Genius and Creative Intelligence. by N. D. M. HirschReview by: Frank H. HankinsSocial Forces, Vol. 11, No. 4 (May, 1933), pp. 606-607Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2570293 .

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6o6 SOCIAL FORCES

unemployment insurance. Then comes a short chapter, "Looking Forward." It reveals our United States as really facing backward, lagging, perverse in our attach- ment to obsolescent relief methods, and persistently refusing to admit that our economic conditions present problems like those of our foreign neighbors. The author believes that compulsory health insurance and some such organization of the labor market as was embodied in the Wagner measure, "so unfortunately ve- toed at the I93I Congressional session," would be instrumental in easing the pres- ent strain. Some readers may feel, in view of the mounting unemployment problem which seems already to have reached a crisis, that something more drastic than labor exchange programs will be needed even as an approach to a solution.

Uncle Sam and some of his fifty-odd children clamoring for their "rights" 'do not seem yet to realize that the old home- spun, rugged individualism has become ragged, frayed, and threadbare in the rough-and-tumble of world events. Com- fortable isolation is no more; foreign ideas must be reckoned with. After all there may be something across the fence that is worth imitating even in the sphere of social legislation. Some of our neigh- bors, no more able but much less compla- cent, have tried and accomplished credit- ably a few programs even though patchy and impermanent in some instances. The average General Assembly now in session would doubtless remain unmoved in the face of the facts presented by Mrs. Arm- strong in connection with the low-cost provisions which Austria, Germany, and Great Britain have made in the way of social insurance coverage for their workers. Even when a state does accept a progres- sive social law or program, it seems to do so with such misgiving that it allows it-

self rather easily to be deprived of the advantages of such laws and plans. North Carolina, one of the last states to adopt workmen's compensation, may lose the full intent of the legislation gained in i9Z9 due to the influence of lawyers and doctors in the 1933 session. Of the seven- teen jurisdictions under the American flag that have passed minimum wage laws for women, only six have so far escaped nulli- fication. For those who can be interested in new designs, patterns, and fabrics in keeping with modern social and economic demands, this volume has much to offer.

Charts, graphs, and tables are employed advantageously and attractively. A bird's-eye view of the world situation on the minimum wage and social insurance can be obtained in the appendices before the reading of the chapters is started. The marginal notes are further evidence of the care and clarity which characterize the work. This is the sort of book much needed by sociologists and social workers who so often find themselves bewildered and insecure in their efforts to understand the development and status of social legislation here and abroad. As one of the most valuable and interesting produc- tions of recent years in its field, it is well worth the price.

LEE M. BROOKS.

University of North Carolina

GENIUS AND CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE. By Dr. N. D. M. Hirsch. Cambridge, Mass.: Sci. Art Pub- lishers, I93I. 339 PP. $4.50.

Dr. Hirsch, who is already favorably known for certain ingenious studies of the heredity-environment problem, here makes an assault on the problem of genius. He has written a work of great suggestibility and mental vigor, but one which is some- times difficult to follow because of not in- frequent flights into the empyrean of poetry and fancy. One hardly knows

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LIBRARY AND WORKSHOP 607

whether this is an innate tendency or due to the influences of McDougall, under whom the author studied, and of Bergson, whom he has read too much.

In Part I, on the basis of Carver's theory of active and passive adaptation, he de- velops the necessity of positive eugenic measures to prevent racial deterioration. The implications of this part are not en- tirely clear, but the author draws an analogy between the mutation, the means of creative biological adaptation, and the genius, the agent of cultural creativeness. His attachment to the Lamarckian-Spen- cerian doctrine, while leading only to some beautiful wishful thoughts and cer- tain harmless aprioriszns, evidences again the McDougall teaching and harmonizes well with a certain mystical soul yearning one feels in the author. He finds, for example, that human germ plasm "has had more experience, is older" than that of lower animals. "The germ cells have sexual yearnings, pugnacious tendencies, and they create; mztations are their darlings. . ...The germ plasm does not die; instead of death being its end, a greater creation occurs when it has experienced much-a mutation occurs." (Italics in original.)

Part II of nearly zoo pages, "The Psy- chological Constitution of Man," analyzes human intelligence into three "dimen- sions." This part of the book is ingenious and marked by unusual fertility of sugges- tion, in spite of its over-schematic and somewhat stilted analysis. He argues with a good deal of convincingness that the first dimension of intelligence is the cognitive or perceptual aspect of instinct. The second dimension is objective intelli- gence, whose conative aspect, the tendency to socialize, leads the author to a long discussion of language and laughter. The third dimension, creative intelligence, has for its conative aspect the creative im- pulse, for its cognitive aspect, intuition,

and for its affective aspect, ecstasy. There follows in Part III an inquiry into the nature of genius, in which a literary rather than a factual effort is made to set genius apart from talent as a sort of mutation, something sui generis, along with various other considerations, some of them plau- sible but all unsupported by an appeal to objective fact.

In sum, Dr. Hirsch has written a solid and serious book, with not a few brilliant passages, showing insight and containing suggestive hypotheses. While worthy of the attention of the inquiring student, its method is rather that of the intuitive and speculative philosopher than of the objec- tive scientist.

FRANK H. HANKINS.

Smith College.

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION FOR BusINrEss. By James H. S. Bossard and J. Frederic Dewhurst. Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, I93I.

578 pp. $5.00.

University Edzcation for Business by Bos- sard and Dewhurst is a notable contribu- tion to the theory and practice of collegiate business education. Prior to the appearance of this volume, the field of university business education had been neglected by the writers of books. Of course, Marshall's The Collegiate School of Business had appeared in 19z8 and Lyon's Education for Business, published originally in u9zz, had run through three editions; but neither of these books is comparable to the book by Professors Bossard and Dewhurst. While the book edited by Marshall is valuable, it is merely a reprint of several articles which appeared in the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Business of the University of Chicago. While the book by Lyon contains chapters dealing with business education at the college level, it is concerned largely with business education at the secondary-school

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