Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/126

 110 CBITICAL NOTICES : whole account of feeling, to learn that he adopts " the James- Lange theory " in a very whole-hearted way. Reserving the question how far this theory does justice to the facts of the case, it is only necessary to add that M. Eibot maintains, in his clear and interesting version of it, the high level of his whole book. Of the second part of the book, which deals in a descriptive way with special affective conditions, it is not necessary to say much. It follows the lines which were laid down in the first part, in giving an account of the several affective phenomena. The primitive or simple feelings are first examined the "instinct of self-preservation " under its various forms of purely physio- logical response, fear, anger, affection, the phenomena of self- feeling, and sexual instinct. The chapter on "the ego and affective manifestations " is especially suggestive. The complex emotions social, moral, religious, aesthetic, and intellectual feelings are next reviewed at considerable length, and with a good deal of interesting detail ; and the work concludes with a discussion of character normal and abnormal and of the dissolution of the affective life. The chapters on these subjects connect themselves with the discussions of Schopenhauer, Paulhan, and Fouillee, and are of the greatest interest throughout. They should certainly be neglected by no one who still hopes for a psychological science of Ethology. In an epilogue on the place of the affective element in the psychic life as a whole, M. Eibot contends that feeling is the primary or dominant factor, which appears first and determines the mental process throughout. The difficulty of establishing the facts on which such a view must rest has already been suggested ; and at the end of M. Eibot's argument one is still left without sufficient grounds for sharing his opinion. Unless we begin by assuming that organic response is feeling, we do not reach the conclusion that feeling, as we know it, has any real priority to other aspects of human consciousness. That state of human beings which we call feeling can no doubt be traced, in part at all events, to an origin in the primitive responses which are all that we know of the simplest forms of life ; but volition and knowledge are in no different position in this respect ; and unless these can be shown psychologically to be reducible to feelings we must remain uncon- vinced that feeling as we know it is in any sense prior to them. It appears more in analogy with what we know of organic and mental development to see in the primitive organic response the germ of the processes which underlie all aspects of consciousness than to identify it directly with any one of them. The conclusion that feeling is the same as organic response is an error or a half-truth, which may, I think, be traced partly to a too exclusive use of the comparative method in psychology ; for the use of this method, to the exclusion of introspective analysis of consciousness, leads to neglect of those aspects of mental life which distinguish it from every form of organic change, and to an