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and the relations between psychiatry and neuropathology throughout the nineteenth cen- tury in Germany, France, England, and America are followed abruptly by consideration of Miibius’s seemingly relevant statements. The immediate context of these views remains obscure, and there is no sense of development during the thirty-five years spanned by Miibius’s career. When noted in passing, the tensions and gaps in Mobius’s views are ascribed to the paradoxical nature of the omnipresent Miibius strip. This lack of sensitivity to connectedness and development in the narrative, though sometimes in- triguing, ultimately frustrates the reader. The problem is that a printed book, while topologically complex, is resolutely linear in structure. Professor Schiller Responds:

Fair enough. But the little book was not meant to treat the subject, or subjects, “in depth.” That expression (fortunately not used by the reviewer) does, however, characterize some of the pedantry from which I deliberately shied away. In agreement with the publisher 1 tried to keep even a potential lay reader awake, to produce something short and, for better or worse, “intriguing,” while still doing justice to the man’s personality and the insoluble nature of the problem. For a less jumpy account I wish to draw attention to Elisabeth Katharina Waldeck-Semadeni von Poschiavo’s “Paul Julius Moebius, 1853-1907, Leben und Werk” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bern, 1981 written under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Med. Esther Fischer-Homberger), which appeared too late to incorporate into my bibliography.

Eric T. Carlson, Jeffrey L. Wollock, and Patricia S. Noel, eds. Benjamin Rush’s Lec- tures on the Mind. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1981. xix + 735 pp. $15.00 (cloth) (Reviewed by ROBERT E. JONES) Benjamin Rush’s recognition as the “father of American psychiatry*’ has been based

heretofore upon his Medical Enquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, published in 1812. Now with the publication of his Lectures on the Mind, we can see that his reputation as a psychologically minded physician was due as much or more to the promulgation of his psychological ideas to several thousand medical students from 1791 to 1813 as to his book. The importance he placed on mental phenomena as integral to physiological medicine (“The diseases of the mind are as certainly objects of medicine, as those of the body,’’ p. 407) guaranteed that psychiatry would be a major branch of American medical practice.

Led by Eric T. Carlson, M.D., who has become the foremost expert on Rush’s psy- chiatric writing, a trio of scholars has edited and annotated the lectures on animal life, the nervous system, and the mind which Rush delivered as Professor of the Institutes of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, they have also provided three useful essays. One is a brief biography of Rush and the place of his psychology lectures in his physiological theory. One excellent essay, a very worthwhile contribution to the history of the sources of Rush’s and of American psychology, traces the origins of Rush’s ideas about the mind to the British empiricists John Locke and David Hartley, to the

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Scottish common sense philosophers Thomas Reid and James Beattie, and to French sensationists. The third essay discusses Rush’s influence on American psychology.

Rush coined the word phrenology for the science of the human mind, and he con- sidered a knowledge of the faculties and operations of the mind to be essential to the physician not only in his medical role but also as a citizen and man. With such knowledge, a physician can give testimony in court, plan the studies of youth, give dis- criminating opinions on theology and morals, and take part in public affairs.

All of the lectures show Rush’s persistent belief in a Creator as the source of life; his theory “prostrates in the most humble posture the mind and body of men at the footstool of divine power.” His style of approaching his subject is charmingly eighteenth century in the way he explores every topic systematically and thoroughly. Rush always gives credit to the source of an idea, and one is greatly impressed with the number of references he cites and the breadth of his reading and acquaintance.

In considering the mind, Rush discusses its nature, its faculties (instinct, memory, imagination, understanding, will, passions, the principle of faith, and the moral faculty), and its operations (perception, association, judgment, reason, volition). Rush provides the lengthiest early American treatise on sleep and dreams. His concept of the mind is always based on biology, a fact that made him optimistic not only about treating its aberrations but also about educating men to be effective in republican government. At times his statements are charmingly naive, but his attempt to assemble and evaluate the theories of his era is impressive. His theory of psychology, here presented for the first time, has great historical interest. Editor’s Note: The editors of this volume were offered an opportunity to respond to the review, but none felt that a response was necessary.

Giorgio Tagliacozzo, ed. Vico: Past and Present. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1981. xvi + 249 + 266 pp. (Reviewed by JEFFREY BARNOUW) This volume, paginated as two, presents a large sampling from a very large con-

ference on Giambattista Vico held in Venice in August 1978. The first “volume” is headed “Philosophy” and subdivided into “Intellectual Background” and several epistemological and methodological topics, while the second, “Comparative Investigations: Human Studies,” includes two groups of essays, types familiar to Vico studies. The first relates Vico to subsequent thinkers (and one predecessor, Machiavelli), either simply compared with him (Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Charles Sanders Peirce) or studied for their interest in him (R. G. Collingwood and, twice, Erich Auerbach). The second relates Vico to disciplines or particular schools of current work in the social sciences and humanities.

Particularly the latter “volume” shows the influence of the editor’s conviction that “Vico’s thought could contribute greatly to fulfilling the widely felt need to recast much of social-scientific thinking in humanistic terms” (pp. x-xi). This expectation has cer- tainly encouraged interest in Vico, though it may also have given him associations or an aura that turned others away. Fortunately, many essays here, particularly in the first