April 21, 192 1] 



NATURE 



229 



■witty remarks and humour. He covers a large 

 ground, and every chapter is packed tight with 

 matter. This makes his work easier to recom- 

 Tnend to the reader than to describe or epitomise. 

 We may select one or two points of special in- 

 terest. One of the most awkward of the realist's 

 problems is to determine the exact status of 

 "images." This problem is discussed in a chapter 

 entitled "The Stuff of Fancy." It begins by direct- 

 ing attention to a very serious defect in our 

 vocabulary. We have one and the same w-ord, 

 "imagination," for images of scenes we remember 

 or anticipate, and for fancies. We have, indeed, 

 the two terms "imagination" and "fancy," but 

 they are in ordinary discourse interchangeable. It 

 is a difficulty the present writer has found in try- 

 ing to present Croce's aesthetic theory in English. 

 Our words "imagination" and "fancy" do not 

 follow the same articulation of meaning as the 

 Italian words "fantasia" and " immaginazione." 

 This reference to Croce is not casual. If anyone 

 is interested in a direct opposition between two 

 philosophical theories of the nature of imagery, 

 he will find it by comparing the first chapter of 

 Croce's " Estetica " with Prof. Laird's theory con- 

 cerning the "Stuff of Fancy." "Images, in a 

 word, are parts of the physical world imaged, 

 and that is what we discover through the fancy," 

 concludes Prof. Laird. " Lo spirito non intuisce 

 se non facendo, formando, esprimendo," says 

 Croce. 



Realism is very clear and emphatic in affirming 

 the existence of the object, and that the know- 

 ledge of it is the mind's discovery; but there is 

 another kind of existence — namely, that of the 

 mind itself. Does the mind discover this existent? 

 Prof. Laird finds no difficulty in answering 

 "Yes." The argument is given in the chapter 

 entitled "The Mind." In neurological theory he 

 follows Sherrington. In philosophical theory his 

 main contention is that in introspection we in- 

 spect awareness, but the act of inspection is dif- 

 ferent from the act of which it is aware. Our 

 minds, he adds, are rich enough to contain a 

 multitude of awarenesses almost at the same 

 moment. 



(2) The same problems are discussed in 

 "Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics," and 

 there is the touch of nature making realist and 

 idealist kin in the underlying motive of Prof. 

 Laird's epilogue and of Prof. Hoernle's pro- 

 logue. Both philosophers feel the need of justify- 

 ing the human instinct to philosophise. Both 

 give practically the same answer, and both have 

 the same distinctly sad refrain. " Is the pursuit of 

 philosophy worth while?" "Those who have de- 

 NO. 2686, VOL. 107] 



voted themselves to it have found it so, and they 

 alone are in a position to judge." 



The idealist's difficulty, unlike the realist's, is 

 not concerned with the first step. The idealist 

 has no initial assumption to negotiate ; his diffi- 

 culty is with the journey's end. The paradox in 

 his case is that knowledge begins with the con- 

 sciousness of an absence, with a datum the char- 

 acteristic mark of which is partiality and incom- 

 pleteness, while it presents to the mind a task to 

 be accomplished. Knowledge is therefore ideality 

 from the start, and its highest attainment in inte- 

 gration — the concrete universal, the absolute — 

 appears elusive, and its objectivity unconvincing. 



Prof. Hoernle criticises, at times with brilliant 

 effectiveness, the various constructive efforts 

 which have been and are being brought to bear 

 on the epistemological problem. His six years at 

 Harvard have evidently been occupied with a 

 vigorous championship of idealism in the home- 

 land of new realism and behaviourism. The most 

 arresting chapter in his deeply interesting book 

 is that entitled "Saving the Appearances." Not 

 only does he there offer us a constructive theory 

 of his own, but he also demonstrates the absolute 

 bankruptcy of realism when face to face with the 

 demands, not of the plain man, but of the scien- 

 tific worker. It is the physicist and biologist who 

 must have the secondary qualities restored to the 

 objective world. It is the realist who has filched 

 them, and the idealist who alone, in Prof. 

 Hoernle's view, can restore them. 



In these two books we have the controversy 

 between contemporary realism and idealism repre- 

 sented by sturdy champions, though at present 

 neither can claim to be bestriding a prostrate foe. 



H. WiLDON C.ARR. 



Vertebrate Morphology. 



Vertebrate Zoology. By Prof. H. H. Newman. 

 Pp. xiii4-432. (New York: The Macmillan 

 Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1920.) 

 165. net. 



THE leading feature of this book is an attempt 

 to interpret the structure of vertebrate 

 animals in terms of the "axial gradient theory." 

 This theory, enunciated by the author's colleague, 

 Prof. Child, is based upon certain facts of verte- 

 brate development. These show that along the 

 three axes of the body — longitudinal, vertical, 

 and transverse — the rate of differentiation is not 

 uniform, but progresses more rapidly in one 

 direction than in the reverse. Thus the head 

 develops faster and farther than the tail; the 



