September i6, 1920] 



NATURE 



8.S 



argued, elementary will-units, but units of a higher 

 order comprising many elementary will-units. And 

 these units of higher order may be thought of as 

 in turn uniting to form higher unities still (e.g. 

 the collective will of society), until in the end we 

 reach the thought of a world-will including within 

 itself the multiplicity of individual wills. 



Many of VV'undt's psychological theories — such, 

 for example, as his well-known doctrine of apper- 

 ception — only become intelligible in the light of 

 his general view of Nature. Emphatic as he was 

 in claiming for psychology a position of its own 

 as an empirical science, he never ceased to regard 

 it as standing in the closest and most intimate 

 relation with philosophy. Even in the "Grund- 

 ziige," which is a storehouse of facts largely 

 accumulated in his own laboratory, he turns aJTain 

 and again to the discussion of problems essentially 

 philosophical in character. That work has often 

 been severely criticised, yet when all is said it 

 remains one of the great and permanent contribu- 

 tions to the modern science. The I^eipzig Institute 

 was started in a humble way in 1878, but it grew 

 by rapid strides, and VVundt lived to see one of his 

 early desires realised — namely, that the time would 

 i-ome when in every German university a psycho- 

 logical laboratory would be deemed a part of the 

 necessary equipment. The " Philosophische 

 Studicn," of which he was the editor, served as a 

 medium of publication for the work of his pupils, 

 id many valuable articles of his own are likewise 

 contained in the twenty volumes that appeared 

 from 1883 to 1903. The last years of his life saw 

 also the realisation of another of his early dreams. 

 In 1900 the first volume of his " Volkerpsycho- 

 logie " was published, and five other bulky 

 \olumes followed. Here, again, to some extent 

 he was breaking new ground, where, however, he 

 was entirely dependent for his material upon the 

 labours of others. 



Wundt married shortly after leaving Heidel- 

 berg; his son is distinguished as an authority in 

 Greek philosophy, and to his daughter, his com- 

 p.-mion "im Urwald der Mythen und Marchen," 

 one of the vohimes of the " Volkerpsychologie "' 

 is dedicated. In private life he was a man of 

 many lovable qualities. His old students look 

 back to many delightful hours spent with him in 

 the midst of his family, and remember with grati- 

 tude his kindly interest in them and their work. 

 Slender in build, never of strong physique, and 

 troubled with failing eyesight, it seems well-nigh 

 incredible that he got through the multitudinous 

 labours of which I have spoken, and survived so 

 many of his former pupils. He was wonderfully 

 fffective as a lecturer ; without a note, and usually 

 I0 audicnce.s of more than three hundred students, 

 he would handle in a concise and lucid manner 

 I hemes of notorious difficulty. Absorbed in his 

 scientific pursuits, allowing himself little leisure, 

 but content and happy in his modest and simple 

 ' ome, his life was a rounded whole, the memory 

 1 which one would not willingly let die. 



G. Dawes Hicks. 



NO. 2655, VOL. 106] 



Armand Gautier. 



BY the death of Emile Justin .^rmand Gautier, 

 at Cannes, in his eighty-third year, France 

 loses one of her most distinguished chemists. 

 Born at Montpellier, the son of a medical man, 

 Gautier appears to have been destined to follow his 

 father's profession, and to his early training is to 

 be attributed, in all probability, the direction of 

 much of his subsequent life's work in science, 

 notably in yological chemistry. As a youth he 

 obtained a post, under the Faculty of Montpellier, 

 first as aide-prdparateur and then as preparatciir 

 in the chemical laboratory, where he remained five 

 years, and where he acquired that power and 

 facility of manipulation which characterised his 

 experimental work. In the early 'sixties he seems 

 definitely to have decided to attach himself to 

 chemistry as a career. .-Vt that period the science 

 was experiencing profound changes, and chemical 

 theory was developing with remarkable rapidity, 

 more particularly owing to the progress in organic 

 chemistry. Wurtz was everywhere recognised as 

 one of the pioneers and leaders of the new move- 

 ment, and accordingly young Gautier repaired 

 to Paris to work under his inspiration and direc- 

 tion. .-Xt Paris he remained, becoming, in 1869, 

 a member of the Faculty of Medicine, in 1872 

 director of the first laboratory of biological 

 chemistry instituted in France, and in 1884, on 

 the death of Wurtz, professor of medical 

 chemistry. He was elected a member of the 

 Academy in 1889. 



During the fifty w ns ,i| his scientific activity 

 Armand Gautier published an extraordinary 

 number of memoirs — upwards of 600, it is said. 

 They range over every department of the science 

 and practically every sub-section of it. Many of 

 them, of course, are not of first-rate importance, 

 but, collectively, they serve to show his breadth of 

 sympathy, his receptivity, his intellectual keen- 

 ness, his versatility, and the many-sidedness of 

 his interests. 



Here we can deal only with his more note- 

 worthy contributions to the literature of chemistry. 

 The influence of Wurtz is stamped on the earliest 

 of them — as in his work on cyanogen derivatives, 

 on the nitriles and their isomerides, the carbyl- 

 amines — which mostly appeared in the Bulletin 

 of the French Chemical Society and served to 

 establish Gautier's jjosition as one of the foremost 

 investigators of the new French school. His ap- 

 pointment as director of the laboratory of bio- 

 logical chemistry, already referred to, gave a fresh 

 impetus and a new departure to his work as an 

 investigator. In 1872 he signalised the existence 

 of a class of cadaveric alkaloids, termed by Sclmi 

 ptomaines, and presumed to be products of putre- 

 faction. Earlier investigators, such as Panum, 

 Dupr^ and Bcncc Jones, Marquardt, Schmidt, 

 Bergmann and Schmiedeberg, Zuelzer and Son- 

 nenschein, had obtained so-called putrefaction 

 bases which occasioned physiological effects 

 similar to certain vegeioalkaloids. Selmi's term 

 was adopted by Gautier Im di note alkaloidal sub- 



