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This is another of the excellent small books on psychology recently published by Methuen & Co. Within the space of 190 pages Mr. Ginsberg has given us an eminently useful account of many of the more important aspects of recent thought and speculation on the psychology of society. That the reader is apt to rise from the perusal of the book with a feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction is not the fault of the author but of the present condition of the subject. Indeed we are inclined to suspect that the arousal of such a state of mind in the reader is part of Mr. Ginsberg's aim, for his work—so far as it is not merely expository—is largely critical in nature and aims at upsetting what he conceives to be the top-heavy theoretical constructions of certain other authors and at producing a realisation of our actual ignorance and of the genuine difficulties of the subject.
After a short historical introduction in which certain main lines of thought are briefly discussed (one of these lines consisting in the social application of psycho-analysis), Mr. Ginsberg deals first with the 'General nature of instinct' and then with 'Instinct in society'. He here points out the futility of the attempt to explain social behaviour in terms of instinct, unless at the same time account is taken of the full complexity of actual social conditions, determined as these are by history, traditions, ideals and institutions: he even ventures to assert in this connection that 'the real problems of sociology are left unsolved by the writers of the instinct school' (p. 21). In the next chapter on the 'Rôle of reason and will' he deals with the modern reaction against 'rationalism', and although he agrees that this reaction has been useful in pointing out much that had been previously neglected, he considers that the anti-intellectualists are sometimes guilty of abstractions similar to those of which they have accused their opponents, and deprecates what he considers to be a false view