WATSON'S "BEHAVIOR" 463 



or the course of the scratch reflex, with a discussion of the prob- 

 lems of tracing the growth and differentiation of behavior as a 

 fact, seem to me among the most stimulating facts of animal 

 psychology. The arguments concerning the causes of variation 

 in general and the potency of sexual selection in general might 

 well be omitted in favor of the more specific and more relevant 

 concrete story of behavior's natural history in the world. In 

 the third place, I regret the omission of a chapter concerning 

 objective methods and results in human psychology. The 

 student is likely, as Watson's book stands, to be left with the 

 impression that mental chemistry — the analysis of conscious 

 states into elements and the construction of cross-sections of 

 a stream of consciousness out of sensations, affections, and 

 other Wundtian myths — has been the regular, orthodox thing 

 in human psychology. On the contrary, objective methods and 

 results have characterized a very large proportion of the work 

 of recognized psychologists for thirty years. Ebbinghaus' 

 Memory and Cattell's studies of reaction- time, for example, 

 are as 'behavioristic' or objective as Bassett's study of rats 

 or Yerkes' study of frogs. 



Watson has, throughout the book, freely joined to the descrip- 

 tion of the status of animal psychology a plea for rigorous control 

 of conditions and steady aim at prophesy of behavior as a test 

 of the truth of conclusions. One feels the zeal of the investi- 

 gator for sound research and the faith of the scientific man in 

 matter of fact control and prediction as the justification of science. 

 There is also the healthy insistence that our eventual ideal 

 must be an explanation of intellect, character and skill in terms 

 of known neural mechanisms. All this, though perhaps some- 

 what over the heads of students, is healthy, and helps to make 

 the book a truer picture of the status of animal psychology, 

 whose workers have worked in comparative freedom from 

 obscurantist conventions. 



The third contribution of the book is the systematic expression 

 of Watson's views of the folly of introspective analysis, the 

 non-existence of centrally initiated processes, the relation of 

 pleasure to afferent impulses from the erogenic zones, the ade- 

 quacy of speech movements and other muscular responses to 

 account for what is commonly meant by 'thought,' the struc- 

 tural unmodifiability of the neurones from soon after birth, 



