You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The first volume of this work was published in 1912 under the title of 'A History of Psychology: Ancient and Patristic'. The present volumes bring the work to about the end of the nineteenth century, and we hope that the author will face the formidable task of completing this series with a final volume on the present position of psychology. The work itself will stand as one of the monuments in the history of psychology and is a magnificent tribute to English scholarship, being considerably superior to its only serious rival, Siebeck's work, published some forty years ago. Although its conception is on a grand scale, aiming at nothing less than a history of psychological thought from the earliest times to the present day, it is far from being a mere encyclopaedia, inclusive though it is. The author's chasteness of style and the directness and serenity of his judgement make it a most valuable presentation of the essential contributions made by the more important writers of the past two thousand years.
A small section on psycho-analysis has been, perhaps unwisely, included at the end of the last volume. We say unwisely, because it is evident that the author is far from familiar with the development of this subject, nor has he been able to select the central ideas in a way that might have been done in the space at his disposal; the word 'Unconscious' for example, is not mentioned, and the subject is regarded too much as being merely a branch of medical science. We trust that this deficiency will be remedied in a future edition.
The author rightly points out that 'If the student is not to be left with the idea that knowledge is a fixed quantity of indisputable facts, if on the contrary he is to acquire a real understanding of the process by which knowledge is continually made and remade, he must learn to look at the movement of ideas without prejudice as a separate fact with its own significance and its own meaning for humanity. To despise forgotten theories bec