CONTENTS:

Professor Grashey, now of Munich, formerly of Würzburg, has published in the Archiv für Psychiatrie (Vol. XVI, p. 654 ff.) an interesting case of a peculiar kind of aphasia. A man whose name is Voit, 32 years old, engaged for menial service in the brewing business, received an injury on the head. He was treated at the psychiatric clinic of Würzburg by Professor Grashey and dismissed as cured, yet five years after the accident he was again submitted to the professor's investigations and it was found that he was suffering from "amnestic aphasia." He could not remember the name of anything for a few seconds. Professor Grashey drew the following conclusion from Voit's case: "There is an aphasia which is based neither upon the functionary inability of certain centres nor upon the interruption of commissural connections, but exclusively upon a diminution of the sense-impressions, which causes a disturbance of apprehension and association." Voit was unable to name any object shown him unless he could spell it with the assistance of his hands, legs, or even his tongue. By writing only could he find the names of objects. Dr. Sommer objects to Professor Grashey's interpretation of the case and shows convincingly from the symptoms, as represented in the Archiv für Psychiatrie by Grashey himself, that whenever Voit was prevented from making writing gestures (which was done by holding his hands and legs immovable and by ordering him to show his tongue so that he could not employ it for writing on the roof of his mouth) he could never find the name of any object. Accordingly it is no case of amnesia; Voit actually has only one way left for finding words, that is by spelling them. Now it is generally supposed, that we first see an object, and recognise it at the centre of vision. The nervous irritation is thence transmitted to the centre of language; the sight of a knife evokes in the centre of speech the word knife and we suppose that the spoken or heard word will in the centre of writing awaken the motor stimuli of spelling the word. The present case proves that if this be the rule there are exceptions to it and Dr. Sommer proposes the question, How can we explain the case? It is strange that the man is not deprived of concepts; so long as he is prevented from writing he is only deprived of naming things or concepts. He never failed to recognise similar things as belonging to the same class, but so long as he was tied at tongue and limb, he could never find their common name. For instance a guitar and a trumpet were shown him while he was bound, as it was called. When asked, Do they belong together? he nodded emphatically. (He had to answer by nods because he had to show his tongue.) When asked, Do you know their names? he shook his head and could never find their names until he was allowed to make writing gestures with either one of his limbs or his tongue. In this way he recognised and classified things correctly, but he never named them except by spelling the names. Such things or pictures of things shown him were the following:

Guitar—trumpet—: musical instruments.
Gun—canon—: arms.
Sickle—watering-pot—: utensils.
Lantern—lamp—: lights.
Palace—barn—: buildings, etc.

Dr. Sommer says: "Suppose that those parts of the brain the loss of which according to modern experiments and pathological observations cause a loss of memory-pictures, are thought of as motor apparatuses, the destruction of which has a similar effect as in the present case, the binding which prevented Voit from spelling: in this case amnesia might find an explanation without the crude materialistic assumption that they are localised in the injured cells." Dr. Sommer only throws out the hint without finding space to explain himself. Yet it appears to us that whether amnesia is produced by the destruction of the centres or of their supposed motor apparatuses that the one is not less and not more crude materialism than the other. The problem it appears has nothing to do with materialism, but with the mechanism of the brain. The fibres of association seem to work in Voit's brain in the opposite direction to what we should expect. The normal path is apparently interrupted. The sight of an object does not evoke its name. Yet are there not innumerable fibres of association which may reach the desired end—in this case the pronunciation of the name—in a roundabout way? There must be, for the facts prove it. One thing in the case of Voit is patent. When Voit finds the names by writing them, he apparently knows the written word, he cannot pronounce it, because he does not know the spoken word, the centre of spoken words being the seat of the injury. He has a concept of the thing, he could write it, but he cannot pronounce it. The roundabout way leads through a province not directly accessible to consciousness. The written word is not in the same immediate contact with consciousness as the spoken word. That this is so we know from actual and daily experience. Who has not tried to assure himself of the correct spelling of a word by writing it down and thus leaving the test to the unconscious memory of the motions of our hand?

