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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
endowments of man are purely and simply physiological phenomena. In- 
deed, he has made his book one full of interest to even an ordinary reader, 
for the number of instances he has recorded of mental peculiarity in every 
chapter of his volume is simply wonderful. He has given such a myriad of 
cases in point on every question raised in the work, that in some two or 
three instances we are compelled to pause ere we place implicit reliance on 
the testimony adduced. 
This treatise, which includes over seven hundred pages, is divided into 
two sections, the one including the facts of general philosophy, the other 
devoted to more special branches of the subject. The chapters in the 
first division, which are in some cases brim-full of reliable anecdotes, are on 
the general relations between mind and body ; on the nervous system and 
its functions ; on attention, sensation, perception, and instinct ; ideation and 
ideo-motor action ; the emotions, habit, and the will. In each of these 
several chapters, some of which are enlarged from his treatise on “ Human 
Philosophy,” Dr. Carpenter gives ample details which go to show the 
operation of the particular faculty with which he is dealing, and he proves 
that it is exclusively the result of certain operations of the mind. One 
wishes that he had space to give ‘the author’s arguments and his mode of 
drawing some of his conclusions, but it is impossible to quote. We must, 
then, suffice ourselves with the statement that in many cases the reasoning 
is almost syllogistic, while the abundance of instances brought forward, and 
Dr. Carpenter’s well-known excellent style of composition, unite to make 
the reading of the book a pleasure instead of a task. 
In the second part, that which is devoted to special physiology,’ the 
following subjects are dealt with : — Memory, coinmon sense ; imagination, 
unconscious cerebration ; reverie, abstraction, electro-biology ; sleep, dream- 
ing, and somnambulism ; mesmerism and spiritualism ; intoxication and 
delirium j insanity; influence of mental states on the organic functions; 
mind and will in nature ; and, lastly, an appendix containing an account of 
Dr. Ferrier’s experimental researches on the brain. Now, all these subjects 
.are treated in the same exhaustive and absorbing style as those we have 
referred to already. And of all we think the chapter which deals with the 
question of spiritualism and mesmerism at once the most interesting and 
important. Dr. Carpenter takes the middle course in these matters ; that 
is, he neither scoffs at both nor believes in either. He shows by the 
most ample cases that mesmerism is an unquestionable influence which one 
mind is able to exert over another, and he argues that it is capable of 
being beneficially exerted in certain cases, as we know ourselves that it 
Jias been ; while he as distinctly opposes the so-called spiritualism as one 
of the most glaring humbugs in existence. He gives his own opinion of 
various seances, and enumerates abundant examples both from his own 
experience and that of others, to show the abominable tendency of so-called 
spirituality. He mentions Mr. Wallace as a remarkable instance of a 
clever man being so completely led away in his belief on this subject. 
And, indeed, one cannot but regret that so able and genial a man as Mr. 
Wallace undoubtedly is should be brought among the crowd of simple 
people who are unquestionably deceived by those charlatans the so-called 
spiritualists. 
