LITERARY NOTICES. 



849 



Health and Preventable Disease " ; " Food " ; 

 " Air, its Impurities and their Effects on 

 Public Health " ; " Ventilation and Warm- 

 ing " ; " Examination of Air and Ventila- 

 tion " ; " Water " ; " Water Analysis " ; 

 " Impure Water, and its Effects on Pub- 

 lic Health " ; " Dwellings " ; " Hospitals " ; 

 " Removal of Sewage " ; " Purification and 

 Utilization of Sewage " ; " The Effects of 

 Improved Drainage and Sewage on Public 

 Health " ; " Preventive Measures " (disin- 

 fection); "Vital Statistics"; and "The 

 Duties of (English) Medical Oilicers of 

 Health." 



Reforms : Their Difficulties and Possi- 

 bilities. By the author of " Conflict in 

 Nature and Life." New York: D. Ap- 

 pleton & Co. Pp. 229. Price, $1. 



Many who read that remarkable book, 

 by an anonymous author, entitled " Conflict 

 in Nature and Life ; a Study of Antagonism 

 in the Constitution of Things," which was 

 published last year, were so deeply inter- 

 ested in the views presented, and so struck 

 with their possible bearings upon various 

 practical questions, as to indulge the hope 

 that the author would resume his novel dis- 

 cussion, and work out some of the more ob- 

 vious implications of his doctrine. This he 

 has now done in the book before us, which, 

 while in a certain sense a sequel or supple- 

 ment to the former work, is still an inde- 

 pendent treatise that must stand substan- 

 tially upon its own merits. The work on 

 " Conflict," as we pointed out at the time of 

 its publication, was devoted to an explica- 

 tion of the dynamic view of Nature, which 

 sees in it the action of forces ever resisted 

 by other forces, so that the conception of 

 conflict becomes the key to its universal 

 operations. The radical ideas of that vol- 

 ume are thus restated in the author's intro- 

 duction to the present work. He says : " A 

 simple and primary form of antagonism is 

 that of attraction and repulsion, which play 

 so conspicuous a part in the phenomena of 

 physics and chemistry. In biology, antag- 

 onism appears in manifold forms, in some 

 instances somewhat obscure, but neverthe- 

 less everywhere present. Birth and death, 

 growth and decay, waste and repair, devel- 

 opment and degradation, arc familiar exam- 

 ples. It appears in the never-ending strug- 

 VOL. XXV. — 54 



gle of individuals with individuals, of spe- 

 cies with species, and of persistence of type 

 with divergence of type. It is even excm- 

 phtied by the rivalry of functions for vital 

 energy from the organic sources in coirmion, 

 in consequence of which the over-activity 

 of one may impoverish another, as when 

 over-exertion of the brain exhausts the 

 body, and early and over reproduction di- 

 minishes growth and development. Similar 

 forms of antagonism pass over into the 

 sphere of mind. At the bottom of the men- 

 tal scale, and at the top, mental action is 

 counteraction. There is no mental concep- 

 tion of properties except by contrast : one 

 feeling antagonizes another; the mind is 

 itself a system of balances, often fluctuating 

 from one extreme to another ; and the will 

 is forever the theatre of emotional conflict. 

 And all this antagonism is not incidental 

 and transitory, as usually supposed, but fun- 

 damental and ineradicable." 



But this policy of conflict is far enough 

 from being confined to the inorganic, the 

 organic, and the sub-human sphere of Na- 

 ture. Man, with all his activities, is a part 

 of the great unified natural order, and is to 

 be as much studied in the light of this prin- 

 ciple as any other divisions of phenomena. 

 On this point the author observes : " Now, 

 if this antagonism prevails in Nature, and 

 is woven into the constitution of man, we 

 should infer that the society which man 

 forms would embody antagonistic elements 

 in manifold forms of combination and in- 

 terrelation. We should further infer that 

 every attempt to act on human nature and 

 on human society, for their improvement, 

 should take an account of this ineradicable 

 antagonism in the constitution of things in 

 order properly to adapt the means to the 

 end. A prevailing form in which this an- 

 tagonism appears in life is in the essential 

 coupling of the evil with the good, of a gen- 

 eral evil with every general good. Now, in 

 consequence of this union of evil with good, 

 there is no such thing as perfection, and 

 any attempt to bring about perfect results 

 will fail. All that can be done is to effect 

 the greatest possible good with the least 

 possible evil. But reformers usually go to 

 work in defiance of this principle ; they 

 have panaceas for every moral disease in 

 the world, and are bound that every wrong 



