THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. x1x.—/JANUARY, 1885.—No. 1 
COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 
BY S. V. CLEVENGER, M.D. 
E ei science of psychiatry will advance in proportion to the 
development of psychology based upon comparative micro- 
scopic anatomy anda physiology into which molecular physics 
shall enter more in the future. The entire fabric will be a triumph 
of monism, for if we set out on any other assumption, such as 
the dualistic affords, than that mind is a product of chemical 
energy and other natural forces, there is an end to inquiry. 
The baleful influence of teleology hangs over the average 
physiologist as over the superstitious laity and debars him from 
seeing things as they really are. The inability to conceive of 
consciousness as a product of the motions of matter is on a level 
with the inscrutability of the nature of ultimate force and atoms. 
In dealing with the workings of the mental mechanism it is not 
necessary to define or attempt to explain consciousness any more 
than the practical electrician or chemist or optician finds it neces- 
sary to define or speculate upon the ultimate nature of the vibra- 
tory terms in which they deal. As the physicist increases his know- 
ledge of how matter and motion act and react upon each other, 
he is willing the metaphysicians should quarrel over the unknow- 
able, the lunar politics. With the dawn of comparative psychol- 
ogy the truth began to appear, theories became subordinated to 
facts and not facts to theories. 
Not only are the laws which bind the social organism similar 
to and derived from those which govern the units of which it is 
composed, but the protoplasmic units are governed by the same 
processes down to chemical affinities. 
VOL. X1X.—No. I. I 
