< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Comparative Psychology; or, The Growth and Grades of Intelligence. By John Bascom. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 291. Price, $1.50.

This small but thoughtful volume deserves to be very cordially commended to the students of psychological science. Though a controversial work, it is free from narrowness and the usual effects of partisan discussion, and it is written by a thinker who can appreciate views with which he disagrees, and freely acknowledges his indebtedness to the party with which he is, nevertheless, at radical issue. Of the two great schools of philosophy, the intuitional and the empirical, one holding that mental faculties are immediate a priori gifts to intelligent creatures, and the other that they are results of development through experience, the author of this volume holds with the first; but he acknowledges that it has been written to elucidate problems and carry out inquiries "that would hardly have been suggested but for the empirical philosophy." The object of the book is admirably stated in the following extract from the author's preface:

"The advocates of the empirical philosophy are wont to criticise the intuitional philosophy in two respects: first, as overlooking the relation between the mature mind and the mind of the infant between rudimentary and developed powers; and, second, as overlooking the still more important connection between the intelligence of to-day and that of remote previous periods, between the intelligence of man and that of animals, and of the earlier human life from which it has been derived We grant these points to be well taken, especially the latter. Without tracing the history of intelligence, we are not prepared to decide what is primitive and what is acquired; what is original material and what is the deposit of growth. The empiricist cannot be fully and fairly met without traveling with him these spaces of evolution, and determining at least their general facts and laws. This I have undertaken in the present volume. It is my purpose to test the nature and extent of the modifications put upon human psychology by its relations in growth to the life below it; and, in doing this, to reach a general statement of each stage of development."

A philosophical writer of our time could hardly occupy himself with a more pertinent problem than is here presented. It has been the reproach of the a priori method that it has ignored the subject of mind in its lower or comparative manifestations. It has neither worked from the base of fundamental organic conditions, nor has it systematically recognized them, and for this reason the method was probably losing its hold upon the scientific mind of the period. Clearly aware of this deficiency, Dr. Bascom has addressed himself to the task of supplying it, and his book will do much to rescue the subject from the reproach into which it had fallen.

Wisconsin Geological Survey. Report for 1877. By J. C. Chamberlin, Chief Geologist. Madison: Atwood print. Pp. 95.

The survey of Wisconsin is now completed, and the results will soon be in readiness for publication. The final report will form three volumes, with maps, of which one volume, with atlas, has already appeared. During the season of 1877, eleven surveying parties were in the field. The survey suffered a serious loss by the accidental death of Mr. Moses Strong, an enthusiastic young mining engineer, of brilliant attainments, who lost his life by the capsizing of his canoe while ascending the rapids of the Flambeau River.

State Regulation of Vice: Regulation Efforts in America. The Geneva Congress. By Aaron M. Powell. New York: Wood & Holbrook. Pp. 127. Price, $1.

Mr. Powell does not believe in the state regulation of vice, and gives his reasons in this book. The subject is considered from the point of view of the philanthropist and reformer, rather than from that of social science.

Mineralogy. By J. H. Collins, F. G. S. With 579 Illustrations. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.206. Price, $1.50.

This little manual is remarkable for the profuseness and neatness of its crystallographic illustrations. It is designed for practical working miners, quarrymen, field geologists, and the students of the science classes in connection with the department of science and art in England.

Geographical Surveys west of the 100th Meridian, in Charge of Lieutenant G. M. Wheeler, Engineer U. S. Army. Part II., Vol. IV. Paleontology. Letter-press, pp. 365, with 83 Plates. Washington: Government Printing-Office.

The present installment of Lieutenant Wheeler's Report consists of a memoir, by

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