LOEB'S " THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE " 467 



So far as the issue is one of terms merely, a large latitude 

 should be accorded to personal preference, and if Dr. Loeb finds 

 "associative memory" a more agreeable term than "conscious- 

 ness," no one may justly object. But if it be supposed that by 

 the use of the phrase "associative memory" any greater insight 

 has been gained into the oiganic happenings commonly called 

 "conscious," a demurrer may justly be entered. Psychologists 

 have used the term consciousness as a general rubric under 

 which to subsume not only memory and association, but also 

 perception and inference and pleasure-pain and attention, to 

 mention only a few of many constituents. It may be correctly 

 asserted that they have often used the teim as though it applied 

 to a specific agent, and have thereby toisted a spurious explana- 

 tion of certain phenomena upon an unsuspecting public. Not 

 all have fallen into this pit. But even granting this short- 

 coming, it is not clear that an insight into the essential physico- 

 chemical causes of behavioi is any more exact or more tangible 

 when we refer a phenomenon to associative memory, than when 

 we refer it to conscious action. In either case we remain in 

 profound ignorance of the physical and chemical changes which 

 permit that marvelous achievement — the recall of past experi- 

 ences. We may and do postulate such a property of brain 

 action, but its chemical basis remains as inscrutable when we 

 call it associative memory as when we use the older phrase 

 "organic memory," or when we label it in some other fashion. 



One must not impute to Dr. Loeb any indisposition to recog- 

 nize the force of this contention. He may, or may not, agiee 

 with it. But it is fair to call attention to the danger to which 

 his conception exposes him, the danger of failure to take into 

 account the complexities of conscious behavior which psycholog- 

 ical analysis has revealed and which await the physico-chemical 

 explanations he so earnestly seeks. The danger is perhaps as 

 great as any to which psychologists are exposed with their 

 meagre knowledge of physical chemistry. It is the danger of a 

 treacherous over-simplification. To make consciousness synony- 

 mous with associative memory is thoroughly justifiable if the one 

 really includes all that is in the other. But if, as is all too 

 easy, one has attention fixed largely or solely upon the purely 

 memorial part of the process, much will be overlooked which is 

 not memory at all in any proper sense, and much which requires 

 explanation and interpretation in a peculiarly urgent manner. 



