Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/868

848 dim awareness of their psychic acts." Attention and the unchaining of mental states are given as the two functions of consciousness.

The author revels, however, in the realm of subconsciousness. Sleep, dreaming, somnambulism, hypnosis, thought-transference, lucidity, and hallucinations are so many doors by which knowledge may enter unhampered by sense. The consideration of criminality is given in the psychology of disease. Newspapers and novelists are justly arraigned for their responsibility in spreading the contagion of vice, and wholesome suggestions in regard to education are given.

Mind in detail is taken up in part second and begun by an outline of the evolution and action of the sensory and motor end organs. In the thirty first chapter an analysis of the cognitive powers is first reached. The old-time division of the mental processes is retained as useful, though the mind is not endowed with any faculties, these being only different phases of psychic action.

It is a little to be wondered at that the author of this work merely enumerates the name of Comte in a list of materialistic philosophers whose theories are annihilated, yet employs the well-known Comtian law to describe the progress of the sciences, including psychology. Blank ignorance is made to precede the theological, metaphysical, and positive stages, which are euphoniously called periods of superstition, speculation, and exactness.

The spirit of the book is claimed to be "strictly scientific" and its purpose "to embody the trustworthy results of safe thought." This aim appears to have suffered an eclipse in the following statements: "When mind and life depart in death, the matter remains, so far as science can discover, chemically and physically the same." What about the co agulation of the blood and the whole process of disintegration? Is organized and unorganized matter identical? Thought-transference is also declared to be "a subconscious gift" whose demonstration is recent; "correlated" with this is "the no less amazing fact of lucidity or second-sight" due to a supersensuous vision which discerns beyond the reach of any known organ. The clew to this rash advocacy seems to be that "this discovery removes from the theological doctrine of a divine inspiration the stigma of violating probabilities."

Accuracy is pronounced impossible; "all sciences have to be regularly readjusted every few years."

Barring the questionable science of these passages, the book is brimful of information and good advice. It is well arranged, clearly written, and can hardly fail to benefit as well as to attain popularity.

of fifty experiments is provided in this little manual, comprising measurements of lengths, areas, and volumes, determinations of the density of solids, liquids, and a gas, the use of hydrometers and barometers, and a few relating to the pendulum and capillarity. Considerable attention is given to careful measurement, the sliding callipers, micrometer screw-gauge, the chemical balance, and the opisometer being used, with a vernier attachment wherever it is applicable.

volume consists of a series of lectures delivered by the late Prof. Marshall in connection with the extension lectures of Victoria University during 1893. The author having failed to elaborate them and prepare them for publication himself, not all the parts are written out in detail, and there is a consequent variability in the fullness of the text; nevertheless, having been delivered by one of Darwin's most earnest disciples, they are believed to form a useful introduction to the literature of Darwinism. They present the History of the Theory of Evolution; Artificial and Natural Selection; The Argument from Palæontology; The Argument from Embryology; The Colors of Animals and Plants; a review of the objections to the Darwinian theory; the origin of vertebrate animals and the descent of man; and a summary of the life and work of Darwin. The author, summarizing his own work, defines as the position which he has