carnation are in many quarters replacing Christianity in our English-speaking world, that these Frenchmen, with intellectual motives and a mental temper so entirely dissimilar to those of our theosophists, should urge such kindred doctrines upon our consideration.
William James.
Of the ten studies which make up this fourth volume of Dr. Münsterberg's "Beiträge," the study on the comparison of tone-distances has been chosen for consideration, not because it is especially meritorious beyond the rest, but because it takes for granted certain matters of methodological interest which, it seems to me, are still open to discussion. The author first draws the question of the estimation of tone-distances out of the cloud of controversy in which Stumpf and Wundt had left it, finds Stumpf right in ascribing the 'middle judgments' of Lorenz's[1] experiments to the interfering play of the consciousness of musical intervals, but nevertheless regards the experiments themselves as valuable in showing that, whatever the determining influences, unlike musical intervals may appear like when compared as distances. The object of the present 'Beitrag' is, in great measure, to test Stumpf's opinions by taking such intervals between tones, that the tone arising from a rate of vibration forming the arithmetical mean of the rates of the extreme tones would be so far removed from making musical intervals with the extremes as to exclude the hypothesis of the inductive action of musical intervals. In part, three tones were used as in Lorenz's experiments, and in part two pairs of tones, the first tone of the second pair being variable, but in each case the interval was changed by successive steps till the distances seemed like. It is somewhat remarkable that Dr. Münsterberg should have found this method of gradations trustworthy when Lorenz found it valueless: "Not merely one tone was felt as the middle between the terminal tones," says Lorenz, "but often an entire series."[2] Accordingly he varied the middle tone irregularly, now high, now low, now in the middle, but always so that no judgment could give the observers clue as to the nature of the succeeding judgment. Dr.
