506 RECORD OF SCIENCE EOR 1887 AND 1888. 



The faculties of the mind are studied iu the same iiiauner as the mind 

 itself. The phenomena of consciousness and unconsciousness, of sensa- 

 tion, of perception and apperception ; of instinct, memory, emotion, rtni- 

 son, and volition in healthy exercise are taken up as so many rocks, or 

 plants, or animals, and their natural history scrutinized. And this is 

 true regardless of the metaphysical basis of the study ; the most pro- 

 nounced materialists and spiritualists have caught the inspiring motive 

 of the naturalist. In this line reference may be made to Wilbrand, 

 Osterman, James, McCosh, Bowne, Dewey, Ladd, Burnham, Fere, 

 Fouillee, Scliolz, ISTelson, Hall, and writers in Mind and other journals 

 of psychology. 



Just as some of the richest results in mineralogy have been realized 

 from tiie study of allotropism, in botany and zoology from abnormali- 

 ties, so in mind study the utmost diligence is exercised in observing the 

 phenomena of mental deformities and eccentricities. In the first num- 

 ber of the American Journal of Psychology, William Jli^oyes discusses 

 paranoia. Further researches in the same line are Eouth on overwork 

 and premature mental decay, G. H. Savage on homicidal mania, Gris- 

 som on the history and poetry of insanity, Tenchini on the brains of 

 delinquents, Foy on idiosyncrasies, Stevenson on genius and mental 

 disease, and Duval, Ploix, and Dally on aphasia. Indeed, both in 

 France and Italy, congresses, societies, and journals are devoted to 

 this side of anthropological research. 



The scientitic psychologist has pursued his researches still further. 

 There have been hanging around the suburbs of knowledge many de- 

 scendants of aboriginal philosophy. One of these oflspring is belief in 

 the possibility of occult contact with the spirits of men and a spirit 

 world of the dead. This whole subject, to study which the English So- 

 ciety for Psychical Research was organized, is ably reviewed by Prof. 

 Stanley Hall in tlie first number of the American Journal of Psychology 

 (128-14G). He says: "Thus far not only the formation of such a soci- 

 ety, but the boldness of its plan, with its committees on apparitions and 

 haunted houses, and on the claims of Mesmer and Reicheubach, and the 

 degree to which the difficulties and the dangers of the proposed inves- 

 tigations were realized, were all such as to commend it not only toeverj^ 

 psychologist, but to every true and intelligent friend of culture and re- 

 ligion. While those who regard the baser forms of modern spiritualism 

 as the refined and concentrated embodiment of all the superstitions of 

 a remote and barbarous jjast, and the claims of those who pretend to 

 mediate between the living and their friends who are dead as a name- 

 less crime against the most sacred things of the soul, must feel a deep 

 interest in such work, there is another class, perhaps still larger, and 

 with an interest still deeper. This class consists of those who, in these 

 days of unsettlement in religious beliefs, hope to find amid superabun- 

 dant aherf/Iaube a nucleus of certainty for at least the doctrine of immor- 

 tality. The most absolute idealists are not so satisfied with the specu- 



