642 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 96. 



A short account of some of the papers 

 follows. At the general sessions — 



Prof. C. Stumpf (Berlin), in his presi- 

 dential address, first reviewed briefly the 

 two previous congresses, calling attention 

 to the fact that this one was a congress for 

 psychology, while the first one at Paris was a 

 congress for physiological psychology, and the 

 second one at London was a congress for 

 experimental psychology. He then discussed 

 the different theories of the relation of body 

 and mind, and concluded with a short ac- 

 count of the advance in psychology since 

 the time of Descartes and Spinoza, and a 

 brief reference to some of the present prob- 

 lems. 



Prof. Eichet (Paris) treated ' Pain ' from 

 the biological standpoint. He showed that 

 in general pain is caused by strong stimuli 

 and by every cause which greatly modifies 

 the state of the nerves. He finds in it, 

 with its fundamental character of persist- 

 ence in memory, one of the seasonable pro- 

 visions that guards the individual from in- 

 jury and from the shortening of life, and 

 he considers it a powerful motive, particu- 

 larly in man, pushing him unceasingly to- 

 ward perfection. 



Prof von Liszt (Halle a. S.) considered 

 the question of ' Criminal responsibility.' 

 He thought that the questions of the free- 

 dom' of the will and of mental capabilities 

 would not settle responsibility, but rather 

 the psychological considerations of the feel- 

 ings and of the will. 



Prof. P. Flechsig (Leipzig), in his paper 

 ' On the association centers in the human 

 brain,' told of his work (first announced 

 two years ago) , on the brains of the embryo 

 and of the young, by which he found the 

 gradual development, or ripening, as he 

 called it, of the different portions of the 

 cerebrum ; first, the parts connected with 

 movements and the senses, and then the 

 connecting parts, the association fibres. A 

 lantern demonstration with brain sections, 



showing the different stages of development,, 

 followed. The paper led to a long and 

 heated discussion between the physiologists 

 and pathologists and the psychologists in 

 which, beside the reader of the paper, Lipps, 

 Ebbinghaus, Stumpf, Forel and Dechterew 

 took part. 



Prof G. Sergi (Rome) discussed the 

 question ' Where is the seat of the emo- 

 tions?' After reviewing the different theo- 

 ries of the emotions and the evidence in 

 support of them, he turned to the question 

 and brought forth evidence to show that the 

 emotional center is not in the brain (cere- 

 bellum or cerebrum), but in the medulla^ 

 oblongata, and he considered the seat of the 

 emotions to be peripheral, and due ta 

 changes in the blood supply, to breathing 

 and to nutritional changes. 



Prof. W. Preyer (Wiesbaden) made an 

 appeal in his paper, ' The Psychology of the 

 child,' for the closer and more extended 

 study of the psychic life of the child, which 

 represents in itself the whole mental devel- 

 opment of mankind. 



Prof. F. Brentano (Vienna), in his dis- 

 course, treated of the theory of sensation,, 

 dealing particularly with the concept of in- 

 tensity. 



Prof. Ebbinghaus (Breslau) next told of 

 some of the practical uses of experimental 

 psychology. His paper, 'On a new method 

 for testing mental ability and its applica- 

 tion to school children,' was an account of 

 some experiments he had made on school 

 children, testing their ability to memorize^ 

 their accuracy, etc., under the varying 

 school conditions, to discover the most 

 favorable conditions for school work. 



Prof. Pierre Janet (Paris) spoke of the 

 influence of the hypnotizer over his subject,, 

 of the feelings sometimes aroused in the 

 latter toward the former— love, hate, ter- 

 ror, veneration, jealousy — which feelings 

 sometimes exist even when the subject is 

 not in a somnambulic state. He consid- 



