6;4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Here is one : " The coal beds by which modern industry subsists are a store of 

 energy that was accumulated by plant life in ages gone by : in fixing it the plants 

 exerted as much power as we now obtain from the coal by burning it." Any tyro 

 among mere theorists would know that the second of the two propositions here 

 enunciated is altogether untrue. But Sir Bampfylde goes on : " Coal is popularly 

 described as ' stored sunlight,' and it is true that the plants needed light in order 

 to produce it. But so does a steam-engine need water for its functioning. Yet 

 we do not credit the water with the power that is developed." Experience in the 

 government of men is plainly no protection against the most palpable of false 

 analogies in physics. Light is the source of energy incarcerated in the organic 

 molecules of the plant ; but water is not the source of energy to a steam engine, 

 it is not the fuel. Yet upon sentences such as these Sir Bampfylde endeavours to 

 base the doctrines of his book. 



Nor in biology are his illustrations any more fortunate. " We do not see 

 because we have eyes, ; ' says Sir Bampfylde, " but we have eyes because we have 

 an impulse to see. This statement may appear paradoxical at first sight : " [and 

 also I may add at second sight] "but on further consideration its truth becomes 

 self-evident ; for how, indeed, could a minute fragment of protoplasm develop an 

 eye unless there was within it an impulse to do so, or unless it was constrained by 

 an impulse from outside ? " Yes, but what do you mean by impulse ? that is the 

 whole question. Words, words, words : Bergsonism in the thinnest of disguises : 

 no true attempt at explanation or addition to knowledge ; just an instance of the 

 habit of "elucidating" an obscure problem by setting it in a jumble of language 

 still more obscure. 



Often Sir Bampfylde Fuller seems to travel through every kind of controversial 

 question without apparent recognition that there is any controversy about it. Yet 

 on many of these he is certainly well informed. " We admire our political leaders," 

 he says. Well, some of us may, perhaps. This is not a partisan Review ; so I 

 will merely observe, with as little Bergsonian ambiguity as possible, that others 

 do not. And now, having criticised freely, let me admit that the book does contain 

 much matter of interest, and is certainly creditable to its author. If it cannot take 

 first rank among other works on this subject, the reason (I venture to think) will 

 be found in the circumstance that the laborious and lifelong researches of pro- 

 fessional students cannot be set aside by the pastime of the leisure hours even of 



an able man of affairs. 



Hugh Elliot. 



What is Adaptation? By R. E. Lloyd, M.B., D.Sc. (Lond.). [Pp. xi + no.] 

 (London : Longmans, Green & Co. Price 2s- 6d. net.) 



This work belongs on the whole more to the sphere of metaphysics than of science. 

 Like so many other inquiring minds at the present time, the author is puzzled how 

 to fit the conception of purpose into a mechanical scheme of the universe. By an 

 interesting simile he shows how difficult it is to separate the motives of men from 

 those of lower animals, and to affirm that the one is purposive and the other not. 

 From this difficulty of drawing a dividing line, he infers that there is no such line ; 

 and, in short, that purpose is not a special characteristic of human beings, but 

 runs through nature at large. The author justly insists that natural selection is a 

 theological doctrine, for it shows how by survival of the fittest an end or purpose, 

 viz. adaptation, is achieved. Yet he hardly appears to recognise the wide differ- 

 ence between this and human or intelligent purpose. For natural selection is a 

 wholly mechanistic doctrine. The aim of adaptation was not consciously sought, 



