f)SS Mast, Loeb's Mechanistic Conception of Life. 



in the yellow and green. Loeb (1910) confirmed this 

 result, using Lubbock's methods, altho earlier (1905) he had sar- 

 castically rejected Lubbock's results intimating that his methods 

 were faulty. Many other experimental results could be cited in 

 support of the criticism of Loeb's contention stated above. 



(2) Loeb says (p. 223): "The writer has shown that the ex- 

 periments on the effect of acids on the heliotropism of copepods 

 can be repeated with the same results in Volrox. It is, therefore, 

 erroneous to try to explain these heliotropic reactions of animals 

 on the basis of peculiarities (e. g., vision) which are not found in 

 plants." Loeb refers here to the fact that when a trace of acid 

 is added to the solution Volrox and a number of different copepods 

 have been found to become strongly positive in their reactions to 

 light. But Volrox is on the border-line between plants and animals. 

 It is claimed by botanists as a plant, by zoologists as an animal. 

 What support then can this fact lend to the contention that the 

 orienting reactions to light in plants and animals are identical! 

 especially when this is the only known point of similarity in the 

 reactions of these forms and when it is known that the process of 

 orientation in the copepods is radically different from that in 

 Volrox and that changes in temperature have precisely opposite 

 effects on the reactions to light in these forms? 



It is, however, in the treatment of those forms of behavior 

 known as moral action that our author seems to have wandered 

 farthest on the paths of mysticism and vague dogmatic speculation. 



In attempting to reduce ethics to mechanical principles he 

 assumes that all instincts are purely mechanical and says (p. 31): 

 "Our instincts are the root of our ethics and the instincts are just 

 as hereditary as is the form of our body. We eat, drink, and 

 reproduce not because mankind has reached an agreement that this 

 is desirable, but because, machine-like, we are compelled to do so. 

 We are active, because we are compelled to be so by processes in 

 our central nervous system; and as long as human beings are not 

 economic slaves the instincts of successful work or workmanship 

 determines the direction of their action. The mother loves and 

 cares for her children, not, because metaphysicians had the idea 

 that this was desirable, but because the instinct of taking care of 

 the young is inherited just as distinctly as the morphological 

 characters of the female body. We seek and enjoy the fellowship 

 of human beings because hereditary conditions compel us to do so. 

 We struggle for justice and truth since we are instinctively com- 

 pelled to see our fellow beings happy." Thus morality is supposed 

 to rest directly on instinct and heredity. In another section, how- 

 ever, the author appears to arrive at a quite different conclusion. He 

 says (p. 62): ,,The highest manifestation of ethics, namely, the con- 



