Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/347



Dr. Féré is the author of many books and of innumerable communications to learned journals. Taken together, these show him to be one of the most indefatigable hospital experimenters and ransackers of neurological literature of our day. But he lacks the fine, flowing literary talent of his nation, and his doctrinal conclusions in this work, instead of being set forth with amplitude and emphasis, must be gathered piecemeal by the reader from the midst of the cases, quotations, and experiments with which the pages are filled. When the ethics of scientific publication shall have taken shape (as human nature will ere long demand) it will be regarded as an unpardonable sin for an author of established reputation, like M. Féré, to offer to the overburdened reader what at bottom is only a collection of classed and indexed note-books about a certain subject. The work is hardly more than raw material. As such it can of course interest those capable of using neurological raw material; but for other readers its main interest will probably be the spectacle which it affords of a mind like M. Féré's at work. That men are machines (whatever else they may be) has long been suspected; but not till our generation have men fairly felt in concreto just what wonderful psycho-neuro-physical mechanisms they are. M. Féré's interest in the secrets of the machinery may fairly be called devout. The thoroughness of his acquaintance is extraordinary. No disorder in the working is too minute, no reaction too unimportant, to fascinate him. 'Points' first caught sight of in hysteria or mental disease rivet his attention in that exaggerated form, and presently are noticed as elements in the normal life. His curiosity never tires of poking and testing the organism to see how it will behave, and still keeps returning with fresh experiments. The result is what may be called a decided intimacy with human nature on its mechanical side.

The book deals so much with details that no analysis of it is possible. Having indicated the general character, I will simply string together a few of its facts and opinions that seem worthy of Rh