506 RECOKD OF SCIENCE FOR 1887 AND 



The faculties of the miud are studied iu the same uiauoer as tlie mind 

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

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

 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 s[)iritualists have caught the inspiring motive 

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

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

 Fouillee, Scholz, Xelson, Hall, and writers in Mind and other journals 

 of psychology. 



Just as some of the ric-hest results in mineralogy have been realized 

 from the 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 lirst num- 

 ber of the American Journal of Psychology, William Noyes discusses 

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

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

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

 delinquents, Foy on idiosyncrasies, Stevenson on genius ami 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 scientific 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 offspring 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 the first number of the American Journal of Psychology 

 (128-146). 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 Mesmerand Reichenbach, 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 to every 

 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 past, and the claims of those who pretend to 

 mediate between the living ami 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 tliese 

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

 dant aherglauhe a nucleus of certainty for at least the doctrine of immor- 

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



