Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/596

V. CEITICAL NOTICES. Elements of Physiological Psychology. A Treatise of the Activities and Nature of the Mind from the Physical and Experimental Point of View. By GEOKGE T. LADD, Professor of Philosophy in Yale University. London : Longmans, Green & Co. (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons), 1887. Pp. v., 696. Such a book as Prof. Ladd here sends over from America has been wanted in English ever since Prof. Wundt showed its possi- bility in 1874. The Physiologische Psychologie has been translated into French and Eussian, and an English version, more especially of the third edition now in press, would be very welcome. An original book has however the more vitality, and there was great need of a work simpler and less technical than Prof. Wuiidt's. Prof. Ladd deserves warm thanks for undertaking the preparation of such a work. His careful and able book will prove most useful to all who take interest in the results and prospects of physiolo- gical psychology. Prof. Ladd, after a brief introduction (pp. 14), treats his subject in three parts named respectively " The Nervous Mechanism" (pp. 219), " Correlations of the Nervous Mechanism and the Mind" (pp. 343) and "The Nature of the Mind" (pp. 103). The second of these sections is without doubt the most important. It is possible to question the necessity or even advantage of an intro- duction on the nervous system. There is need of an English work on the physiology of the nervous centres and sense-organs, as thorough as that contained in Hermann's Handbucli der Physio- logie ; but Prof. Ladd cannot of course attempt this in the limits to which he is confined. It is equally impossible to start from the beginning and teach in the first section all the science needed to understand the rest : the student must be supposed to have some acquaintance with physics and biology, knowledge best gained in the laboratory and dissecting-room. Neither an exhaustive treatise on the nervous system nor a science primer is in place. Introductions such as Prof. Wundt and Prof. Ladd give are useful only in proportion to the extent to which they clear the ground for, and lead up to, the facts and theories with which the work is concerned. From this point of view Prof. Ladd's treatment does not seem altogether successful. For example, the rate of trans- mission of the impulse along the nerve is discussed at length : this is only of interest to the psychologist, however, in so far as it en- ables us to analyse reaction-times and determine the time taken up by mental processes, and no such application is made. The anatomy of the semicircular canals is only important to the student of mind in so far as these organs are brought into con-