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This book which concerns itself with problems of the mind consists of two parts. The eight essays forming part one are collectively termed “Mind as Behavior” and through them the author attempts to show that mind is an observable object and that consciousness is behavior instead of something inferred from behavior or as he states, “Our belief in consciousness is an expectation of probable behavior based on observation of actual behavior, a belief to be confirmed or refuted by more observation as any other belief in a fact is to be tried out.” Life is also defined in terms of behavior, as an aspect distinguishable but not separable from other aspects, and in no way mysterious in the sense of the “vital.”
The phenomena of life and mind are dealt with at length in Chapter IV— “The Pulse of Life” —where such topics as life and mechanism, materialism, monadism, science of life, self—preservation, and death are discussed after the manner of a philosopher who proposes to blaze hypothetical trails beyond the scope of scientific experimentation. In substance life is defined without reference to beginning or end, or to higher and lower forms of its expression.
Unless endowed with intrinsic reflexes trained to mathematical stimuli in the form of concepts and formulae one may find difficulty in wading through the sections on sensibility and sensation—intensity and the psy—chopathologist trained in the study of dream behavior will find little to feed his expectations, or even to stimulate the philosophic tendencies of which he is so frequently accused while perusing the chapter “On Pain and Dreams” which immediately follows.