FEBRUARY 8, 1901.] 
progress of the disease could be deduced 
from such tests. Turning to an exceptional 
case, similar tests made on the chess player, 
Mr. Pillsbury, were described. Thespeaker 
also noted the correlation of the tests made 
on the freshmen and seniors of Columbia 
College, mentioned tests made on the clev- 
erest and dullest children in a primary 
and in a high school, and described a pho- 
tographic method of measuring the features. 
The last paper of the morning, by Pro- 
fessor E. F. Buchner, on ‘ Volition and Ex- 
periment,’ was read by title. 
On Friday morning Professor Edward A. 
Pace presented ‘A Note on Binocular Ri- 
valry.’ The purpose of the experiments 
was to determine whether the fluctuation 
of retinal fields is influenced by such men- 
tal factors as expectation and recognition. 
It was found that when the fields (colored 
squares or figures) are presented in succes- 
sion, the new field dominates in conscious- 
ness. The mere fact that one field is famil- 
iar and the other strange does not affect the 
result. Efforts of the will to retain a field 
when a new stimulus is applied to the other 
retina are not at first successful. By repe- 
tition, however, control is gradually ac- 
quired, so that, in proportion as the novelty 
of the intruding field wears off, inhibition 
becomes easier. 
Professor Charles H. Judd followed with 
a paper, ‘The Analysis of Writing Move- 
ments.’ The method consists in attaching a 
tracer to the hand in such a way that it will 
not be affected by the fingers, but will record 
any movement of the hand asa whole. If 
one writes with such a tracer attached to the 
hand, the written letters will contain the 
finger components as well as hand and arm 
movements, while the tracer record will not 
contain the finger components. Apparatus 
and records were exhibited to illustrate 
the method. It is found that the hand 
and arm do not participate in the finer 
formative parts of the writing movement, 
SCIENCE. 
213 
but merely carry the fingers forward, thus 
contributing the grosser elements, espe- 
cially those ina forward direction. Marked 
differences appear in the modes of coordi- 
nation employed by different individuals. 
Professor J. A. Bergstrom demonstrated 
an ergograph and reported studies made 
with the instrument. 
Dr. Arthur MacDonald spoke on the sus- 
ceptibility to disease and physical devel- 
Opment in college women, the data on 
which his statistics were based having been 
furnished by the professor of physical cul- 
ture and the resident physician in one of 
our woman’s colleges. 
Dr. E. W. Scripture described further ex- 
periments on rhythm made in the Yale 
Laboratory and Professor E. C. Sanford 
spoke briefly of some new apparatus. 
In the Philosophical Section of the As- 
sociation, which held meetings both in the 
morning and in the afternoon of Friday, Mr. 
Henry Rutgers Marshall spoke on ‘Self- 
consciousness and its Physical Correlate.’ 
If each special mental state in a given in- 
dividual corresponds with a differentiation 
of process in that individual’s nervous sys- 
tem, then ‘ self-consciousness ’ must have co- 
incident with it some special form of neural 
activity. Theneural process in man is the 
activity of an enormously complex neural 
system which itself is made up of minor 
neural systems: consciousness then, under 
this hypothesis, must be looked upon as 
a vast psychic system made up of minor 
psychic systems. System as a whole, any 
increment of activity in any minor sys- 
tem will stand in contrast with the mass 
of activity of the complex system as a 
whole. The most ordinary presentations 
to the Self correspond with such special 
increments of neural activity ; hence we are 
led to ask whether the Self may not be 
that part of consciousness which corresponds 
with the mass of psychic activity in the 
complex neural system as a whole. 
