The Individual Delinquent; A Text-Book of Diagnosis and Prognosis For All Concerned in Understanding Offenders. By William Healy, A.B., M.D., Director of the Psychopathic Institute, Juvenile Court, Chicago, Associate Professor Mental and Nervous Diseases, Chicago Policlinic. Published by  Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1915.

This somewhat massive book of nearly 800 pages, whatever minor defects it may have, deserves to be rated as a classic. It will surely be consulted frequently and profitably by all persons—whether judges, lawyers, and institutional authorities, or “psychologists, physicians, religious leaders, school people and … parents”—having to do with children who find the difficulties and temptations of life greater than they can cope with unaided.

The significance of such a book as this for educators is greater than it might seem. The practical education of the future is certain to be based to a larger extent than heretofore on the psychology of childhood. Whatever may be the influences leading to the formation of temperament and character, which one might look upon as innate and unalterable by treatment, the child's future life is largely determined by the environmental influences of the first ten or fifteen years and by the reactions of the child to these influences. And those who have the guidance of so-called “normal” children will find their views widened by a careful study of children who would ordinarily be classified as “abnormal.” As a matter of fact, no sharp line between “normal” and “abnormal” can be drawn. The same tendencies and influences are everywhere present, although they vary enormously in point of combination and intensity. Certainly, even the most healthyminded persons have a great deal to learn from the experiences of the less healthy-minded, the chief lesson being that in great measure the external conflicts with which people have to struggle are reflections of their internal conflicts, and that the degree of their success with reference to the former is largely determined by their success with reference to the latter. When one is called upon to pass judgment on a delinquent, one must study him from many points of view,—that is, with reference to his innate tendencies and to the influences by which he is surrounded after birth. But the latter, just becau