OCTOBEE 30, 1896.] 



{SCIENCE. 



645 



J. Philippe (Paris) gave the general 

 results he had obtained in mental ima- 

 gery. He showed there were three ways 

 of studying the imagination: (1) con- 

 sidering the way in which our mental 

 images are formed; (2) taking the con- 

 tents of our imagination at different times, 

 and (3) studying the way in which our 

 mental images disappear or fade away. His 

 experiments were made with the last method 

 •chiefly, and he considered only visual im- 

 ages. The visual images of objects seen 

 or felt were noted immediately after, after 

 a lapse of 15 days, after 30 days and after 

 two months. It was found that details 

 tended to disappear and that the tj^pi- 

 cal form became more and more accentu- 

 ated, making thus a general image of the 

 object. 



Prof. G. G. Gizzi (Rome) discussed 

 ^ Feeling and its Laws.' The laws he de- 

 duced were as follows : (1) The sensation 

 and the feeling are directly proportional to 

 the sensibility of the individual and the in- 

 versely to the mental distraction. (2) 

 During the persistance of a stimulus the 

 intensity of the sensation decreases while 

 the intensity of the feeling increases, the 

 increase or decrease being directly propor- 

 tional to the culture and education of the 

 individual and inversely proportional to the 

 mental distraction. 



Dr. W. Jerusalem (Vienna) discussed 

 the origin of the number concept. He con- 

 sidered that our notion of number arose 

 through the existence of similar objects in 

 nature and from our function of judgment. 

 Our arithmetical judgments, therefore, are 

 general laws of physical occurrences and 

 have an unconditioned and indubitable 

 validity. 



Dr. S. S. Epstein (Berlin) described some 

 experiments on the influence of light stim- 

 ulation on the blood supply. All colors 

 were found to have a stimulating effect, 

 red having the most and green the least. 



SECTION III. 



Prof A. von Striimpell (Erlangen) gave 

 an account of some interesting diseases of 

 memory, with loss of mental images for 

 periods of time past, some cases of word 

 amnesia, etc. 



Prof. Pierre Janet (Paris) announced 

 some interesting results on ' the times for 

 simple reactions in their relation to dis- 

 eases of attention.' Different classes of in- 

 sane people were tested, and the curves ob- 

 tained showed the feebleness of attention 

 in the melancholic, the oscillations in the 

 neurasthenic and its rapid fatigue in the 

 hysterical cases. The reactions, if contin- 

 ued beyond fifteen or twenty minutes, in 

 some cases, particularly with paranoiacs 

 and hysterical patients, become automatic, 

 so that the reaction cannot always be 

 taken as a sure guide of the state of atten- 

 tion. 



Dr. 0. ISTacke (Leipzig) , in his paper on 

 ' Criminal Psychology,' defined the ma- 

 terials with which to work as follows : 

 (1) Those generally classed as criminals 

 (a heterogeneous mass). (2) Those men- 

 tally unsound, epileptic, imbecile, etc. 

 (3) The lowest strata of societj\ 



Dr. A. de Jong (The Hague) considered 

 '■ the psychology of false ideas of the in- 

 sane.' He thought they were only second- 

 ary symptoms and as logical developments. 

 Their character cannot determine the diag- 

 nosis of the case, he thought, but we must 

 look rather to their developments. 



Drs. G. C. Ferrari and Bernadini (San 

 Maurizio, Italy) described some experi- 

 ments to test the musical memory of idiots. 

 Simple melodies were used and the idiots 

 required to repeat immediately after, as 

 well as possible, what they had just heard. 

 60 (39 men and 21 women) out of 100 (60 

 men, 21 women) could repeat the chord 

 C.E.G.C., while 12 (7 men, 5 women) were 

 found to have (for idiots) good memory for 

 music. 



