

PSYCHO-PHYSICS 209 



stimulation these potentially more excitable areas become 

 more intensely stimulated than their less active background, 

 thus reproducing the original picture. Ordinarily such 

 memory-revival takes place under the diffuse stimulus 

 of the effort of the will. Here then is a wide range of 

 inquiry, its subjects ranging from metal to plants, and 

 lastly to man himself. And Bose concludes that ' in 

 this demonstration of continuity, it has been found that 

 the dividing frontiers between physics, physiology, and 

 psychology have disappeared.' 



This of course means the older conventional frontiers, 

 and does not deny to each view-point such reasonable 

 distinctness as may be. And while the physicists were 

 sympathetic to these inquiries from the first, and the 

 physiologists, though slower to convince, have come from 

 these volumes and their successors essentially to accept 

 them, it would seem that the psychologists are as yet 

 insufficiently in touch with the results. Yet there are 

 notable exceptions, President Stanley Hall of Clark 

 University, for example, having been so interested as to 

 have introduced the books into his syllabus for workers 

 in psychology. 



Bergson's and others' interpretations of ' Memory ' 

 need to take note of this differing one ; and Bergson and 

 Bose alike have also to discuss interpretations like those 

 of Semon's. The psychologist, the physiologist, and the 

 physicist have here peculiarly to collaborate in a most 

 important field of investigation ; while, as has once and 

 again been pointed out, the mystery of Heredity is also 

 correlated ; for is not this the organic race-memory ? 



As psychological reaction must be related to under- 

 lying physiological change, Bose next - investigated the 

 effect of increasing stimulus from the sub-minimal to 

 maximal. From his results there arises a fresh consideration 

 of that famous ' Weber- Fechner's Law ' which to so many 

 has long seemed the very foundation of psycho-physiological 



