LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Present State of Comparative Psychology.^ 



One turns to this work with eagerness. The author is master of 

 the rare art of expressing logical thought in perspicuous English and 

 has already done much to lift the study of animal intelligence out of the 

 vulgar rut in which it has so long laid. Has he perhaps at last discov- 

 ered the key to the interpretation of the mental processes of animals 

 for which we have been groping ? Has he at least shown us how we 

 may contribute toward this end and make our scattered observations 

 acquire a scientific value ? Unfortunately a negative answer must be 

 given to both questions. But this is far from saying that there is not 

 much of value in the book. Many familiar things are said in a brighter 

 way and the reconstructed biological monism is ably expounded. 



What the author in his prolegomena modestly calls a subordinate 

 object, the discussion of the place of consciousness in nature, will, it is 

 most likely, usurp a preeminent place in the minds of most readers. 



Mr. Morgan's monism is analytic ; for him the organism is one and 

 indivisible, but is polarisable in analytic thought into a bodily and a 

 mental or conscious aspect which, like object and subject, are distin- 

 guishable but not separable. One is as true as the other, the true real- 

 ity is the union of them both. 



Adopting Professor James' figure of a wave of consciousness, the 

 physiological conditions of consciousness are discussed. As far as the 

 body is concerned, all that it does or suffers belongs to the category of 

 occurrences of the material world. Life is a coordinated sequence of 

 transformations of energy. Accompanying some of these transforma- 

 tions of energy or molecular changes of the body are states of con- 

 sciousness. These are psychical not physical states. The wave of 

 consciousness constitutes the mind. According to this then the mind — 

 the totality of the wave of consciousnes — does not exist apart from the 

 conscious activity. There remain only organic vestiges or structural 

 changes. For the monist the conscious is simply an aspect of the ner- 

 vous. The important question is. How does a molecular change hap- 

 pen to have two aspects — what is meant by the word ' aspect,' under 



^C. Lloyd Morgan. Introduction to Comparative Psychology. Walter 

 Scott, London. Price six shillings. 



