NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

THIRTY YEARS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. By Charles Richet. New York: the Macmillan Company.

Scientists who have seriously taken up what is called "psychic research" have always had to contend not only with the inherent difficulty of their subject matter but also with an intolerant attitude on the part of other scientists and the general public. Every science, to be sure, has had its mythological period. Since chemistry originated in alchemy and astronomy in astrology, it should not surprise us that "metapsychics", as Professor Richet chooses to call the branch of knowledge to which he has devoted so much effort, finds its beginnings in Spiritualism. The difference is that, whereas the other pseudosciences flourished in a period of general ignorance and superstition, the "occult" aspects of psychic research were brought forward at a time when men's minds were thoroughly accustomed to scientific modes of thought and to an objective matter-of-fact way of looking at all things. "Spiritualism" thus fell into deserved contempt, and the connection of psychic research with the discredited cult was too close and too recent to be promptly shaken off. It was doubtless inevitable that a man like F. W. H. Myers should have entered upon the investigation of occult phenomena chiefly with the object of proving (or disproving) survival of bodily death. So the first experimenters in chemistry sought the philosopher's stone, and those who first studied the laws governing the stars aimed at the prediction of future events. Whether scientific proof of immortality be something more or less illusory than the philosopher's stone, we are not at present entitled to say. The point that has become clear is that the search for such proof is no longer either the necessary motive or the most promising objective in metapsychic investigation. And while it is unintelligent-and in the case of the living not merely unintelligent but cruel-to sneer at such men as Myers and Lodge for their preoccupation with the beyond, yet it must be said that the emphasis they have laid upon this phase of the subject has proved rather a hindrance than a help to a just appreciation of the facts.

The truth appears to be that "metapsychics" is a science just emerging from the mythological stage and entering upon the stage of exact and impartial examination of phenomena. It has hardly reached the stage at which hypotheses are feasible. In particular it needs to be wary of adopting as its leading hypothesis and its reason for being the idea of disembodied intelligences. Conceivably any science may reach conclusions profoundly modifying our conception of human destiny; but its immediate goal should be simply truth.

To lay the formal foundation, or rather to outline clearly the ground plan, of the new science of metapsychics is clearly the purpose of Professor Richet. His book is thus not at all of a sensational character. It is possible, indeed,— though not easy,—to write entertainingly of the occult without merely peddling marvels or catering to the love of ghost stories. This, however, is not precisely what Richet has attempted. His book is largely a collection of observations, patiently accumulated, rigidly classified, and carefully criticized. It partakes of the dullness which the layman without special enthusiasm for bare truth is apt to feel when he delves into the detailed facts of any science.

The originality of the work consists, first, in its classification of the phenomena, and, secondly, in its severe exclusion of mythology, and, indeed, of every unnecessary hypothesis. The phenomena of metapsychics are divided into the subjective and the objective. The subjective class includes simply various manifestations of cryptesthesia, "a faculty of cognition that differs from the normal sensorial faculties." The objective class comprises telekinesis -mechanical action at a distance without contact and ectoplasm (materialization), which is "the formation of diverse objects that seem to emerge from a human body and take on the semblance of material realities-clothing, veils, and living bodies."

If these alleged phenomena are not true, then we must attribute to the professor of physiology in the University of Paris-to say nothing of other men of science who have reached similar conclusions-strange credulity and extraordinary inexactness of observation.

But what is the interpretation of the facts, if facts they be? Professor Richet's answers are largely negative. The spiritist doctrine he criticizes and dismisses. "Telepathy," as an explanation of the phenomena of cryptesthesia, he regards as a mere impediment. "Telepathy implies a hypothesis; cryptesthesia has the great merit that it does not. If A sees his [absent] dying friend at the moment of death, it is a hypothesis to say that the thought of B has been transmitted to A. But it is no hypothesis to say that A has some special sensibility that makes him aware of the death of B." Except for the relative simplicity of the term cryptesthesia (hidden sensibility) it makes no difference how we label the facts. "Although the pole-star is many millions of miles beyond Sirius, both are equally inaccessible. To read my thought seems as difficult as to read a letter (open or closed) on my desk two miles or two thousand miles distant." Similarly Professor Richet, unlike Flournoy, attempts no explanation by means of the subconsciousness. Facts that can be completely explained by subconscious action belong, he would say, to normal psychology rather than to metapsychics.

