15© THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



problem as to the relation of body and mind in his works on hearing 

 and seeing and on vision and music. Lotze, who has the credit of 

 having banished the idea of vital force from the study of biology, has 

 given especial attention to the study of the methods or rules of the 

 psychophysical machine. But the most prominent and successful 

 investigator in this special department of mental and physical study is 

 Professor Wundt, of Leipzig. It is said of him that he combines in the 

 methods he follows the truth found in Lotze's medical psychology and 

 Helmholtz's physiology of hearing and seeing with valuable additions 

 of his own. He approaches the study of mind from the side of physi- 

 ology, but is careful to take into consideration the whole problem of 

 mentality and thus avoid theories founded on the study of only a part 

 of it. The older metaphysical psychologists explained " the unity and 

 unified totality of all inner and mental phenomena " by assuming the 

 existence of an independent entity, " the soul, the person, the self," at 

 the beginning of their discussions. This modern psychology is unwill- 

 ing to do. The unity of the inner life and its unified totality is a 

 clearly defined problem. This problem Professor Wundt has sought 

 to solve. The question he puts to himself is, " Wherein consists the 

 unity of consciousness, wherein is the totality of all mental life, in- 

 dividual and collective?" It will thus be seen that he and his school 

 are leaving no difficulty untouched, and if the results of their studies 

 are not universally accepted as satisfactory it will not be from any lack 

 of thoroughness on the part of those who have made them. 



Objectively, the study of mind psychophysical^ may be made a 

 basis for the study of language. Or from the study of language one 

 may form some opinion as to the nature and origin of mind. The 

 problems of language are many and difficult of solution. How did 

 language originate? How has it been developed? What does its use 

 indicate? Broca in 1861 located the organ of speech in the center of 

 the brain and by his writings laid the foundation of the science of 

 phonetics, but was unable to overcome the well-nigh universal convic- 

 tion that we can not account for the beginning of speech or of its 

 development upon a merely mechanical and material basis. Speech 

 implies thought, and thought has not been proved to be an attribute of 

 matter or a product of mechanics. Wundt has not failed to study the 

 problem of mental life objectively as well as introspectively. He has 

 created the science of psychophysics. He has originated the theory of 

 the parallelism of physical and psychophysical phenomena. As easily 

 the first in this department of study, it is to his laboratory and to the 

 men he has trained that students who are awaiting the solution of the 

 difficulties connected with the psychophysical problem are turning for 

 light. Wundt uses the word epiphenomena, which may be discon- 

 tinuous, even if life itself is continuous, to explain various mental 

 manifestations. But even here in the effort to explain centralization 



