Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/845

 REVIEWS 825

ideas and their relations to the environment will seem to many readers so obvious and reasonable that we shall doubtless encounter but little sympathy in our criticism of this portion of his psychology. This will be especially true in the case of readers familiar (and who is not ?) with the general doctrines advanced by Darwin and Spencer. Not that the position underlying our criticism is necessarily hostile to the principles represented by these writers, but simply that the correct application of these principles involves a psychological formulation somewhat different from the one proposed by Mr. Patten. Men cer- tainly differ vastly from one another in the relative amounts of reflec- tion and muscular action iu which they indulge, and one of the important items in determining this relation is undoubtedly the environ- ment, in the broad sense of that term. But reflection cannot be regarded as completely synonymous with the having of sensory ideas, as Mr. Patten seems at times to imply (p. 30), although we frankly confess that we find him difficult to follow on these points ; nor can action be exclusively connected with one special class of ideas, such as those Mr. Patten denominates motor. For, in the first place, all sensory processes are implicated with motor consequences ; and, in the second place, there are no such things as motor ideas which as ideas are not sensory. That all consciousness is motor is today a psychological commonplace. Movement as a psychological factor is always represented by sensations, originating sometimes in the part of the body moved and sometimes in sense organs relatively remote from the moving member. But in every case the movement is reported by a group of sensations, and a voluntary repetition of the movement is executed psychologically by a mental anticipation of some of the sensory effects of the movement. Mr. Patten appears, moreover, entirely to overlook the motor accom- paniments of sensory activities, as is natural in view of his position. He says, for example (p. 7) that a cosmopolitan environment develops the sensory powers by necessitating nice discrimination, and straight- way forgets that every act of sensory analysis involves a definite motor adjustment for its execution, and that modern psychology has shown this motor adjustment to be the very heart of the sensory activity, and consequently a process which must necessarily dtwtXo'p pari passu with the sensory action. The fact is that the difference between sensory and motor ideas is, as has recently been pointed out by several writers, one of function and not of content. Our criticism of Mr. Patten at this point may appear to involve a merely ornamental logical refine- ment upon the common-sense facts of the situations. But to this it