evidence as a whole points towards the view that the protozoa die natural deaths only when they are not protected from the products of their own metabolism; and this is death due to external influences, not to a death-instinct inherent in the living substance.

Freud somewhat naïvely disregards the results of these experiments, as well as the cogency of Weismann's arguments, and declares that "if we abandon the morphological point of view for the dynamic, it may be a matter of entire indifference to us whether the natural death of the protozoa can be proved or not. With them the substance later regarded as immortal has not yet separated itself in any way from the part subject to death" (p. 62). That is to say, Freud assumes that although the death-instincts of the protozoa find no morphological expression (produce no corpse), they are there all the time as forces making for death, although the influence exerted by them is obscured by the effects of the forces tending to preserve life.

Even if the biological evidence had been more conclusive than it is, it might still be maintained, as is done by Freud, that biology does not "entirely put out of court any recognition of the death-instincts"; for it is always open to us to suppose that death-instincts may be present although they give no sign of their activity. But if such evidence as may be found is to be entirely disregarded, then indeed it may be asked "whether any good purpose has been served in looking for the answer to the question as to natural death in the study of the protozoa" (p. 61).

Along the line of biological investigation Freud finds little to support his conception of death-instincts, and at the end of his enquiry he simply returns to his assumption that they do exist and proceeds to a further examination of their nature and of the relation in which they stand to the life-instincts. In doing so he enters upon a fascinating speculation regarding the action and reaction of the life- and death-instincts pertaining to the individual cells of which the body is composed, and reveals to us, in the interrelation of these bodily units, a new and unexpected application of his theory of the Libido. He supposes that the life-instincts active in every cell take the other cells for their object' and, by partially neutralizing the death-instincts of those cells, help to prolong their lives. "Thus the Libido of our sexual instincts would coincide with the Eros of poets and philosophers, which holds together all things living" (p. 64).

There are two glaring gaps in the continuity of Professor Freud's argument. Dominated by his belief that a tendency to repetition is a primordial characteristic of living matter, he seizes upon this tendency and makes it the fundamental basis of all the instincts. Repetition is a reinstatement of an earlier condition and the first instinct of living substance must be a tendency to return to the inanimate from which it sprang. If this be so it should be possible to point to some recognised instinct in operation the activity of which tends towards the death of the organism endowed with it. But this Freud fails to do. The only example he puts forward in support of his contention is the sadistic impulse which aims at 'injury of the object' rather than at selfdestruction. His way out of this contradiction is to assume that sadism is "a death-instinct which is driven apart from the ego by the influence of the narcissistic libido, so that it becomes manifest only in reference to the object" (p. 69).

He anticipates the criticism that this conception of a displaced instinct is

"far from being evident and creates a frankly mystical impression," by reminding us that such an assumption is no new one, for he had made a similar one in a previous work. Clinical observation had led him to believe that masochism is to be understood as a recoil of sadism on to the ego. He gave this "turning against the subject" as one of the destinies which await the instincts, and he maintained that masochism is actually sadism turned against the subject's own ego-a change of object without a change of aim. He regarded sadism as the primary impulse and he did not then believe in the existence of a primary masochism, not derived from sadism.

He appears to justify his new assumption by asserting that "a turning of the instinct from the object to the ego is...essentially the same thing as a turning from the ego to the object" (p. 70). From one point of view—that of mere mechanism or process-this is no doubt true; but from another point of view it is obviously false. As regards the result, the displacement is not essentially the same but essentially different. Masochism is now declared to be primary and the so-called turning of the instinct against the self is in reality a regression-a return to what obtained before the death-instinct was "driven apart from the ego by the influence of the narcissistic libido." This change of standpoint, so far as we are told, is not based upon clinical observation as was the earlier view of the sadism-masochism relation, and we are led to suspect that the new formulation derives its cogency from its congruity with, and the support it accords to, the hypothesis of death-instincts.

The second gap in the argument comes at the other end of the series of speculations by which Freud defends his thesis. The conception of a repetitioncompulsion pointed the way to the conception of death-instincts, but the recognition of life-instincts brought to light a difficulty in relating them to the repetition-compulsion. The final aim of all the life-instincts is "the union of two germ cells which are specifically differentiated." If the sexual instincts are subject to the repetition-compulsion and if they reproduce primitive states of the living being, then, as has been indicated on a previous page, it must be asked: "Of what important happening...in the process of development of the living substance is sexual reproduction, or its forerunner, the copulation of two individual protozoa, the repetition?" (p. 54). Science fails to provide an answer to this question and Freud is forced to seek elsewhere for an hypothesis which will satisfy the demand that this instinct, like all others, arises from the necessity for the reinstatement of an earlier condition. Such an hypothesis he finds in the myth told by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium -the myth of the round men whom Zeus cut in two. In this way it has come to pass that every human creature, being a counterpart, is always seeking his other half. Are we to assume, Freud asks, "that living substance was at the time of its animation. rent into small particles, which since that time strive for reunion by means of the sexual instincts"? (p. 75). And there he leaves the matter. "I think," he says, "this is the point at which to break off" (p. 76).

Save in regard to the establishment of a repetition-compulsion beyond the pleasure-principle Freud frankly acknowledges the speculative character of this book. He declares that he is neither convinced himself nor does he seek to convince others of the truth of the views he here sets forth. He asserts the right to give oneself up to a line of thought and follow it as far as it leads, simply out of scientific curiosity. But he also declares his belief that in dealing with ultimate things "everyone is under the sway of preferences deeply rooted

within, into the hands of which he unwittingly plays as he pursues his speculation" (p. 77).

