424 F. A. BATHER [DECEMBER 
that can be said is that the students of Columbia University have not 
been fairly treated. Some old lectures “prepared at different times 
and for various reasons” have been furbished up and intermingled 
with extracts from reviews and other magazine articles. The almost 
unavoidable consequence is superabundant repetition, not always free 
from inconsistency, a want of coherence, not wholly remedied by an 
interjected paragraph or two, an absence of logical arrangement and 
continuity in the development of the main thesis, and long complicated 
sentences to be attacked only by the midnight reader with a wet towel. 
Despite these defects, the conclusions or leading ideas of the book, 
if not simple, are few. In fact the author states that his sole purpose 
is to show that mechanical conceptions of life and mind cannot make 
right deductions from true principles untenable (p. 29). This state- 
ment, however, scarcely illustrates the scope of the work, and the 
reader will doubtless wish to know what those particular deductions 
may be that Dr. Brooks holds to be proof against all attack. I shall 
therefore attempt a brief relation of the leading ideas in the book. 
The two fundamental conceptions that appeal specially to the 
biologist, and are in large measure the outcome of his labours, are the 
principle of genetic continuity and the principle of fitness. Significant 
resemblances recognised between the phenomena of nature may be due 
to genetic continuity ; and the order of nature may be the order of 
fitness. 
The meaning attached to fitness by Dr. Brooks is at once seen in 
the second Lecture, entitled “ Huxley, and the problem of the Naturalist.” 
It is mainly a criticism of Huxley’s essay on “The Physical Basis of 
Life,” and its keynote may be thus expressed.—Admitting that proto- 
plasm is the physical basis of life, and even supposing that its properties 
are a result of its molecular structure, still life is not one of those pro- 
perties, but the adjustment of the properties to the environment, so as 
to promote the welfare of the species. As Aristotle put it, the essence 
of a living being is not what it is made of or what it does, but why it does 
it. The problem of the naturalist is therefore the study of this adjust- 
ment; in other words, the problem of fitness (p. 39). Later on, how- 
ever (p. 246), we are told that “the problem of the naturalist is not 
the existence of adaptations as such, but the existence of adaptive 
species.” The limitation will be found important. 
The problem stated, we proceed to its consideration; and the next 
three lectures deal with one of the proposed solutions, that of Lamarck, 
and the so-called Neo-Lamarckian emendation of it. “Stated briefly,” — 
and, I think, fairly, “it is the doctrine that organic evolution has been 
brought about, or at least greatly aided, by the inheritance of nurture.” 
By “nurture” we are to understand all manner of modification due to 
the external world. 
To this doctrine Professor Brooks raises an objection that seems to 
have an insecure foundation. We all admit a present fitness in the 
