cl Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



Kolliker remarks respecting the origin of the dorsal nerves from cells 

 within the cord and the absence of ganglia on the roots that if these 

 nerve cells are found to be the most dorsal in the cord there would be 

 a correspondence with the ganglionic ridge of higher vertebrates which 

 would make it still more probable that this ridge pertains to the neu- 

 ral tube rather than the adjacent ectoderm. No reference is mqde to 

 the fact that while there are no ganglia yet the dorsal root contains 

 ganglion cells to a point lying near the skin, as shown by Hatschek, a 

 fact which suggests a very different interpretation of the spinal 

 ganglia. 



Professor Kolliker compares the caudal colossal fibres to com- 

 missural fibres and those of the cephalic cells with the pyramids, (p. 159.) 

 In the later sections the discussion is limited more strictly to the hu- 

 man subject and we cannot select from the vast amount of carefully 

 elaborated material special portions for notice at this time. The 

 work will serve as the neurologist's vade mecum for years to come. 



The Superstition of Necessity.^ 



The author uses the term in the way indicated by its etymology : 

 as a standing-still on the part of thought ; a clinging to old ideas after 

 those ideas have lost their use. He endeavors to show that the doc- 

 trine of necessity is a survival which holds over from an earlier and 

 undeveloped period of knowledge; that as a means of getting out of 

 and beyond that stage it had a certain value, but having done its 

 work, loses its significance. That judgment uses the idea of necessity 

 as a crutch by means of which it steps up out of uncertainty upon 

 solid ground of fact, and then discards it as unnecessary and only a 

 hindrance to further progress. As he says : " We learn (but only at 

 the end) that instead of discovering and then connecting together a 

 number of separate realities, we have been engaged in the progressive 

 definition of one fact." " The progress of judgment is equivalent to a 

 change in the value of objects — that objects as they are for us, as 

 known, change with the development of our judgments " " It is the 

 necessary influence which one exerts upon the other that finally rubs 

 away the separateness and leaves them revealed as elements of one 

 unified whole. This done, the determining influence — necessity — has 

 gone too." 



" Contingent and necessary are thus the correlative aspects of 

 one and the same fact." 



iDewy, John. " The Mom'st," April, 1892, VoL III, No. 3. 



