Abstract
THIS is one of those well-meaning but futile books which it is almost impossible to criticise. To write a history of the evolution of consciousness an author should be thoroughly well informed of the latest results in both psychology and physiology. Mr. Hall seems to depend for his knowledge of the two sciences principally on the late J. S. Mill, with an infusion of Mr. Herbert Spencer. His account of psychological development is, no doubt unconsciously, entirely at variance with the results which have been won in recent years by careful experimentation, especially in the important domains of animal psychology, the analysis of spatial perception and the investigation of the processes by which meaning is acquired. The physiological explanations in which the- writer indulges most frequently amount to nothing more than the reiteration of the blessed words “integration” and “differentiation.” His grand thesis is that human consciousness is the property of a dominant cell or monad, but he seems not to be aware of the practical. dethronement of the cell by the neuron as the unit of nervous action, nor does he offer any valid reason for his belief that the sub-cortical and medullary cells have a minor consciousness of their own. The actual “transference of consciousness” from one cell to another of which he talks freely is, of course, nonsense. Like most writers whose knowledge of psychology is of the same kind as his own, he is a very dogmatic and determined adherent of the merely mechanical theory of human action.
The Evolution of Consciousness.
By Leonard Hall Pp. 152. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1901.) Price 3s. net.
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The Evolution of Consciousness . Nature 64, 467 (1901). https://doi.org/10.1038/064467b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/064467b0