SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 781 



somewhat dubious and partial acceptance of 

 Professor James's theory of the will to believe 

 as the creator of reality much help out the 

 matter. More light would have been thrown 

 on this obscure subject if the author had thor- 

 oughly worked out the suggestion received in 

 a private letter from Professor Gildersleeve : 

 " To the Greek the world was first ' Wille ' ; 

 then ' Vorstellung.' The consciousness of the 

 not-me comes from the putting forth of will." 

 This most important truth, so early recognized 

 by Greek thought, we have ourselves elabo- 

 rated at great length in various writings, and 

 as it appears both from the modern psycholog- 

 ical and from the metaphysical points of view. 

 It is worth mention in this connection, that 

 the same view is extensively adopted by physi- 

 cists who are interested in the psychological 

 and metaphysical aspects of their particiilar 

 science. 



The physiological theory of the pleasure- 

 pains, which resolves the fundamental differ- 

 ence in character and all the differences in the 

 intensities of the two series, into the efficiency 

 or inefficiency of the neural elements to re- 

 spond to stimuli, like all similar theories, 

 offers an explanation of only some of the 

 phenomena. The discussion of the time con- 

 cept, while it assumes the correct position that 

 its entire basis in experience is given in the 

 fact, that presentations actually occur in suc- 

 cession, is obscured by the use of the mislead- 

 ing term, the " specious present " — misleading, 

 because the so-called specious present is the 

 only real present ; it is the actual " now " com- 

 prised within the grasp of consciousness. But 

 the present conceived of as a mathematical 

 point is not, and never can be, actualized. A 

 similar misconception has been the source of 

 a lot of silly puzzles, such as that of the in- 

 ability of Achilles to overtake the tortoise, of 

 the arrow to fly, etc, which have tormented the 

 brains of men, to no good purpose, through 

 centuries of misspent time. How often does 

 the student of psychology, who wishes to arrive 

 somewhere, wish also that such phrases as 

 " specious present," " stream of consciousness," 

 and many similar phrases, had never been 

 born! 



It is in his treatment of the Qualities of 

 Relation (Chapter XIII.) that the author be- 

 gins to show the more serious results of his 

 general theory. So far as the relations of 

 so-caUed presentations can be considered ob- 

 jectively, or better passively, no serious objec- 

 tion to the treatment is to be urged. On the 

 contrary, it is, in several respects, excellent; 

 but there is nowhere any clear recognition of 

 the fundamental truth that relations between 

 presentations, objectively considered, can come 

 into existence only as the result of " discrim- 

 inating consciousness," or the mind's relating 

 activity. While, then, attention is again 

 recognized as " a very general aspect of con- 

 sciousness " (p. 314) and the statement that 

 the distinction between involuntary and vol- 

 untary attention is largely, oftentimes, a mat- 

 ter of degrees is quite true; and while it must 

 be admitted that attention is not all of will, al- 

 though it is " the very essence of connation " ; 

 the general theory of psychic facts as due to 

 correspondences between neururgic facts and 

 facts of sentience, seems to us utterly to 

 break down when it faces the experiences and 

 the developments of man's intellectual life. 

 Thinhing and the cognitive judgment can 

 never he explained — and, indeed, the facts can 

 not even he stated — in terms of either neur- 

 urgics or the rhechanism of presentations. 



But the inadequacy of the theory is more 

 conspicuous when the attempt is made to ex- 

 plain in its terms the Object-Subject Relation 

 (Chapter XV.). We are here told that it is 

 " the correlation of realness (or stability) and 

 manifoldness " of the presentations which 

 gives us the object-subject relation (p. 345). 

 But Mr. Marshall, who is usually so clear in 

 style, becomes increasingly unclear, as he 

 attempts to show us how a mere correlation 

 in presentations can beget a self-consciously 

 active " empirical ego." Nor does the already 

 much over-worked function of " a will to be- 

 lieve " by any means serve to supply all the 

 missing links between this machine-controlled 

 field of conscious and unconscious presenta- 

 tions and a " real, live man." The obvious 

 reason is that unless a will, that counts for 

 something, is recognized at the start, it can 



