64 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIX. No. 469 



sorption and adjustment. '' The attention moves throughout 

 the series of elements, grasping, relating, retaining, selecting, 

 and when the integration it effects swells and fills conscious- 

 ness — that is the fiat" (p. 355). That is to say, the decisive 

 point is reached, the rending strife is over, when the dis- 

 tracting character of the elements has been subdued, the 

 unsettled claims satisfied, and the "attention gets its hold 

 upoji its integrated content as a grand related situation." 



It is necessary to pin the attentive act down still closer. 

 What can attention do in the matter of initiation of motives ? 

 Is attention unmotived ? Is it independent of the internal 

 and external conditions of endowment and environment ? 

 Professor Baldwin replies in the negative: an analysis of the 

 two general classes of "apparent initiation of motive inten- 

 sity" — cases of involuntary attention and cases of delibera- 

 tion — renders an affirmative answer untenable. Strength- 

 ened intensity in the former cases is easily shown to be 

 involuntary; in the latter, "as soon as any such preference 

 comes in — -any physical, mental, or emotional motive for 

 wishing to intensify this particular alternative — then my 

 choice is ah-eady made and I am fooling myself in thinking 

 that I am reaching an unbiased decision." 



Consequent upon these preliminaries comes the author's 

 formal statement of the problem of freedom, in which he 

 unfolds with great clearness of thought and transparency of 

 expression the following four alternatives: (1) indeterminism, 

 (2) external determinism, (3) immanent determinism, (4) 

 freedom as self-expression. The contingent or indeterminis- 

 tic view, with its theory of unconditioned choice, meets with 

 a very summary but warranted rejection. It is not only 

 crudely unpsychological, but defeats the very end in whose 

 interest it is projected; moral responsibility has the very 

 ground cut from under its feet on any such theory; the con- 

 ception of an agent whose voluntary expression involves 

 moral judgment because he is agent, is emptied of all mean- 

 ing. Professor Baldwin gives us here nothing new — nor 

 was it necessary. This controversy has ah-eady been "thrashed 

 out to the very last fragments of chaff." ' 



The external determinists are all those who explain voli- 

 tion in terms of natural causality, and thus consider the 

 problem of volition a problem in physical dynamics. "Mo- 

 tives are forces in reference to one another, effects in refer- 

 ence to the brain, in which they have their causal support; 

 volition is the consciousness of the outcome of a conflict of 

 forces" (p. 370). The objection to this theory is that it 

 floats in the air. To give it weight, an assumption is neces- 

 sary, which neither science nor philosophy can substantiate. 

 The theory assumes the possibility of a continuous movement 

 under natural causality across the physical into the mental 

 world. Whatever may be believed as to a "uniform psycho- 

 physical connection," there is no warrant for assuming that 

 consciousness is an epi-phenomenon. So, too, there is no 

 legitimate ground for believing motives to be mere natural 

 phenomena. Baldwin is as positive as Green, though from 

 a very different standpoint, that a motive is vastly more than 

 a natural phenomenon. As to moral action, therefore, that 

 view of it is false which supposes "that the motives which 

 determine it, liaving natural antecedents, are themselves but 

 links in the chain of natural phenomena." " 



The analysis of motive exhibits three important results: 

 1. Choice is never motiveness. 2. The end chosen is always 

 a synthesis of all present motives, and is adequately ex- 

 pressed by no one of them. 8. This synthesis is an activity 



' Jonathan Edwards, Day, etc. 



' Green's " Prolegomena to Ethics," p. 93. 



sui generis : it finds no analogy in the composition of physi- 

 cal forces. With these results clearly in view, he finds that 

 "freedom, therefore, is a fact, if by it we mean the expres- 

 sion of one's self as conditioned by past choices and present 

 environment.'' " Free choice is a synthesis, the outcome of 

 which is, in every case, conditioned upon its elements, but 

 in no case caused by them " ^ (p. 373). 



To read Baldwin's chapters on the will (for these were 

 well worth the space of a separate review) is to feel that a 

 mind of admirable scientific temper has been at work through- 

 out. Approaching the phenomena of mind from the natu- 

 ralist's point of view, he has guarded against the tendency, 

 all too common in these days, of trying to drive the princi- 

 ple of physical causality through a multitude of facts, natu- 

 rally and philosophically recalcitrant to such treatment. 

 The great lesson of his two volumes is, that in psychology 

 the application of scientific methods and canons to mental 

 phenomena affords no results which a cautious metaphysic 

 may interpret as casting discredit on spiritualism in philoso- 

 phy. Roger B. Johnson. 



Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. 



SIE GEOEGE BIDDELL AIRY. 



The cable has just flashed across the ocean the announce- 

 ment of the death of Sir George Biddell Airy, the eminent 

 astronomer of England. He was born on the 37th day of 

 June, 180], at Alnwick, in Northumberland, and had, there- 

 fore, just passed the half-mile post that would bring him to 

 his ninety-first birthday. 



Sir George Airy's life and work will always be looked 

 upon as one of the most prominent pillars in the astronomi- 

 cal edifice erected in the nineteenth century. He had al- 

 most lived to see what had been done in that hundred of 

 years. He had stood upon the pile of debris thrown up from 

 the foundation, and looked down upon the formation of a 

 structure, little dreaming that he would live to see the fin- 

 ishing touches put upon an edifice to which he had added so 

 much material. 



Airy was educated first at two private academies, Hereford 

 and Colchester. From the latter, at the age of eighteen, he 

 entered Trinity College, Cambridge. Three years after- 

 wards he was elected to a scholarship. In that college he 

 developed his remarkable mathematical ability, graduating 

 as Senior Wrangler. His degree of M.A. was taken in 1826, 

 and, with it, he was elected as Luscasian professor at Cam- 

 bridge. Illustrious philosophers like Barrow and Newton 

 had preceded him as occupants of that historic chair. Just 

 previous to his election to that chair he published his math- 

 ematical tracts on the "Lunar and Planetary Theories," 

 "The Figure of the Earth," etc., and "The Undulatory 

 Theory of Optics." 



Professor Airy, having been installed in the position just 

 mentioned, followed his appointment with a series of popu- 

 lar lectures upon experimental philosophy, which were de- 

 livered with remarkable effect, and which greatly enhanced 

 his scientific reputation. The university, recognizing in him 

 one whose investigations were of a high order, elected him 

 two years afterward to the Plumian professorship. This 

 election gave him chai'ge of the Cambridge astronomical ob- 

 servatory', and now is inaugurated an epoch in his life that 

 is to elevate him to one of the highest positions held by Eng- 

 lish scientific men 



Having been placed in the position above cited. Professor 



= cf. James, Vcl. II., pp. 571-2. 



