Volume 1

Psychology and politics : and other essays / by W.H.R. Rivers ... with a prefatory note by G. Elliot Smith ... and an appreciation by C.S. Myers.

  • Rivers, W. H. R. (William Halse Rivers), 1864-1922.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Psychology and politics : and other essays / by W.H.R. Rivers ... with a prefatory note by G. Elliot Smith ... and an appreciation by C.S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/200
    death, another on Education and Mental Hygiene, upon the preparation of which he seems to have been engaged at the end, and a lecture on the Aims of Ethnology. During his last three years Dr Rivers delivered this lecture repeatedly in universities and public schools and to a variety of societies of different kinds in Great Britain and America, and refrained from publishing it, because he was able to make use of it whenever he was invited simply to give a lecture at a school, a university, or in fact any kind of gathering of people. Although its connection with politics may not be apparent, it is included in this volume because Dr Rivers approached the problems of politics and education and acquired that wider understanding of the range of psychology and sociology by way of ethnology ; and during the last five years of his life he was constantly pleading for the closer integration of ethnology and psychology. The history of his change of attitude to the problems of ethnology, which he gives in the last chapter of this book, had a direct bearing upon his views on sociology, education and politics. For the clearer vision of the nature of human thought and action and the fuller understanding of the meaning of civilisation that emerged from such studies forcibly impressed upon him the unity of culture and the close interdependence of all mankind, and laid the foundations of his appreciation of what should be the ultimate aim of all government and political action. These addresses are printed without any alterations other than mere typographical corrections. G. ELLIOT SMITH.