Literary Notices. xlvii 



thor has been able to present both sides of each issue fairly and openly 

 and the simple statement of all the facts is often sufficient to throw 

 doubt upon many cherished popular ideas. The discussion of the real 

 significance of the relation of the frontal lobes to high intelligence is a 

 case in point. The general effect however of these chapters is not to 

 discourage research, but by pointing out that the real weakness of all 

 previous work has been generalization on too slender a foundation of 

 observed fact to encourage more active and thorough research along 

 all of these lines. 



The question of degeneracy is introduced by an elaborate critique 

 upon microcephalia, a character which from its historical and other im- 

 portance occupies a crucial position in the whole discussion. The ata- 

 vistic and pathological theories of the origin of microcephalia are both 

 rejected, or rather, they are harmonized in a single new theory. The 

 argument is somewhat as follows. Ontogeny being a compressed re- 

 capitulation of the phylogeny, many terms of the latter being suppressed 

 in the former, we may assume that terms not expressed are latent. 

 These latent terms require only a favorable disposition of the organism 

 to become patent and to remain permanently in the organism. Such a 

 disposition may be furnished by disease, etc. It is then impossible to 

 establish a fixed barrier between atavism and pathology, and the search 

 for a type of microcephalic brain is obviously useless. The anomalies 

 which may return at any time are so numerous and depend for their 

 presence upon so many complicated conditions that they will never be 

 repeated. An atavistic vestige then is nothing else than a sign indicat- 

 ing that the evolution of an organ has not been accomplished with complete 

 and nortnal regularity ; the disease is the necessary condition for the revival 

 of the atavism. 



This granted, the conclusion follows : a phylogenetic record upon 

 the surface of the cerebral mantle has no other value than that appear- 

 ing on any other organ, and consequently to judge of the abnormality 

 of an organism the presence of atavistic characters in other organs 

 should be taken into account. Now we understand why the number 

 of degenerative stigmata seems to increase in the insane, epileptic, 

 idiotic, and criminal and why with the number of stigmata the number 

 of diseases should naturally increase. 



Again, the author says, in the word '' abnormality " or in the more 

 usual term " degeneration" it is impossible therefore to find anything 

 definable, but we affirm that an individual has departed from the normal, 

 that is from the normal state of the species to which he belongs, in 

 proportion to the traces either of the advance of morbid processes or of 



