136 



DISCOVERY 



subject-material of their experiments; but the results 

 obtained by this method were not very illumimating in 

 themselves, and only remotely applicable to the remember- 

 ing and forgetting that takes place in our everyday life. 

 Professor Pear therefore rapidly passes over this earlier 

 work to discuss the phenomenon of memory in relation to 

 the general mental life and economy of the individual. The 

 first haU of the book deals with the " image," the elusive 

 form in which a past experience is recalled to consciousness. 

 The author is especially interested in " kinaesthetic " 

 imagery,'^ that is, the recall of the actual sensations 

 arising in muscles, joints, and tendons during the perform- 

 ance of a muscular action or in maintaining a certain pose, 

 and a chapter in the Appendix is devoted to an inquiry 

 into the role played by these kinaesthetic sensations in 

 the mental life of certain types of individuals (by no means 

 the most primitive) who habitually employ this mode of 

 imagery. 



Professor Pear makes the very interesting suggestion 

 that a predominance of a kinaesthetic or a visual and 

 auditory imagery may perhaps be correlated with those 

 two types of character, the " extrovert " and the " intro- 

 vert," 2 who find it so difficult to understand, and so easy 

 to despise, one another. He even suggests that if a 

 language couJd be devised for the expression of the sensa- 

 tions of kinaesthesis, it might be raised to the level of 

 "those aristocrats of sense, sight and hearing," and possibly 

 bring about a rapprochement between the two types of 

 character. 



The problem of memory tends to present itself in modern 

 psychology chiefly as the problem of how we forget, of 

 how we keep our consciousness free of the mass of our 

 past experience and prevent it from being flooded by 

 irrelevent associations when an incident is recalled out 

 of the past. 



Professor Pear is not overwhelmingly impressed by the 

 evidence of hypnosis and psycho-analytical investigations 

 into believing that all past impressions are indelibly 

 recorded, and he regards (at least provisionally) a spon- 

 taneous fading of insignificant experiences as one of the 

 factors in forgetting. As a second factor in the for- 

 getting of insignificant impressions, the author appears to 

 accept Dr. Rivers 's theory of their fusion with the main 

 mass of experience, by which process they lose irrecover- 

 ably their original form, although he modifies the theory 

 to admit varying degrees of fusion. On the question of 

 the forgetting of significant experiences the author agrees 

 with the now generally accepted theory of repression, 

 though he makes a very fine distinction in separating out 

 a group of experiences that are " superseded " rather 

 than repressed. 



Professor Pear claims foi his book no more than that it 



' Professor Pear leaves open the question of whether a 

 movement is recalled by means of an " image," or whether it is 

 to some extent reproduced by minimal contractions of the 

 muscles originally employed, but for convenience of descrip- 

 tion he refers to the process of recall as one of " imagery." 



- Roughly, the " extrovert " tends to find his expression 

 inaction; the " introvert " in thought. (Hotspur and Hamlet 

 are extreme examples.) 



" may serve as a guide-book to some of Memory's more 

 interesting facts," and if it does not attempt or attain the 

 comprehensiveness and dry clarity of a psychological 

 Baedeker, it is a great deal more stimulating and readable. 



F. A. H. 



Glands in Health and Disease. By Dr. Benjamin 

 Harrow. (George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 8s. 6d.) 



Among the many volumes of verj^ different value which 

 have been produced on a subject which has caught the 

 public imagination, this capable little work deserves special 

 mention. It is eminently well suited to give the man in 

 the street a trustworthy appreciation of the importance of 

 " glands " in the medical horizon, without the sensation- 

 alism which is too often associated with them. Especially 

 to be commended is the space which is given to a considera- 

 tion of that by no means negligible school of thought 

 which believes that the importance of " glands " is grossly 

 over-emphasised. For instance, no substance said to 

 be manufactured by these organs and cast into the blood- 

 stream is more generally accepted than " adrenaline " 

 — which is supposed to be formed by glands near the 

 kidney. In fact, adrenaline has been artificially prepared, 

 and its value to the surgeon cannot be disputed. How- 

 ever, Gley, a well-known French physiologist, while not 

 disputing that " adrenaline " can be prepared from these 

 organs, and that when prepared it is a powerful drug, 

 denies that it is ever present in the blood in such propor- 

 tions as to produce any effect whatever. On the other 

 hand, the American worker. Cannon, has interpreted the 

 behavioui of animals and men in terms of the activity of 

 this gland — the cat's attitude of terror when a dog barks, 

 the dilated pupils of a frightened child, and the quickened 

 heart -beat of the examination candidate, alike arise from 

 that source. Dr. Harrow holds the scales of justice very 

 impartially between these two schools. 



There is a short final chapter on the possibility of the 

 existence of substances having an importance to plant life 

 similar to that which the " hormones " which glands 

 manufacture have to animals. For example, it is said 

 to be bad for fruit-trees to grow them in a grassy meadow, 

 on account of some poison arising from the presence of the 

 grass. We would like further information on this point ; 

 though we are aware of the important work of Professor 

 Bottomley, of London, on similar questions. The orchards 

 of Devon and Normandy have borne crops of world-fame 

 for generations, in spite of their grassy carpets, and a 

 comparison of orchard crops as opposed to kitchen- 

 garden crops — where the trees grow in naked soil — does 

 not always flatter the kitchen-garden. 



We congratulate the author on the care he has taken 

 to explain " hard words." His vaulting ambition has, 

 however, o'erleaped itself in his explanation of the word 

 " th>Toidectomy " — " 'dectomy' is derived from a Greek 

 word meaning excision." Few scientific words have much 

 classical erudition to commend them, but " dectomy " 

 is a word that never was on land or sea, or even in the 

 Greek dictionary ! 



R. J. V. P. 



