Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/126

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116
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

blest motives, both for self-discipline and for philanthropic exertion, is unworthy of the nature and destiny of the being whose creation in the 'image of God' can have no higher meaning than his capacity for infinite progress."

The difference between the new point of view and the old is not a mere speculative difference, or a matter of abstract belief. The study of man as an actual whole, a complex working phenomenon, and a fact of experience, has given us a kind of knowledge that is invaluable for the uses of all in every-day life. This kind of knowledge, concerning human nature, has been long and slowly accumulating, as the result of modern observation, though it has recently become more extended and accurate in many particulars, and Dr. Carpenter's work, we may say, has first presented it with the systematic fullness which its importance demands.

In his plan of treatment, Dr. Carpenter classifies from the mental side; that is, it is mental phenomena and problems that are successively taken up. After a preliminary statement of the general relations between mind and body, in the first chapter, he takes up the structure and modes of action of the nervous apparatus in the second chapter, and then proceeds to consider in successive chapters the subjects of Attention, Sensation, Perception, and Instinct, the Emotions, the Will, Memory, Common-sense, Unconscious Cerebration, Reverie, Sleep, Dreaming, Somnambulism, Electro-biology, Mesmerism, and Spiritualism, Intoxication and Delirium. But each and all of these manifestations are considered, not in themselves merely, but as conditioned by the physiological constitution. Whatever may be their ultimate nature, practically they are effects of a vital mechanism by the laws of which they are determined. Much of this wonderful connection is of course, as yet, far from being understood. We are indebted to Dr. Carpenter for having shown that a great deal more is understood of the psychical and vital interactions than has become generally known. Dr. Carpenter has won his reputation as a physiologist, largely from the clearness of his expositions, and the present work shows that his capacity in this respect is still vigorous. Its most scientific parts are attractive reading, and the extensive array of personal instances and incidents, which illustrate his positions, gives great fascination to the volume. It is a book hard to lay down when once entered upon, and Dr. Carpenter may be congratulated upon having contributed so fresh and adequate a book upon such an important subject.

The Principles of Science. A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method. By W. Stanley Jevons, M. A., F. R. S., Fellow of University College, London; Professor of Logic and Political Economy in the Owens College, Manchester. New York: Macmillan & Co. 2 vols., 943 pages. Price, $9.

This able treatise is entitled to be classed at once with such valuable and solid works as Mill's "Logic," Whewell's "History of the Inductive Sciences," and Herbert Spencer's "First Principles." Whether it be equal to either of those treatises, as a contribution to scientific knowledge, we shall not assume to say, but it is certainly a timely and powerful exposition of scientific method, in the light of the later advances of knowledge. The author sets out with the assumption, which few will question, that the rapid progress of the physical sciences during the last three centuries has not been accompanied by a corresponding advance in the theory of reasoning. Physicists are usually too much engrossed in the immense and ever-accumulating details of their special sciences to give sufficient attention to the methods of reasoning which they unconsciously employ. It becomes necessary, then, that certain minds should devote themselves absorbingly to this neglected side of science, for few will deny that the clearing up of questions of order, logic, and method, are indispensable to its rational progress. To do any justice to this work, by a notice or review of it within such space as we can allow, would be impossible, and the best course is to let the author speak for himself in regard to the aims and characteristics of his undertaking. The following passages are from his preface:

"The study both of Formal Logic and of the Theory of Probabilities has led me to adopt the opinion that there is no such thing as a distinct method of induction as