The Journal of 



Comparative Neurology and Psychology 



Volume XVIII NOVEMBER, 1908 Number 5 



THE RELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY TO 

 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY.^ 



BY 



LUDWIG EDINGER. 



(Translated from the German by H. W. Rand.) 

 With Five Figures. 



The relation between animal psychology and human psychology 

 constitutes an old problem. It has interested me since myearliest 

 years of study. However, when I endeavored to learn from the 

 literature more precisely how brain anatomy and psychic phe- 

 nomena are related to one another in the lower animals, I dis- 

 covered something very surprising. It is true that I found in all 

 the text-books very promising illustrations of the brains of sharks, 

 frogs, rabbits, and other animals, yet I remember as if it were 

 today the lively undeception which I experienced when I found 

 that in all the books, even in Wundt's great work, the psycholog- 

 ical part of the text made no reference to these illustrations. I 

 discovered that psychology had made no further use of compara- 

 tive anatomy than, so to speak, as a means of illustrating its texts. 

 I gradually discovered the reason for this. In reality anatomy 

 has had nothing to offer to psychology. 



The ideal goal of the study of brain anatomy is a very ambitious 

 one. We desire so thoroughly to understand the organ with 

 which psychic processes are associated that we shall be able to 

 predict its functions, so that where observations are impossible — 

 and that is really the case for a large part of the psychology of the 

 lower vertebrates — we may even infer these functions. To be 

 sure, we are still very far from this goal. When we consider what 

 we know about the human brain, its overwhelming complexity 

 seems even simple compared to what wt have observed of its 

 activities. But I hope today to be able to point out that, at least in 

 the realm of comparative psychology, anatomy, pursued always in 

 connection with observation of the hving animal, can explain much 



^ An address before the Third Congress for Experimental Psychology. 



