44 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1437 



From the stain they are transferred by means 

 of a clean lifter or a glass slide to a dish of 

 distilled water, rinsed, differentiated if neces- 

 sary, suitably counterstained in the same man- 

 ner, rinsed, and finally floated into place upon 

 the siirface of an albumenized slide, dried 

 thoroughly, cleared and mounted. 



The majority of our routine histological 

 stains ma3r be used in this way, but few, such 

 as iron haematoxylin, presenting any difficul- 

 ties. By this method a number of sections of 

 the same tissue or organ may be stained by 

 different methods to In-ing out special struc- 

 tural features, and then mounted side by side 

 on the same slide for comparative study. For 

 example, Haematoxylin and Eosin, Mallory's 

 or Van Gieson's connective tissue stains, and 

 Para-Carmine combined with Orcein or Wei- 

 gert's Resorcin-Fuchsin may be used, and a 

 section of each mounted together under the 

 same cover glass. Even the most reluctant 

 student may thus be brought to a comparative 

 synthetic study of the structure of an organ. 



In routine work large numbers of sections 

 may be stained by an assistant in a short time, 

 floated upon distilled water in large dishes, 

 and issued to a class, ready for mounting, with- 

 out the large expenditure of time, labor, re- 

 agents and glassware necessitated by the usual 

 method of handling individually mounted sec- 

 tions. If preferred the sections may be issued 

 directly to the students, and each can readily 

 perform the staining for himself, using Syra- 

 cuse watch glasses or similar dishes. The main 

 points are that the removal of the paraffine 

 from the section, and the consequent use of al- 

 bumen or other fixative, xylene, absolute alco- 

 hol, and the customary series of three to five 

 percentages of graded alcohols are all unneces- 

 sary, save in the ease of serial sections of con- 

 siderable extent, and in delicate cytological 

 ■work. Finally it is not even necessary to re- 

 move the paraffine as a final step before mount- 

 ing in balsam, if the section has been thorough- 

 ly dried, the sui-rounding parafSne in such a 

 mount being entirely invisible, save with a 

 very narrow diaphragm opening. 



F. M. McFAkLAND 



Department of Akatomt, 



Stanpoed University, California 



PROFESSOR KEYSER ON RUSSELL'S "THE 

 ANALYSIS OF MIND" 



May a belated reader of Professor Keyser's 

 notice, in Science, November 25, of Bertrand 

 Russell's Analysis of Mind dissent from the 

 implication that the book is written by a man 

 specifically competent to deal with psychology? 

 My dissent is not based on the obviously ama- 

 teur quality of Russell's psychology, for an 

 amateur may be a good observer and many of 

 RusseU's psj'chological passages have genuine 

 significance. Nor do I care to stress the rather 

 eclectic range of Russell's psychological read- 

 ing. I am concerned rathej with his totally 

 non-psychological point of view. In this book, 

 as in all his others, Mr. Russell obviously 

 treats psychology as handmaid of metaphysics 

 — a procedure quite as disastrous to scientific 

 psychology when the metaphysics in question 

 is neo-realism as when it is, say. Wolffian spir- 

 itualism. Russell himself declares that he is 

 "interested in psychology not so much for its 

 own sake as for the light that it may throw 

 on the problem of knowledge" ;^ and the fact 

 which his reviewer correctly states, that the 

 motive of the book is "primarily logical . . . 

 that of reconciling two tendencies seemingly" 

 inconsistent, "the tendency of the behaviorist 

 to materialize mind and the tendency of mod- 

 ern physicists to spiritualize matter" — this fact 

 alone rouses the suspicion of every scientific- 

 ally-minded reader. For the competent psy- 

 chologist writes not in the interest of logical 

 or metaphysical reconciliations but rather with 

 the primary intent to record and to order ob- 

 served phenomena. The reviewer provides us 

 with many other instances of the author's 

 metaphysical manipulations. Russell's doe- 

 trine of desire, for example, as "a mere 'fic- 

 tion' like force in dynamics," may be (in 

 Keyser's phrase) "a diabolically ingenious 

 analysis" but certainly is not a psychological 

 conception. And assuredly Russell's agree- 

 ment with the realists in the thesis that (with 

 respect to sensations) the world is composed 

 of a "neutral stuff" would not by anybody be 

 regarded as a contribution to psychology. 



I am not here concerned to criticize the 

 argimient, or the more plentiful assertions, on 

 which the metaphysical conclusion of The 



1 Analysis of Mind, p. 15. 



