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These two little books are really not connected expositions of any particular subject, but rather series of essays, each complete in itself, and referring, of course, in a general way to the subject matter as set forth in the title. They contain a great deal of valuable information for the average reader about the way in which our mental machinery works and are written in an easy literary style that makes the assimilation of the facts set forth a pleasurable diversion.
There is so much knowledge in the world and it is so irregularly distributed that it seems almost a hopeless task to ever get it all working to any particular end. Wisdom is incorporated in various dilutions in all sorts of popular sayings, it comes in varying quantities to each of us as the result of our several life experiences and it is used in this fragmentary way after a fashion. We listen to a man of the world who tells what he has learned and though we listen with respect, what he says is soon forgotten, and any wisdom which he has sought to communicate is never embodied in our living. One of the reasons for this must certainly be that we have no filing device, as it were, in which we can catalogue this wisdom and to which we can turn in our hour of need and be sure of finding it; nor, on the other hand, have we any measuring rod with which we can estimate its value. Filing devices and measuring rods are essential if this scattered knowledge is to be made common property with any chance of being put to practical use in our living.
Dr. Stekel in these two little volumes does a real service to the man in the street by examining a lot of the commonest conceptions and in short and pithy chapters pulls them apart, examines them, indicating the elements of truth and of falsity. It is true that in many instances the analysis may seem superficial, but it is done by a man whose writings attest to the fact that he has profounder depths of knowlege than are communicated in these writings, and therefore it i