Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/871

Rh the relation of the human consciousness to the apparently intelligent, purposive movements which the body executes is by no means as simple as we thought, any attempt to discuss the problem from the empirical point of view will be welcomed. With the exception of Mr. F. W. H. Myers's papers and reviews, in the publications of the Society for Psychical Research, and of the series by Prof. W. R. Newbold, which recently appeared in this magazine, no discussion of the matter at all commensurate with its importance has appeared, and Mrs. Baldwin's translation of M. Binet's book will therefore be doubly welcome.

M. Binet adopts the conception of double personality—that is, coexistent personalities—and makes use of it consistently for the explanation of all forms of motor automatism, from the most rudimentary twitchings of an anæsthetic hand to the fully developed automatic script which manifests memories, emotions, and desires unknown to the primary self. All alike, he holds, evince the existence of a "little consciousness by the side of a greater a small luminous point by the side of a great focus of light." The precise character of the secondary consciousness he does not try to determine for all cases, recognizing that it probably varies indefinitely; and he agrees with Pierre Janet, as against Myers, in regarding it as essentially a pathological phenomenon. On the whole, he avoids the pitfall of regarding evidence for the existence of dissociated states as in the same sense and to the same degree evidence for the existence of a fully equipped secondary self, but in one curious passage (p. 210) he seems fairly to fall into it.

Especially interesting are Chapters VI to VIII, in which M. Binet tries to determine the relation of the subconscious field to the upper self. The evidence which he has collected—the greater part of it, indeed, being based upon tracings taken by himself of the movements of an anæsthetic hand under varying conditions—is of the highest importance, and bears directly upon the relation of the margin to the focus in the normal consciousness. Chapter VIII, on Ideas of Subconscious Origin, gives a brief account of the brilliant series of experiments by which M. Binet proved that in some patients touch stimuli which were not felt by the patient gave rise nevertheless to visual hallucinations representing to some degree the object touched, and in one case at least (page 213) extraordinary subconscious hyperæsthesia seems demonstrated.

M. Binet does not treat of the cognate questions involved in the phenomena of normal suggestibility, trance, ecstasy, and hallucination, nor does he endeavor to develop psychological principles of universal application. In conclusion, he points out how unsatisfactory the common notions of association, of unconscious cerebration, and of personality become when viewed in the light of these facts, but, with that exception, he does not show the bearing of the latter upon the more profound problems of mind and brain. Perhaps he feels that the time has not yet come for that; but he marshals the facts with discretion, and if his conceptions are not always as clear as they might be, there are few of us who would wish to cast the first stone at him.