The Psychology of Men of Genius. By Ernst Kretschmer, Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology in the University of Marburg. Translated, with an Introduction, by R. B. Cattell, B.Sc, Ph.D., University of London. New York:  Harcourt, Brace & Co. Illus. Pp.  256, including Index.

The author of this book is already well known through his work on Physique and Character, which appeared in English some years ago. It is a great joy to be able to read another book from the same pen in which the author applies the principles worked out in Physique and Character to an understanding of men of genius. Kretschmer is by no means a dry as dust writer or scientist. He appreciates that there are many things, especially in living matter and particularly in the complex manifestations of, human thought and activity, that are intangible, and which cannot be reduced to mathematical formulations. Statistics, measurements, and the like which are the goal of so many scientists fail here, and yet for that reason alone there is no excuse for not considering the phenomena which present themselves. If we are to wait until a thought can be weighed and measured then we will wait forever. The thought is a living fact and Kretschmer has no hesitancy in dealing with it with such available methods as exist. Intuition and feeling are just as real tools of the mind as the intellect, and they need not to be forgotten. Therefore, we must be prepared to see in the present book, as in fact we do, that he measures the performances of given individuals against standards of value which he appreciates fully may be to an extent personal, but that by no means destroys their significance. Values and efficiency are the sort of things with which we must approach the study of genius. He does this in this most fascinating volume written in parts almost with the pen of a poet.

The book is divided into two parts. The first one takes up what would ordinarily be called the more scientific discussion, the questions of inheritance, of race, and the like; while the second part is largely occupied with accounts of the life history of certain geniuses who illustrate the points discussed. Thus the artist is illustrated by Goethe, the scientist by Robert Mayer, the great leader by Bismarck, the literar