pity, commonly observed among savage races, which causes them tą regard homicide as a mere incident, and as glorious in case it is the outcome of revenge. To this latter the negro is frequently impelled by a spirit of resentment of the prejudices of his white fellow-citizens; and just as frequently the motive for his crimes may be found in the gratification of his brutal instincts.

Further, there may be adduced in explanation of the negro's tendency to crime the fact that he is still practically in servitude; for while the law has emancipated him, it cannot be denied that the law in this respect is to a great extent a dead letter. It has been amply demonstrated that from a servile condition spring the greatest of criminals.

Again, a supreme cause of the homicidal tendency found in the negro race of the United States may be sought in their moral and material conditions, which in some respects are rendered worse by the abolition of slavery, producing, as it did, a ferment in the minds of the colored people and exposing them to social problems in the presence of which even a stronger race would have stood appalled and powerless. With a diminished surveillance, and an increased antagonism between whites and blacks, rendered inevitable by an emancipation which was not due to but in spite of the Southern whites, it is not difficult to conceive that the law decreeing equality of the two races must inevitably have become practically ineffective, the negro still remaining morally, if not bodily, the white man's slave. Even in the British West Indies where the negroes have long enjoyed ample liberty, they still preserve their primitive habits, with a marked tendency to homicide and a rarity of suicides.*

As to the Chinese, they are more given to infanticide, which they do not regard as a real crime. Considering their restricted numbers, they furnish a large percentage of criminals; but while the prisons have for years been full of these Mongolians, their contribution to criminality is not increasing, for the law prohibits Chinese immigration, and there is little or no natural increase of such population in the United States, owing to the very limited number of women of that race in the country.

(To be continued.)

CESARE LOMBROSO.

* See Hoffmann, The Negroes in the West Indies; Strahan, Suicide and Insanity, 1896.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOLF.

BY DR. LOUIS ROBINSON.

GOLF is generally regarded as a hobby which should be followed with a single mind, and some enthusiasts may possibly resent its being used as a kind of philosophic stalking horse for approaching certain shy problems in psychology. I have found, however, when conversing with many confirmed golfers that any subject which has a colorable connection with their favorite sport is treated with tolerance. Hence I trust that a brief discussion of some of the nervous and mental processes involved in the game may interest the golfing readers of this REVIEW.

It must be evident to every one who has watched a golfer's progress that there must be some remarkable affinity between th human mind and the royal and ancient game. Every golf club becomes a mission centre for the surrounding district and one continually sees that those who come to scoff remain to play.

It would be easy to justify the game of golf on rational grounds and to show that it affords one of the most beneficial forms of relaxation for brain workers who are not able to indulge in violent or fatiguing sports. But, as is generally the case in human affairs, the tyro's impelling motive is seldom based upon reason.

At present, although the game is played the whole world over, one finds that it has not obtained a firm foothold except where the English language is spoken. Hence, if we wish to enquire into the psychic idiosyncrasies which conduce to golf contagion-in the way that physicians enquire into the predisposing causes of disease-we must seek them among the mental peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon race. Now, to the outsider who has never handled a club the game looks ridiculously easy. The object which has to be struck is stationary; hence the man who has played cricket, or fives, or baseball, thinks that it is the simplest thing in

the world to hit it in the direction in which he wishes it to go. He takes hold of a club (which he generally handles as if it were a cricket bat) and strikes at the ball. As often as not he misses it altogether, and even if he chances to aim correctly he finds himself completely outdriven by men whose athletic capabilities he holds in contempt. On following up his first attempt with the stern determination to better it, our beginner, after striking with all his might three or four times and plowing up the ground around his ball, manages at length to move it fully two yards. The difficulties seem unaccountable. Although the ball sits still to be hit he cannot hit it; and, the more he sets his teeth and exerts his muscles in attempts to send it soaring forward after the manner of his opponent, the more complete is his humiliation.

