684 
Analyses oj Books. 
[November, 
The President, Mr. R. Steel, read an important memoir on 
“ Mind in Man and in the Lower Animals,” and came to the 
only legitimate conclusion to be drawn from the farts, viz., 
that “ the processes which go to constitute man’s mental 
activities are found as truly in their measure in the brute,” and 
again “ Man’s claim to be something entirely different in his 
powers from the lower animals must be peremptorily dismissed.” 
Speaking of the senses, he remarks that the higher forms 
of the brute creation possess as many as man himself.” Do 
not some inserts possibly — nay, probably — possess more ? 
What, for instance, is the meaning of the two, and even three, 
kinds of eyes in certain inserts ? 
“ Parrots,” Mr. Steele writes, “ can repeat many sentences, 
and obviously connert them with certain subjerts. I do not, of 
course, say that the parrot understands what it says in the same 
manner that the human being understands the same words ? 
Here one word is wanting; it should have been said “ the adult 
human being.” A parrot’s use of language is very closely 
similar to that of a child of one and a half or two years of age. 
The bird distinguishes and applies rightly not only nouns but 
verbs. We know a parrot which almost invariably says “ What 
you want ?” if any person seems to open drawers, turn over 
papers, &c. “ What you got ?” if anyone enters the room with a 
basket or a bag-; and “ What you doing ?” if any unusual artion 
is performed in her presence. 
In a discussion on induction he brings forward a caution too 
commonly overlooked. He writes : It is possible to show from 
still another point of view the fallacy of postulating these laws 
(i.e., those of number, space, and causation). The laws of 
number and space are purely hypothetical. The whole theory 
of number rests upon an assumption — that of unity. But the 
idea of unity is a subjective abstraction. There is no such 
thing in nature or in the compass of our experience as 
absolute unity, and therefore all arithmetic, which is developed 
from the idea of absolute unity, is, to our apprehension, 
exartly true only because in its every step it carries with it the 
original assumption. But that cannot be an absolutely certain 
induction which contains in its every step a pure assumption, 
so that the science of number has no such claim to infallibility 
as Mill assigns to it.” 
The Rev. T. P. Kirkman, F.R.S., the author, as our readers 
will remember, of a “ Philosophy without Assumptions,” com- 
municates a “ Description of the 24-Edra, having only Triad 
Summits, and for Faces only Pentagons, Hexagons, Heptagons, 
and Ortagons, which are reducible to the regular Dodeca- 
hedron.” He admits that his results are, “ like most mathe- 
matical results, of no further use than to prove the power of the 
method.” 
Dr. W. A. Herdman is the author of a paper on the “ Theory 
