July 26, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



129 



plant ; according to Daudres it regulates 

 the functions of the blood ; according to 

 Mussart it regulates some functions of the 

 human eye as well as the life of the most 

 deadly infectious poisons, like the typhus 

 bacilli. 



Since then literature on the same subject 

 has appeared which might fill a new and 

 most interesting volume, in "which the most 

 startling fact up to the present would be the 

 fact realized here by that splendid discovery 

 of Professor Loeb, that the act of fertiliza- 

 tion in lower organisms, as sea urchins, 

 may be substituted by a given increase in 

 the osmotic pressure of the surrounding 

 medium. 



And I may well quote in conclusion his 

 summary that : " At no time sin/Be the period 

 immediately following the discovery of the 

 law of conservation of energy has the out- 

 look for the progress of physiology appeared 

 brighter than at present, this largely being 

 due to the application of physical chemistry 

 to the problems of life. " 



J. H, Van't Hoff. 



PSYCHOLOGY AND THE 3IEDICAL SCHOOL. 

 It requires only a minimum amount of 

 consideration for a person thoughtful of 

 the matter to recognize that in the most es- 

 sential meaning of the proposition, psj''- 

 chology is the most fundamental of all the 

 sciences : psychology discusses the mental 

 processes whereby all perceptible nature is 

 perceived. As long as men continually and 

 of necessity study each other, subject and 

 object alike in modes of consciousness, that 

 body of related facts and principles con- 

 cerning mind will remain basal, and, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, universal. Chem- 

 istry, for example, treating of the composi- 

 tion of matter, arrives at its analyses only 

 through mental processes which it is the 

 business of psychology to explain and to 

 facilitate. Astronomy tells us of the planets 

 and the stars, but the astronomer who is 



consciously or unconsciously nothing of a 

 psychologist may readily deceive not alone 

 himself, but the scientific public, as has 

 happened more than once. To^ the psy- 

 chologist no longer ' seeing is believing,' as 

 the ancient adage runs, for the nature of 

 man unfolds itself apace and shows fold 

 within fold undreamed. 



Yet on other grounds than these, which 

 are theoretical and philosophic, lies the in- 

 terest of the science of psychology to all 

 who have the opportunity to intelligently 

 learn its principles — men and women value 

 it and usually become more or less ab- 

 sorbed in it because it describes themselves, 

 and, ever more successfully, attempts to 

 explain what is and must ever be the most 

 regarded of subjects to every agent, namely 

 himself, as individual and as social unit. 

 The biologic egotism implanted deep in 

 every soul sees to it inevitably that all 

 one's life, whatever the social status or the 

 life-pursuit, that soul shall study continu- 

 ally itself, with however apparent indi- 

 rectness or however elaborate the social 

 system of real or hypocritical altruism may 

 be. Indeed, altruism has nothing to do 

 with the deeper aspects of the interest in 

 question, this interest being beneath all al- 

 truism, in the organic mechanism. The 

 degenerate criminal and the flower of eth- 

 ical manhood play alike on the same fragile 

 instrument, one miserably and the other 

 with far better harmony ; this instrument 

 is consciousness and the changes that it 

 manifests are constant in one only thing — 

 it is I, I, I, the type, the sum. It is chiefly 

 on this account that psychology is an in- 

 teresting science. 



But besides being the basal and an emi- 

 nently interesting science, psychology is a 

 sound science, ' new ' but soundly scientific, 

 a thoroughly self-reliant and deep- set de- 

 partment of systematized human knowl- 

 edge. In substance older than Thales, 

 known as methodical since Aristotle, yet 



