352 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1106 



like a biireaucrat, was incessantly plotting for 

 his own hand and pocket against the interests 

 of the partnership. True science and politics 

 are incompatible. They can not exist together 

 any more than the eagle and the squid can 

 share the same apartment. Science has at this 

 moment the most magnificent opportunity that 

 it has ever enjoyed of seizing the steersman- 

 ship of human destiny. Every man who wants 

 to see his country great, progressive and pros- 

 perous, marching as a standard-bearer at the 

 head of the advancing legions of mankind, 

 should back the scientists with every ounce of 

 energy that he possesses. If, otherwise, he 

 wishes to see her mean, petty, retrogressive, 

 squalid and contemptible, let him support a 

 return to our debasing party strifes, with their 

 concomitant triumph of the political schemer 

 and all the host of parasites whom he enriches 

 out of public money. — London Financial Neivs. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Die Grundlagen der Psychologie. Von Theo- 



DOR Ziehen. Leipzig und Berlin, B. G. 



Teubner, 1915. 2 volumes. Pp. vi + 259; 



vi + 304. Price M. 4.40, geb. M. 5. 



Professor Ziehen, long known to psycholo- 

 gists as the author of a very readable " Intro- 

 duction to Physiological Psychology," has 

 undertaken in his latest work to determine 

 the fundamental principles of psychology. Ac- 

 cording to his view the science rests upon a 

 twofold basis, its epistemological foundation, 

 and the basal principles of the science itself. 

 The latter may be investigated " autochthon- 

 ously," that is, with respect to the psychical 

 alone, or in correlation with non-psychical 

 material. The latter investigations furnish 

 the psychophysical and psychophysiological 

 foundations of psychology. In the present 

 work only the epistemological and autochthon- 

 ous principles are discussed — each in a sepa- 

 rate voliome. 



The author's epistemological standpoint is 

 rigidly phenomenalistic. He starts with the 

 totality of the Given (das Gegebene), which 

 he calls the Gignomene. This primary datum 

 is divided into two fundamental classes, sen- 

 sations and representations (Vorstellungen). 



The latter are derivatives of the former. The 

 psychical, which constitutes the subject matter 

 of psychology, is to be regarded as the total- 

 ity of the Given in relation to a certain 

 " component " of the sensations and repre- 

 sentations. 



Every sensation datiun can be analyzed into 

 two constituents, a " reduction " component 

 and a parallel component. The former is sub- 

 ject to a certain sort of variation — successive 

 changes — and such partial variations consti- 

 tute the causal series. The second component 

 is subject to a different sort of variation — 

 simultaneous changes — which form the parallel 

 grouping of data. The parallel group includes 

 both independent and dependent variations. 

 The independent variations, so far as we know, 

 occur only in the brain and nervous system. 

 All sensations are subject to dependent varia- 

 tion. Thus among our sense data there are 

 some which stand only in causal and passive 

 parallel relations to other data, and some 

 which manifest active parallel relations as well 

 — that is, data which produce parallel effects. 

 The representative data are resolvable into 

 components analogous to those of sensations. 

 Psychology, according to the author, is the sci- 

 ence of the passive parallel components of ex- 

 perience. Such, in bare outline, is Professor 

 Ziehen's demarcation of psychology. Unfor- 

 tunately, in spite of his endeavor to give 

 mathematical precision to the analysis the 

 meaning of his fundamental terms remains 

 somewhat in doubt. 



The fourth chapter contains a very incisive 

 discussion of the historic theories of the Self. 

 The author finds no sufficient ground for as- 

 smning the existence of a soul-substance or 

 mind-stufP. The self is merely " an individual 

 collective concept, distinguished by special 

 characteristics" (I., 140). The existence of 

 " other selves " he believes to be comprehen- 

 sible from his standpoint, while the substance 

 theory, carried out logically, lands us in 

 solipsism. 



In Chapter 5 the relation of the " psychical " 

 to the brain is examined. The classic theories, 

 which he designates as causalism, parallelism, 

 materialism, spiritualism, identism and logis- 



