Literary Notices. 75 



que,"^ worked over for the benefit of English readers. After a brief 

 glance at the history of the problem, the present reaction of biologists 

 against the anthropomorphic tendencies of the Darwinian period, and 

 the attempts of Loeb, Bethe and others, to reduce the activities of 

 lower organisms to simple physico-chemical tropisms are discussed in 

 detail. The question is pointedly asked, why are tropisms necessarily 

 unconscious ? In all probability they are a great deal more complex 

 than they are assumed to be by these investigators, and in any case it 

 is difficult to discover any difference in kind between tropisms, reflexes 

 and voluntary acts. 



Any such objective tests of consciousness as Loeb's "associative 

 memory'', or Watkins' "spontaneity" are quite beside the mark, for 

 they overlook the fact that consciousness is and can be only subjective. 

 The only legitimate point of view for approaching the problem is that 

 of pyscho-physical parallelism, the principle which assumes that for 

 every change in consciousness there is a parallel and corresponding 

 change in the nervous system. Just what the relation is that subsists 

 between the two is as yet undetermined, but at any rate we must look 

 upon them as two distinct series, and therefore it does not make a par- 

 ticle of difference, so far as the external series of acts is concerned, 

 whether a biological process is conscious or not. If biologists would 

 realize this fact, and cease trying to bring in the mind as a biological 

 factor which exerts an influence on the body, much confusion would 

 be avoided. So far as physical acts are concerned, consciousness is an 

 epiphenomenon. 



Bethe and his associates have gone to the other extreme in their 

 efforts to get a perfectly objective nomenclature for all reactions to 

 stimuli. They deny the possibility of psychic states in animals, or at 

 least the possibility of gaining such knowledge of them as will furnish 

 material for science, and hence they demand the suppression of com- 

 parative psychology. But any such argument would apply to human 

 psychology as well. Comparative psychology is here and cannot be 

 suppressed. From the standpoint of psycho-physical parallelism there 

 are two parallel methods of studying life activity: (i) the ascending, 

 or physiological, beginning with the lowest organisms and going on to 

 the highest, explaining everything on purely physico-chemical princi- 

 ples ; (2) the descending, or psychological, going down from n-ian, and 

 reasoning by analogy as to the mental life of animals. Both of these 



' liDOUARD Claparede. Les animaux sont-ils conscients ? Revue Philo- 

 sophique, tome LI, pp. 481-498. 1901. 



