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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



certainly recognized since Le Sueur's time. 

 The only profitable fishery of the common 

 sturgeon — unless the Florida sturgeon should 

 prove to be of the same form — is on the 

 eastern coast of the Delaware River and 

 Bay. A considerable amount of capital is 

 invested in the business. The experience 

 of the dealers and fishermen shows that a 

 steady falling off has occurred in the catch 

 within a few years. This and other facts 

 prove that it is high time that something 

 was being done to stay the extinction of the 

 fish. The only means of maintaining and 

 increasing the industry is through artificial 

 propagation ; and the author has every rea- 

 son to think that this may be successfully 

 accomplished at a comparatively insignifi- 

 cant outlay. 



The Diseases of Personality. By Th. 

 RiBOT. Chicago : Open Court Publishing 

 Company. Pp. 157. Price, 75 cents. 



The idea of personality is easily handled 

 by metaphysicians who assume an ego. The 

 school of experimental psychology, however, 

 which claims M. Ribot, views this as no sim- 

 ple task, but rather the reward of arduous 

 research. In the present volume, therefore, 

 the author seeks through investigation of 

 those cases in which the sense of person- 

 ality is disorganized to discover a clew to its 

 nature. In order to kn(3w human personal- 

 ity we must analyze it, but it must be re- 

 membered that the phenomena separated 

 for purposes of analysis are interdependent. 

 The various disorders of personality may be 

 classified as organic, emotional, and intel- 

 lectual. The sense of individuality in the 

 normal body, its fluctuations dependent upon 

 alterations in general or local sensibility, the 

 egoistic sense in monsters and twins, show 

 "as the organism, so the personality." 

 Emotional manifestations peculiar to im- 

 paired nutrition, sexual aberration, and per- 

 version of the higher instincts are found to 

 confirm the same proposition. Intellectual 

 vagaries of all kinds, due to sensorial de- 

 rangement, hallucinations, the phenomena of 

 hypnotism and of mysticism, furnish the 

 corollary that ideas are only a secondary 

 factor in changes of personality. 



Regarding personality as " the highest 

 form of psychic individuality," the nature of 

 consciousness and the individual is involved. 



Instead of the subjective notion that con- 

 sciousness is '' a basic property of soul," M. 

 Ribot finds it " a simple phenomenon super- 

 added to activity of the brain, appearing and 

 disappearing according to circumstances." 

 States of consciousness are coincident with 

 disassimilation of nervous tissue, so that we 

 may predict that they depend upon a certain 

 state of the nervous system But we do not 

 yet understand all of the physiological con- 

 ditions of consciousness. 



If individual be defined as that which is 

 not divided, we are obliged to descend very 

 low in the organic world to find an example. 

 " Every protoplasmic mass which attains a 

 few tenths of a millimetre spontaneously 

 divides itself. Protoplasm in the individual 

 state is therefore limited in size." Scientists 

 may find a rudimentary consciousness in the 

 unfolding, absorbing, and dividiag of the 

 lowest organism ; but M. Ribot considers this 

 an irritability common to living beings, 

 which is developed into the general sensi- 

 bility of more complex forms. In colonies 

 of Hydradinia, or in Agalmidce, where loco- 

 motion is centralized, we meet with a co- 

 ordination which is the germ of personality. 

 Gradually, as the nervous system becomes 

 more prominent, psychic individuality is 

 constituted. In any given time the sum of 

 nervous actions in man will far exceed the 

 sum of the states of consciousness. Thus 

 conscious personality is but an abstract of 

 what takes place in the nervous centers. 

 " Why certain nervous actions become con- 

 scious, and which are they ? " is yet unan- 

 swerable. Different states of consciousness 

 succeed each other and depend upon nerv- 

 ous activity. Pathology confirms the fact 

 that the feeling of tlie ego changes with the 

 bodily condition. The problem thus becomes 

 biological, and psychologv must wait, there- 

 fore, for a fuller knowledge of the genesis 

 of organisms. 



Studies i\ Evolution and Biology. By 

 Alice Bodivgton. London: Eliot Stock. 

 Pp. 220. 50 cents. 



A PERUSAL of this book shows exten- 

 sive reading on the part of the author, and 

 a clear conception of the principles of evo- 

 lution. Some of the chapters are very in- 

 teresting. It is difficult, however, to see 

 the purposes of the book : as a help to the 