C. S. Cornelius discusses the theory of spatial conception with special reference to a localisation of after-images. He takes the position that we are in relation to the outer world through sensation only, rejecting all assumptions of innate ideas, of a special space sense, etc. "Sensation," he says, "is an intensive state. The conception of space-relations can originate only by a multiplicity of sensations which through the qualitative contrasts affect each other and arrange themselves in a certain order beside each other. The vertical and horizontal conception height and breadth, are easily explained, but depth, the third dimension of space affords some difficulty." Th. Lipps denies the existence of an apprehension of depth, yet Cornelius maintains that it actually exists. He explains it in the same way as the vertical and horizontal space-conceptions as originating from muscle sensation.

It cannot be denied that upon the whole space-sense is the product and the interpretation of motion experiences mainly due to the activity of the muscles of the eye. But it appears that the conception of the third dimension of sight is not due alone, as says Cornelius, to muscle activity. The investigations of Wundt and of Mach, which are not taken into consideration by Cornelius, prove that the perspective and the distribution of light and shade are essential elements in our perception of the third dimension in space. Our eyes have become accustomed by the information received through other channels, especially the sense of touch, to interpret perspective in combination with certain shadings as depth so that even the one-eyed man sees things not as two dimensional pictures but as three dimensional corporeal forms.

A subject of extraordinary interest is discussed by J. Rehmke, who criticises O. Flügel's position and contrasts it with his own. O. Flügel has published a book, entitled Die Seelenfrage, treating the subject from the narrow standpoint of Herbart's school. It is unnecessary to state that Herbart has great merits in the evolution of our psychological views. He attempted to introduce mathematical methods in order to define exactly the dynamics and statics of the soul. Herbart failed, although he gave new impulses to psychological investigations which have proved valuable in many ways. Many of his disciples are now busy perpetuating his mistakes. Flügel is one among them. Flügel emphasises the immateriality of the soul, but being like his master an advocate of atomism he postulates soul atoms which are mathematical points. "Atomism," Flügel declares, "must reject actio in distans" because it is (1) inconceivable, (2) nonsensical and contradictory, and (3) because force is an accidens of matter, matter being the substance. The accidens can have no effects, it cannot exist, where the substance is not. Flügel also lays much stress on the disparity of feeling and motion, and of thought and motion. Soul and body are to him two distinct things and their interaction is explained through the contact of the point-like, immaterial soul atom and the brain atoms. Rehmke points out that this view in spite of its professed hostility toward materialism is extremely materialistic, but the view which he proposes himself suffers from similar errors. Flügel has preserved the unity and the immortality of the soul which is an indestructible immaterial mathematical point, moving about in our brain. Rehmke also preserves the unity and immortality of the soul: he believes in a "subjectum," in an ego which is the essence having the states of consciousness as attributes. The soul according to Rehmke is not space-given, it is an immaterial something which has sensations. We should accordingly make a distinction between the ego as the subject and the ego as our bodily existence; moreover we should distinguish between the state of consciousness and the object of consciousness. Rehmke takes the word contents of consciousness in the sense of signifying that which the "ego" possesses. The state of consciousness is always the same, it has no evolution, no growth, no development. The object of consciousness however constantly changes. The subject of consciousness is the soul. The interconnection between soul and body is not denied, but there can be no thought of a contact between the immaterial and the material. The soul is, but it is not in space, it is nowhere, and its co-operation with the body is described as "an exemplary together"—an expression to which, we are sorry to say, we cannot attach any meaning.

J. Rehmke objects also to the theory that feeling and motion, soul and body, the spiritual and the material are two sides of one and the same thing. If this two sides theory were correct, he says, the soul would be an abstract and so would be the body. But, he adds, all abstracts are immutable, unchangeable and the object of psychology is something that is observed to possess evolution. Now it is true that some abstracts represent immutable concepts; matter is such an abstract. Matter is that which all matters have in common and the abstract matter is everywhere the same; we cannot speak of the evolution of matter as such. But other abstracts are not so rigid. Take for instance life. Life is an abstract, but it would be a strange proposition to say that there can be no evolution of life because life is an abstract, all abstracts being unchangeable, immutable, invariable.

We cannot agree with Flügel, but J. Rehmke's psychological views are still less acceptable. (Hamburg and Leipsic: L. Voss.)

κρς.

VIERTELJAHRSSCHRIFT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTLICHE PHILOSOPHIE. Vol. XV. Nos. 1 and 2.

LITTERATURBERICHT.