exposition. In brief, psychologists are rather likely, with a reasonable variation of cordiality, to endorse the emphasis which Dr. Hall's studies have led him to place upon certain aspects of mental evolution, but rather unlikely to endorse his special and insistent applications thereof. Likewise will they hesitate to join forces with him in his subservience of so many other normative trends in psychology to the dominance of the evolutionary and atavistic influences from which in his accounts so many human blessings and their opposites flow.
It has already been indicated that psychologists and laymen alike will find their sense of obligation to those volumes lessened by certain peculiarities of presentation that seem to result from a too ardent desire for judiciously modified and at the same time richly comprehensive statements. This detraction from the possible influence of the work is more serious for the layman; and it is to be feared that these volumes, extensive and difficult to read, will lose a considerable measure of the influence which the interest of the subject would have, under more favorable circumstances, commanded. Equally must it be said that the extreme, and to many minds needlessly urgent, frankness in the treatment of topics usually (even if we admit at times unwisely) debarred from public consideration, will give offense in quarters where a less drastic treatment would have saved the situation without sacrificing the pedagogical effect. That this element in the work has already led to the exclusion of the volume from certain public libraries can easily be ascertained. Those who read between the lines will acquire a conviction of greater sympathy with the author than with his book. They may come to feel, what those who are acquainted with the author's career know, that his influence in shaping psychological and educational interests is sounder and more effective and distinctly more suggestive than his recorded position. These mixed feelings of attraction and repulsion, together with the strain of orientation of thought already referred to, will further diminish the influence of the volumes among the lay public. This criticism may be fairly interpreted to mean that the author has attempted too complex and many-sided a task, rather than that he has in any sense failed to accomplish the purpose which he set before him. It may well be that two different books, each addressed to a separate set of readers, would have diminished the sense of lack of fitness to their special needs which the layman and the psychologist—to say nothing of the student of education—now feel.
Having thus indicated the characteristics of the volumes which are likely to detract from the more general acceptance of the positions taken therein and from a proper appreciation of the work among lay readers, it remains only to repeat the estimate more objectively stated above, that the comprehensiveness of the task and the ability of the author will in the end, and in more directions than have here been indicated, gain for the work a distinct recognition as one of the notable contributions of American scholarship to the field of psychology.
