Human Speech, a Study in the Purposive Action of Living Matter

Abstract

MAJOR MACNAMARA'S object in writing this book is to trace the gradual evolution of the living matter found in the cerebral centres on which intelligent speech depends. This is truly a herculean task, and one from which most physiologists and psychologists would shrink; and yet the author has succeeded in producing a readable book, full of information, and in many places both interesting and suggestive. There is not much said about human speech, either as regards its nervous or muscular mechanisms, but the author approaches the subject from the standpoint of general biology. He traces the influence of stimuli on living matter, the effects of the accumulation of stimuli, thu gradual evolution of the senses, the corresponding development in greater complexity of the nerve centres, more especially of those connected with the higher centres of vision and hearing, and the changes that coincide with the appearance of such psychic activity as we associate with the brains of man and the higher animals. Waves of sound, falling on the ear, “reach the living matter forming his centre of hearing in such a form that they become impressed on this matter.” The sensori-motor auditory centres become related to the living matter in the psychical areas of the brain, these react on the cerebral centre or centres for speech, and, in turn, these “play upon the nuclei of the nerves supplying the muscles of the vocal apparatus.”

Human Speech, a Study in the Purposive Action of Living Matter.

By N. C. Macnamara. Pp. xiii + 284. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd., 1908.) Price 5s.