Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/574

 560 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. nor in the quantitative relations between stimulus and brain reaction, but in the well-known fact of the variability of brain activity under identical stimuli." " Two stimuli must vary by more than the range of this variability for their difference to be perceived."] M. Meyer. ' Ele- ments of Psychological Theory of Melody.' [The theory that the basis of all music is the diatonic scale (24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40, 45, 48) is funda- mentally wrong. One of its chief errors is the exclusion of the number 7. ^Esthetic laws of melodies composed of two notes only ; the ' rela- tionship ' of tones considered as an elementary psychological fact. The complete musical scale is represented by the infinite series of all com- posites of the powers of 2, 3 and 7. Analysis of certain complex melodies, with comparison of the new and the old theories.] E. A. Kirkpatrick. ' Individual Tests of School Children.' [Counting aloud rapidly, making vertical marks rapidly, sorting cards into piles by oral direction, sorting cards by visual impression, naming ink spots. " Fifty- seven per cent, (of the children) were graded just the same by the com- bination of all the tests as by the teacher." Psychogenetic norms are needed.] Discussion and Reports. R. MacDougall. ' A Pneumatic Shutter for Optical Exposures.' H. M. Stanley. ' Remarks on Time Perception.' [Critique of Stout (MiND, Jan., 1900). Distinction between objective and subjective time.] Psychological Literature. New Books. Notes. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. xi., No. 2. W. S. Small. 'An Experimental Study of the Mental Processes of the Rat.' [Six groups of experiments, with puzzle-boxes containing food, upon the origination and integration of contiguous associations ; the persistence, variability and composition of the associative process ; recognition, dis- crimination, imitation ; and individual differences. Points of interest in the results are : the great importance of the first success ; the persistence of wild traits and useless motor habits (digging, nest-building as against satisfaction of hunger, scurrying in the midst of a definite task) ; the permanence of association in spite of fortuitous origination ; the low level of imitation ; etc. Tentative analysis of the task-consciousness are given, but are too detailed for summary. Tables of time values are appended.] O. P. Watkiiis. ' Psychical Life in Protozoa.' [(1) The compounding of minds : critique of James. Primitive consciousness and its survival value. (2) The problem of the protozoan mind : criterion of the presence of consciousness. " Symbolisation of some environing circumstance . . . may be the distinguishing attribute of mentality. . . . Learning by ex- perience, and the alterableness of action that this implies, furnish the best objective criterion of mentality. . . . There would be rectification of action." But lack of mentality is not proved by absence of evidence for learning by experience. (3) Critique of work so far done : Binet, Verworn. Hodge and Aikins, Jennings.] G. E. Dawson. ' Psychic Rudiments and Morality.' [Attempt to trace, in psychogenesis, the conditions of ' im- morality, vice, crime, sin'. They are as follows: (1) "The temporarily incomplete elimination of qualities belonging to a lower stage of develop- ment " (children, whose moral nature is not yet adjusted to adult life, adults with delayed [not arrested] development through unfavourable en- vironment). (2) " The total arrest of the eliminative process, leading to the persistence of qualities that should normally disappear " (the delinquent classes generally). (3) " The hypertrophy or disease of abnormally persistent qualities, leading to an abnormal pathological condition of the moral nature" (dipsomania, kleptomania, sexual perversion, etc.). Educational suggestions.] E. B. Titchener. ' Minor Studies from the Psychological Laboratory of Cornell University,' xix. W. B. Secor.