1895. ] Psychology. 1127 
Possibly this dense mass may serve to check the spreading of sperm 
in a forward direction and make more certain its passage backward to- 
wards the region where it can reach the receptacles of the other worm. 
The balance of evidence seem to be that the spermatophores of the 
brandling, and by inference those of other earthworms too, are of no 
use after the process of conjugation is finished, that they do not serve 
to convey sperm and hence are not spermatophores at all in any proper 
sense of the word.—E. A. ANDREWs. 
PSYCHOLOGY. 
Criminology.—In a series of articles on Les Régles de la Méthode 
Sociologique, recently contributed to the Revue Philosophique (May, 
June, July and Aug., 1894), Prof. Emile Durkheim, of Bordeaux, has 
taken occasion to advance a somewhat novel theory of crime and its 
relation to the normal social organism. This he restates and reaffirms 
in the May number, 1895, in reply to a rather intemperate attack 
made by M. G. Tarde in February. The whole controversy is of inter- 
est as showing how easily familiar facts assume a new and even para- 
doxical guise when put in ambiguous language. 
Prof. Durkheim finds his point of departure in the impossibility of 
getting from the subjective or the teleological points of view any satis- 
factory definition of the concepts normal and pathological. The morbid 
is not necessarily painful e. g., hysterical anæsthesia and, vice-versa, the 
painful is sometimes normal, e. g., menstruation, parturition. The nor- 
- mal cannot be defined as that which is adapted to its environment, for 
it is not proved that every state of the organism must be adapted to 
some external state, and, in any case, we lack a criterion to judge be- 
tween greater and less degrees of adaptation. Noris the normal that 
which is fitted to survive, since, e. g., infancy and old age are normal, 
and, on the other hand, many morbid states do not appreciably shorten 
life. There remains, then, only one suitable meaning which we can 
give these words. The normal is the general, the usual, the average. 
The abnormal, morbid or pathological is the exceptional and unusual. 
It follows then that the conception of a healthy organism is practically 
identical with that of the organism as such. Health will also be 
1 This department is edited by Dr. Wm. Romaine Newbold, University of Penn- 
sylvania. 
