416 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



steps we are led to the pivotal idea through 

 a radius of reasonings, from the simpler to 

 the more complex forms constituting the 

 human personality. Through this process 

 the attempt is apparent to keep in a meas- 

 ure abreast of modern scientific research, 

 and supply a truer interpretation of the 

 meaning of human life. This, in turn, ne- 

 cessarily involves an ethical significance, not 

 so much aimed at by the author as connoted 

 by the reader in his perusal. Throughout 

 the whole field of view selected, suggestions 

 occur which mark a decided modification 

 in, if not an entire elimination of, the popu- 

 larly accepted idea of man's individual ex- 

 istence t duo. Withal, facts and ideas are 

 so grouped as not to identify polemics with 

 the object to be attained. 



Among the more familiar doctrines treated 

 of is that the real relations of things are not 

 necessarily elucidated by, nor do they at all 

 times express, their apparent conditions, more 

 particularly so in the domain of natural phe- 

 nomena. The belief in the homogeneity of 

 man's personality received its primal shock 

 and break when the differentiation of body 

 and soul became an authorized concept in 

 the past. Then, for the first, we discover a 

 distinct personality expressed as attaching to 

 the two entities. Organism and spirit had 

 their distinguishing features and their sepa- 

 rate functions, whether in union or disjoined. 

 As with the mental attributes and moral 

 affinities, any one of which might undergo 

 change or be absolutely lost as in numer- 

 ous cases of insanity so, though not in so 

 marked a degree, a process distinct in charac- 

 ter, supervenes the necessary changes which 

 accompany growth outputs in the human 

 organism, either marking secedence to senil- 

 ity, or the progressive steps to maturity. 

 The human system, therefore, is no longer 

 the self-contained individual, but each group 

 of living activities within it has its special 

 range of duties and relations, even down to 

 the germ with its individualized potencies, 

 which we discover only narrowly removed 

 from the plasma. Hence we find in the hu- 

 man organic co-ordination, "not only the 

 ruling and working subpersonalities of an 

 individual character," but " the associate 

 actions of combined and representative per- 

 sonalities the same as in a state ; and, as in 

 a state one personality may be attached to 



another as a check, so diverse organic at- 

 tributes check other organic attributes and 

 regulate the general equipoise by their va- 

 ried interactions. As with the organic, so 

 with the mental attributes." 



Starting with the assumption that co- 

 ordination, or growth combination, consti- 

 tutes the governing principle of the human 

 personality differentiated under distinct sub- 

 personalities, the author proceeds to show 

 that these latter in their content are but ag- 

 gregates of a still lower class of differentia- 

 tions. From the nomad to the man, this prin- 

 ciple characterizes all growths. Further, while 

 life exists these organic co-ordinations may 

 separate or blend, and tissues are found to 

 degenerate or advance, to be repellent or to 

 severally work in unison. In each and every 

 occurring and recurring complexity, how- 

 ever, the earlier differentiations which marked 

 individual changes are never wholly for- 

 feited; in brief, the evolutionary principle 

 remains intact. 



In Book I of the first volume we have 

 inclusive the nature and origin of the human 

 personality, the phylogenic stages of growth, 

 the phylogenic sexual forms, and the co-ordi- 

 nation of faculties and functions. The forms 

 of mental and organic co-ordination are cov- 

 ered by the second book under three classes 

 and several chapters, all of which are written 

 with a succinctness that sensibly diminishes 

 the reader's labor, and include under " normal 

 forms of co-ordination " the active wakeful 

 state, quiescent repose, the state of reverie, 

 somnambulism, and the induced mental and 

 physical states. We gather from the " forms 

 of co-ordinate variation " the law of varia- 

 bility in human personality, variations result- 

 ing from transference and variations through 

 growth. From a review of the abnormal 

 discordinate states, including physical abnor- 

 mals and discordinatious mental and organic, 

 we are introduced to the second volume. 

 This deals mainly with reversions to the 

 lower civilized states, the semicivilized and 

 barbaric states, the state of savages, and 

 finally animal consciousness. Here the third 

 and last book induces reflection on the in- 

 ternal and external relations of man, the 

 modes of self-government in the co-ordinate 

 personality, which betimes becomes alternate 

 and multiple, and the power of self and ex- 

 ternal suggestion. In a lucid appendix, 



