74 Journal of Comparative Neurology anei Psychology. 



isolated from the activities of tlie whole organism. It is probably true 

 that the brain activity and the so-called mental activity are ultimately 

 one, but it certainly is neither good biology nor good psychology to 

 attempt to identify the latter with the former in any sense which op- 

 poses these to non-nervous organic or to the extra-organic processes. 

 The author unquestionably has hold here of an important truth, but it 

 is a truth still in solution —still fluid, not yet precipitated in a form 

 that is quite consistent. In truth, this is just the desideratum in the 

 current controversy as to the nature of the relation existing between 

 the physical and the psychical — a statement of the law of the conditions 

 of consciousness which will not violate the principle of continuity in 

 nature. 



The article in the Monist on "Ants and Some Other Insects, ' 

 traslated from the German by Professor William Morton Wheeler, 

 is an "inquiry into the psychic powers of these animals with an ap- 

 pendix on the peculiarities of their olfactory sense." This is an ac- 

 count of some very interesting experiments upon ants and bees, pre- 

 faced, as in the case of the other two papers, by a metaphysical 

 introduction. As in the former articles, he finds evidence of the 

 possession in these insects of memory, association, will, etc. The ex- 

 periments are certainly instructive even though one is inclined to regard 

 the interpretation of results as infected detrimentally by the metaphys- 

 ical standpoint. The standpoint here again, while suggestive, seems 

 untenable. One is pleased with the statement that "we can therefore 

 compare attention to a functional macula lutea wandering in the brain, 

 or with a wandering maximal intensity of neurocymic activity' (p. 36). 

 But we are astonished then to be told that "if this assumption is cor- 

 rect ... we are not further concerned with consciousness. It does 

 not at all exist as such, but only through the brain-activity of which it 

 is the inner reflex. . . . Consciousness is only an abstract concept, 

 which loses all its substance with the falling away of 'conscious' brain- 

 activity" (37). In other words, the author adopts the identity theory 

 and wholly rejects the parallelism. And the criticism, in a word, is 

 this, that he has thus cast aside the very element that makes the iden- 

 tity intelligible. h. heath bawden. 



Claparede on Animal Consciousness.' 



The present article is in large measure a revision, or restatement, 

 of the author's contribution to the subject in the Revue Philosophi- 



' ElJOUARl) Ci.APAREDE. The Consciousness of Animals. The Interna- 

 tional Quarterly, Vol. VIII, pp. 296-315. Dec, 1903. Translated by Wii.i.iam 

 EIarper Davis, Columbia University. 



