October 23, 1919] 



NATURE 



151 



ing and succeeding response, the great law of 

 proenvironment is constantly at work." Again, 

 we have the same fallacious hysteron proteron. 

 Surely the emancipation of the hand was the out- 

 come of variations of structure and habit which 

 are left unexplained (not that we can explain 

 them) ; surely the cerebral initiative that put the 

 free hand to manifold tests and found for it a 

 thousand uses was and is a cause, not a conse- 

 quence ; moreover, the hereditary entailment of 

 individual gains is a hypothesis, not a proven 

 fact. We wish to make clear that when Prof. 

 .Macfarlane speaks of "the capacity of an 

 >rganism for perceiving and then positively grow- 

 ling or moving toward an environment that is 

 most satisfying for it," he is not defining any new 

 "law of proenvironment," but referring to the 

 fundamental fact that the organism is a self- 

 preservative agent. In so far as other evolu- 

 tionists have forgotten this and made the organism 

 a passive pawn in a game, or a portmanteau of 

 potentialities which require only liberating stimuli, 

 ^rof. Macfarlane 's thesis is of great service. He 

 jias hold of the open secret that the organism 

 shares in its own evolution. 



(7) Our admiration is commanded by the two 

 chapters in which the author gives an apprecia- 

 tion of the two great ways — competitive and co- 

 operative — in which organisms answer back to the 

 difficulties and limitations that beset them, 

 though we do not think he realises what Darwin 

 clearly expressed, that a co-operative reaction to 

 a crisis is as much part of the struggle for exist- 

 ence as a competitive one. We -vyish that we 

 had space to refer to the concluding chapters on 

 human evolution, which are marked by a splendid 

 earnestness and a truly evolutionistic hope. We 

 can only refer to the cope-stone of Prof. Macfar- 

 lane's hierarchy of substance. Just as biotic 

 energy is associated with protoplasm, cognitic 

 energy with chromatin, cogitic energy with neu- 

 ratin, so there is " spiritic energy " — a still more 

 condensed mode — which " has so functioned as to 

 energise the more aspiring and lofty souls of 

 humanity to widest outreachings, toward the most 

 profound questions of the world and the universe." 

 "The phenomena, the experiences of human life 

 in the past millennia especially, powerfully sug- 

 gest to the writer that built up on, energised by, 

 linked into complex relations by, a combined bio- 

 cognito-cogitic union is a still more complex 

 substance than the protoplasmatin, chromatin, or 

 neuratin, probably resident in some part of the 

 gray frontal matter of the brain, and which hypo- 

 thetically we may call the spiritin." No man 

 understands his brother's philosophy, and we do 

 not know what Prof. Macfarlane is getting at by 

 his quaint and uninviting system of substances 

 and energies. There may be some, however, to 

 whom it makes the riddle of the organism — body- 

 mind and mind-body — clearer ; and we are sure of 

 this, that there are facts enough in the volume to 

 reward even the learned, and that the whole work 

 is marked by resoluteness and sincerity. 



J. A. T. 

 NO. 2608, VOL. 104] 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES. 



(i) The America of To-day. Being Lectures 

 delivered at the Local Lectures Summer Meet- 

 ing of the University of Cambridge, 1918. 

 Edited by Dr. Gaillard Lapsley. Pp. xxv -1-254. 

 (Cambridge : At the University Press, 1919.) 

 Price I2S. net. 



(2) The Voyage of a Vice-Chaiicellor. Pp. ix-t- 

 139. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 

 1919.) Price 6s. net. 



(i) npHIS volume of lectures delivered at Cam- 

 -*■ bridge in the summer of 1918 contains 

 only two chapters of direct technical interest to 

 the readers of Nature — namely, that of Prof. 

 J. W. Cunliffe, on "American Universities: their 

 Beginnings and Development," and that by Dr. 

 G. E. MacLean on " State Universities, School 

 Systems, and Colleges in the United States of 

 America." The first of these gives a very in- 

 teresting account of the English origins of Ameri- 

 can universities, of the effect of the different en- 

 vironments in bringing about a gradual departure 

 from the English model, the injection of German 

 influence, and the subsequent growth along more 

 independent lines. The similar process of develop- 

 ment is traced by Dr. MacLean with respect to 

 the State-supported institutions, which have no 

 direct counterpart in Great Britain. A very clear 

 account is given of the various ways in which 

 State and federal subsidy is provided for these 

 institutions, and there is a brief discussion of the 

 type of administrative organisation which has 

 grown up. Both Prof. Cunliffe and Dr. MacLean 

 rightly emphasise the ideals of universal educa- 

 tion which have led to such a large expenditure 

 of public money upon the school system as a 

 whole. The result is, perhaps, that the reader 

 unfamiliar with the situation would get too rosy 

 a picture of the state of affairs. Not that there 

 is any loss of faith in the ideals, but that, as 

 Dr. MacLean points out, there is a strong feeling 

 that great changes of method are necessary, and, 

 indeed, such changes are constantly under dis- 

 cussion and under trial. Though they have no 

 direct bearing on the subject of education, 

 chaps, iii. and iv., by Lord Eustace Percy, on 

 "State Municipal Government" and "Social 

 Legislation," read in conjunction with those on 

 education, will give a fairer idea of the tremen- 

 dous problems presented by education in America 

 and of the political and social difficulties involved 

 in their solution. 



(2) Such an important journey as that of the 

 British University Mission in the autumn of 1918 

 to Canada and the United States will doubtless be 

 the subject of formal and formidable reports both 

 in England and America, but it is well to have 

 also such an intimate and clever personal record 

 of daily happenings as Dr. Shipley has given us 

 in this volume. Though the account, in diary 

 form, is very brief, one gains a clear impression 

 of the differing characteristics of the various in- 

 stitutions and regions which were visited. As 

 one reads of the unbroken series of banquets and 



