LITERARY NOTICES. 



849 



" The order and progress of the world," 

 President Hill maintains, " the ideals which 

 press upon us for realization these are the 

 secure foundations of religious faith. The 

 unity of the world, the immanent rationality 

 of its processes, the beneficence of law, the 

 imperative authority of duty these are the 

 corner stones of religious life and hope." His 

 own definition of religion, however, is " belief 

 in a superhuman being or beings regarded 

 as objects of worship " ; and the question is 

 how, without some such hypothesis as Mr. 

 Spencer's, or without a primitive supernatural 

 revelation a conception which the author 

 puts aside as totally insufficient and having 

 only a verbal meaning to explain the origin 

 of such belief. That question we do not 

 consider he has solved. In concluding this 

 notice we leave many interesting points un- 

 touched ; but we wish to say that the book 

 as a whole has great merits ; it is perspicu- 

 ous and scholarly in style, vigorous in thought, 

 candid in tone, excellent in matter, and alto- 

 gether a very creditable addition to American 

 philosophical literature. 



A Theory of Development and Heredity. 

 By Henry B. Orr, Ph. D., Professor at 

 the Tulane University of Louisiana. 

 New York and London : Macmillan & 

 Co., 1893. Pp. ix+255. Price, $1.50. 



The author states in his preface that he 

 believes that by a critical .review of the 

 facts of biology in the light of the great 

 conclusions derived from the allied sciences 

 of physics and psychology we may obtain 

 a view of the great phenomena of life that 

 shall bring into harmony a more extensive 

 r.inge of facts, and explain intelligibly rela- 

 tions that have hitherto been hidden. 



He sums up a scheme of the course of 

 development by premising a primitive mass 

 of protoplasm which acquires nervous co- 

 ordinations that influence its activity and 

 growth : as it divides and redivides, it adds 

 continually new co-ordinations to those al- 

 ready acquired, and by repetition the process 

 of growth and development has the charac- 

 ter of reflex action. As the same forces act 

 on each generation, and form a series of 

 stimuli that are similar for each generation, so 

 each generation repeats in its life the course 

 of development followed by all its ancestors. 

 These diiferent phases of one process con- 

 TOL. XLIV. 62 



stitute his explanation of growth, develop- 

 ment, and inheritance. According to this, 

 in our own development we must recognize 

 ourselves and our actions as the result of a 

 definite, accurate activity of creative force. 



The author sees what is the last analysis 

 of such a theory of development and life, 

 that our ideas of free will and moral respon- 

 sibility are paradoxical : but we do not see 

 on what grounds he believes such a para- 

 dox is capable of satisfactory solution, even 

 though we are all convinced that we have a 

 certain degree of freedom of will. Would 

 it not be better to abandon the idea of free 

 will and hold that will is the expression of 

 hereditary tendencies modified by environ- 

 ment a theory that, at present, the author 

 strongly inclines to ? 



Prof. Orr's book is interesting, and is a 

 satisfactory explanation of the evolutionary 

 theory of development and heredity. 



Lectures and Essays on Fevers and Diph- 

 theria, 1849 to 1879. By Sir William 

 Jenner, Bart., G. C. B.," M. D. Lond., 

 and F. R. C. P., D. C. L. Oxon., LL. D. Can- 

 tab, and Edin., F. R. S., etc. New York : 

 Macmillan & Co., 1893. Pp. xii-f 3 to 

 581. Price, $4. 



This volume is a collection of papers 

 that the author published between 1849 and 

 1879 in various medical journals of Great 

 Britain. 



The first essay, on the identity or non-iden- 

 tity of typhoid and typhus fevers, is dated 

 lS49-'50, and is founded on a statistical 

 analysis of a series of cases observed dur- 

 ing two years at the London Fever Hos- 

 pital. 



The second essay is devoted to proving 

 that the causes of typhus, of typhoid, and of 

 relapsing fever are separate and distinct, a 

 fact by no means currently accepted in 1849. 

 This topic is further elucidated in the third 

 essay. 



The fourth essay, on the acute specific 

 diseases, formed the Gulstonian Lectures of 

 1853. 



The second section of the volume con- 

 sists of three clinical lectures, two on diph- 

 theria and one on croup and diseases that 

 resemble it. 



All these essays demonstrate the careful 

 and critical observation displayed by the au- 

 thor in his clinical work, and the volume 



