Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/189

Rh the Origin of Species appeared to him, as he read it, to give the death blow to teleology in the domain of life-phenomena. Teleology has, unfortunately, come to life again, and nourishes all too abundantly in the pages of this book.

The treatment of consciousness is vacillating (13 f., 190 f., 257 ff., etc.). There is ground for making consciousness a form of energy, and using it as such in causal explanation. It is legitimate also to adopt the working principle of parallelism, and to leave consciousness out of account in dealing with the material world of physics and physiology. Both positions are defended by competent psychologists, and both have weighty arguments in their favor. The author takes a sort of middle course between the two views. Consciousness is the product of natural selection, and has been preserved because it is useful; yet "it is safer not to assume conscious states until all the simpler and more demonstrable factors in behavior have been given due weight" (p. 13). Why 'simpler'? Why should consciousness be a complex factor in behavior? "In general, the function of consciousness is not to actually do things but to adjust apparatus for doing them, note the results, and readjust as needed" (p. 205). The function would, then, be simple or complex according as the apparatus are crude or delicate. Cf. p. 178: "in racial development consciousness in the form of rudimentary feeling indicating the necessity or non-necessity of movement may be present momentarily even in the lowest organisms and help to produce more prompt and effective reactions." Here the function of consciousness would be extremely simple; nothing more, in fact, than the saying of Yes or No to a motor impulse.

A final word may be said with regard to the writer's four levels of adaptive activity or 'intelligence'. First in order comes physiological intelligence, shown especially in nutritive and growth processes, and concerned with the direction of activities taking place within the body in such a way as to preserve life. Next follows sensory-motor intelligence, with or without consciousness, directing movements of a part or of the whole body in response to external stimulation in such a way that favorable results may be secured. In the third place stands representative intelligence, of which imagination and memory are characteristic manifestations, making possible economy of movement, ministering to psychical needs, and teaching by way of imitation. Last of all comes conceptual intelligence, which not only makes it possible to accomplish certain purposes more quickly and effectively than by sensory motor or representative intelligence, and to meet new situations which could not be reacted to effectively by any other form of intellectual process, but also enables its possessor to go beyond what can be experienced or even represented. It seems clear that we have, in this hierarchy of faculties, a logical construction of the kind dear to Romanes and his contemporaries, rather than an actual picture of the course of mental evolution.

It is natural for a critic, writing in a technical journal, to estimate the worth of a book from the purely scientific point of view. The present writer can, however, conceive (as he indicated above) that the Genetic Psychology, despite all its sins of scientific omission and commission, may serve a very useful purpose as a popular introduction to its subject. Many a student has been attracted to a science by some general treatise, to which he will acknowledge a real debt of gratitude on that account, even though in later years he reject or essentially modify its teaching.