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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 279. 



the perceptual consciousuess becomes relatively 

 more prominent, while " sensation is more deli- 

 cately differentiated, more definitely restricted, 

 less intense, and less strongly toned in the way 

 of pleasure or pain." At the same time — and 

 this is very important for the author's functional 

 standpoint — differentiation means a less im- 

 mediate reaction and a more clever planning 

 for remote ends. Beyond these general state- 

 ments and a hint at the corresponding develop- 

 ment of organs, the Manual is decidedly dis- 

 appointing in its treatment of differentiation ; 

 a concept which Spencer handled so boldly, 

 when there was a paucity of knowledge on 

 the subject, and which James and Ward have 

 since made promising, but have not worked 

 out. 



We pass rather suddenly from these general 

 synthetic questions to a detailed study of the 

 various senses. A chapter is given to vision, 

 one to audition, one to ' Other Sensations,' one 

 to the ' Weber-Fechner Law ' — a summary of 

 Meinong — and a final one to the ' Feeling- 

 tone of Sensation.' We cannot stop to point 

 out many things that are admirable both in 

 selection and in arrangement, or to indicate 

 possible lines of criticism. There is, on the 

 whole, a general suggestion of perfunctoriness 

 in this part of the work. The material used 

 shows the traces of second handling ; it is, how- 

 ever, for the most part from reliable sources 

 (chiefly Ebbinghaus and Foster), and is brought 

 down to date. We find occasional lapses in the 

 strict use of sensation ; for example, we read of 

 the 'sensation of softness and smoothness,' 

 ' position-sensations and movement- sensations ' 

 and, finally, sharpness and bluntness, hardness 

 and softness, wetness and dryness are spoken of 

 as ' peculiar qualities of sensation.' Surely a 

 gross confusion of sensation and perception, 

 which is defined as ' the cognitive function of 

 sensation. ' Another difficulty arises in connec- 

 tion with the feeling-tone of sensation. It was 

 remarked earlier that feeling-tone, including 

 pleasure and pain, is one of the feeling atti- 

 tudes ; but here we find a whole chapter under 

 sensation devoted to feeling-tone. Now, if 

 feeling-tone is an ultimate mode of being con- 

 scious, how can it be a feeling-tone of sensation, 

 i. e., a, variable dependent upon sensation which 



is not an ultimate mode of consciousness ?* 

 If, in other words, feeling-tone is a feeling-at- 

 titude and demands relation to an object, how 

 can it be the feeling-tone of sensation which ab- 

 stracts from the object? Still, we are told that 

 feeling-tone does exist on the level of ' mere 

 sensation.' The confusion, in both cases, evi- 

 dently arises from the failure to keep distinct 

 the architecture of mind and the ofllces it ful- 

 fils as interagent between the organism and 

 the objects which it knows. It is to be re- 

 marked that, in the sensation chapters, the ge- 

 netic standpoint is almost entirely forsaken. 

 This is somewhat surprising, since sensation 

 was the datum from which the phylogeny of 

 mind was started. It is, again, the sensation 

 abstracted from the Introspected consciousness 

 at odds with its alter ego, the sensation of 

 genesis. In view, then, of the confusion which 

 necessarily pervades this section and of the ob- 

 vious shift of standpoint, one is tempted to re- 

 mark that the work would have gained rather 

 than lost by the omission of most of the chap- 

 ters on Sensation. 



The third and fourth books, on Perception 

 and Ideation, respectively, are much more sat- 

 isfactory than the Sensation chapters. An ad- 

 mirable introductory chapter to the third book 

 gives the characteristics of the perceptual con- 

 sciousness. Perception is the cognitive func- 

 tion of sensation, but it has also a conative as- 

 pect and a feeling-tone ; it is not only reference 

 to an object, but it is an active striving toward, 

 and striving implies feeling. The Perception 

 chapters breathe the spirit of that wholesome 

 conservatism which has recently been infused 

 into genetic psychology. It is clear that the 

 author has a program worked out, and worked 

 out on the basis of facts rather than from log- 

 ical formulae. Two things are insisted upon : 

 first, the categories of the developed conscious- 

 ness must not be thrust upon the primitive 

 mind, and, secondly, the activity of the organ- 

 ism must be reckoned with in mental devel- 

 opment ; the individual is not to be regarded 

 as an inert mass that draws in the world by a 

 kind of mental attraction : he learns by doing 



* We may even go deeper than this and ask how 

 the genetic series can be started, at all, with some- 

 thing which is not an ultimate mode. 



