494 



NA TURE 



[September 22, 1898 



of plants, has adopted the admirable plan of giving under 

 each species a brief note of its range, a most valuable 

 addition in a paper of which the importance is chiefly 

 distributional. The plates consist of photo-etchings well 

 executed in the Survey of India Office, and represent 

 fishes, reptiles and crustaceans, the rock structure of a 

 biotite granite, and a view of an Ovis poll skin on a wall 

 of rough stones amongst small orchards. The last is so 

 good a plate, that it is impossible to help regretting that 

 a more congenial background has not been selected. 



W. T. B. 



SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCE. 

 Outlines of Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. Pp. xii 

 + 301. (New York : The Macmillan Company, 1898.) 



MR. WARD'S little volume, with its clear thought and 

 trenchant writing on more than one topic of current 

 interest, will be welcomed by all students of sociology. It 

 is a reprint of twelve chapters formerly contributed by 

 the author to the American Journal of Sociology during 

 the years 1895 to 1897. In the first six lectures, which 

 bear the general title " Social Philosophy," Mr. Ward 

 discusses the old question of the proper position of 

 sociology in a systematic classification of the sciences. 

 The general philosophical position adopted is that of 

 Comte, but the author very properly restores anthropology 

 and psychology to their lawful position in the scheme of 

 the sciences between biology and sociology, and insists 

 with great force upon the very special dependence of 

 sociological on psychological science. The most interest- 

 ing feature of this part of the book is Mr. Ward's able 

 criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer's favourite comparison 

 of society to a huge biological organism. Following the 

 lead of Prof. Huxley, he shows, by irresistible arguments, 

 that it is not the whole biological organism, but only the 

 nervous system which really corresponds to a society, 

 and further, that society in its present state is at best a 

 " very low form of organism." 



"The most extreme socialist would shrink from the 

 contemplation of any such absolutism as that exercised 

 by the central ganglion of even the lowest of the recog- 

 nised Metazoa. In order to find a stage comparable to 

 that occupied by society with respect to the central 

 control of the functions of life, it is necessary to go down 

 among the Protozoa and study those peculiar groups 

 of creatures that live in colonies so adapted, that, while 

 the individuals are free to act as they please within 

 certain limits, they are still imperfectly bound together 

 by protoplasmic threads to such an extent that they are 

 in a measure subordinate to the mass thus combined, 

 and really act as a unit or body." 



When conscious co-operation of society, as a whole, for 

 its own welfare supersedes sporadic individual effort, and 

 not before will there be a real parallelism between social 

 institutions and the nervous structure of the higher 

 animals. 



In the second part of the book, which is entitled 

 " Social Science," Mr. Ward describes the gradual evo- 

 lution of such a higher form of social structure. Social 

 institutions at first grow up unconsciously under the 

 pressure of the mere " struggle for existence." As intel- 

 ligence progresses this stage of mere "genesis" passes 

 into the higher stage, called by Mr. Ward "telesis"; 

 NO. 1508, VOL. 58] 



unconscious growth gives place to the deliberate manu- 

 facture of institutions by conscious purposive action. 

 Hitherto such conscious creation of social institutions 

 has been the work of a few exceptional individuals, but 

 in a higher stage of evolution we may expect it to take 

 the form of " collective telesis," i.e. the deliberate co- 

 operation of the community as an organised whole in the 

 work of social amelioration. 



Perhaps the most valuable part of Mr. Ward's book is 

 that in which he discusses the differences between mere 

 unconscious growth and deliberate constructive activity. 

 It has been too much the fashion of sociologists in recent 

 years to argue directly from biological analogies, forgetting 

 that society is at least as much a machine as an organism, 

 and that the presence in all but the lowest stages of 

 social evolution of deliberate human purpose profoundly 

 modifies the whole character of the evolutionary process. 

 As Mr. Ward pithily phrases it, " the environment trans- 

 forms the animal, but man transforms his environment," 

 a remark which has an obvious bearing upon the applica- 

 tion of evolutionary principles to the problems of ethics. 

 Altogether the student who is not content with being told 

 that society " evolves," but wishes to know how specifically 

 social differs from merely biological evolution, will find 

 Mr. Ward's last six chapters -singularly luminous and 

 suggestive. The get-up and typography of the book are 

 generally worthy of commendation, but there are some 

 ugly misprints of classical names. A. E. Taylor. 



OUR BOOK SHELF. 

 A Text-book of Botany. By Dr. E. Strasburger, Dr. 



Fritz Noll, Dr. H. Schenck, Dr. A. F. W. Schimper ; 



translated from the German by H. C. Porter, Ph.D. 



With 594 illustrations, in part coloured. (London : 



Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1898.) 

 The "Text-book of Botany" issued from the famous 

 institute at Bonn has met with such favour on the part 

 of teachers and students, that it is a matter of surprise 

 that the translation of it into English should have been 

 so long deferred. However it is certain to be ex- 

 tensively used, as the subject is handled from a compre- 

 hensive standpoint, and the authors have succeeded in 

 hitting the happy mean between a too elementary and a 

 too advanced treatment. 



It is the more to be regretted that, as it was passing 

 through the press, the emendations and corrections 

 which have some time ago appeared in the third 

 German edition were not incorporated in the present 

 volume, which seems based on the first edition in the 

 original language. It is, for example, surprising, and to 

 a student confusing, to find elaborate figures and de- 

 scriptions of centrospheres in dicotyledonous cells on 

 p. 61, when it is known that the author of this part of the 

 book (Strasburger) has long ago abandoned his belief 

 in their existence, and in the current German text 

 expressly denies their presence in these plants. It may 

 also be doubted whether the book gains at all in value 

 by the somewhat poor coloured illustrations of certain 

 examples of flowering plants, although in this the 

 publishers are but following the original. If, however, 

 they could see their way to reduce the rather high price 

 of the book at the expense of these really useless 

 luxuries, both its own circulation and the temper of the 

 purchaser would improve. For it is not a little re- 

 markable to find a work which in Germany can be 

 bought for 7 marks, costing in its English dress i8x. 

 The book is intrinsically so good that it is to be hoped 



