Mental Evolution in Man. By George John Romanes. (Kagan Paul,
Trench, and Co.)—Dr. Romanes writes in his first chapter : —" After centuries of intellectual conquest in all regions of the phenomenal universe, man has at last begun to find that he may apply in a new and most unexpected manner the adage of antiquity,—Knoto thyself. For he has begun to perceive a strong probability, if not an actual certainty, that his own living nature is identical in kind with the nature of all other life, and that even the most amazing side of this his own nature—nay, the most amazing of all things within the reach of his knowledge—the human mind itself, is but the topmost inflorescence of one mighty growth, whose roots and stem and many branches are sunk in the abyss of planetary time." He proposes, when he shall have proved this of the "Human Faculty "—by which may be taken to be meant speech and the intellectual conditions wanted for speech —to extend his inquiry to "Intellect, Emotions, Volition, Morals, and Religion." Criticism of the arguments by which he main- tains a thesis so vast as is this, oven under the limitations im- posed by the author upon himself in the present instalment of his work, we do not attempt. This must be done at another time and on a larger scale than present conditions make possible. But it is only respectful to a writer who takes high rank as a student, an observer, and reasoner, to record the appearance of the first instalment of his work, if we do not attempt to estimate it.
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