igii. Reviews. 1 57 



REVIEWS. 



A PRIMER OF EVOLUTION. 



Evolution. By Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson. Pp. 256. 

 London : Williams and Norgate (Home University Library of Modern 

 Knowledge). Price 15. net. 



Prof. Thomson is acting as Editor for the scientific volumes of this 

 admirable series, the readers of which may congratulate themselves that 

 he has himself undertaken , in collaboration with Prof. Geddes, to write 

 this most important contribution to the biological section. There have 

 been not a few small books on the great subject of evolution published 

 during the last thirty years ; the distinctive mark of this one is the human 

 and especially the social standpoint from which the subject is approached. 

 For example, the presentation of the " evidences of evolution " begins 

 with a few suggestive lines on Darwin — " the supreme field -naturalist at 

 once widest and intensest " — as influenced by his voyage on the " Beagle." 

 Each step in the argument is linked with the personahty of some dis- 

 tinguished investigator, and every conclusion serves to throw light on 

 seme problem of human life. A sentence from the conclusion of the third 

 chapter, on " Great Steps in Evolution," well illustrates the tone of the 

 writers' minds and the trend of their thought : " Hygiene, engineering and 

 irrigation, agriculture and forestry, and all such strenuous careers are already 

 opening perspectives lately undreamed by youth, struggles for existence 

 nobler and more sustainedly strenuous than those of war." In their 

 comments on the anti-social deductions drawn by certain modern students 

 of heredity and on "the incipient art of Eugenics," our authors rightly 

 point out that " the greatest practical controversy of our science, in 

 comparison to which all others have been but academic " is " that 

 ultimately between the Herodian and Magian view and treatment of the 

 child, and between essential renewals of the Caesarist and of the Christian 

 ideals of the community." 



Turning to the more strictly biological aspect of the subject, we find 

 almost every question that has divided naturalists into opposing schools 

 during the last half century is discussed wisely and impartially. The 

 space at the authors' disposal is, of course, restricted, but so suggestive 

 are their brief remarks on use-inheritance and selection, biometrical and 

 Mendelian methods, mnemic theories and vitalism, that the student 

 cannot fail to gather many valuable hints and to receive fresh light on the 

 controversies of the day as he reads the pages of this handy little book. 

 In the last chapter : " The Evolution Process once more Reinterpreted," 

 the authors give us, " not dogmatically pressed but suggestively offered," 

 a reasoned plea for the cardinal importance of the organism itself as the 



