6 I 2 



NATURE 



[July 14, 192 1 



The question of the estabHshment of new uni- 

 versities — how many, in what districts, and with 

 what special characteristics — has to be examined. 

 There are also questions relating to the co- 

 ordination of university work with the view 

 of obtaining the maximum benefit from the 

 minimum expenditure, a- consideration which 

 in future will be increasingly in the minds 

 of public men and public authorities. We are 

 reluctant to criticise a congress which has been 

 the means of publishing so many useful contribu- 

 tions to educational thought ; but it is impossible 

 to overlook the need for a more systematic dis- 

 cussion of these questions of university organ- 

 isation and for the formulation of guiding prin- 

 ciples. As Lord Rosebery insisted at the first 

 congress, every university must work out its own 

 salvation in its own way, and a centralisation of 

 the Universities of the Empire would be demoral- 

 ising to them and fatal to their growth and 

 development. Acceptance of this general idea 

 should not inhibit an orderly study of various 

 questions of university organisation, the decision 

 of which is already long overdue. If the universi- 

 ties limit their contributions to these discussions 

 to expressions of personal opinion, however adroit 

 and enlightened, the task of finding solutions to 

 these difficult questions will have to be under- 

 taken b} some other authority. 



A Psychology of Logic. 



Psychologic du Raisonnement. By Eugenio 

 Rignano. (Biblioth^que de Philosophic Con- 

 temporaine.) Pp. xi-f-544. (Paris: Felix 

 Alcan, 1920.) 18 francs. 



THE distinguished editor of Scientia has given 

 us in this volume a valuable and most use- 

 ful study, which is likely to take its place as a 

 recognised book of reference. It is original, both 

 in its method and in its subject-matter, to a very 

 high degree, and part of its originality is the way 

 in which it brings together, and works into a com- 

 plete scheme, the researches and theories based on 

 the researches of experimenters and theorists in 

 all the sciences. The main purpose is to present 

 a psychology of reasoning. By reasoning is 

 meant the higher logical processes of the mind 

 which are distinctive of intellect, and by 

 psychology a descriptive science which interprets 

 a definite domain of reality by bringing it into 

 relation with other domains. 



The theory is given in the chapter entitled 

 "Qu'est-ce que le raisonnement?" This appeared 

 as the first of a series of articles, in Scientia eight 

 NO. 2698, VOL. 107] 



or nine years ago, and it forms now a kind of 

 centre or nucleus around which the argument 

 plays. The answer to the question is that reason- 

 ing is nothing but a consecutive series of 

 actions or experiments carried out simply imagina- 

 tively in thought and not effected materially. 

 The result of the imaginatively represented pro- 

 cess is the demonstration or conclusion to which 

 reasoning leads and at which it aims. Reasoning 

 is experimenting internally, thoughts are merely 

 imagined acts. 



It will be seen, therefore, that Signor 

 Rignano 's psychology moves on the scientific 

 plane and ignores the metaphysical problem. It 

 accepts existence and is unconcerned with the 

 genesis or with the ultimate nature of reality. 

 Given the physical, biological, and physiological 

 basis, psychology can define its data by relation to 

 it. Memory, perception, and productive and repro- 

 ductive imagination can be described and their 

 function, scope, and limitations determined. The 

 scheme of the work is then clear. A psychology 

 of logic has to show, first, the evolution of reason- 

 ing from inferior forms of mind which do not 

 attain to it; secondly, the evolution of reasoning 

 itself into its higher forms ; and, finally, the positive 

 factors as they are revealed by the study of abnor- 

 mality. 



On the basis of the assumption that mentality 

 is a phenomenon within the objective world of 

 physical science and presupposes the independent 

 existence of that world, it is undeniable that a 

 great deal of practically useful science can be for- 

 mulated. The author's numerous, excellently 

 chosen illustrations of the reasoning process are 

 very fascinating. They provide the kind of inter- 

 est which used to thrill us in the old descriptive 

 "natural histories." Certain doubts as to the 

 soundness of the method, however, very soon in- 

 vade us. There are extraordinary stories of animal 

 intelligence — all standard illustrations and taken 

 from recognised authorities (Romanes, Jennings, 

 and others), and to be differentiated, therefore, 

 from the tall stories which fill the correspondence 

 columns of some newspapers ; but, even so, it is 

 questionable whether they do not darken rather 

 than enlighten judgment as to the mode of work- 

 ing of the animal mind. 



To understand the mentality of a dog or of an 

 amoeba, surely we ought to study the most ordi- 

 nary responses and not single out some special 

 case of anthropomorphic behaviour as peculiarly 

 significant. This vice of method spoils a good 

 deal of Signor Rignano 's excellent work. For 

 example, take his theory of intuition. In contrast 

 with deductive reasoning, intuition is character- 



