XXXVI JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY. 
relative difference’ (267-8). ‘‘The psycho-physic law appears now 
to formulate a certain limit to which the Docility of the organism in 
responding to finer differences in stimulation is subject” (270). That 
is, ‘‘the psycho-physic law is not a law directly relating to our sensa- 
tions, but is rather a law of our reactions” (272). 
(3) In chapter XII we have a most illuminating statement of the 
relations of thought to action in a discussion of the psychological and 
social functions of language. Thinking differs from naive action 
chiefly in this, that in thinking we reflect on the details of the action, 
and bring the method of the action to consciousness. ‘‘One who 
thinks makes it part of his ideal to be conscious of how he behaves in 
the presence of things. And this he does because the social compari- 
son of his acts with the acts of other people not only controls the for- 
mation of his acts, but has made his observation of his own acts an 
ideal’ (284). ‘‘The consciousness of how one performs the act” is 
the very essence of thought. The abstract idea or concept is a re- 
duced act. Take the concept or ‘‘horse” or ‘‘man.” ‘‘Whoever 
knows what a horse or man in general is, knows of some kind of act 
which it is fitting to perform in the presence of any object of the class 
in question.” ‘*The name ‘man’ or ‘horse,’ the word-image asso- 
ciated with any such subject, is itself a part of a well-known act by 
which one may react in the presence of an object in the class in ques- 
tion.- For naming objects is one way of responding to their presence” 
(286-287). ‘‘Our general ideas . . . stand, therefore, for cer- 
tain. . . attitudes.” ‘‘Our mental images of outer objects are 
never to be divorced from our reactions.”” A ‘‘general idea is a con- 
scious plan of action.” 
(4) The treatment of the relation of feeling to action supports the 
same general conception. On page 296 we read, ‘‘Like the thinking 
process in general, the reasoning process develops out of conditions 
which at the outset involve a very rich, and in fact predominant pres- 
ence of feelings and of Complex emotions. That is, reasonings have 
resulted from what were at first decidedly passionate contrasts of 
opinion.” ‘Thinking, reasoning, here would appear at the setting up 
of distinctions and the introduction of control within the primitive 
predominantly affective type of consciousness. In the chapter on the 
Feelings the author refers to the traditional view of the relation of 
feeling to thought and to action as embodying an important truth, but 
seems hesitant about adopting it. ‘‘Those who “divide mental life, in, 
the well known traditional way, into the life of cognition, the life of 
feeling, and the life of will, are accustomed to assign to the feelings a 