Now, I think we have discovered the first element of golfmania in the stiff-necked and pig-headed Caucasian. After such a defeat it is absolutely impossible for him, consistently with retaining his self-respect, to leave things as they are. To give up golf at this stage is to acknowledge that he cannot do something which is obviously and ludicrously simple. He must either go on or else acknowledge himself an impotent paralytic. Yet, the more he concentrates his soul upon the game, the greater becomes the contrast between his miserable attempts and the feats of the players whom he lately despised. Although in the very slough of despond he grimly (and literally) plows his way onwards, determined not to be beaten. At length-usually when his humiliation is complete-by a lucky chance he makes an effective stroke, and the ball springs away from his club-head like a thing of life and flies an incredible distance. It was the one thing needed to weld the fetters of golf slavery. He goes home with blistered hands and aching shoulders, and before he sleeps he has restruck that miraculous stroke a hundred times. Next morning finds him again upon the links. Ere a week is out he is armed with all the complex paraphernalia of the game, which he formerly regarded as contemptible superfluities, and is practising "approach shots" in his garden to the ruination of the sacred turf. He buys sundry handbooks on golf and spends a small fortune in lessons from the club professional. All his thoughts and conversation are saturated with golf, and his friends sum up his condition by saying that he has "got it badly."

Having thus suggested the chief reasons why the game is so

seductive to most people who allow themselves to tamper with it, I will now endeavor to explain what takes place in the brain and nervous apparatus of the learner before he becomes an adept. Perhaps it is taking rather a liberty with the word psychology to apply it to nervous processes in which conscious thought has but little share, but at present we have no other term which can be used in its place. The nervous processes to which I shall refer are by no means peculiar to golf; in fact, they come into play on almost every occasion when we perform any act requiring the combined efforts of various muscles. Probably it is because they seem so much a matter of course that they have hitherto received so little attention from students of mental science. They belong, in fact, to that animal or automatic part of us which it has been the fashion of nearly all moral philosophers to ignore, and which we are only beginning to understand. He who takes up golf in early life probably learns to play as unconsciously as he learned to walk, and if the game were a development of any other branch of athletics in which most youths acquire proficiency, most of us would probably drift into it in an automatic fashion and acquire a fair amount of skill without knowing how. It is because golf compels those of us who take it up in adult life to begin again at the beginning that it helps us to appreciate some of the elementary conditions of semi-automatic acts. Another peculiarity of golf which renders it useful as a revealer of psychic methods is the fact that each player acts independently and pursues his course without let or hindrance, except from his own want of skill and the condition of the ground. football, cricket, and almost all popular athletic sports there is a continual interaction of wills and the constant excitement of opposed endeavors. Hence the mental and nervous processes involved are extremely complex, and no chance offers for calm introspective analysis while the game is proceeding. But the golfer, from the time he leaves the first "tee" until he finally "holes out," usually has the ball solely at his own disposal, and there is abundant time for meditation as he follows it after each stroke. Proficiency in other games instead of assisting the golf player rather stands in his way. The driving stroke at golf is utterly different from a stroke at cricket, hockey, tennis, or baseball. In all these, vigorous action of the flexor and extensor muscles of the arm is necessary, but the golfer who would drive a long ball"

In

must reduce the muscular action of the arm to a minimum and do all with a turn of the body and a pendulum-like swing of the club. This is why even the accomplished all-round athlete has practically to begin over again when he becomes a golfer. The muscular habits which he has acquired during his boyhood, and which give him easy skill in other games, are worse than useless, and an entirely new set of automatic actions must be evolved.

Probably, few of my readers are conscious of the extremely complex nature of some of the simplest muscular acts. A little thought will show that both in ourselves and in the great majority of the lower animals elaborate calculations are unconsciously performed almost every time the body is put in motion. Look how exactly a beast of prey calculates the distance of its quarry before it makes a spring, and what a complex business must be the adjusting of all the muscular forces so as to enable it to alight upon the back of its victim. Mental science has now arrived at a stage when we can no longer be content with the explanation that such actions are "instinctive." Every athlete is perfectly aware that as he approaches a jump a calculating process is going on within him, and he knows before he arrives at the obstacle whether the forces he can summon are sufficient to carry him over. Like the beast of prey above alluded to, he can without difficulty estimate the propulsive force required so that he can alight at any point he pleases within the limits of his jumping distance. That this capacity for mental calculation is something quite distinct from the ordinary mathematical faculty is shown by the fact that it exists in great perfection in early life, before the power to deal with figures develops.

As I have said, golf compels those of us who take up the game after we have arrived at manhood to fall back upon subconscious mental processes which are common in young children and in the lower animals, and I shall show that most of the wellworn maxims of professional instructors are calculated to aid us. in this attempt. Take, for instance, the two phrases which are dinned into the ears of every beginner, "Keep your eye on the ball," and "Slow back." Every tyro finds out that it is by no means easy to estimate the distance of the ball correctly enough to enable his club to strike it. We find, however, that among the lower animals this power to estimate distances is very widely distributed. Even as low down in the scale as the chameleon, or