July 18, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



93 



school, the volume is rich alike in fine theo- 

 retical considerations and in varied applica- 

 tions. Theory, however, is not overdone and 

 the applications are chosen with unusual re- 

 gard to their intelligibility. 



C. J. Keyser 

 Columbia University 



Instinct and Experience. By 0. Lloyd Mor- 

 gan, Professor in the University of Bristol. 

 New York, The Macmillau Company. 1912. 

 Pp. xvii + 299. 



" Once more I urge that the more clearly 

 we distinguish the scientific problems from 

 the metaphysical problems the better it will 

 be both for science and for metaphysics " (p. 

 292). This, the concluding sentence of Pro- 

 fessor Morgan's book, suggests the tenor of 

 his discussion. 



The volume is the direct outcome of a sym- 

 posium on instinct and intelligence which was 

 held in London in the summer of 1910. The 

 several papers contributed to the symposium 

 ■were published in the British Journal of Psy- 

 chology, Vol. 3, 1909-10. Professor Morgan's 

 views concerning instinct and intelligence dif- 

 fered in many respects from those of certain 

 ■of the other speakers, and in the present work 

 he has, at some length, presented and defended 

 them in contrast with those of Messrs. Myers, 

 McDougall and Stout. 



Although the author would doubtless resent 

 the suggestion, the reviewer looks upon this 

 -work as philosophical rather than purely sci- 

 entific in nature. It deals largely with defini- 

 tions, relations, speculations and presupposi- 

 tions, and with attempts to draw a line be- 

 tween the naturalistic and the metaphysical 

 ■disciplines. This is undoubtedly a profitable 

 task from Professor Morgan's standpoint, but 

 from the reviewer's it is decidedly less profit- 

 able than attempts to supply the deficiencies 

 in our knowledge of instinct and intelligence. 

 And yet Professor Morgan insists, even in 

 his opening paragraph, " My aim is to treat 

 the phenomena of conscious existence as a 

 naturalist treats the phenomena of organic 

 life. I shall therefore begin with instinctive 

 -behavior and shall endeavor to give some ac- 



count of the nature of the instinctive experi- 

 ence which, as I believe, accompanies it. In 

 this way we shall get some idea of what I 

 conceive to be the beginnings of experience in 

 the individual organism" (p. 1). From this 

 statement, one might suppose that the book 

 would be devoted chiefly to the phenomena of 

 instinctive and intelligent behavior, rather 

 than to a consideration of the relations of 

 instinct and experience or of the necessity of 

 avoiding metaphysical problems. 



Besting his contention upon the physiolog- 

 ical discoveries of Sherrington and ffis co- 

 workers. Professor Morgan insists that we 

 must, in the end, distinguish instinctive 

 from intelligent activities by describing the 

 changes which occur in the central nervous 

 system. The instinctive is dependent upon 

 subcortical processes; and the intelligent, by 

 contrast, is dependent upon cortical processes. 



Throughout the book, but especially in 

 Chapters II., The Eelation of Instinct to Ex- 

 perience, III., Eeflex Action and Instinct, and 

 IV., Hereditary Dispositions and Innate Men- 

 tal Tendencies, the importance of studying 

 the functions of the central nervous system in 

 their relations to different forms of activity 

 is emphasized. 



Eifective consciousness, by which the au- 

 thor means consciousness that has something 

 to do with the form of behavior, is supposed 

 to be " connected with the process of profiting 

 by experience " and to be " correlated with " 

 the functions of the cerebral cortex. There is 

 every reason, the author contends, to attempt 

 to write a natural history of effective con- 

 sciousness, a natural history of experience " as 

 it somehow actually runs its course." 



Concerning the doctrine of epiphenomenal- 

 ism, the author observes that we have no 

 proof whatever that the same brain processes 

 which occur in connection with intelligent 

 activity, accompanied by consciousness, ever 

 occur in precisely the same way when these 

 accompaniments are lacking. Professor Mor- 

 gan does not believe that behavior would re- 

 main the same if the cerebral processes oc- 

 curred without " correlated intelligence " (p. 

 262). 



