644 SCIENTIFIC EECORD FOE 1882, 



It is not advised that this scheme be adopted without reservation, 

 yet it does show a permanent advance in anthropometry. Further- 

 more, it is drawn up for Italians, but this need not embarrass the stu- 

 dent, since he will only need to fix his standard mesosoma and arrange 

 above and below that according to the scale. 



IV. — PSYCHOLOGY. 



The most perplexing of all the outstanding problems in anthropology 

 is the exj)lanatiou of the processes of feeling, thinking, and volition. 

 On the one hand it is maintained that in course of time it will be 

 shown that thought is a mode of material motion ; on the other, this 

 incomprehensible phenomenon is remanded to the category of occult 

 properties, like cohesion and gravitation, which will ever elude our 

 grasp. However that may be, man will ever aim to think this unthink- 

 able, to achieve this impossible, and to reach after this unattainable. 

 In prosecuting researclies with reference to the mind various avenues 

 of approach have been followed. 



Out of the old phrenology has come the new, and several imi)ortaut 

 works have appeared upon cerebral localization in its various aspects. 

 The second part of H. C. Bastian's publication ujjon the brain as the 

 organ of the mind was printed duriug the current year. Furthermore 

 a reference to the bibliography will reveal treatises upon brain-weight 

 and mind, heredity and psychology, growth of intellect, pre-natal educa- 

 tion, brain-functions, sensations and their translation into thought and 

 feeling, the various aspects of mind growth from infancy to maturity, 

 the accurate measurement of thought, or jisychometry, the phenomena 

 of insanity as opening the door upon primitive man, and the exhibition 

 of intelligence in animals. 



Speaking of the equivalents of consciousness in nature beneath man, 

 Professor Cope says : " The utterances of Professor du Bois Eeymond, 

 at the recent celebration of the birthday of Leibnitz at Berlin, should 

 have a clearing effect on the intellectual atmosphere of the evolutionists. 

 ' Consciousness,' says one, ' is to the progress of evolution what the 

 whistle is to the engine, that makes a good deal of noise but does none 

 of the work.' Another says, ' If the will of man and the higher animals 

 seems to be free in contrast with the fixed will of atoms, that is a delu- 

 sion provoked by the contrast between the extremely complicated vol- 

 untary movements of the former and the extremely simple voluntary 

 movements of the latter.' One authority tells us that consciousness 

 does nothing, and the other will have it that it does everything, rising 

 even to the autonomic dignity of a will for atoms. They agree in 

 believing consciousness to be a form of force ; but they differ in that 

 the first authority thinks it all dissipated, while the other holds it to be 

 a link in a continuous chain of metamorphosis equivalent to every other 

 link. As usual, truth lies between these extremes. Says du Bois Rey- 

 mond, ' More temperate heads betrayed the weakness of their dialectics 



