434 NOTES AND COMMENTS [june 



when we say that the department of comparative psychology is 

 notoriously anarchic, and a happy hunting-ground for the crank 

 whose hand is against every man's. In this there is no reason for 

 ill-humour, except that many people are led astray from the paths 

 of clear -thinking, and that much energy is wasted in making bad 

 inferences which might have been more profitably expended in 

 making good observations. The only cure that we can suggest is that 

 it might, without tyrannous censorship, be made, let us say, a point of 

 etiquette, that a man should not publish his views without first making 

 himself reasonably well acquainted with what has been done and said 

 on the subject by a few of the leading representatives of the different 

 schools. 



These remarks are prompted by the perusal of a little book 

 entitled "The Dawn of Eeason," 1 by Dr. James Weir, Jr., author of 

 " The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire," 

 etc. ; and the particular characteristic of the book which seems to call 

 for comment is its remarkable combination of good and bad qualities. 

 It cannot be read without pleasure and profit, for it records in an 

 entertaining way many very interesting observations ; it cannot be 

 read without disappointment and irritation, for its inferences are pre- 

 judiced and its prejudices are ignorant. Let us illustrate. 



The author tells us in his preface that " his material has been 

 thoroughly sifted, and the reader may depend upon the absolute truth 

 of the evidence here presented." This is admirable ; evidence whose 

 absolute truth may be depended on is exactly what we need, for, as 

 Dr. Weir reminds us, " many of the data used by the authors of more 

 pretentious works are second-hand or hearsay." But before we get 

 over the third page this author tells us that he is confident that, not- 

 withstanding the fact that the nerve-cell is not differentiated in the 

 primal forms known as the monera, or one-celled organisms [we are 

 combining two sentences], nerve-elements are, nevertheless, present in 

 them, and serve to direct and control life. We do not see the reason 

 for the author's confidence, but we read that his " propositions have 

 been formulated only after a twenty years' study of biology in all of its 

 phases." We also read that all the other senses have been evolved 

 from the sense of touch ; that the visual picture formed by a crayfish's 

 eye is a mosaic of hundreds of little pictured sections ; that the author 

 has been able to verify Professor ('lark's observations in regard to the 

 protozoan, Stentor polymorphits, which, as he asserts, has a well- 

 developed nervous system ; that on one occasion, while he was studying 

 the contractile vesicle (heart) of one of these animalcules he saw it 

 evince what seemed to him to be unquestionable evidences of conscious 

 determination ; and so on at frequent intervals through the whole 

 book. We must believe the author when he tells us that " his 

 material has been thoroughly sifted," but the meshes in his sieve must 



1 New York : Macmillan Company, 1889, pp. xiii. and 234. Price 5f. 



