Literary Notices. Iv 



tations. Desire is the motor aspect of one element of representation 

 as it is partially inhibited by other elements. Feeling of effort ex- 

 presses the tendency of consciousness to pass from this plurality of 

 motor content into a state of motor synthesis. 



All so-called efforts of infants belong in the categories of suggest- 

 ion and are involuntary. Persistent imitation is an advance on sim- 

 ple imitation, in that it involves comparison, this implying a state of 

 motor complexity which we call interest or desire or will stimulus, and 

 it involves the feeling ■ of effort accompanying the resolution of this 

 complexity into a new reaction — " the trial." 



Evidence of the effect of suggestion in creating the imitative de- 

 sire is obtained by comparing the number of trials which a student 

 will make when given given a figure to copy and allowed to attempt 

 it with open eyes or closed, or after the lapse of some time since the 

 removal of the pattern. It is found that the attempt is repeated 

 much more frequently if the object is present to view. 



The author recognizes three stages in the development of will : 

 (a), perception of stimulus with imitative impulse, (b), recognit^ion 

 of muscular instrumentality, (c), reducing the muscular activities to a 

 subconscious state subordinate to pictured end. Troubles of speech 

 faculty pursue the converse course of the development of the faculty. 

 This view seems to afford a basis for the development of the will other 

 than the pleasure or pain which Professor Bain and his school assume. 

 The nature of the imitative impulse does not seem to be rendered 

 much more clear by the employment of the term "suggestion" for 

 its operative cause. 



The Visual Path and Visual Centre.' 



The visual path is divided into three portions, frontal, middle, 

 and occipital. The frontal stretches from the bulb to the external 

 geniculate. The fibres are arranged in separate bundles for the differ- 

 ent quadrants. 



Though the optic fibres ramify without immediate connection 

 with the cells of the geniculatum the later is supposed to be necessary 

 to sight. Other bundles pass to the pulvinar and nates, but there is 

 no clinical proof that destruction of these structures produce hema- 

 nopsia. [This statement seems remarkable to the reviewer, particularly 

 respecting the nates.] Neither is there clinical ground for the be- 

 lief that a lesion of the posterior part of the internal capsule will pro- 



1 Henschen, S. E. On the Visual Path and the Visual Centre. Internal. 

 Congress of Experimental Psychology. Second session, 1892. 



