professionals like Bishop and Cumberland and in the production of which skill is easily acquired even by amateurs.

ERNEST JONES.

AND

STUDIES OF THE GENESIS OF THE CRAMP OF WRITERS TELEGRAPHERS. THE RELATION OF THE DISORDER ΤΟ OTHER NEUROSES: THEIR PATHOGENESIS COMPARED WITH THAT OF TICS AND HABIT SPASMS: DESCRIPTION OF THE TREATMENT

MADE

POSSIBLE BY THIS RESEARCH: CASES. Tom A. Williams, M.B.C.M. Jour. f. Psychol. u. Neurol. (Leipzig.) 1912.

It is not surprising that writers' cramp, as it is called, is the commonest occupation neurosis because writing is the most widespread manual art which exacts the frequent repetition of the same movements. Thus, of the five cases, four are writers.

But the differences of pathogenesis cannot be expressed in terms of the kind of handicraft affected. To express them in terms of muscle function or topography is also misleading as the analyses of the cases clearly show; nor is cerebral locality, nor even perhaps functional "center," a fruitful explanation.

The mechanism of professional cramp is always psychological. Accordingly the treatment must address itself to the psyche. It must be clearly understood that the disorder of the apparatus is not structural but regulative. It is not an incapacity of muscle and nerves to perform their function; for this is intact except for performing the particular professional acts which fail. A want. of harmony in the controlling of the mechanism is the fault. We have not even to deal with the kind of want of harmony which occurs upon the destruction or toxic inhibition of the cortical center such as happens in aphasia. Professional cramp is a strictly psychodynamic inhibition or disorder in the habitual series of co-ordinated associations gained by education in some art.

The paper consists of an analysis and account of the treatment of four cases, and a discussion of the principles accruing from the research.

AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT.

REVIEWS

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND. Joseph McCabe. London. Adam & Charles Black. 1910. Pp. xvii, 287.

THE MIND OF PRIMITIVE MAN. Franz Boas. New York. The Macmillan Company. 1911. Pp. xi, 294.

These two recent books, not less interesting than important to every student of mental process, logically form a continuum, the latter taking up the mental evolution about where the former leaves it. Both are composed in the broad and far-seeing spirit. of the truly understanding mind, but while Fr. McCabe shapes. his whole book's argument to convince one of the continuity and essential likeness of mentation from alga to man, Professor Boas of Columbia emphasizes the same thing in the species of Homo, but recognizes the inherent hiatus in kind between the human and the brute, the gap that implies without explaining organized articulate language and "the use of utensils of varied application." "It is the very characteristic of modern research to discover hidden connections between the most divergent realities. It is the supreme ideal of science to unify," says McCabe, and his essay is therefore essentially one more elucidation of the narrower monism. "The Mind of Primitive Man," on the other hand, shows little such tendency either way.

"The Evolution of Mind" is a storehouse of interesting data and considerations garnered in part from literature ranging far afield in cosmology, terrestrial and celestial, chiefly (the author says) from "physics, organic chemistry, geology, paleontology, zoology, physiology, psychology, and anthropology. In particular I wholly disclaim the ambition to put mechanical interpretations on the various phases of mental evolution." None the less, this would certainly be its influence on the mind of the average

reader.

We could indicate the material of the book perhaps in no better way than by quotation of the chapter-titles: "The two evolutionary series, The lowest forms of mind, The earliest forms of life, The appearance of brain, The development of the fish, The invasion of the land, Instinct and intelligence in the insect, Mind in the bird, The growth of the mammal brain, The dawn of humanity, and The advance of mind in civilization." An excellently fair sample of the material of these eleven chapters may be taken from that on Mind in the bird, p. 193: "Presentation, emotion, volition, and memory are at some point in the story of evolution

irradiated by consciousness.

As this cortex is proportionately

developed in the higher birds and mammals, we may legitimately argue from analogy that they have a measure of consciousness. . . . All we know is that particular regions of the cortex are concerned in particular conscious functions;" p. 195: "We cannot say whether the analogy between the brain of the fish or the ant and the human brain is close enough to justify an inference." Here, then, we have a consciousness-criterion from analogy strictly à la McCabe, plus an outwearing localization of cerebral functions à la Ferrier and Flechsig. We have the same analogy affirmative in the birds, but wholly negative for the poor wise ant and the poorer fish! We confess we have no patience with this eclectic sort of argumentation, especially when based on our utter ultimate ignorance of the mode of working of the brain "at present... a dark cavern in which the lamps of the anatomist and physiologist do little more than increase our sense of mystery," as McCabe himself says (p. 16). How this dark cavern gets the light that shows Professor McCabe the consciousness in the bird, but that the ant and fish have none of it, we confess ourselves unable to observe. Perhaps certain "cortical regions" have not yet evolved, on this side of the Atlantic, to perceive these antiquated ultra-violet rays.