We are left, then, with an accumulation of observed facts and a very little knowledge of the conditions under which they occur. "There is a small number of subjective intellectual facts (much less numerous than spiritualists suppose) which neither pantamnesia nor the subconscious elaboration of

remembrances can account for." A limited number of objective facts is equally well attested. That is all.

On the whole, the chief interest of Richet's book is that it states precisely what reason there is for supposing that the range of human intellect is greater than we have been accustomed to think. Otherwise, this treatise has rather less relation to life and to the recognized interests of mankind than has an explanation of Relativity. To those who possess intellectual curiosity and who are free from the common phobia of the abnormal, it will prove almost as well worth reading as any of the accounts of Einstein's theory-and for similar reasons.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS. By Robert Lynd. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The charm of Mr. Lynd's critical writing is essentially due to the fact that he is a sound if sometimes rather superficial humanist. The virtue of humanism, untainted with dogmatism either new or old, is one that will bear considerable dilution. Nothing that possesses a well-attested, or even a presumptive, human value comes amiss to Mr. Lynd, and without making an idol of art or its supposed principles, he sees that art has a sphere of its own not altogether coincident with that of objective reality. Doubtless-though Mr. Lynd does not say just this-the virtue of what Nathaniel Hawthorne called "those damned allegories" of his is precisely the fact that they are exquisite allegories rather than realistic stories. Substantiality in fiction has its delight, but so has unsubstantiality, and the world would be poorer without the unsubstantiality of Hawthorne. So of many other writers, questionable or highly respectable. What they have written is literature; that is, it is writing exquisitely adapted to fulfill a human need and to convey a human meaning. Shall we then ask whether Herrick, for example, is worth while? By no means! It is enough to know that "Herrick was a gross and goodnatured clergyman who had a double chin❞—and who wrote exquisite verses. After this we may go on and get a taste of the quality of his work. Herrick "kept a pet pig which drank beer out of a tankard It would be a libel on him to say that he was a pig, but it would not be a libel to say that he was a pet pig On the whole, "he is a master of light poetry-of

poetry under the rose."

In the part of his essay that lies between his characterization and his estimate, Mr. Lynd does, however, make one feel a good deal of Herrick's real quality. If this sort of thing be superficial criticism, then superficiality is often more to be desired than profundity.

That Mr. Lynd writes with charm is undeniable: he possesses the art of interesting his readers not so much in criticism or in literature as in the particular work or the individual writer that he portrays. He is, however, seldom very penetrating, and is, all things considered, essayist rather than critic in much of what he writes. Thus, after writing eloquently of Byron, he

leaves us―Macaulay-fashion-with little more than the conventional picture of Byron. In his article on Keats, he fastens upon the Fanny Brawne controversy, and he produces a comment rather than an interpretation. The only conclusion that appears capable of emerging from all the talk about Keats and Fanny (when all the pros and cons have been exhausted) is that Keats was a man! He was also a poet, which interests one more.

In short, despite all the stress that Mr. Lynd very properly lays upon the personal element in criticism, one does occasionally feel in his writing an insufficiency of personal insight.

One likes him best in those essays wherein one can most clearly perceive his liberality and his best intuition at work in assigning to writers, howsoever fashionable or unfashionable, fantastic or realistic, a just preëminence within the spheres that they have made their own. One likes it that Hawthorne should be called "the first prose myth-maker of America," and that he should be praised for that. One is pleased with Mr. Lynd's estimate of Max Beerbohm as perfect in his own fashion. A critic who can perceive the human and the artistic superiority of Plutarch and of Herodotus to most modern biographers and historians, and who can at the same time attribute due value and praise to writers so artificial as Max Beerbohm and Edgar Allen Poe, joins liberality and discrimination to some purpose.

