424 F. A. BATHER [December 



that can be said is that the students of Columbia University have not 

 been fairly treated. Some old lectures " prepared at different times 

 and for various reasons " have been furbished up and intermingled 

 with extracts from reviews and other magazine articles. The almost 

 unavoidable consequence is superabundant repetition, not always free 

 from inconsistency, a want of coherence, not wholly remedied by an 

 interjected paragraph or two, an absence of logical arrangement and 

 continuity in the development of the main thesis, and long complicated 

 sentences to be attacked only by the midnight reader with a wet towel. 



Despite these defects, the conclusions or leading ideas of the book, 

 if not simple, are few. In fact the author states that his sole purpose 

 is to show that mechanical conceptions of life and mind cannot make 

 right deductions from true principles untenable (p. 29). This state- 

 ment, however, scarcely illustrates the scope of the work, and the 

 reader will doubtless wish to know what those particular deductions 

 may be that Dr. Brooks holds to be proof against all attack. I shall 

 therefore attempt a brief relation of the leading ideas in the book. 



The two fundamental conceptions that appeal specially to the 

 biologist, and are in large measure the outcome of his labours, are the 

 principle of genetic continuity and the principle of fitness. Significant 

 resemblances recognised between the phenomena of nature may be due 

 to genetic continuity ; and the order of nature may be the order of 

 fitness. 



The meaning attached to fitness by Dr. Brooks is at once seen in 

 the second Lecture, entitled " Huxley, and the problem of the Naturalist." 

 It is mainly a criticism of Huxley's essay on " The Physical Basis of 

 Life," and its keynote may be thus expressed. — Admitting that proto- 

 plasm is the physical basis of life, and even supposing that its properties 

 are a result of its molecular structure, still life is not one of those pro- 

 perties, but the adjustment of the properties to the environment, so as 

 to promote the welfare of the species. As Aristotle put it, the essence 

 of a living being is not what it is made of or what it does, but why it does 

 it. The problem of the naturalist is therefore the study of this adjust- 

 ment ; in other words, the problem of fitness (p. 39). Later on, how- 

 ever (p. 246), we are told that " the problem of the naturalist is not 

 the existence of adaptations as such, but the existence of adaptive 

 species." The limitation will be found important. 



The problem stated, we proceed to its consideration ; and the next 

 three lectures deal with one of the proposed solutions, that of Lamarck, 

 and the so-called Neo-Lamarckian emendation of it. " Stated briefly," 

 and, I think, fairly, " it is the doctrine that organic evolution has been 

 brought about, or at least greatly aided, by the inheritance of nurture." 

 By " nurture " we are to understand all manner of modification due to 

 the external world. 



To this doctrine Professor Brooks raises an objection that seems to 

 have an insecure foundation. We all admit a present fitness in the 



