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minute search has failed to reveal any clue to " the statements of science." We 

 can do no more than express regret that Mr. Wells should have deployed his 

 remarkable powers of language in defence of this new variety of mysticism and 

 obscurantism. We cannot accept this tour-de-force of oratorical verbiage as a 

 substitute for genuine ideas and plain statements. Mr. Wells has carried his 

 genius for writing fiction into a sphere where it is out of place. 



Hugh Elliot. 



The Order of Nature. By Lawrence J. Henderson. (Cambridge, U.S.A. : 

 Harvard University Press ; London : Oxford University Press. 1917.) 



This is an essay by the Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry in Harvard 

 University, on the subject of Teleology. This word is used by the author in a 

 somewhat wider sense than usual, since he does not regard it as connoting 

 necessarily either purpose or design. He employs it apparently merely to indicate 

 the harmony and independence which are found throughout nature, and especially 

 organic nature. We may remark at once that this book, although favouring some 

 vague conception of a teleological ordering of the Universe, is on a much higher 

 level both of thought and scientific knowledge than we usually find in works of 

 this character. Especially valuable is the history of teleological ideas in the 

 past. Having completed this survey, the author sets himself to inquire how an 

 apparently purposive regulation of the Universe may be rendered compatible with 

 a mechanistic theory. He bases this inquiry to a great extent on the work of 

 Willard Gibbs. Although his analysis is worthy of careful study, we do not think 

 its result can be considered satisfactory. The author's strength is in the extreme 

 and intentional vagueness which he attaches to the word teleology. If by that he 

 means no more than adaptation and harmony among living things, then there 

 seems to be no special point in writing the book. If, on the other hand, he 

 wishes to suggest that mechanical laws are diluted by " purpose," then the book 

 fails completely in establishing that conclusion. By a conscious resort to vague- 

 ness, the problem is not solved but merely shelved. 



Hugh Elliot. 



The Borderlands of Science. By A. T. Schofield, M.D. (Cassell & Co., 



1917. Price 6s. net.) 

 The author of this work laments that a former volume from his pen, The 

 Unconscious Mind, was received "with scorn and ridicule " when he "presented 

 it to scientists at the close of the nineteenth century." We fear that no better 

 fate can be anticipated for this new book, in which he makes a fresh incursion into 

 the land of spooks. The author divides his work into two parts, " Light " and 

 "Twilight," though the contents would undoubtedly be better described as 

 " Darkness" and " Inky Blackness." A considerable part of the book is devoted 

 to such subjects as telepathy, aura and colour vision, clairvoyance, and other 

 so-called " psychical phenomena." Where he deals with the special sciences, he 

 does not often express definite opinions, but indicates a decided leaning for every 

 kind of heresy that he can find. He believes, of course, in vitalism ; he believes 

 that impressions on the maternal organism are specifically reproduced in the 

 offspring, having known such cases himself; he is favourably disposed to the 

 belief in inheritance of acquired characters, etc. More remarkable still, in his 

 own subject of medicine, he believes that certain cases of mania, which he has 

 seen, can only be accounted for on the assumption that the body of the patient is 

 possessed by a spirit. Throughout the book Dr. Schofield exhibits a most 