The pessimism which hangs like a cloud over the whole of this essay is perhaps the inevitable outcome of a belief, however achieved, in a mechanistic theory of life; and perhaps the criticism which will, in the end, invalidate Freud's arguments, may come, not from those who dispute the accuracy of his deductions, but from those who question the fundamental assumption on which all his reasoning rests-the assumption that all the phenomena of life and mind can be interpreted in terms of the physical sciences. Freud has invoked the myth of Aristophanes in aid of his speculations; is it permissible to appeal to the other myth in the Symposium, the Discourse of Diotima? "What then is Eros?-is he Mortal? Nay, Mortal he verily is not."

T. W. MITCHELL.

REVIEWS

The Evolution of the Conscious Faculties. By J. VARENDONCK, D.Litt., D.Sc. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1923. Pp. 259. Price 18s. net.

This essay, as the title implies, is a genetic study of the conscious faculties, based on a biological conception of the problems of psychology. The author holds with Baldwin that the original type of all psychic process is the simple cycle: outer excitation-inner process-reaction to the outer world; he starts from this formula, and constantly returns to it as his argument develops.

His first two chapters deal with his distinction between reduplicative and synthetic memory, and with the latter as an element in perception. Reduplicative memory is the most primitive aspect of retention, and lies at the root of the preservation of the primitive organism. It is an anticipative process, although in itself only of use in relation to situations which have already been experienced. Repetition is not essential to its functioning; and it is an automatic function, for "the mind registers without the intervention of volition and...some remembrances come back uncalled for, nay, when we should better like not to recollect at all." It is utilised at the higher levels of conscious life, as well as by the primitive organism; the products of synthetic memory being in their turn subject to the reduplicative process. Synthetical memory is the "function which registers a selected classification of experience," or, again, may be defined as an accumulation of mnemonic elements apt to become causative; that is, provoking the conception or the awakening of reduplicative memory." It involves not merely the positive selection of elements of experience, but also the negative aspect of the same function the inhibition of irrelevant recollections. An illuminating parallel is drawn between reduplicative and synthetic memory on the one hand, and the protopathic and epicritic systems of sensibility of Head and Rivers, on the other. Varendonck shows further how both forms of memory are drawn upon in conceptual processes; synthetic memory makes it possible to use similar mnemonic elements from different situations, but reduplicative memory makes it possible for us to test our premeditated actions by unrolling the "film" of similar situations in the past. He emphasises the normality and genetic significance of the reduplicative form of memory, and evidently feels that this is his special contribution to the problems raised. As he remarks in the final summary, "At the lower stages of mental evolution reduplicative memory is responsible for automatic and reflex behaviour, but it is still of the first importance for the intellections at the top of the ladder."

Having shown that both forms of memory function in perception, the author develops his view that perception and conception are the same phenomenon, both releasing an automatic flow of memorial elements; in the first case, however, memory is set moving by an external excitation, whereas in the second the excitation is internal. He then turns to the problem of unconscious movements, offering some interesting examples of these. Human automatisms, he holds, are not fewer than those of simpler organisms, they are, rather, more varied and mobile. An acute discussion of the intimate relations of movement and perception, and movement and thought, follows, and the view is

developed that repression of movement is a fundamental condition of thought, such repression being, of course, automatic and unconscious. Here the support of Ribot and Janet is invoked. The author might well have drawn also upon everyday psycho-analytic experience to illustrate his view that "the tendency towards movement diminishes when thought operates with wordsymbols instead of images of objects," and have shown that this tendency further diminishes when the word-symbols are abstract and technical rather than concrete and colloquial. It is comparatively easy to refer to banned topics in general or scientific terms; resistances are much more powerful against familiar, concrete terms, since these lie much nearer to the original divide between primitive gesture and formal symbolism, and are, indeed, felt to be a form of behaviour rather than an instrument of thought. Varendonck has, however, been strongly influenced throughout his study of the conscious processes by psycho-analytic method, and for this reason he is able to go on to the view that "the fore-conscious ideas which are not allowed to cross the threshold, and which repression does not succeed in sending back into the deeper layers of the unconscious, find their way to the muscular system, which is another way of saying that, for affective ideas and reduplicative recollections, the passage into motility is one alternative, whereas access into consciousness is the other."

The discussion then proceeds to the problem of consciousness, a problem which, for Varendonck, is the question of how consciousness, which, in the lower animals is momentary and discontinuous, a mere flash, becomes almost continuous, and dominant, in man. He finds his answer in the multiplicity of human desires which are "so abundant that there are but few moments in the course of a day when sensations of objects come to him without immediately arousing a corresponding wish, which puts the psychic mechanism on the move." This leads him to the view that "will is constituted by all the wishes of man tending towards adaptation," a definition which we confess we find more than a little tantalising, since it would seem to hold a good deal more psychology than the author actually brings out. Unfortunately the definitions offered are the weakest aspect of the essay, the power to focus an important and valuable movement of ideas in a clear, vivid and concise sentence being evidently wanting. We may instance the definition of intelligence as consisting in "the whole of the psychic operations, which in their turn consist in reviving certain recollections under the stress of wish or will most often to re-associate them--and to repress others which are not useful to the end in view." And that of consciousness as "that part of intelligence which is organised for the reaction against the outer world, for the adaption to the non-ego." The argument is, however, of more importance than the form of its summary, and it is clear that Varendonck in this volume emphasises some aspects of the biology of consciousness and intelligence which have not yet been fully worked out.

Some reference to the work of Stout and Hobhouse, as amongst the most important English students of genetic psychology, would have been in place. And we should like to see Varendonck's view of perception and conception (as, for example, that "perception includes an unconscious judgment"), brought into relation with Stout's analysis of the "perceptual process," and Hobhouse's "practical judgment." Neither of these authors would agree that perception and conception are the same phenomenon, differing only in exciting conditions, although both Stout and Hobhouse would be at one with Varendonck in emphasising the continuity of the two processes.