LiTKRARY Notices. 



COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 



Our title indicates a science yet to be created, but one for which materials 

 are rapidly collecting and methods formulating. The importance of an adequate 

 interpretation of the supposed mental activities of animals other than man has 

 been fully recognized by the most fertile and resourceful students of the century, 

 among whom may be mentioned Darwin, Wallace, Lubbock, Romanes, and 

 Eimer, while Mueller and, in our own country, Peckham and McCook have in- 

 dustriously and intelligently added to the accumulation of materials. 



Of all the discussions of the general subject of animal inteligence the most 

 lucid and even luminous work is that recently published by Professor C. Lloyd 

 Morgan, Dean of University College, Bristol, l Some points in the author's 

 treatment will be commented upon more at length beyond. It may be said 

 here that in clearness, honesty and charm, the author's style compares favorably 

 with that of his acknowledged master, Charles Darwin. His facility in happy 

 phrase lends piquancy to a treatment which presents clearly and without fatigue 

 even the most abstruse aspects of the subject. 



It would be useless to discuss the question which will inevitably be raised 

 in some quarters, Is not comparative psychology a contradiction of terms? We 

 know of the supposed states of consciousness of animals exactly as we learn 

 of those of other human beings, by inference based on our own conduct while 

 conscious of certain states and, if it be true that the activities of animals bear 

 unmistakable resemblance to our own conduct under definite states of conscious- 

 ness, it is scientifically legitimate, nay, imperative, to critically examine the na- 

 ture of such resemblances, quite irrespective of any theory or postulated differ- 

 ence between man and beast. 



If it be true that some of our nervous processes are more closely correlated 

 with more complex states of consciousness than others, it would be assumed, 

 from the grand achievements of the comparative method in other departments 

 of science, that a comparison of the nervous processes of animals with those of 

 man would be most useful in exclusion of what is irrelevant and construing the 

 residua. Whether or not one is prepared to believe with Professor Morgan that 

 every neural process or neurosis is not merely associated with, but is the reverse 

 aspect of a psychical process or psychosis, every one is interested profoundly in 

 discovering how far one influences the other directly or by way of heredity, and 

 no way is more likely to lead to satisfactory results than a sudy of subjective 

 processes in the light of comparative observation and experiment. 



It is needless to say that one's mental equipment for such work should be of 

 the broadest, but this fact need not deter one from the accumulation of data and 



1 Animal Life and Intelligence. Boston, (iinn A Company. 14.00. 



