Literai'y Notices. Ixvii 



mind has long been a desideratunri and is here furnished in the follow- 

 ing terms : "The organized totality of deduced facts, as it is devel- 

 oped in feeling substance, is called mind." 



Mind is the necessary outcome of a combination of feelings, as a 

 triangle is the product of the combination of three lines. 



The author admits that agnosticism means a half concealed 

 confession of bankruptcy in philosophy. It is important to make 

 sure that positivism offers other than the forged securities which delay 

 the crash. Positivism denys the separate existence of the subject 

 which is considered but a collective term designating a certain group 

 of sense-impressions, perceptions, ideas, and volitions which form, 

 simultaneously as well as successively, the elements of the soul life. 



The author considers the preservation of form in living sub- 

 stance as equivalent to memory. 



" The brain preserves certain impressions, the forms of which re- 

 main, though the nervous substance may change. If these forms 

 happen to be stimulated or irritated we experience the same feelings 

 over again." What the author means by "irritating the form" of 

 impressions is difficult to see. If he means that the same type of 

 molecular combination produced by one stimulus will persist during 

 metabolic changes of the cell and predispose the cell to a similar dis- 

 charge when next irritated, the thought is not new nor does its 

 acceptance serve to explain the definition which is next given : 

 " The soul is the form of an organism." 



After the introductory chapters, including a discussion of such 

 topics as above indicated, there follows a resume of comparative neu- 

 rological anatomy and physiology along familiar lines. The illustra- 

 tions are from excellent sources and well reproduced. Edinger has 

 been laid under large contribution. In connection with a discussion 

 of localization we meet a return to the old idea of a " seat of con- 

 sciousness." This time it is the striatum which poses as the seat of 

 the soul, the cortex being simply a store-house of old experiences. 

 The former is the seat of consciousness, the latter of intelligence — two 

 processes radically different. The function of consciousness is the 

 stimulation of different ideas registered in the hemispheres. 



The unity of consciousness is no intrinsic quality ot mind, it is 

 imposed upon the mind by the object of attention which acts in a way 

 analogous to a magnet. 



The brief discussion of comparative psychology serves to indicate 

 its existence. 



