human history this new social force comes into play, we have no need here to inquire. What I am concerned to point out is that it is a new social force, wholly different in character from any which had hitherto helped to shape human destiny—wholly different, also, from those influences which have guided the unfolding either of the individual animal or of the species. We cannot, by taking thought, add a cubit to our stature. The species, in undergoing the process of improvement, is wholly unconscious of the influences that are determining its career. It is not so with human evolution. Civilized mankind are aware of the changes taking place in their social conditions, and do consciously and deliberately take measures for its improvement.—Fortnightly Review.
| SKETCH OF DR. HENRY MAUDSLEY. |
THOSE who are familiar with the growing literature of psychological medicine during the last quarter of a century will remember the appearance of various papers remarkable for literary brilliancy and expressive of the most advanced opinion which appeared, nearly twenty years ago, in the English periodicals devoted to this subject, and written by Dr. Henry Maudsley. He was then a very young man, and the promise of his early efforts has been thoroughly redeemed by his subsequent professional career. A voluminous and able writer, and an eminent practitioner, he is now among the foremost men in the branch of medicine to which he has devoted himself. The last quarter of a century has witnessed a great change in the mode of studying mental phenomena. The old metaphysical method, which confined itself mainly to introspection of consciousness, with no more regard to the organic conditions under which mind is manifested than as if such conditions had no existence, has been invaded, and perhaps it is not too much to say, as a method of study, has completely broken down. Not that the introversive study of the phenomena of consciousness has been abandoned, but its sufficiency has been completely discredited; and mental science takes a new departure with the recognition that its organic basis is a fundamental element in its problems. The physicians whose studies begin with the body and traverse the field both of its normal and abnormal states, were forced to consider the subject of mind from the corporeal side, and with reference to the exigencies of practice. Metaphysical speculation was fruitless for their purposes; the mind had to be considered as dependent upon material conditions. The new order of truths thus brought forward has had a profound influence upon recent mental philosophy, and, in this reconstruction and reëxposition of the science, the subject of the present sketch has had a prominent share. His contributions to the literature
