Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/647

Rh are Locke and Hume, whose views he courageously combats, leaving such names as Wundt, Lewes, Taine, Bain, Sully, Spencer, James, and the rest, in the depth of oblivion.

Being curious to know what foundation he had for his leading statements from which he deduces such far-reaching conclusions relative to the nature of the "social forces," I submitted, as above intimated, a few questions to a prominent experimental psychologist, who kindly permits me to use the answers he gave to them. The questions and answers are as follows:

1. Have any experiments been made on the relative rates at which afferent and efferent nerve currents travel?

Ans. Yes, but with Inconclusive results.

2. If so, do they show that efferent (motor) currents travel faster than afferent (sensory) currents?

Ans. No. My own experiments indicate (but do not prove) that the motor impulse travels more slowly in the spinal cord.

3. Would it be a correct or intelligible statement to say that motor currents are "stronger" or "more intense" than sensory currents?

Ans. It would not be correct and scarcely intelligible in our present ignorance of the nature of the "current."

I also quoted the following passage from page 46 and asked him if he would accept it as true or correct:

"The defects in current psychology are traceable to the fact that analytic psychology has not kept pace with the development of physiologic psychology." His answer was: "I should not accept the above. Experimental psychology and physiological psychology (in so far as it is psychology and not physiology) contribute to and are a part of mental analysis."

From this little piece of history we seem to learn two lessons. One is that it does no good to complain that those who cultivate the more complex sciences often lack the necessary equipment which an acquaintance with the more general sciences in which the former have their roots would furnish; for forthwith they abandon the fields with which they are familiar and become bewildered and lost in new habitats to which they have not become adapted. The other lesson is the old one of the cobbler and his last.

Chapter iii on "Knowledge and Belief," being for the most part derived from the preceding ones, of course partakes of the character that belongs to the general treatment, and we find the term "belief"