December 11, 1!)03.] 



SCIENCE. 



751 



upon the matter. * He brings wide knowledge, 

 unbiased judgment and unusual critical acu- 

 men to his task, and the result is a work of 

 marked distinction. The various contentions 

 of automatism, parallelism and interactionism 

 are successively examined, and after the ex- 

 purgation of all fallacies, the residuum of 

 uncontroverted doctrine is elaborated into the 

 theory of psychophysical idealism — a theory 

 closely akin to the panpsychism of Fechner, 

 Clifford and others. 



Psychophysical idealism inverts the ma- 

 terialistic view, in accordance with which the 

 brain is the reality and consciousness a mere 

 unsubstantial phenomenon, and maintains that 

 the mind is the reality — the thing-in-itself — 

 of which the brain is the phenomenal mani- 

 festation. This sounds at first like a very 

 naive form of subjective idealism, offensive to 

 all persons of Dr. Johnson's persuasion and to 

 many others less strenuous. And idealism it 

 is, but by no means naive in the arguments 

 uppn which it is based, including, as these do, 

 scholarly considerations of the nature of 

 causation and the law of the conservation of 

 energy, discussions of the pertinent facts in 

 physiological psychology, etc. An adequate 

 critical analysis of Professor Strong's theory 

 is evidently out of the question at this time. 

 It should not be forgotten, however, that 

 theories of this type, while avoiding the crass 

 incongruities of the common forms of ma- 

 terialism, the inconsistencies of interactionism 

 and the inconclusiveness of parallelism, are 

 nevertheless incessantly haunted b,v the ghost 

 of solipsism. If the solipsistic position be ac- 

 cepted, it then requires a constant miracle, 

 of the kind resorted to by occasionalism, to 

 account for the orderliness of the physical 

 cosmos upon which we are all so unanimously 

 agreed. Whether Professor Strong has wholly 

 avoided the treacherous solipsistic pitfalls, the 

 reader must decide for himself. 



James Rowland Axgell. 



*■ Why the Mind has a Body,' hy C. A. Strong, 

 The Maomillan Company, Xew York, 1003, pp. 

 X + 355. 



SCIE\TII'IC JOiIi\.iLS A\D ARTICLES. 



The Journal of Comparative Neurology for 

 October contains five papers, as follows: (1) 

 ' The Neurofibrillar Structures in the Ganglia 

 of the Leech and Crayfish, with Especial Refer- 

 ence to the Neurone Theory,' by C. W. Pren- 

 tiss. Establishes fibrillar continuity between 

 the nerve elements, confirming in this respect 

 the conclusions of Bethe and Apathy. (2) 

 ' On the Increase in the Number of Medul- 

 lated Nerve Fibers in the Ventral Roots of the 

 Spinal Nerves of the Growing White Rat,' 

 by Shinkishi Hatai. The total number of 

 mcdullated fibers in the ventral roots of the 

 adult is 2.7 times that of the rat ten days old, 

 and at all ages the total number of mcdul- 

 lated ventral root fibers decreases from the 

 spinal cord toward the periphery. (.3) ' On 

 the Medullated Nerve Fibers crossing the Site 

 of Lesions in the Brain of the White Rat,' 

 by S. Walter Ranson. Operations on very 

 .young rats heal with no appreciable scar and 

 the site of the lesions is crossed by medullated 

 fibers. These are presumably entirely new 

 axones, for the power of regeneration seems to 

 be lost in the adult. (4) ' On the Density of 

 the Cutaneous Innervation in Man,' by Charles 

 E. Ingbert. About 79 per cent, of the medul- 

 lated dorsal root fibers innervate the skin and 

 21 per cent, are afferent fibers from muscles 

 and deep tissues. One cutaneous spinal nerve 

 fiber innervates, taking the average of the 

 entire body, 2.05 sq. mm. of the skin. (5) 

 ' On a Law determining the Number of 

 Medullated Nerve Fibers innervating the 

 Thigh, Shank and Foot of the Frog — Rana 

 virescens,' by Henry H. Donaldson. The 

 nerve fibers entering the leg being considered 

 as so many separate lines of connection with 

 the several segments, are found to be distrib- 

 uted in accordance with the law that the 

 efferent fibers are present in proportion to the 

 weight of the muscle, and the afferent in pro- 

 portion to the area of skin. 



HOCIETIES AXD ACADEMIES. 



THK roXVOC'ATIOX WEEK AIEETI.\(iS OF SCIENTIFIC 



SOCIETIES. 



The American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, the American Society 



