Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/712

 696 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The first three chapters of the section on conation deal with reflex, instinctive, and automatic acts ; the next two, with emotion ; and the last three, with volitional action. The emotions are included in this section, rather than in the preceding one on affective processes, because the author adopts a modified version of the James-Lange theory of the emotions, and is therefore logically forced to deal with the simpler forms of action before discussing emotion. The treatment of the emotions does justice to their affective aspect, and further modifies James's formulation by adopting Dewey's view that emotion is constituted, not by a mere instinctive reaction which is felt, but by the conflict between two or more possible instinctive reactions. The sketch of the development of volition is exceedingly clear and convincing, and serves to emphasize the unity of conscious processes with reference to activity. The experience of effort is explained as an emotion, rather than as a psychic force, and the freedom of the will is made to depend not upon the amount of effort which may be exerted in any given case, but on the successful co-ordination of impulses with reference to ends.

It remains to say a word about the chapter on the nervous system. This seems to the reviewer the least successful portion of the book. It has the defect of being so condensed that it would be exceedingly difficult to students who had had no previous training in the anatomy of the nervous system. Occasionally its extreme condensation pro- duces lack of clearness. If the chapter could have been increased in length, it seems as though it might have been made enough clearer to more than compensate for the additional pages. Its use as it stands would certainly require a great deal to be supplied by the instructor. On one very minor point the most recent data are not given. It quotes the old estimate of the total number of neurones in the nervous system, three thousand millions, whereas the more recent estimate is that there are at least eleven thousand millions. 1 The average volume of the cell-body computed upon this basis differs from the one given. The chapter has, however, the virtue of bringing together the material on the nervous system which it is possible to require of an elementary class, and that is something which had not been done before.

HELEN BRADFORD THOMPSON.

MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE.

Vol. II. p. 318.
 * Donaldson, in Wood's Reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences ,