of the brain; and that by different arrangements of these elements the various forms of mental activity are secured." He then proceeds to a "classification of ideas," using the term "idea" as practically synonymous with sense impression or sensation. He makes two classes: "knowledge-producing ideas" and "action-producing ideas." Instead of an idea being itself a form of knowledge derived from sense impressions, he makes it a producer of knowledge. His "action ideas," instead of being, as one would naturally suppose, thoughts that generate motor impulses, seem to be nothing but internal sensations or emotions.
He then discourses at some length upon nerve currents, and without indicating that he has made any experiments of his own or seen any described by others, he imagines that he has discovered some new and important laws of nervous action. Among these are that "sensory or ingoing currents" cause "clear ideas," while "motor or outgoing currents," which "move more rapidly than do the sensory currents," cause vivid but obscure ideas. These vivid ideas, he says, "are motor feelings." "They are the pleasures and pains of the organism, its desires, its passions and its beliefs." The "weaker and purer" sensory currents furnish "ideas of the environment," while the "motor feelings" only furnish "ideas of the organism." What he means by motor feelings as distinguished from motor impulses following normally upon the discharges of the sensori-motor centers it is difficult to see. He seems to think there can be motor without sensory phenomena, and to forget that all sensory currents, whether peripheral or internal may produce motor effects. As nearly as I can understand him his "motor feelings" are simply the general effective sensations or emotions, but he does not seem to think that these have to be referred to the brain along sensory currents, the same as external sense impressions, in order to become conscious or be reflected to the organs of motion. It seems like an involved and ambiguous way of saying a very simple thing.
His treatment of "the self-conscious center" with a simple diagram is not altogether trite, and his remarks on "the development of the sensory feelings," and the classification of the motor feelings" are based on the foregoing " principles." They seem to have been evolved wholly from his personal meditations, and he manifests no acquaintance with the general volume of psychological knowledge and thought of the time. The only "psychologists" that he vouchsafes to mention
