In all sorts of psychology, save one, there is of late an ia creasing interest in the motor side of consciousness. Physio logical and abnormal psychology are busy studying the involun tary and automatic movements that are connected with conscious or subconscious processes. Explanatory psychology is making use more and more of factors connected with muscular ten Sion or with reactions to stimuli. Even abstract concepts are now interpreted, by some of the best students of logic, as types of reaction to classes of stimuli. In short, the evident fact that man is not merely perceptive and intellectual, but distinctly se tive or reactive, is being pushed to a position in our study more worthy of its fundamental importance. Those also who are trying to apply the results of psychology to educational problems are - the best of them - emphasizing this same fact, and insist ing in accordance therewith that the child shall be educated not in learning or thinking alone, but in well-directed and vigorous action. The same impetus is Seen in the introduction of manual training and other practical activities into the schools.

In view of all this interest, it is somewhat surprising that the subject of movement has received so little attention from one of the great departments of psychological research. We have as yet no psychophysics of the voluntary movements. By this I mean that we have no large mass of detailed study into the normal relations of voluntary movement to consciousness.

We have nothing in this line that can compare with the immense amount of work done on the relation of perception to the stimulus perceived; or, to widen our view, we have nothing in the general subject of voluntary movement that can compare in completeness with the work done and still doing in all depart ments of sensation.

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