Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/186

176

The contents of this book can be indicated by its chapter heads as follows: first stages of knowledge, classification, use and abuse of words, proposition, induction, verification and deduction; the syllogism its traditional treatment, abbreviated and complex forms of reasoning, the hypothetical and disjunctive syllogism, proof and disproof. Then follows a special part on supplementary methods, viz.: statistics, averages, probabilities, the construction of systems, hypothesis, typical systems of knowledge.

Professor Ribot has here brought together, with some modification and revision, five of his recent essays on affective problems. The first paper, on affective consciousness (Rev. p kilos., April, 1909), argues that pleasantness and unpleasantness are but secondary symptoms of the affective life, the true basis of affectivity lying in coensesthetic and motor tendencies, and thus in a dimension akin to Wundt's excitement-depression and Royce's restlessness-quiescence. The second, on affective memory (ibid., Dec., 1907; cf. Journ. de psych., JulyAugust, 1909), brings additional evidence for the writer's theory of a purely affective memory, evidence which will be accepted or rejected according to the reader's definition of affective process. The third, a study of antipathy (Rev. philos., Nov., 1908), is especially valuable, as breaking what is practically virgin soil in ps}-chology. The fourth, on the nature of pleasure (ibid., August, 1909), is rather critical than constructive, although the author gives fresh formulation to his wellknown doctrine that pleasure is the conscious translation of the fact of successful functioning on the part of the physical or mental constitution. The concluding essay, on a form of affective illusion (ibid., May, 1907), discusses certain cases of misfelt (if that term may be coined) and misinterpreted feeling, as the euphoria of the seriously ill, or our belief that we desire a visit the postponement of which reveals that we had been looking forward to it with aversion.

Professor Ribot gives a half-promise, in his preface, of a future work on affective theory, to be entitled La vie affective et les mouvements. Such a book, written with critical regard to the definitions and usages of other contemporary psychologists, would be of extreme interest. As it is, one is often puzzled to say whether one agrees or disagrees with the writer, since he nowhere takes up a definite position as to the dividing line between affective and sensational experience. Thus, though he rules out kinsesthesis, warmth and cold (with their derivatives) from any share in the strictly affective life, he nevertheless regards ccensesthesis as purely affective in character, and makes affection essentially motor in derivation. Even a negative demarcation, the statement that such and such organic experiences are sensory and consequently non-affective, if made with sufficient definiteness and rigidly adhered to, would be of great assistance in clearing up the points upon which Professor Ribot agrees with and differs from other students of the subject. It is a further source of confusion that the essays slip back and forth, without warning, between the biological and the psychological standpoints.

.