192 



DISCOVERY 



THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



The Evolution of .Man. A Series of Lectures delivered 

 before the Yale Chapter of the Syma during the 

 Academic Year 1921-2. By Richard Swan Lull, 

 Henry Burr Ferris, and others. Edited by 

 George Alfred Ballsell. (New Haven : Yale 

 LTniversity Press ; London : Humphrey Milford, 

 Oxford University Press, 15s.) 



The occasion of the deUvery of the lectures contained 

 in this book is sufficiently indicated by the sub-title. 

 Intended as a sequel to a series of lectures on the evolu- 

 tion of the earth and its inhabitants delivered to the same 

 club some few years earlier, they take up the specific 

 study of man from the evolutionary standpoint on several 

 sides. The lectures are six in number. Of these, two 

 are purely physical, one psycho -physical, one psychologi- 

 cal, one is cultural, and one, the last, is an attempt to 

 forecast the lines of Man's progress in the future — an 

 attempt which, it may be said, is not so fantastic as might 

 be thought at first sight, but is based on sound methods 

 of scientific analysis. 



These essays have a double interest. In the first 

 place, being delivered to a non-specialist but educated 

 audience, as a whole they present a survey of the present 

 state of knowledge in certain departments of anthro- 

 pology in a form which will commend itself to those who 

 wish to acquaint themselves with the latest results of 

 research, but do not wish to be overburdened with 

 technicalities. In the second place, they represent the 

 current views of American scientists on many problems 

 which are the peculiar province of European anthropolo- 

 gists, and for which the evidence is derived mainly from 

 the Old World and, particularly, from Europe. As a 

 result, matter is presented to English readers from what, 

 in many cases, will be a new point of view. 



Of the six essays, the first, by Professor K. S. Lull, 

 deals with the antiquity of man. He surveys the evidence, 

 geological and archajological, for the antiquity of man, 

 adopting the view of Osborne that Mr. Reid Moir's 

 Foxhall flints from East Anglia are to be accepted as 

 evidence for man in late Tertiary times. But it may be 

 noted that he still holds the view at one time general 

 in America, that while the cranium of the Piltdown 

 Skull, the oldest skeletal remains of man found in Britain, 

 is^human, the jaw associated with it is simian. Pro- 

 fessor Osborne himself has, however, now abandoned this 

 view and accepted it as human. Professor H. Burr 

 Ferris's lecture, on the natural history of man, traces the 

 growth of man from the cell through prenatal and post- 

 natal development to senescence, dealing with each of 

 the organs in detail. This is a very useful exposition of 

 a subject not as a rule adequately treated for the benefit 

 of non-technical readers, and the same applies to Pro- 

 fessor G. H. Parker's lecture on the evolution of the 

 nervous system of man. Professor J. R. Angell's essay 

 on the evolution of intelligence contains the essentials 

 for an understanding of the place of human intelligence 

 in the evolutionary scale. If, from the anthropologist's 

 point of view, it may seem too general in character 



when dealing with questions of racial psychology, this 

 must be attributed not so much to the author as to the 

 fact that it attempts to give an outline of a subject for 

 which accurate scientific data are almost entirely lacking- 

 Professor Albert G. Keller, in " societal evolution," 

 has chosen to deal with the general principles of study 

 rather than attempt to handle the ascertained facts of 

 the course of development in human society. In this 

 he has shown wisdom, and his lecture will prove a useful 

 corrective to the facile theories which unfortunately have 

 frequently been allowed to usurp the place of clear 

 thinking and accurate detailed verification by comparison 

 with the facts. Of Professor E. G. Conklin's theories of 

 the trend of evolution enough has already been said to 

 indicate that his method is strictly scientific ; of his 

 results, each reader must judge for himself. It must 

 be said, however, that in a sense they sum up the teaching 

 of the book and lend support to those who hold that the 

 study of man as he has been in the past and as he is 

 to-day should throw light upon what he will become in 

 the future. E. N. Fallaize. 



FREUD ON LIFE AND DEATH 



Beyond the Pleasure Principle. By Sigmund Freud. 

 Translated by C. M. Hubback. (Allen & Unwin, 6s.) 



Tliroughout the development of his theories Freud has 

 always held that the one ultimate motive of all human 

 conduct was the desire to avoid pain or to gain pleasure, 

 though the immediate gratification of the desire might 

 be postponed in the hope of a deeper and more lasting 

 fulfilment. But the suspicion crept in that behind the 

 " pleasure-pain principle " there might be another, 

 altogether different motive, and with the access of new 

 psychological material from the study of the war neuroses 

 the suspicion was confirmed, for in the cases of war 

 shock one of the most frequent symptoms was the recur- 

 rence of terrifying dreams in which the patient lived 

 through again and again the experience that caused his 

 illness. Here was a phenomenon that could not be 

 explained by the old formula that the dream is invariably 

 the expression of an unconscious wish. 



Freud accordingly gives up the universal applicability 

 of the formula and of the pleasure-pain principle to 

 seek for a new motive in what he has named the tendency 

 to repetition or the " repetition compulsion," a tendency 

 or instinct in every living organism " impelling it towards 

 the reinstatement of an earlier condition." 



The phenomenon of repetition is familiar enough in 

 biology, so familiar that, perhaps, we have missed its 

 importance ; we have only to recall the compulsive 

 migration of birds and fish back to the original home of 

 their kind, and, perhaps the most perfect example of 

 all, the way in which every individual in its development 

 from the germ-cell is obliged to recapitulate the structural 

 history of the race ' ' instead of hastening along the 

 shortest path to its own final shape." 



This conception of a fundamental regressive tendency 

 in the organism is diametrically opposed to our ordinary 

 view of the instincts as urging on towards progress and 



