THE CENTURY'S ADVANCE IN PHYSIOLOGIC PSYCHOLOGY.

Abstract

The September issue of<i>Harper's Monthly</i>contains an article by Dr. H. S. Williams, on "The Century's Progress in Physiological Psychology." There is certainly a large amount of material for such a review, and Dr. Williams appears to have fairly utilized it. We know vastly more than formerly about the functions of the brain, and the latest developments of our knowledge of its anatomy are suggestive in many ways. We have also become able to measure and register our sensations and have reduced some facts thus obtained to their mathematical expression; methods have been improved and a vast store of facts obtained, but after all we are not so very much nearer an understanding of the real nature of our mental action than before. In fact, as Dr. Williams shows, some of our advances are really only experimental verifications of ideas theoretically advanced many years prior to the beginning of