Janttaey 24, 1896.] 



SGIENGE. 



121 



dence was emphasized. The address will 

 be printed in the March number of The 

 Psychological Review. 



The President's address was followed 

 by a,n informal communication from Prof. 

 Ladd, of Yale, upon the Direct Control 

 of the Retinal Light. After a description 

 of the phenomenon (upon which the 

 speaker has contributed a brief paper to 

 the Psychological Review, I., 351) a syllabus 

 of simple experiments for observing it was 

 distributed and cooperative aid in its study 

 solicited. 



The next speaker was Prof. Strong, and 

 his topic Consciousness and Time. The paper 

 was a critique of the views presented in the 

 Presidential address of Prof. James at the 

 Princeton meeting. It was then argued that 

 the perception of passing time involved a 

 successive unity of consciousness in addi- 

 tion to the simultaneous unity required for 

 the perception of likeness and diflference. 

 Prof. Strong, on the contrary, held that a 

 successive unity is an impossibility, and 

 that the consciousness of succession being 

 in its nature retrospective, all knowledge of 

 passing time must be representative, thus 

 making the ordinary simultaneous unity of 

 consciousness all sufiicient. This paper will 

 appear in the Psychological Review. 



The afternoon session concluded with the 

 paper of Brother Chrysostom on Some Con- 

 ditions of Will Development. These condi- 

 tions, the speaker considered, fall under 

 two heads: the instrinsic, or such as depend 

 on the voluntary agent, and the extrinsic, 

 or such as act on him from without. The 

 first of the intrinsic conditions is the nature 

 of the will itself, which is indeterminate, at 

 least as to the means that it shall employ. 

 Objection to this view based on ' Double 

 Consciousness ' does not hold. The will is, 

 however, determined to a certain extent by 

 habit and intellect, and heredity and envi- 

 ronment exercise a marked influence upon it. 

 Environment itself, however, is partly sub- 



ject to will and herein lies the great oppor- 

 tunity of ethical improvement. 



The paper of Prof. Lloyd, of the Univer- 

 sity of Michigan, on A Psychological Inter- 

 pretation of the Rides of Definition in Logic, 

 though in the hands of the Secretary, was 

 omitted because of the fulness of the 

 program. 



The most generally interesting and the 

 most fully attended session of the Associa- 

 tion was that of Saturday morning, when a 

 discussion on Evolution and Consciousness 

 brought together as participants Professors 

 James, Cope, Baldwin, Minot and Ladd. 

 Prof. James in opening the discussion 

 sketched in brief the several aspects of the 

 general question upon which psychological 

 interest is more or less centered. 



1. How ancient is consciousness in the 

 world at large ? To this question Clifford, 

 Fechner and others have replied with a 

 doctrine of atomic souls, making conscious- 

 ness coeval with the universe, while Spen- 

 cer and others again have advanced theo- 

 ries which place its entrance relatively late 

 in cosmic development. The monadism of 

 Leibnitz and the current doctrines of the 

 soul are still other coodinate theories. 2. 

 Is consciousness a genuine dynamic agent 

 in the psycho-physical combination or 

 merely an epiphenomenon ? Here, it was 

 said, the leaning of all the younger 

 workers and of some of the elder is toward 

 automatism, or psycho-physic parallelism, 

 though others of the elder men still contend 

 for a genuine effect of mind upon its bodily 

 partner. 3. In the field of individual con- 

 sciousness the question is that of nativism 

 and empiricism ; what in the consciousness 

 of the child, for example, is inherited and 

 what is acquired? Here the balance of 

 current opinion dips heavily toward nativ- 

 ism. 



Prof. Cope, of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania, who followed, spoke from the plat- 

 form of zoological evolution. In these mat- 



