THE MIND OF SCIENCE.* AMONG the many recent works on
Evolution and Heredity, one of the best is not a text-book, but just a record of pleasant memories. Dr. Judd's The Coming of Evolution is written with singular charm and distinction : be could not have found a happier way of celebrating the seventieth year of his life. The story has been told before, but is always worth telling again, of the influences and friendships which went to the making of Darwin ; how men were drawn to him by.admiration of him and by love of facts. There is no better reading than to study the faithful and patient working together of minds of the highest order ; and here, fora shilling, is a Life of an Idea : its parentage, birth, early days, adven- tures, and final triumph. We have many biographies of thinkers, we want more biographies of thoughts ; and we may well be glad of this admirable history of the greatest of all theories of the world. It is especially useful, because it pro- perly recognises the work of Sir Charles Lyell and the founding of the doctrine of evolution in geology. Indeed, the book on its own lines is not far from faultless ; its title only is clumsy : but the perfect title would not be easy to find. Another of these " Cambridge Manuals," Mr. Doncaster's Heredity in the Light of Recent Research, is also excellent. It gives, in one hundred and thirty pages, a very careful and well- arranged summary of the principles of the study of heredity, the conclusions attained by the biometric method, and the guiding facts of Mendelism. It is in no sense a primer for beginners ; not that it is deliberately difficult or assumes a great amount of previous reading, but it does assume a highly-trained and severely logical mind. Mr. Doncaster is a thorough believer in the doctrine that acquired variations are not transmitted, whether they be of the body or of the mind; and the following sentences illustrate his judgment and the simple and lucid style of his writing :—
"The conclusion is therefore reached that not only bodily characters but also those of the mind are essentially determined by the hereditary endowment received from the parents. This result is of great importance practically. It shows how little room is left in the development of the individual for the effects of environment even on the intellect or mind in the broadest sense of the word ; no doubt the direction which intellectual development takes is to a considerable extent determined by circumstances, but the kind of mind is irrevocably decided before the child is born. Still less is there room for the inheritance of the mental acquire- ments made by the individual during his life, and hence the hopes held cut of improving the race by education and by special care of the dull or feeble-minded are illusory, except in so far as they improve the tradition."
Mr. C. E. Walker's Hereditary Characters and their Modes of Transmissicn is a very thorough and scholarly work. As the author of " The Essentials of Cytology," and as Director of Research in the Glasgow Cancer Hospital, he is especially concerned with the physiological facts of the cell, and with the laws of cell-division and cell-conjugation ; and, as a doctor, he writes with equal authority of the facts of immunity to disease. Like Dr. Archdall Reid, he is well acquainted with the limitations of the experimental method: "There seems to be a tendency among biologists of certain schools to disregard every kind of evidence relating to the transmission of here- ditary characters, except that provided by experiment. Such was not the method of Darwin." He gives due importance to the great preponderance of racial characteristics over parental. ]t would seem, he says, that very few characters are inherited from the parents and immediate ancestors. On the contrary,
(1) • The Coming of Evolution; the Story of a Great Revolution in Science. By John W. Judd, C.B., LL.D., F.E.S. "Cambridge Manuals of Science and Lam ature." Camtridge: at the University Press. fls.]—(2) Heredity in the Light of Recent Research. By L. Doncaster, M.A. Same aeries, publishers and price.---(3) Hereditary Cl anuters and their Modes oTransmission. By C. E. Walker, M.Sc., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. Edward Arnold. [Sc. ed .1—(4) The First Principles of Heredity. By S. Herbert, M.D., M.R. .S., L.V..C.P. London: A. and C. Black. [5s.]—(2) The Inherent Law of Life a New Theory of Life and :f ri,ense. By Franz Bleiuschrod, M.D. Translated and Edited by Louise C. A n cl, B.Sc., M.B., B.S. London: G. Bell and Sons. [Ss. Cd.]—(6) The Lrau.h..n Mind. By Joseph lacCate. London : A. and C. Black.
the overwhelming bulk of characters appearing in any individual are the heritage of the race, and are derived from comparatively remote ancestors ; and be connects this fact with the fact that some parts of the cells involved in fertili- sation are distributed in an alternative manner, while other parts simply divide in bulk. For the general reader, Mr. Walker's chapter on "Adaptation" is a delightful study, with its amazing instances of the fantastical ingenuity of Nature.
Dr. Herbert's First Principles of Heredity is a complete and well-arranged text-book; it covers the whole ground of the subject in a clear, orderly method. The author wrote it for students not yet "advanced enough to master the larger manuals." But his work is in no sense elementary ; indeed, it is quite as hard as any of the books on this list, and there is room for doubt whether it be not too hard for the " intelligent and aspiring young people, eager for a deeper knowledge of the problem of life," for whom he wrote it. The illustrations are numerous and good ; and the whole book is written with authority. It is perhaps inevitable that a man acquainted with the poverty and depravity of a great city should be hopeless and bitter over things as they are, and should preach Weismann and Eugenics as the one way out. "As for moral characteristics," he says, "there is no doubt that we cannot but bold them subject to the general biological' laws of inheritance." That is the present mind of science; yet the very words, moral characteristics, have a way of evading the grasp of science. Dr. Herbert goes so far as to quote this portentous sentence : " Education is to man what manure is to the pea. The educated are in themselves the better for it, but their experience will alter not one jot the irrevocable nature of their offspring." But education includes punish- ment, and we cannot punish a pea; and the difference between men and peas is really very considerable.
Two books remain which are more or less closely concerned with problems of heredity. One is Kleinschrod's The Inherent Law of Life : a new Theory of Life and of Disease, translated by Louise C. Appel. It is well translated, and it raises ques- tions of much interest, but it fails to be more than a vague and wordy exposition of "'Vitalism." Life, it says, is neither mechanistic nor materialistic, but just life ; and it tries to strengthen this position by arguments, some wise and some foolish. A man may well disbelieve and reject " materialism," yet remain strictly commonplace in his views on the action of digitalis and of diphtheria antitoxin. The other book is Mr. McCabe's The Evolution of Mind. It is a study of the paral- lelism between the development of the brain and the develop- ment (if that word may be allowed) of the Ego. It is not a bad book, and is worth reading ; but, of course, it fails, and is none the worse for that. A book on consciousness which avoids " metaphysical considerations" will never get far. " Frankly," he says, " I find no speculation on the origin and nature of consciousness that is worth reproducing, and I assuredly have none to cffer." He is inclined to be fairly sure that consciousness has arisen in the cortex of the brain, and is a function thereof : so are many of us. He hopes that science has " Lrought us nearer to a verdict than we were in the days when monists, dualists, and parallelists fought their historic battles." That may be ; but the verdict in favcur of dogmatic monism, even if science were ever in a: position to give that verdict, would be subject to appeal : and the historic battles would begin all over again.
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