ANTHROPOLOGY. 507 



lative method which works by exhausting- thought i)ossibilities as not 

 to welcome the most empirical refutation of materialism and mechanism. 

 Even Mr. Meyer's "phantasmagoric efhcacy," his "telepathic percola- 

 tion," or veritable ghosts of those dying or dead or even in great dan- 

 ger, are not unwarrantable in establishing his "solidarity of life which 

 idealism proclaims," or " the universal mind in which all minds are 

 one." But the impartiality attainable in most lields of scientific research 

 is impossible here. A rigorously unbiassed and yet an intelligent jury, 

 could probably not be found in this country or in England, so many and 

 subtle and remotely ancestral are the conscious, ami far more the uncon- 

 scious, prepossessions which enter like Schopenhauer's primacy of the 

 will, making us all lynx-eyed to all that favors one side and bat-eyed for 

 all that favors the other. It is this iuexpuugable bias, evolved from a 

 state of savage superstition, whi(;h enters into our judgment and pre- 

 vents a just critical estimate of evidence. Gurney's phantasms of the 

 living, Sinnett's hypnotism in the Orient, Herter's discussion of the 

 nature of hypnotism, such are the works that are constantly a])peariug 

 upon this corner of anthropology. 



Psychology is now clearly within the area of anthropology, having 

 its laboratories and instruments of precision, its systematic experiments 

 and its organized corps of observation. Prof. G. Stanly Hall says, 

 " Several departments of science have touched and enriched psychology, 

 bringing to it their best methods and their clearest insights." Among 

 those whose studies have contributed to this end are teachers of psy- 

 chology in higher institutions of learning, biologists and physiologists ; 

 anthropologists who are interested in primitive manifestations of psy- 

 chological laws; physicians who give special attention to mental and 

 nervous diseases; men who, like Mr. Galton, have applied more exact 

 methods to the problem of human feelings, will, and thought. 



The establishment in our country of a journal devoted solely to 

 psycho-physics is a noteworthy event, and the fact that Prof. G. Stanley 

 Hall will have charge of the American Jouriml of Psychology is a suf- 

 ficient guaranty of its great scientilic value. 



In the first number of this publication Dr. Lombard and Professor 

 Jastrow both explain with great clearness the psycho-T)hysic law and 

 illustrate its oi)eration. Professor Jastrow, in iiis paper on star magni- 

 tudes, very clearly explains the action of thepsycho-i)hysical law in the 

 first number of the American Journal by referring to P.ernouille's illus- 

 tration of the distinction between the value and the emolument of money. 

 The emolument, or pleasure-giving power, of an additional sum of money 

 is shown to be the logarithm of the wealth of an individual. By widen- 

 ing the conception of the wealth to the general one of a physical stim- 

 ulus of any kind, and putting sensation in general for the particular 

 sensation caused by an i-jcrease in money, we have the psycho-i)hysic 

 law. For the particular illustration of this law Professor Jastrow com- 



