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In this book Professor Rosett presents a sketchy, somewhat artificial and premature discussion of what psychologists and psychiatrists usually consider to be exceedingly complex functions. In his introduction Dr. Rosett bemoans the fact that the ancient and mediæval thinkers, also much concerned with the problem of consciousness, employed premises that were deeply rooted in fable and tradition. He complains that they 'exerted the powers of the mind in the vain hope that the factors requisite for the solution of the problem of the mind might thereby be obtained, the facts at their disposal thus remaining scanty. Their arguments contained wide gaps which they filled in by arbitrary assumptions of collosal magnitude and with the unbounded license of the poet and the dreamer. Most of them were indeed as much poets as they were logicians and they hardly ever hesitated to mix facts with phantasy.' In the reviewer's opinion, the author himself throughout the whole book lapses into a similar methodological procedure, often forgetting however that it is not simply the license which makes a good poet.
Rosett presents an inconclusive and not very scientific view of the problem in hand. The literature noted throughout the whole book represents only one small relevant part of the whole field of literature referable to the problems discussed. In the interests of brevity and perhaps simplicity a great deal of contradictory literature is omitted, the author thus sacrificing much that might have failed to fit in with his theories. It would be unfair to state, nevertheless, that the author has not drawn upon experience for his point of view; but he drew essentially only from his own experience which unfortunately was mainly in the safer, surer fields of neurology and neuroanatomy. The book therefore becomes more of a simplified introductory point of view for elementary students of the biological sciences rather than a thorough or profound