Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/353

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PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERATURE
341

very young children. It contains forty-three lessons upon the topics of dependence, kindness, generosity, love, courage, obedience, immortality, helpfulness; every lesson is based upon a story, which may or may not be taken from the Bible; and the programme is arranged to carry the teacher through the Sundays from autumn to summer, with appropriate lessons for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. A regular order of exercises is outlined, and the words and music are given of twenty-one selected songs. The book is well illustrated, and in general has been carefully prepared; it should prove excellently adapted to its purpose.F. Smith.

The Child and His Religion. By G. E. Dawson. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1909. pp. ix, 124. Price, 82c.

The core of this little book is the chapter entitled Children's Interest in the Bible, which is reprinted without substantial change from the Pedagogical Seminary, 1900. Two prefatory chapters deal respectively with Interest as a Measure of Values and with the Natural Religion of Children. In the former, the author sketches the doctrine of interest in its various historical phases, and enters a plea for its acceptance in religious as in secular education. In the latter, he seeks to determine the psychological factors in natural religion, and finds them in animism, the instinct of causality, the instinct of immortality, and the child's inherent faith and good-will. A concluding chapter outlines the problem of religious education. Its aim is that of religious adjustment to a progressive environment; its material is the whole of experience, religious in the stricter sense and secular as well, appropriated to religious uses; and its method is that which insures self-expression, in interest, in thought and in conduct. "The typical kindergarten and the typical Young Men's Christian Association illustrate what is thus far the best statement of the problem of religious education and constitute the most consistent attempts at its solution."F. Smith.

Die Kultur der Gegenwart, herausgegeben von Paul Hinneberg. Teil I, Abteilung V. Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie. Berlin und Leipzig, B. G. Teubner. 1909. pp. viii, 572. Price Mk. 12.

The present volume of this comprehensive work is made up of eight essays, excellently proportioned, which cover the main divisions of a systematic history of philosophy. A general introduction, on the beginnings of philosophy and the philosophy of primitive peoples, is contributed by Wundt. The four following chapters are devoted to the philosophy of the Orient, Oldenberg writing on India, Goldziher on Islam and Judaea, the late Professor Grube on China, and Inouye on Japan. Occidental philosophy is treated under three principal headings: von Arnim is responsible for the account of ancient philosophy, and Baumker and Windelband deal, respectively, with the medieval and the modern periods. Every section is therefore written, not only competently, but with authority, and the editor is to be congratulated upon his choice of collaborators and his success in securing their co-operation. The value of the work is greatly enhanced by the selected bibliographies appended to the successive chapters; and there is a good index.

It goes without saying that the volume contains much that is of interest to psychologists; it furnishes, on many counts, materials of high value towards that history of psychology which is still to be written. We must here confine ourselves, however, to a brief account of Wundt's paragraphs upon primitive psychology.

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