Recent experiments on Mental Action. 89 



and partly also because (as occasionally happens) the 

 latter has been a neglected subject of research. 

 During the past few years however, various experi- 

 mental investigations have been made, especially by 

 Donders in Holland, and Mosso in Turin, for the 

 purpose of elucidating the physical conditions of 

 mental action ; and it has been found that -instead of 

 an act of thought being instantaneous, as was formerly 

 believed, it requires a variable time.* Numerous 

 desultory experiments made upon dreamers, and with 

 drugs, alcohol, &c., upon persons in the waking state, 

 also prove that mental phenomena are amenable to 

 .scientific research. F. Galton has even proposed ex- 

 periments and methods for measuring the mental 

 faculties of different persons.")- The effects of exciting 

 different parts of the brain of animals by means of 

 electric currents, and the localization of the functions 

 of the brain effected by the experiments of Ferrier, 

 Hirtzig and others, also tend to throw further light 

 upon mental phenomena. The fact alone that mental 

 actions and conditions may be made the subject of 

 experiment, and consequently of observation, com- 

 parison, analysis and inference, proves that they may 

 be rendered sources of new facts and principles, and 

 are therefore within the domain of science. As the 

 dependence of mental phenomena upon physical con- 

 ditions has been clearly demonstrated, an extensive 

 reduction of them to scientific laws is only a question 

 -of time and labour. 



* NOTE. See also p. 95. t NOTE. Athenaeum, Aug. 3, 1877. p. 242. 



