The difference in the action between whispered sounds and those spoken loud is not so great as might have been expected.

Voracious.

Tick.

Peg.

Attended.

Ferocious.

Sufficeth.

Tear.

Tin.

Kite.

Words of Intensity.

Tentative.

ли

Deducting.

The word used in the four following trials is "Incomprehen

sibility."

The first is whispered faintly,

The second is whispered forcibly,

The third is spoken at the ordinary tone of the voice,
And the fourth is spoken loudly.

In order to show the manner in which the diagrams of words are affected when spoken together, I give four lines from Hohenlinden," and the words separately.

It will be observed that the diagrams of the separate words, although they become modified when grouped together, are more or less discernible in the lines continuously spoken; and the similarity of sound at the termination of the first three lines, which constitutes the rhyme of the verse, is represented in the similarity of form, or in the character of the form, of the terminations of the diagrams of these three lines.

The subject might be pursued much further by showing the diagrams of the same words spoken by different individuals, the outlines produced by the words and sentences of other languages, the effect produced by change of accent, &c.

My object, however, has not been to pursue the subject into minute detail, but to show that the articulation of the human voice is accompanied by definite pneumatic actions, and that those actions, many of which are insensible to ordinary observation, are capable of being recorded.—A Paper read before the Royal Society, April 16, 1874.

289

REVIEWS.

IT.

MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY.*

cannot be doubted that the study of the mind, or, in other words, the pursuit of mental physiology, is at once the most difficult and attractive study within the wide range of scientific subjects. Its difficulty results from the very nature of the subject, for it has within its grasp the important questions-Is the mind exclusively the result of the merely physical operations of brain-substance, or is there another and more mysterious agent engaged in the elaboration of thought? These are grave questions, and ones which unhappily cannot be decided positively at present, nor in all probability in futuro. Still it is possible to arrive, from a mass of evidence, at some sort of conclusion; and we are aware that certain men of considerable mental powers have arrived at the decision that mind is simply brain-power, i. e. the result of physical or chemical changes in the substance of the tissue, and that there is nothing whatever present in the shape of a soul or spirit. That, however, is not the view propounded by Dr. Carpenter, who, so far as we can perceive, believes unquestionably in the existence of a soul, but endeavours to explain most mental phenomena by ordinary physiological laws. The difficulty of doing for mental questions what is a comparatively easy matter in the case of the ordinary organs of the body, is admitted on all hands; and indeed this purely physiological mode of treatment is a method which the great metaphysician, Sir W. Hamilton, never for a moment attempted, and which we may say has not been tried on any extensive scale till Dr. Carpenter took the matter in hand. And indeed it would have been difficult for any ordinary student of mental operations to attempt, for he who would endeavour to solve the various questions it involves must possess an intimate acquaintance, not only with the laws laid down by the metaphysical schools, but must also have given serious attention to the physiology of the mind of the healthy and the insane. We cannot say that Dr. Carpenter has satisfied his readers on the question of the existence of a soul, for we ourselves fail to be convinced by any physical facts adduced by him in this part of the testimony. But we cannot help expressing our admiration of the cogency of his arguments-their number, power, and immense variety-in proving that the several psychical

"Principles of Mental Physiology, with their Application to the Training and Discipline of the Mind, and the Study of its Morbid Phenomena." By W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. London: Henry S. King & Co., 1874.