702 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



in clear and lofty tones the one true re- 

 ligion, that which exalts the claims of 

 humanity and of social duty." In de- 

 fending his appointment in the Senate, 

 the Minister of Public Instruction, after 

 dwelling upon the intellectual qualifi- 

 cations of his nominee, paid the follow- 

 ing tribute to his character: "Truly, 

 if there is among us a modest man, 

 a simple man, a man who has never 

 courted notoriety, and who has reached 

 his seventieth year without ever having 

 asked anything of his country, it is M. 

 Lafitte; and, for that reason, this mod- 

 est and conscientious scholar, this sa- 

 va?it, whose whole life has been devoted 

 to disinterested study, appeared to us to 

 present the moral as well as the intel- 

 lectual characteristics necessary for the 

 high dignity of a professor in the 

 College de France." Again, speaking of 

 positivism as a system, he observed: 

 " This positivist doctrine, that people talk 

 about and that some execrate, is an ex- 

 tremely tolerant doctrine ; you may say 

 that tolerance lies at its very base. Its 

 absolute rule is to proceed by means of 

 observation and experiment ; to limit its 

 conclusions and its affirmations to what 

 is revealed to it by these special scien- 

 tific methods ; and, as regards what lies 

 beyond verification, to treat with re- 

 spect every belief and every hypothesis. 

 Positivism is, therefore, from the phil- 

 osophical point of view what the un- 

 sectarian, or lay state is from the po- 

 litical point of view ; and I did not, 

 therefore, think that M. Lafitte's pro- 

 fession of this doctrine should alarm or 

 disturb men's consciences in this coun- 

 try, or prevent me from nominating 

 him to a chair of which he was wor- 

 thy." 



These are notable words to have 

 been spoken by a responsible minister 

 in a country in which not long ago 

 ecclesiasticism was so powerful. It is 

 not necessary to have adopted, or to ap- 

 prove of, the peculiarities which mark 

 positivism in its intellectual, and espe- 

 cially in its practical aspects, in order to 



rejoice that its most eminent teacher 

 should have an opportunity of exhibit- 

 ing its broader principles from the van- 

 tage-ground now afforded him, and of 

 thus challenging for them, more openly 

 than ever before, the criticism of the 

 philosophical world. As to the action 

 of the French Government, we can only 

 applaud the determination it shows to 

 place all competently represented sys- 

 tems of thought upon a footing of per- 

 fect equality. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Marriage and Disease. By S. A. K. Stra- 

 han, M. D. New York : D. Appleton & 

 Co. Pp. 326. Price, $1.25. 



A subject for which the progress of 

 science is just beginning to obtain intelligent 

 consideration is the transmission of defects 

 from parents to offspring. While most per- 

 sons have a hazy belief in the adage, " Like 

 father, like son," comparatively few have 

 any adequate conception of the remorseless 

 certainty with which the physical and men- 

 tal defects of parents produce degeneracy 

 and early death in their children. The pres- 

 ent work furnishes in a form available for 

 the general reader an abundance of pertinent 

 and well-authenticated facts concerning the 

 above subject. The author states first what 

 is known as to the general laws of heredity, 

 and then proceeds to discuss in turn insanity, 

 drunkenness, epilepsy, and other diseases 

 and defects with relation to parenthood. 

 " There is no class of diseases," he says, " so 

 surely transmitted from parent to child as 

 the nervous." While the chronically insane 

 are not allowed to contract marriage, yet a 

 young man, for instance, who inherits nerv- 

 ous instability may, in the intervals between 

 acute attacks of insanity, marry and beget 

 children. When, as probably happens, he 

 goes to end his days in an asylum, he is very 

 likely to be followed by some of the children 

 whom he has burdened with his infirmity. 

 The results are more surely disastrous when 

 both parents belong to the neurotic or insane 

 type. " The person, man or woman," says 

 Dr. Strahan, " who has an epileptic, or cho- 

 reic, or imbecile brother or sister, an insane 

 uncle, aunt, or parent, or even grandparent, 



