Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/439

PHILOSOPHICAL I'KUKiDICALS. sensation, memory, imagination : history; bibliography. The ob lions are good ; but the author seems to have no penpeotire in theoretical matters.] Vol. i.. No. .">. W. P. Montague. A Plea for Soul Sul) stance.' i. [The mystery of the seeming ellicac* of final causes in the world of mental facts lias called forth rive, explanations; those of pure teleology, materialism, occasionalism, parallelism and spiritualism The first three may be briefly dismissed. Parallelism proves inadequate, on close logical scrutiny. It remains to assume the existence of a soul- substiince. Descriptive psychology needs this, and we have a right to hypostatise the conception as soon as it is properly defined. A loose P:I|MT. R. Dodge. 'The Reaction-time of the Eye.' [A stimulus is thrown on the blind spot of the resting eye. Since any slight movement will bring it into view, the natural movement following some peripheral stimulation will do so, provided it last long enough. The duration of the stimulus which just allows the observer to see it, after the cue for movement is given, is the reaction-time of the eye. After correction made for constant errors, the time for two observers proved to he HiJ and 170 a respectively.] Q. A. Coe. 'A Study in the Dynamics of Personal Religion.' [Examination of the conversion-experiences of seventy-four persons (nearly all college students) by a highly elaborate questionnaire, supplemented by personal interviews, scrutiny of tem- peramental manifestations, interviews with friends of those under ob- servation, and hypnotic experiments. "Three sets of factors favour the attainment of a striking religious transformation : the temperament factor, the factor of expectation, and the tendency to automatisms and passive suggestibility."] Shorter Contributions and Discussions. M. W. Calkins. ' Attributes of Sensation.' [Sensation cannot have attributes, since it is an elemental fact of consciousness and, as such, irreducible. Moreover, duration is a complex of conscious elements, and quality, ex- tensity and intensity are elemental processes in their own right.] M Meyer. ' Is the Memory of Absolute Pitch Capable of Development by Training?' [Experiments on forks and piano, showing (against vou Kries) that systematic and lasting practice develops memory of absolute pitch.] Psychological Literature. New Books. Notes. AMKRICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. Vol. xi.. No. 1. X. M. Bentley. ' The Memory Image and its Qualitative Fidelity.' [A systematic and successful attempt to isolate the memory image, to compare it qualita- tively with the sense-complex from which it derives, and to estimate the extrinsic and intrinsic factors tending to modify its original quality. < I < Memory of so simple a thing as a coloured or grey disc may be mediated by a colour or brightness image, by names (verbal descriptions or as- sociates), by affective processes (felt organic sensations), or by strain sensations in the head and about the trunk. (2) Greys and colours exposed in daylight tend (if the subject is at all visual in type) to lighten in iMial memory. -'A) Greys shown in the dark tend to darken in visual memory during an unilluminated interval. These two facts show the importance of peripheral influences on memory, and suggest that it i-. often only by a combination of various memorial resources that retention i- made definite and exact. (4) Qualitative fidelity shows no constant change from 2 to 6 seconds after the cessation of stimulus ; it loses in accuracy from 10 to 60 seconds, the direction of change being constant. Above, 1 minute to "> minutes, the inaccuracy increases. On the other hand, the image is more readily producible after 5 than it is after 1 minute. (5) Images are available in the great majority of cases of brightness and colour memory. Under such circumstances, memory is, on tin- whole, somewhat more accurate, though perfect ivccuracy is compatible with