RECORDS. 327 



Professor Lough presented a report of experiments made in 

 the psychological laboratory of the school of pedagogy. It was 

 found that the time required to write series of letter-equivalents 

 w^hen the " key " of equivalents was not memorized, but was con- 

 sulted as frequently as necessary, diminished as the associations 

 between the letter equivalents became more habitual. The 

 curves representing the results of these experiments exhibit all 

 the characteristics of the typical habit curve. Repetition of the 

 experiment using new ** keys " shows little or no interference due 

 to earlier associations, while with each succeeding "key" the 

 physiological limit was reached after a constantly diminishing 

 number of trials. 



The paper by Dr. Montague aimed to show (i) that Hume 

 (in Part IV, Section II, of the " Treatise ") had quite unwittingly 

 furnished what from his own point of view should have been 

 regarded as a logical deduction and justification — rather than 

 the mere psychogenetic description, which it purported to be, — 

 of the realistic belief in the independent and uninterrupted exist- 

 ence of sensible objects ; and (2) that the naive realism or posi- 

 tivism thus accidentally promulgated was from both the scien- 

 tific and the popular standpoint, a far sounder and more inviting 

 doctrine than the empirical idealism or sensationalism with which 

 Hume's name is usually associated. 



Mr. Hughes said that Rickert's description of the content of 

 history as a reality is amended to read past reality^ the past of 

 evidence. From this definition the individual, objective, moving 

 and continuous character of historic content follows ; and further, 

 the conception of action as descriptive of both historic content 

 and historic synthesis. An historical synthesis is a past action 

 that itself has created a certain synthesis of evidence, which the 

 historian discovers. In such synthetic actions, " simple" actions 

 retain their individuality as means, stimuli or hindrances to the 

 main action, /. e., in a functional relation. 



At the close of the afternoon session the members were invited 

 to attend a lecture given in Columbia University by Professor 

 John Dewey on "The Psychologist's Account of Knowledge." 



James E. Lough, 



Secretary. 



