xliv Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



whose specious covering what of fallacy may not hide ? Can there be 

 two aspects apart from two observers or two positions of the same 

 observer, and is not a change of position as much a competent cause 

 as a molecular vibration? Again, what is it whose position changes? 

 Right here is an obscurity which any amount of prior or subsequent 

 brilliance serves but to throw into stronger contrast. Frankly stated 

 we have a dynamic realism, according to which force — activity — is all 

 and in all. Matter is simply our interpretation of certain rates and fig- 

 ures of vibration. Our author recognizes subdominant nervous states 

 whose intensity is suficient to bring them into consciousness, but no 

 criterion is offered to determine the availability of one intensity rather 

 than another for this important office nor are we helped to understand 

 how such subconscious processes continue to exgrt an influence on the 

 dominant ones. The discrimination of three methods of estimating the 

 position of a given mind in the scale is, we think, useful and deserving 

 a wider illustration than it received. The chapter on the sense impres- 

 sions of animals is pleasing reading and contains interesting illustrative 

 matter. 



In the closing paragraph of the passage on automatism and con- 

 trol we are told that it is a suggestion unsupported by cerebral anatomy 

 that there may be centres for the control of sensory activity. Perhaps 

 the now well-attested existence of efferent fibres in the nerves of special 

 sense will supply the author with at least a suggestion in this direction. 

 The reasons are given at length for denying to lower animals the 

 power of perceiving relations or reasoning but as they consist chiefly in 

 a sifting of evidence it is doubtful whether the result can be accepted 

 as conclusive. It would seem to us that the hub of the matter hes in 

 the question whether a given process in man or animals is to be identi- 

 fied with its subsequent explanation. There can be little doubt that all 

 isolated mental processes in man may be performed independently of 

 any formulation of them. What the man may do but the animal can- 

 not do is to put that process explicitly in language. In denying reason 

 to animals Morgan excludes implicit reasoning and limits the process to 

 a recognition of the necessary relation of cause and effect. 



Coming now to the core of the problem, our author admits that 

 there is an orderly and determinate activity in consciousness without 

 which the subject tumbles to pieces as an incoherent series of sensations 

 with nothing to give them unity and to interpret them as a whole ; he 

 adds that so far from being dissimilar to anything else in the realm of 

 existence, this selective synthetic activity in consciousness is but the 

 subjective aspect of the selective synthetic activity which is objective 



