818 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 50. 



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW, SEPTEMBER, 1893. 



Some Observations on the Anomalies of Self- 

 Consciousness (1) .• JosiAH RoYCE. In this paper 

 the author traces the development of the idea 

 of self in the child, emphasizing the social in- 

 fluences which contribute to it, as worked out 

 in earlier papers by himself and by Baldwin. 

 He then attempts to account for the various 

 disturbances of self-consciousness which are 

 known to the students of mental pathology — and 

 for the very large part which organic, visceral, 

 and conaBsthetic sensations play in these dis- 

 turbances — by derangements of the associations 

 between the social factors in the environment 

 and these organic bodily processes, as such 

 associations have become established in the 

 process of learning. Organic disturbances are 

 therefore among the most common causes of 

 perturbances of the sense of self, since they 

 suggest distorted and mistaken social situations; 

 and the reverse is true: social disturbances may 

 bring about distorted states of the common sen- 

 sibility and so work changes in the sense of self. 



On Dreaming of the Dead : Havelock Ellis. 

 This is an account of the forms which dreams 

 about the dead take on, with actual instances 

 reported. It suggests lines of analogy between 

 such dreams and processes in the early ^history 

 of mankind of which anthropological theory has 

 taken notice. 



Emotion, Desire and Interest (Descriptive): S. F. 

 McLennan. An analytical study of the relation 

 of emotion, desire, and interest to one another. 



Reaction-Time According to Race: R. Meade 

 Bache. In this paper Mr. Bache attempts to 

 bring to an experimental test the theory that 

 advance in culture and in the deliberative 

 processes characteristic of advanced stages of 

 civilization tends to break up the reflex pro- 

 cesses and lengthen them. With the help of 

 Prof. Witmer, of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, a research was carried out upon the re- 

 action times of ten individuals each of three 

 races — Indians, Negroes and Whites. He found 

 the Whites giving the longest reaction-time, as 

 the hypothesis required, the Negroes coming 

 next and the Indians being quickest. The re- 

 lation between the Negro and the Indian he ac- 

 counts for on the theory that the former has 

 been made less quick by his ancestry of slavery. 



and the Indian more quick by his method of 

 life. 



Discussion. Pain-Nerves: H. Nichols. A 

 review of Prof. Strong's paper in the July 

 number of the same Review. Professor Watson 

 on Reality and Time: J. Mark Baldwin. A 

 review of a paper by the author mentioned in 

 the title. Psychological Literature, Notes, &c. 



NOVEMBER, 1895. 



The Confusion of Function and Content in Men- 

 tal Analysis : D. S. Miller. This paper points 

 out the danger and the currency of such con- 

 fusion, holding that the difficulties attending 

 certain problems which he enumerates are 

 mainly due to it. He holds that the function 

 of a mental content must have recognition by 

 psychology as a matter of process, the ordinary 

 conceptions of processes and activities getting a 

 construction under this term 'function.' In- 

 cidentally to the main discussion there is an in- 

 interesting note on Belief. 



The Origin of a ^ Thing ^ and its Nature: J. 

 Mark Baldwin. This paper is a long discussion 

 of the problem as to how far the theory of the 

 origin or natural history of a thing can give an 

 adequate statement of its nature and value in 

 the system of the world. It aims to bring to 

 the bar the claim of the evolution theory that 

 it explains things by describing their history 

 in a developing series. The author propounds 

 a distinction between the ' retrospective ' and 

 the ' prospective ' points of view, claiming 

 that the evolutionist takes exclusively the 

 former ; but since all growing, developing 

 things are never exhausted at any stage to 

 which their career has already attained, more 

 career is always to be expected. This expectation 

 of more career, of further development, supplies 

 the ' prospective ' reference of reality ; and the 

 habit of mind which looks forward rests on the 

 same kind of experience of nature that the his- 

 torical or evolution habit of mind does. And 

 since all reality is an organized system, whose 

 career is never finished in our experience, we 

 must think also pro.spectively. Under this 

 head the author brings the older conceptions of 

 teleology, intuition, ethical values, the activity 

 of volition, etc., i. e., they are all illustrations 

 of thinking in the 'prospective reference.' 



