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This book consists of a series of lectures which were delivered at the Teachers' College, Columbia University, in 1923–4. As is so often the case in a book which has this origin, it ranges widely and deals in a fresh and stimulating way with the various topics raised. It touches upon a number of controversial subjects, but takes these perhaps too easily and lightly. This is particularly so in the sections which are of special interest to the readers of this JOURNAL. The chapter on repression and sublimation is led up to by the earlier general discussions of instinct. Professor Thomson emphasizes throughout the great plasticity of the instincts in man and the vast significance of the learning process, and he conceives the problem of sublimation in these terms. In attempting to explain repression and sublimation he develops the analogy of the water drainage system very fully and forcibly. His general attitude to psycho-analytical theory is sympathetic and undisturbed, but his broad eclecticism and readiness to see the significance of the psycho-analytical contribution to the theory of instincts in relation to education is a shade undiscriminating. Professor Thomson is untechnical not only in the sense of writing clearly and simply and popularly, but in the sense of being himself vague about the terms he uses and the detailed facts he describes, as in the following passage (p. 157): 'From another point of view, however, man's superiority is in the greater plasticity of his instincts, and the emotional drives associated with them, so that they can be directed away from the bestial gutters in which their untrammelled course would lie, into other channels. And so began in man the conflict of good and evil, for while the primordial path of expression of an instinct cannot be either blameworthy or praiseworthy in a beast of the field which can respond in no other way, in man the channels into which instincts are diverted may be either noble or ignoble. The former