1895.) Psychology. j 39ł 
believing that brutes can form an aesthetic judgment or attain to an 
aesthetic or moral ideal. 
It is not my intention to enter into any detailed criticism of Profes- 
sor Morgan’s book, yet there are some points which he will, I hope, 
make clearer in his forthcoming “ Psychology for Teachers.” I do 
not clearly see the laws by which the transition from the concrete to 
the general relation is effected ; I would like to know why the word 
“ concept” is to be restricted to generalized vector states and denied 
of analogous static states; I would like to see the doctrine of “ auto- 
matic” centres and “control” centres brought more into harmony 
with the results of introspection; and I would like Professor Morgan 
to show why he identifies the selective, synthetic activity of nature, not 
only with the intrinsic properties of mental states, such as tendencies 
to development, to suggestion of ideas, to the production and preven- 
tion of muscular contraction, ete., which are its true analogues in the 
inner life, but also with that enigmatic activity of will, which seems 
at times to run counter to all these momenta and to determine thought 
and conduct in a fashion diametrically opposed to the provocation of © 
the immediate environment. Thatthis activity is without determinate 
laws I do not for a moment believe. It is probable that in it we see 
the present, conscious representative of our total individual and here- 
ditary experience in some way brought to bear upon the immediate 
present. But as I do not think that even descriptive psychology can 
afford to ignore it, so I would not hastily identify it with any other 
phenomenon of inner or outer experience. That tendency to identify 
the energy or activity of the objective world with the “will” of the 
subjective world which has been more or less noticeable in philosophy 
since the days of Schopenhauer, is but a more refined form of the 
animistic theories of our prehistoric ancestors and of their successor, the 
theistic interpretation of nature which is still current. That there may 
be truth in such theories I am not prepared to deny, but as they can- 
not be tested by appeal to experience, nor are essential to the construc- 
tion of a scientific conception of nature, they have at present no place 
in a reasoned scheme of knowledge. 
One other point calls for comment. In his chapter on the physio- 
logical conditions of consciousness, Professor Morgan has, I think, 
failed to make use of the suggestive material brought to light by 
recent researches into what Pierre Janet calls “la désagrégation psy- 
chologique.” It would, perhaps, be too much to say that the study of 
mental disorganization has established the possibility of mental states 
existing in connection with a given brain without forming part of the 
