Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/451

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The writer takes up the two methods of studying animals; the natural, which consists in a careful observation of the free life of the animal, and the experimental, in which the animal is subjected to certain conditions. Either method by itself is liable to lead the investigator astray; both methods must be combined to get the best results. This combination he illustrates by presenting the results of experiments and observations upon vorticella, wasps, chicks, and rats. In conclusion, he shows that the methods presented will enable us in a short time to discover the dividing lines between instinct, intelligence, and habit.

The object of these experiments was the determination of the limen of form at various parts of the cutaneous surface. The forms employed were angles, open circles, filled circles, and filled triangles. The surfaces tested were the tip of the tongue, the tip of the middle finger of the right hand, and the central portions of the red areas of the upper and lower lips. Three subjects, all trained in psychological methods, were used. The results are briefly these; the surfaces tested rank, as regards capacity of cognition, in the order: tip of tongue, tip of finger, lips (with no appreciable difference between upper and lower lip). The surfaces differ in their behavior according as the stimuli are surfaces or outlines; the most easily cognized form is the open circle, the filled circle the most difficult; practice at a given spot increased the subject's power of discrimination at that spot.

Our social, like our individual, conduct tends to become and ultimately does become automatic. It moves in certain automatic routines, established by habit and sanctioned by law. Legal punishment is but a reminder that our individual conduct is out of adjustment with this automatic social machine. Thus we find in social phenomena, as everywhere else, a case of identity in difference. The identity is the result of habit and imitation, the difference that of invention, individual imitation. But so far we have only an "awkward dualism." We have imitation and invention, identity and difference artificially placed in juxtaposition and an attempt made to weld them together. But we have no rationale of their real organic unity. Professor Baldwin, in his 'Social and Ethical