1899] A ZOOLOGIST ON THE PRINCIPLES OE SCIENCE 433 



necessarily false. " As I understand Agassiz," says Dr. Brooks, " it is 

 not because natural history is a language that he holds it to be 

 intended ; but because it is delightful to listen to the language of 

 nature, and because it abounds in beneficial instruction for mankind." 

 And again : "As I understand Berkeley, it is not because nature is 

 orderly, but because the order of nature is useful, and instructive, and 

 full of delights for living things, that he holds it to be a language." 

 Let us admit that response to nature and the study of nature are all 

 these things ; it does not therefore follow that the language is necessary 

 or unnecessary, and I do not see how it follows that the language is 

 intended. It may be so, but, on the other hand, " the modern zoologist 

 must also ask whether natural selection, so far as it accounts for living 

 things and their works and ways, does not in the same measure account 

 for language ; both that which men use among themselves and that 

 which we find in nature" (p. 337). 



We close the book, then, as ignorant of fundamental truths as when 

 we opened it. But we have now reasons for our ignorance. Professor 

 Brooks, in so far as he has adhered to his maxim — -" The assertion that 

 outstrips evidence is a crime " — has convinced us of his main thesis, 

 which indeed is a corollary of that statement, and may be expressed in 

 the words on the wrapper of this Eeview : 



Nunquam aliud natura, aliiul sapientia elicit. 



British Museum 



(Natural History), 

 London, S.W. 



