576 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 94. 



Flora should be that work. It is among the 

 young, among those beginning to take an in- 

 terest in the plant creatures of their vicinage, 

 that this book will yield the very best results. 

 The figures add so much to the attractiveness 

 of the descriptions that plant-analysis, even as 

 it used to be conducted, could hardly be so dry 

 and profitless as we have been accustomed to 

 believe it. Such books make botanists every- 

 where respect the botanical advancement of 

 America. Conway MacMillan. 



XJnivebsity of Minnesota. 



i' Annee psychologique. 2me Annie, 1895. Pub- 



liee par MM. H. Beaunis et A. Binet. Alcan, 



Paris. 1896. Pp. 1010. 



This Annee is two-thirds larger than it was 

 a year ago. In the value of its original con- 

 tributions and the thoroughness and helpfulness 

 of its analyses it has at least not fallen below 

 its high standard. Its perusal leaves an im- 

 pression of immense and fruitful industry on the 

 part of M. Binet and his fellow-workers, who 

 have made it an indispensable aid to all inter- 

 ested in the field it covers. Its contents include 

 16 original articles (pp. 1-500); analyses of 

 about 240 books and articles of the year (pp. 

 501-912), for the most part brief and just, though 

 also some important ones of considerable length 

 and a bibliographical index of 1394 titles, which, 

 by special arrangement, is the same as that pub- 

 lished by The Psychological Review. 



The original contributions alone will be briefly 

 summarized. 



A. Articles by various contributors. 



(1) Th. Ribot : Abnormal and Morbid Char- 

 acters. (Pp. 1-17.) M. Eibot is one of several 

 French thinkers — Perez, Paulhan, Fouillee — 

 who have recently attempted classifications of 

 temperaments or characters. An analysis of 

 their systems appears later in this Annee, pp. 

 785-793. M. Ribot here calls particular atten- 

 tion to Seeland's hierarchical division into the 

 strong (gay and calm), the neutral and the weak 

 (melancholic, nervous and choleric), in which 

 the former are more perfect, the latter approach 

 more nearly to the abnormal. The truly ab- 

 normal he then divides into (1) successive con- 

 tradictory characters; (2) coexisting contradic- 

 tory characters ; (3) unstable or polymorphous 



' infantile ' characters. Each class is further 

 subdivided and described. 



(2) A. FoREL : Comparative Psychology. (Pp, 

 18-44.) A vigorous protest against "transfer- 

 ring the content of our superior consciousness 

 into the acts of insects and of animals in gen- 

 eral, with the partial and very reserved ex- 

 ception of the highest mammals." This ten- 

 dency ' ' arises from two confusions, first that of 

 instinct with plastic reasoning, and second that 

 of a series of acts observed in the animal with 

 the psychological subjectivity of the animal. "^ 

 Nervous centers can act in two different way& 

 to arrive at the same end : (a) automatically ; 

 (b) in the adaptive or plastic manner, which we 

 call intelligence or reason. For the latter is 

 demanded the inheritance of a much larger 

 number and complexity of neurons than for 

 the former. Man is highly plastic, though he 

 has also inherited automatisms more or less- 

 complete. The social instinct of insects, espec- 

 ially of ants, belongs to the category of com- 

 plete inherited automatisms, which do not need 

 to be learned ; yet these insects show also some 

 small degree of adaptive activity. In studying 

 thera ' ' we should content ourselves with exact 

 biological observations and note carefully the 

 facts of plastic and of automatic activity, en- 

 deavoring to understand and appreciate them 

 as thoroughly as possible." So-called compara- 

 tive psychology should be made rather a com- 

 parative biology. 



(3) Th. Flournoy : Note on times of reading' 

 and of omission. (Pp. 45-53.) It takes twenty- 

 five per cent, longer to omit the names of a 

 class of objects A and pronounce the non-A's- 

 than to pronounce the A's and omit the non-A's- 

 in lists of equal length, where both appear an 

 equal number of times. This is due to an ante- 

 cedent subexcitation of the images, visual and 

 articulatory, belonging to the concept A, and 

 the impossibility of such subexcitation for all 

 non-A's. There can be no actual concept, 

 aside from its verbal formula, of an indefinite- 

 class non-A. 



(4) B. Bourdon : Investigation into intellectual 

 phenomena. (Pp. 54-69.) A study of the com- 

 parative frequency of different kinds of associa- 

 tion. Most frequently aroused are verbal or 

 non-verbal images ; the latter by the more con- 