After all, the only serious fault that one somewhat ill-naturedly finds with Mr. Lynd's criticism is that it leaves Philistinism almost untouched. A perhaps not wholly misguided instinct makes one feel that criticism should not be too easy-going and democratic-that it should be a little savage and also a little esoteric; that it should not merely engage the willing interest of the reader, but should force him to know in his soul whether his liking for literature is sham or real.

SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS. By John Cowper Powys. New York: American Library Service.

Just what is meant by Philistinism-that intellectually snobbish word? Perhaps the quality at the heart of it is the unspoken belief that all men are created equal in intellect and in perception, or, if not, that no one has a right to claim any superiority by reason of such endowments-intellect and taste being a kind of freakish addition to plain human nature. Thus the "finer things of life" are all very well in their way.

However this may be, it is certain that the criticism of Mr. John Cowper Powys cannot be accused of leaving Philistinism unscathed. Any one who is a Philistine is going to be enraged by Mr. Powys's criticism. This also would doubtless be all very well in its way, except for the fact that Mr. Powys in his latest book indulges in certain rather extravagant tirades against the dominance of bourgeois tastes and standards, the tyranny of the "young person" in literature, and that "barbaric vulgarity of our commercial age" which casts a slur upon frank discussions of the influence of sex in literature.

To put the case mildly, one feels that a subtler irony would have been more effective.

Mr. Powys at his best is, however, an acute and even a powerful critic. If his general philosophy is unacceptable and one wishes that he would not parade it quite so much-this fact does not prevent him from writing amazingly well of Joseph Conrad and of Henry James. On the contrary, one may perhaps concede that a bad philosophy may help one to write good criticism, as a thoroughly unscientific conception of the universe may be favourable to writing good poetry!

Nevertheless, one cannot avoid stumbling over Mr. Powys's general notions about life, and one cannot praise him adequately without first dispraising them.

There is first the notion that the ultimately desirable thing is "to sink deeply into one's true self": literature helps us most when it helps us to do this. It is true enough, no doubt, that we all have certain primary traits and instincts which we cannot really alter and which we repress at our peril. If modern psychology has taught us anything, it certainly appears to have taught us that. But who is to tell us when we are truly sinking into our true selves and when we are merely sinking into our vagaries? In order to make the proper discrimination, it really does not seem to be enough that we frankly and fully recognize the influence of sex. Again one can scarcely avoid noticing that the doctrine does not invariably work well in the case of those who practice it consciously. In fact, it works badly about to the extent to which it is consciously practiced, seeming to result in what one is tempted to call lazymindedness, a subjectivism, at any rate, that appears to be not sufficiently careful of logic and proportion. Men of genius do indeed seem more or less to conform to the doctrine, but they are at their best when they do so unconsciously and because they cannot help it. Let us admit that there are certain deep hereditary, not very definable, apprehensions in us, to which the greater writers and artists appeal. But suppose this course of reasoning results in the affirmation that the only permanently humourous subject is sex, and that the most genuine humour is akin to the "racy" talk of loungers in a tavern! Shall we still agree? One is led to doubt that the reaction even of great writers upon one is best described by the word “sinking", or any such passive word, and one wants a better definition of "true self".

Secondly, one runs foul of the notion that all the significance of life is contained in those moments of realization which art and literature inspire and which in their turn are the inspirers of art and literature. This identification of imagination with the meaning of life, like the more famous identification of truth with beauty, seems splendid yet a trifle rash. "Something tells us" that it may be so, yet one cannot help suspecting that there may be a good deal more in life than just this.

Finally, one comes up against Mr. Powys's general contempt for our present commercial civilization and bourgeois standards. Here, too, it seems as