NATURE 



21 



THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 19:7. 



MENTAL ORGANISATION. 



Organic to Human: Psychological and Socio- 

 logical. By Dr. Henry Maudsley. Pp. viii + 386. 

 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1916.) 

 Price 125. net. 

 AATE welcome this vigorous expression of a 

 • * distinguished veteran's convictions in 

 regard to some of the major problems of evolu- 

 tion, both organic and social. Mature reflection 

 does not seem to have made Dr. Maudsley more 

 tolerant of metaphysicians, men of feeling, and 

 others of that clan; he remains, in fact, a con- 

 sistent unbending type of those whom William 

 James called "tough-minded," and he writes as 

 trenchantly as ever about the folly of man's 

 overweening intellectual conceit. One of the 

 central ideas of his book is that of the unity of 

 the organism, which discharges mental as well 

 as motor functions by a nervous organisation in 

 which every part co-operates. 



"The whole body enters into the constitution of 

 every mood, thought, and feeling." The author 

 sees man as solidary with the rest of creation on 

 his mental as well as on his bodily side. We are 

 glad to see that he recognises that "there is 

 obviously plenty of seemingly conscious work in 

 animal nature outside human nature, though not, 

 of course, so complexly reflective intra-mentally." 

 With these conclusions many biologists will 

 agree, but few will now follow Dr. Maudsley in 

 his Lamarckian explanation of man's cerebral 

 organisation as "embodying the cumulative 

 acquisitions of immemorial adaptive experience 

 from age to age." 



- Dr. Maudsley makes much of "mental 

 organisation," which might well have been the 

 title of his book had not the word been vulgarised 

 in other connections. The idea is a sound one 

 that individual initiatives may somehow become 

 enregistered in the hereditary constitution of the 

 race. The author also uses the vivid phrase 

 •" mental capitalisation " for the way in which man 

 > secures external registration— in implement and 

 machine, in cultivated plant and written word — 

 of the gains of ages. "The wonderful calculation 

 it would be to estimate the number of mind- 

 powers incorporate in and now represented by 

 the modern battleship evolved step by step from 

 the primitive canoe. ... It is in like manner 

 that the intelligent instincts of animals represent 

 the silent memories of past habits, of acquired 

 function grafted in structure, and that the innate 

 apacities and aptitudes of human Intellect signify 

 e quintessence of immemorial consolidate adapta- 

 ions transmitted as unconscious mind by hei;e- 

 ity. " But this is very questionable interpretation, 

 hat there is " mental capitalisation " in battleship 

 nd brain alike seems indubitable; but the re- 

 mblance in process in the two cases is purely 

 'ormal. That the brain of any organism grew 

 ich in the course of evolution by accumulating 

 acquisitions of individual thrift is a very 

 NO. 2471, VOL. 99] 



hazardous biological hypothesis. Fiacts arc 

 wanted ! 



We are precluded by limits of space from any 

 appreciation of Dr. Maudsley 's stimulating and 

 critical discussions concerning the relation of 

 science to social advance, the conditions of 

 civilisation, the microbe and man, social evolu- 

 tion, and the moralisation of the reproductive 

 instinct ; we must pass on to the last chapter, 

 where the view is expounded that "materialism 

 neither can nor ought to be got rid of. To think 

 such riddance possible is to perpetuate pretence 

 and invite unrealities and hypocrisies of thought." 



For a man of his experience Dr. Maudsley is 

 surprising in the convincedness with which he 

 continually suggests that all the hard, resolute, 

 sincere, critical thinking is done by tough-minded 

 scientific analysts. This conviction is more 

 grotesque than the " ungainly, contorted, or other- 

 wise ungraceful bodies " which Dr. Maudsley has 

 discovered in the animal kingdom. It is equally 

 fictitious. Another psychologically erroneous view, 

 as it seems to us, is expressed in the copious cold 

 water which the book pours on those who cannot 

 settle down sensibly and give up the adventure 

 of trying to interpret Nature. As if that were 

 not the very last thing man should give up ! A 

 German biologist of distinction wrote not long 

 ago: — "So until the opposite can be proved we 

 nmst accept the proposition that also human intel- 

 ligence comprises no psychical factor, and that it 

 has arisen phylc^enetically through continual 

 transformation and refinement of physico-chemical 

 nerve-processes." If this sort of position is in- 

 cluded in the materialism which Dr. Maudsley 

 does not wish to get rid of, we protest, for it 

 seems to us a false simplicity ^^nd bad science. 

 That the position cited would be accepted by DrJ 

 Maudsley we do not suggest, for we understand 

 the author of "The Physiology of. Mind" to 

 recognise the reality of psychical factors while 

 contending that they are inseparably bound up 

 with physiological factors in the unified life of the 

 creature.. But he sails very, near the wind when 

 he says:. "Consciousness is not itself a power of 

 doing work." For who cares for ideas if they 

 have not hands and feet?. J. A- T. 



BOOKS ON ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY. 



(i) Analytical Chemistry. Based on the German 

 text of Prof. F. P. Treadwell. Translated and 

 revised by W. T. Hall. Vol. i., Qualitative 

 Analysis. Pp. xiii -1-538. (New York: John 

 Wiley and Sons, Inc. ; London : Chapman and 

 Hall, Ltd., 1916.) Price 125. 6d. net. 



(2) A Method for the Identification of Pure 

 Organic Compounds. Bv Pror. S. P. Mulliken. 

 Vol. ii. Pp. ix + 327. (New York : John Wiley 

 and Sons, Inc. ; London : Chapman and Hall, 

 Ltd., igi6.) Price 215. net. 



(1) •" I "HE present volume is the fourth English 

 *■ edition of this well-known . analytical 



chemistry, which was first published at Zurich in 



German in 1899 by the American chemist, F. P. 



