April i, 1922] 



NA TURE 



409 



Roy has faith. But whether this be so or not there can 

 I' no doubt that India Hes on the great racial divide 

 I modern mankind. Within its population taper off 

 le three great divisions into which human races are 

 louped — the white, yellow, and black. Here, too, 

 iree great linguistic families come into juxtaposition. 

 I is a vast treasure-house of ancient lites, beliefs, and 

 istoms. 



It is a great task to which the author of this work has 

 set his hand. He is bold enough to hope that his 

 school will do for the 300 millions of India what the 

 anthropological schools of Cambridge and Oxford have 

 done for the 36 millions of England. The English 

 pioneers had an uphill fight, and it is the memory of 

 this experience which will make them extend a willing 

 and helping hand to Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Roy, 

 reader in anthropology in Patna University, in the 

 difficulties and apathy which now confront him and 

 his school. Arthur Keith. 



Our Bookshelf. 



University of London. Gallon Laboratory for National 

 Eugenics : Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs, VIL On 

 the Relationship of Condition of the Teeth in Children 

 to Factors of Health and Home Environment. By 

 E. C. Rhodes. Pp. viii+80. (London: Cam- 

 bridge University Press, 1921.) 9,?. net. 

 Mr. Rhodes has analysed the records of five School 

 Medical inspectors charged with the examination of the 

 school children of an administrative county, with a 

 view of discovering whether relationship could be traced 

 between condition of teeth and factors of health and 

 home environment. The bulk of the paper is devoted 

 to an investigation of methods of standardisation, i.e. 

 to the solution of a problem of the following kind : 

 given that two observers having different standards of 

 classification examine and group into classes random 

 samples of th.: same population, required, the corrections 

 of the several distributions needed to render the results 

 comparable. Two methods of solution, involving 

 different assumptions, are employed. It is shown that 

 the individual variations of standard are very large and 

 that, for purposes of correlation, it is necessary to deal 

 separately with each inspector's data. Actually very 

 little correlation was found between the state of caries 

 in the teeth of children aged 12-14 and either general 

 health or home environment. 



Both the author and Prof. Karl Pearson, in an 

 introductory note, emphasise the need of standardisa- 

 tion. The results of this inquiry justify the following 

 remark of Prof. Pearson : " There are many urgent 

 practical problems which could be adequately solved 

 by a study of the child population of this country, but 

 they can only be solved by the leisurely laboratory 

 method of observation, by standardised judgments and 

 an efficient training in modern statistical methods. At 

 present the observations are too rapid to be 01 great 

 scientific value, the judgments are personal opinions 

 rather than real measures of fact, and the statistical 

 methods of school officers' reports rarely indicate a 

 NO. 2735, VOL. 109] 



knowledge extending beyond the elementary rules of 

 arithmetic. These results are not due to any fault of 

 the medical officers themselves, but to the inadequate 

 system under which they are trained for their work, 

 and to the speed under which they are compelled to 

 form their record." 



Mr. Rhodes' paper, despite the necessarily negative 

 character of his main conclusions, is a valuable piece 

 of work and enforces lessons which the public, not 

 excluding medical officers, are slow to learn. 



Hellenism and Christianity. By Edwyn Bevan. Pp. 



275. (London : George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 



1921.) 12^. 6d. net. 

 With the exception of two essays on " Bacchylides " 

 and on " The Greek Anthology," all the essays in this 

 volume deal with some aspect or other of the relation- 

 ship of Christianity to the world, ancient or modern. 

 Touching the ancient world, there are two essays on 

 the earliest contacts of Christianity and Paganism, 

 and two especially delightful ones on St. Augustine. 

 The essays on the modern world all revolve around the 

 conflict between our " rationalistic " civihsation and 

 religious experience as focussed by the life and teaching 

 of Christ. The author's limpid style makes it a pure 

 pleasure to read his arguments, and his complete 

 candour should secure for them respectful consideration 

 even from those who stand intellectually aloof from 

 theology. A good example of his method, on a non- 

 controversial topic, is the short essay on " Dirt," in 

 which he works out in a most interesting way the 

 polarity of our feelings towards objects, like our bodies 

 and sex, which we treat as at once sacred and unclean. 

 Of miracles he holds that their possibility cannot be 

 scientifically disproved, but at the same time he re- 

 gards them as altogether " peripheral " in Christian 

 belief, and he finds the evidence both for the Virgin 

 Birth and for the Bodily Resurrection of Christ too un- 

 certain to build the edifice of faith upon them. 



The intellectual difficulties of the Christian faith 

 arise no longer from any supposed conflict with natural 

 science — evolution is accepted by " educated Christian 

 opinion " and the Book of Genesis is mythology — 

 but with anthropology, comparative psychology, and 

 philosophy. At most, however, these can show only, 

 not that the Christian hypothesis is impossible, but that 

 it is unnecessary. Mr. Bevan's answer is that the case 

 for Christianity rests, not on argument, but on the 

 quality of the Christian life. " If the Church Christian 

 wants to convince the world of the supreme value of 

 its ideal of love, it can only do so by steadily con- 

 fronting the world with the actual thing." True, but 

 this only means that among all the millions of nominal 

 Christians, Christianity has rarely been seriously tried. 

 Will it ever be widely tried ? That is the question. 



R. F. A. H. 



Hermann v. Hehnholtz^ Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. 



Herausgegeben und erlautert von P. Hertz und M. 



Schlick. Pp. X+175. (Berlin: Julius Springer, 



1921.) 90 m. 

 The centenary of Helmholtz's birth is the occasion of 

 the publication of these little known writings. They 

 are chosen for their special importance in regard to 

 present-day problems and in particular to the recent 

 developments of mathematical theory. 



