December 17, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



883 



nature of a permissible hypothesis), but where 

 the alleged facts are largely coujectured in 

 support of the theory; and this along both the 

 parallel lines — facts of sentience and facts 

 called neuroses. 



How this general theory works in its at- 

 tempts to deal with definite psychological 

 problems we shall now test in a number of 

 selected particulars. We hasten to say that 

 where Mr. Marshall approaches any psycho- 

 logical problem without emphasizing his gen- 

 eral theory for explaining " all psychic facts " 

 by correspondences between largely conjectural 

 facts of sentience and almost wholly conjec- 

 tural neururgic facts, he is much at his best. 

 In such cases he shows the candor, learning 

 and depth and breadth of insight, from 

 the more general exercise of which an im- 

 provement of psychological science, now so 

 sex-erely threatened with disintegration and 

 degradation, might reasonably be expected. 



Mr. Marshall makes clearly and well the 

 distinction between consciousness as sentience, 

 the universal characteristic of all psychical 

 life, and consciousness as the " awareness " 

 of an object, whether percept of thing or con- 

 sciousness of self. But, in our judgment, he 

 weakens the value and mistakes the signifi- 

 cance of this distinction when he speaks of 

 " sub-attentive consciousness," and fails to see 

 that some at least faint share in the distribu- 

 tion of attention is necessary in order that any 

 particular part of the field of sentience may 

 lay claim to being part of this field at all. Nor 

 is this a point of no importance for our gen- 

 eral psychological theory. For since all the 

 earlier and simpler conative manifestations of 

 mental life are connected with attention, the 

 failure to recognize them on the lowest levels 

 of this life renders the theory lacking in the 

 prime requisite of all modern science; we will 

 call it " dynamic quality." It is not sur- 

 prising, then, that our author, having only 

 presentations and systems of presentations to 

 deal with, so frequently overlooks or mini- 

 mizes the " energetics," or active aspect of — 

 not the presentations, but of the being whose 

 are the presentations. 



Other particulars in Book I. with which we 



find ourselves in agreement are the "systemic" 

 view of consciousness, as against all attempts 

 to regard it as a " blooming confusion " or to 

 ridicule the efforts to analyze it into elements 

 or factors, if only these latter words are under- 

 stood in accordance with the unity of con- 

 sciousness; with what is said (p. 94 f.) about 

 the unsatisfactory assumptions connected with 

 the customary theory of the " association of 

 ideas " ; with the doctrine that pleasure and 

 pain are not sensations, but "general qualities 

 of all presentations " ; and with the view that 

 other than human consciousness is of neces- 

 sity described and explained in terms- of our 

 consciousness. 



We also note with peculiar satisfaction Mr. 

 Marshall's discussion and rejection of the the- 

 ory of Lange and James concerning the mus- 

 cular and peripheral origin of the emotions 

 (the central determining conditions of which 

 we have ourselves discussed at great length, 

 elsewhere) ; and as well, the unwarrantable 

 and almost unintelligible contention of Stumpf 

 and James that some special quality or specific 

 element, to be called " extensity," belongs to 

 the material content of every sensation. In a 

 word, this first book, being, after the theory of 

 parallelism is once stated, little burdened with 

 that theory, is perhaps of all three books the 

 most satisfactory. 



Book II., which, as we have already seen, 

 treats of The General Nature of Human 

 Presentation, in its doctrine of their intensity 

 and complexity, presents no features worthy 

 of special attention. But the case is not the 

 same with Mr. Marshall's views as to what he 

 calls the " realness " of certain presentations. 

 This qualification he seems to resolve into the 

 one element of persistence or stability (pp. 

 221 ff.). It might properly be objected that 

 many of the impressions of the real, both in 

 ourselves and in outside objects, are among the 

 most sudden, sharp and unstable of all our 

 presentations. But the entire following dis- 

 cussion shows how inadequate is the basis 

 laid in this way for the subtle, exceedingly 

 complex and eminently intellectual and pro- 

 foundly metaphysical, human conception which 

 answers to the word " reality." Nor does the 



