OciOBEE 21, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



541 



Here again, while a society of psychologists 

 might properly discuss the causes of this 

 limitation, in an address confined to gener- 

 alities, it may be more profitable to point 

 out that daily life consists in the applica- 

 tion of such psychological knowledge as is 

 at hand. How could Bismarck and Glad- 

 stone direct contemporary history except by 

 superior insight into the way men act and 

 the methods of influencing their actions? 

 "What have Wagner and Browning done 

 except excite interest and emotion ? The 

 conduct of every profession and of every 

 business is chiefly based on the adjustment 

 of thoughts, feelings and actions. Systems 

 of government and education are simply 

 methods for controlling and directing the 

 human mind. Now, of course, all this is 

 done by the rule of thumb entirely unin- 

 fluenced by psj'chology as a science. The 

 savage who kills a bird with a stone is not 

 thereby shown to be a zoologist and a physi- 

 cist. Still he does have a kind of knowl- 

 edge of the habits of animals and of the 

 laws of projectiles, whence have devel- 

 oped the sciences which, in the course of 

 time, have turned back to daily life those 

 applications of science in which modern 

 civilization consists. Whether the history 

 of the material sciences will be repeated in 

 the case of the mental and social sciences 

 it is not possible to say or to gainsay. There 

 are at present indications of the application 

 of psychology in the treatment of diseases, 

 in education and in other directions. Evo- 

 lution, careless of the individual, has pro- 

 ceeded with boundless waste ; certainly we 

 are now interfering with its course for our 

 benefit. It may be that some day the ap- 

 plications of material science will be subor- 

 dinate to those of psychology. 



These things lie on the knees of the 

 gods. What the future will bring we do 

 not know, but the past is ours. When we 

 regard the fifty years of this Association or 

 the century now ending we cannot fail to 



see that it has been an era of science. 

 German music, English poetry, the modern 

 novel — these are great achievements, but 

 scarcely comparable to the forward move- 

 ment in science. The older sciences have 

 been reformed and new departments have 

 been established. But amid all this scien- 

 tific progress nothing has been more notable 

 — at least from my own partial point of 

 view — than the development of psychology 

 into a science rivaling in activity and fruit- 

 fulness the other great sciences. 



J. McKeen Cattell. 

 Columbia Univebsity. 



TEE SENFF ZOOLOGICAL EXPEDITION TO 

 THE NILE VALLEY. 



The chief object of the expedition was to 

 procure the life-history of Polypterus and its 

 bearings upon the problem of the relation of 

 the Crossopterygian fishes to the Amphibia. 

 In the last few years the former theory that 

 Amphibia sprang from Dipnoan fishes has 

 gradually given way to the present view 

 that Dipnoi are to be regarded as parallel to 

 Amphibia from a common Crossopterygian 

 origin. 



Several very successful expeditions have 

 been recently sent out to procure material 

 for the embryology of Dipnoans, notably 

 that of Eichard Semon from Jena and that 

 of Graham Kerr from the University of 

 Cambridge. The former secured the com- 

 plete life history of Cei-atodus, and the latter 

 brought back the embryology and complete 

 life history of Lepidosiren, a South American 

 form. In the meanwhile nothing has been 

 done upon the development of PohjiMrus 

 because of the exceptional difliculties which 

 stood in the way of procuring material. 

 The fish is abundant in the unhealthy equa- 

 torial zone of Africa, being recorded on the 

 West Coast rivers as well as in Central 

 Africa. It is also found in the File, but the 

 Upper Nile, where it probably occurs in 

 greatest abundance, has not been open to 



