1893.] Recent Literature. 33 
where the principle of correlation must play so important a part. The 
electric organ in the tail of the skate is a formidable case, which our 
present knowledge is not able satisfactorily to dispose of. In the last 
chapter Mr. Wallace’s objections to Darwin’s theory of Sexual Selec- 
tion are replied to. The relations of the Darwinian doctrine to adap- 
tation and beauty in organic nature are discussed in brief, and finally 
its relations to the fundamentals of religion —F. 8. Ler. » 
The Diseases of Personality, by Tu. Rısor.’—The new Psy- 
chology is under a great debt to Ribot for his studies of nervous dis- 
eases. In this last volume he bases personality as the highest form of 
psychic individuality upon the organic sense. All the bodily organs 
are constantly sending into the central nervous system impulses that 
give rise to sensations. These organic sensations are relatively more 
prominent in the lower animals, because there they are not, as they are 
higher in the scale, covered up by desires, passions, perceptions and 
ideas. Everywhere, however, they form the physical basis of person- 
ality. The author analyzes the organic, emotional and intellectual 
conditions and disorders of personality. The discussions include the 
meaning of “individual” in various forms of animal life; the person- 
ality of twins and double monsters; the rôle of memory ; transforma- 
tions brought about by hallucinations and by ideas; the phenomena 
of the dissolution of personality in cases of progressive dementia. A 
convenient, if not entirely comprehensive, classification of the diseases 
mentioned is that its three categories, viz., alienation (where the 
changed person is either entirely ignorant of his former self or regards 
it objectively), alternation (ordinary cases of double consciousness), 
and substitution (where the individual takes on a new character, yet is 
conscious of his former one, as where he now believes himself a king, 
although he remembers that he was formerly a poor man). 
It is to be hoped that the same publishers will issue in the same neat 
form the author’s works on the diseases of memory and of the will. 
F. 5. Lee. 
SAuthorized translation, Chicago. The Open Court Publishing Co. pp. 157. 
