940 



SGIENGE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 104. 



the exposition is condensed it will occupy 

 one hundred large pages. Psychology may 

 have been lacking in concrete facts until 

 recently, but now it seems in danger from 

 a plethora of facts. The nearly 2,000 people 

 who have sent in returns have described 

 6,456 fears. It seems that thunderstorms 

 are feared most frequently and next rep- 

 tiles ; then follow strangers, darkness, fire 

 and death. Boys report on the average 

 2.21 fears, while girls report 3.55. There 

 is an increase in the number of fears up to 

 the age of fifteen for boys and up to the age 

 of eighteen for girls, but this is probably 

 due to fuller descriptions from those who 

 are older. President Hall classifies the kinds 

 of fears, and under each heading gives a 

 number of examples followed by a discussion. 

 Some of the fears, such as those connected 

 with high places, with loss of orientation and 

 with being shut in, are psychologically of 

 much interest. President Hall adopts an 

 extreme genetic standpoint. He holds that 

 " the conscious ego is but a very inadequate 

 and partial manifestation of the soul, that 

 it is a feeble, flickering taper in a vast fac- 

 tory full of machinery and operatives, each 

 doing its work in unobserved silence." In- 

 stinct is much older than intelligence; it is 

 inherited not only from our anthropoid an- 

 cestors, but from remotest times, associated 

 with the persistency of cells or protoplasm 

 rather than with a developed nervous sys- 

 tem. The fear of high places, President 

 Hall thinks, is a vestigal trace, like the gill 

 slits under the skin of our necks, anteda- 

 ting limbs and inherited from our swimming 

 and floating ancestors. It would be difl&cult 

 to disprove President Hall's theory, but it 

 does not seem to follow from his facts. 

 Many prevalent fears, as of weather and 

 serpents, are not in accord with our urban 

 civilization, but I doubt if they will persist 

 a century hence, let alone through millions 

 of years. The three children of which the 

 present writer knows most have not shown 



the slightest fear of thunderstorms, and 

 had to be taught to fear snakes owing to the 

 presence of poisonous species. Fears of 

 death, of disease and of the end of the world 

 are among the common ones, and these are 

 not inherent in protoplasm. Children un- 

 doubtedly show instinctive fears, but I be- 

 lieve that most of their fears are learned 

 and not inherited. 



The forthcoming number of The Psycho- 

 logical Review will contain an experimental 

 study of the physiology and psychology of 

 the telegraphic language, by Prof. W. L. 

 Bryan and Mr. Noble Harter, of Indiana 

 University. Mr. Harter is himself an ex- 

 pert telegrapher, and has examined the 

 methods and results of several hundred 

 operatives, making special experiments on 

 a large number. The highest sending 

 record so far as known is forty-nine words 

 per minute, by the Morse code, which 

 would be about eight taps in each second. 

 With those unskilled the ability to send is 

 greater than the ability to receive, but with 

 experts the reverse is generally the case» 

 Twenty to twenty- four words of four letters 

 each may be taken as an ordinary rate. 

 Elaborate curves are given in the paper 

 showing improvement with practice week 

 by week. The sending curve rises more 

 rapidly and more uniformly than does 

 the receiving curve from the beginnings 

 of practice to the learner's maximum 

 ability. The receiving curve rises more 

 slowly and irregularly and shows a failure 

 to rise for several months in two places. 

 The curves may represent the rate of other 

 acquisitions and show interesting difierences 

 between motor and apperceptive proces- 

 ses. Each operator has an individual lan- 

 guage and none conforms exactly to the 

 type. In order to appreciate the extensive 

 results and many inferences drawn from 

 them the reader must refer to the paper 

 which is a contribution of value to the 



