March 13, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



383 



opinion, only part of the preliminary sci- 

 entific training for these new lines of work. 

 The zoologist is continually confronted at 

 least in his study of the higher animals 

 with those complicated conditions that we 

 recognize in our own mental states. That 

 such conditions exist in varying degrees in 

 the lower animals no one can deny. The 

 questions that arise concerning them are 

 what is their nature and to what extent are 

 they present in the lower forms. These 

 problems are psychological, and I should, 

 therefore, regret to see a prospective zoolo- 

 gist omit from his preliminary training a 

 reasonable grounding in this field of in- 

 vestigation. In one way, however, I regard 

 psychology as less important for the be- 

 ginner than physics and chemistry. In it 

 the experimental method is less completely 

 developed than in the two sciences just 

 named. In truth, it is in this respect much 

 like biology itself and in need of help 

 especially from the side of chemistry. The 

 genius of Helmholtz seems to have had such 

 an overwhelming influence on most p.sy- 

 chologists that they have been content to 

 study almost exclusively the physics of 

 sensory phenomena to the neglect of other 

 psychological fields, such as the chemistry 

 of the central nervous states. But though 

 psychology may have its own difficulties, I 

 nevertheless regard it as a field that should 

 be included in the general training of every 

 student who aspires to a broad-minded and 

 productive scholarship in zoology. With 

 the botanist it may be different. He some- 

 times counts himself fortunate to have 

 escaped the problem of mind, but to my 

 way of thinking this very problem is one 

 of those elements which makes zoology so 

 intensely interesting. 



But the young zoologist trained in the 

 experimental method by physics and chem- 

 istry, and heedful of the fact that the ma- 

 terial of his investigation may exhibit 



among its characteristics some of the phe- 

 nomena of intelligence, must still assume a 

 very difi'erent attitude toward his work 

 from that which most of us were accus- 

 tomed to in the laboratories of twenty or 

 thirty years ago. Those, were the days of 

 morphology, when the visible structure of 

 the organism was all important and the 

 problem of the homology of various parts, 

 the integrity of the germ layers, and so 

 forth were of foremost interest. The atti- 

 tude of the average student of those days 

 was essentially anatomical, and the ana- 

 tomical conception of an organism was 

 that of a standing motionless object. Im- 

 mensely important as this view was, it 

 lacked the really essential characteristic of 

 the living thing, its incessant activity. The 

 new view, on the other hand, includes just 

 this feature. The student of thirty years 

 ago was concerned with methods of pre- 

 serving animals and he never felt safe until 

 his catch was in the alcohol jar ; the modern 

 student is all alert to keep his stock alive 

 and he consigns it to preservatives with 

 funereal rites. This change in attitude is 

 part and parcel of the new growth and is 

 working a slow but steady revolution in 

 the equipment of our laboratories. 



With all this overturning and revolution 

 going on in oixr advanced work, what can 

 we say of our elementary instruction. Here 

 we are supposed to keep to those aspects of 

 the subject that are well established and 

 that are not open to fundamental revision. 

 Moreover, in this direction the procedure 

 of lecture work and laboratory routine is 

 well established in text-books and the like, 

 and the instructor, in keeping in these well- 

 worn paths, is on what seems to him to be 

 safer grounds. But even the elementary 

 courses, in my opinion, must not be devoid 

 of promising outlook. They should in- 

 clude a reasonable amount of the new work. 

 But to accomplish this without printed 



