no 
Analyses of Books, 
[February, 
Conscious Matter , or the Physical and the Psychical universally 
in Causal Connection. By W. Stewart Duncan. London: 
D. Bogue. 
We have here a work which may, to a certain extent, be re- 
garded as a continuation of two articles contributed by the author 
tothe “Journal of Science ” (1878, pp. 186 and 385). 
Mr. Duncan undertakes to “ remove certain barriers to the 
progress of Modern Psychology; to repel certain objections and 
to suggest a slight re-arrangement of its tenets, to enable it to 
harmonise with physical science.” He informs us that the 
existence of a substantive entity, inhabiting the body of a living 
man, but distinCt altogether from the matter of which such body 
is composed, — in other words, of a soul, — in which alone mental 
experience can arise, and from which alone volition proceeds, 
though widely held by metaphysicians, by the clergy, and the 
unscientific laity, “ is almost, if not quite, universally rejected 
by experts in that department of biology which compares and 
describes the structures and functions of nervous organisation in 
man and the lower animals.” In favour of this view he cites 
the published utterances of Mr. Douglas Spalding, of Professor 
Allman, of Drs. Maudsley and Bastian, of Prof. Bain, and even 
of Prof. St. George Mivart. Hence, according to the teachings 
of modern psychology, if correCtly represented by these eminent 
men, “ the immaterial soul, considered as a substance numeri- 
cally and essentially distinCl from that of which a material 
organism is composed, namely matter, is a non-entity, a mere 
myth.” 
Prof. Allman, however, points out a “ weak point ” in the 
generalisation which refers consciousness as well as life to a 
common material source, namely, that there is no analogy be- 
tween mental and physical phenomena. “ Even irritability,” 
the Professor adds, “to which, on a superficial view, consciousness 
may seem related, is as absolutely distinCt as it is from any of 
the ordinary phenomena of matter.” 
A second objection is drawn from the automatic or unconscious 
aCfcs of men and animals, from which it has been inferred that 
“the physical processes in nerve-aCtion were complete in them- 
selves, without the necessary intervention of any mental aCtion 
or condition.” The third difficulty is to account for the persist- 
ence of the individual self, while the particles of matter of which 
it was said to be composed were believed to be continually 
passing out of the body and being replaced by new particles. 
To these objections, then, Mr. Duncan addresses himself. 
He points out that the term “ physical ” has been used in three 
senses, implying “ the play of forces, or the equilibrium of forces 
as such,” considered apart from matter ; secondly, it has been 
applied to matter by itself, apart from either force or feeling ; 