And the author's look ahead is as depressing as his survey behind: "We do not see the future evolution of mind even darkly, as in a glass. But we do foresee its ultimate fate. The time will come when humanity a race of geniuses, judged by our modern standard will wage the most titanic struggle that will ever be recorded in its calendar. Our sun must die as other suns have done and are doing; and no human art can create a substitute for its streams of energy. Slowly the red rays will grow feebler, and the arctic temperature creep toward the equator. All the magical engineering of that future race will be applied to prolonging the last hour of humanity's life. At last the central belt of the earth will sink to the cold of space, and the marvelous structure of brain will succumb to the natural forces which engendered it, and sink back into the elements from which it so slowly and so subtly compacted" (p. 281). This certainly is eloquent poetry well worthy the learned ecclesiastic who wrote it, but as philosophy it does not convince, for it utterly begs the question, the essential question of all questions mundane, as to the meaning of this phantasmagoria, whose quintessence is Individual Purposes. James's "Is Life Worth Living?" and "The Will to Believe" answer it better.

Professor Boas's book, "The Mind of Primitive Man," is less full of romantic fact, and to a physiologist less interesting, but its logic is sounder, less partial, and more conclusive, and no book before it has done so ably what it has done. The abolition of racial prejudice seems to be one of the great ultimate aims of the writer's life work-witness his recent essay, "An Anthropologist's View of War." Behind and supporting this high intention of the man is the unsurpassed learning and insight of the scientist, as this volume of co-ordinated Lowell Institute lectures plainly enough shows.

The chapter-headings are as follows: "Racial prejudices, Influence of environment upon human types, Influence of heredity upon human types, The mental traits of primitive man and of civilized man, Race and language, The universality of cultural traits, The evolutionary viewpoint, Some traits of primitive culture, Summary, and Race problems in the United States." The chapter on the mental traits of primitive man would probably most interest the readers of the JOURNAL. Boas follows the orthodox psychology in drawing sharp demarcation between brute and man in that no specimen of the former has the "abstract concepts accompanying action," while every human group, however primitive, possesses this faculty. He points out also that personal freedom in the use of utensils, etc., may be used as a criterion of humanity, despite the remaining mystery of the instincts by which animal masses perform very efficiently complex constructive and useful actions. Comparing, on the other hand, the races of men, he finds far more unity and similarity than we are in the habit of presuming. The gist of this chapter should be expressed in his own summary of it: "Our brief consideration of some of the mental activities of man in civilized and in primitive society has led us to the conclusion that these functions of the human mind are common to the whole humanity. It may be well to state here, that, according to our present method of considering biological and psychological phenomena, we must assume that these have developed from lower conditions existing at a previous time, and that at one time there certainly must have been races and tribes in which the properties here described were not at all, or only slightly, developed; but it is also true that among the present races of man, no matter how primitive they may be in comparison with ourselves, these faculties are highly developed [namely, the power to inhibit impulses, power of attention, originality of thought, and power of clear reasoning]. It is not impossible that the degree of development of these functions may differ somewhat among different types of men, but I do not believe that we are able at the

present time to form a just valuation of the hereditary mental powers of the different races. A comparison of their languages, customs, and activities suggests that their faculties may be unequally developed; but the differences are not sufficient to justify us to ascribe materially lower stages to some peoples, and higher stages to others. The conclusions reached from these considerations are therefore, on the whole, negative. We are not inclined. to consider the mental organization of different races of man as differing in fundamental points. Although, therefore, the distribution of faculty among the races of man is far from being known, we can say this much: the average faculty of the white race is found to the same degree in a large proportion of individuals of all other races, and, although it is probable that some of these races may not produce as large a proportion of great men as our own race, there is no reason to suppose that they are unable to reach the level of civilization represented by the bulk of our own people."

He points out in an interesting way how the social associations of sense inpressions and of activities are gradually replaced in the civilization process by intellectual associations, accompanied by a loss of conservatism in certain directions. "The change from primitive to civilized society includes a lessening of the number of the emotional associations, and an improvement of the traditional material that enters into our habitual mental operations,"tendencies that one sees in the autogenetic evolution also, but which are not possible in mental defections owing to organic deficiencies in the brain.

The last chapter of Professor Boas's book is a far-reaching discussion of the Negro race-problem in the United States; in his opinion the melanochroic racial characteristics will gradually be eliminated by absorption into the xanthochroic majority,- centuries hence.

Fifteen pages of bibliographic notes end the volume,- a book that can hardly fail to interest very many people who seek a broad outlook into the early stages of human mind. The absence of an index is by no means wholly compensated by the analytic table of contents,an omission for which there seems never any excuse in any scientific work.

Tufts Medical School

GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN.