264 
NATURE 
[OcToBER 30, 1913 
specific nervous current. “Memory” in this wide 
sense is next applied to explain the affective ten- 
dencies (conations) which are regarded as striv- 
ings to regain physiological equilibrium. Thus 
one and the same explanation holds of all the 
finalism of life, namely, the mnemonic property of 
vital substance, that faculty of ‘specific accumu- 
lation ’’ which belongs exclusively to nervous 
energy, itself the basis of life. The other essays 
reveal the same acuteness, fertility, and confidence 
in theorising. 
(2) M. le Dantec, after a semi-serious demon- 
stration that the philosopher is an artist, to be 
appreciated by those vibrating in harmony with 
him rather than understood by mankind at large, 
and a plea for more reasoning in natural science 
and less “kitchen-technique,” proceeds also to 
consider the central problems of biology. All vital 
phenomena fall under the head of “functional 
assimilation.” The organism assimilates qua 
organ of its function at the moment. Thus a 
mammal into whose peritoneum cow’s milk is 
injected assimilates this, if it survives, qua organ 
of the struggle against cow’s milk, but not abso- 
lutely, for it retains a trace or “memory” (cf. 
Rignano) in that its serum will henceforth give a 
precipitate with cow’s milk. Thus it is impossible 
to separate “nature” and ‘“‘nurture,” though the 
part played by the latter must be relatively small 
“on pain of death.” Like M. Rignano, a Neo- 
Lamarckian, M. le Dantec holds that among the 
transmissible acquisitions are the instincts, and 
logic, “the résumé of ancestral experience.” 
(3) Mr. Elliot’s view of philosophy is, broadly, 
that it consists in making unfounded and untest- 
able statements about the universe—mapping the 
back of the moon. Now this is surely a mistake; 
philosophy is not description, but explanation; 
and to explain is to bring unconnected or conflict- 
ing facts under one general law or notion. Some- 
times it is merely a question of selecting the right 
familiar notion, but often a new ‘appropriate 
conception” has to be created, a process the 
difficulty and importance of which Mill so greatly 
underestimated; and philosophical explanation is 
evidently likely to be of this nature. 
Thus while it is legitimate criticism of a philo- 
sophy to say that it is incomprehensible (a line 
pretty effectively worked by Schopenhauer) it is 
unreasonable to insist that it must be easily com- 
prehensible, or use only everyday notions. Nor 
can one fairly complain if philosophers do not 
adduce specific facts for their theories. Negative 
evidence can disprove an explanatory hypothesis; 
positive evidence can only “verify” it cumula- 
tively, and here the facts are broadly not in dis- 
pute. This, if correct, invalidates much that Mr. 
NO. 2296, VOL. 92] 
Elliot says about M. Bergson’s “besetting falla- 
cies,” e.g., the “mannikin fallacy.” Again, his 
keen scent for “false analogy” often leads Mr. 
Elliot to take as demonstration what is clearly 
meant as “explication.” While always acute and 
often touching on real difficulties, Mr. Elliot too 
often allows himself to be tempted, in sporting 
parlance, into smashes which find the net. 
(4) Perhaps the least of the differences between 
the last work and Herr Frischeisen-KGhler’s essay 
in Critical realism is that in the latter M. Bergson 
is not so much as mentioned. The nineteenth 
century saw a movement of opposition to the intel- 
lectualism of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, and the book aims at helping to find a 
common point of view for the sciences typical of 
the two points of view—mathematics and history, 
the latter of which can never be based on pure 
thought. The method is a critical consideration of 
the conditions involved in consciousness, which 
themselves contain the bases of knowledge. Of 
the categories or modes of experiencing involved 
in consciousness, however, only that of reality is 
considered. 
The closely-reasoned exposition is impossible to 
summarise here, but it involves the discussion of 
the two main modern attempts to derive all experi- 
ence from the laws of pure thought—the logical 
idealism of the Marburg school and the philosophy 
of values developed. by Windelband and Rickert. 
Finally, the empirical bases of our notion of 
reality are found, above all, in experiences of 
striving and resistance. Like fish in a glass bowl 
we are unable to go further in some directions, 
and since this experience always occurs in con-— 
junction with certain sense-impressions, we recog- 
nise in these that which sets limits to our subjec- 
tivity. The real remains, indeed, always within 
the conditions of consciousness in general, but 
within consciousness the independence of the 
objective world from the self is assured. The book 
is a  clearly-written, cautious, and eminently 
helpful discussion of the difficult problems with 
which it deals. 
(5) Having nothing in common with the other 
works except that it deals with a philosopher, the 
life of Nietzsche by his sister is an interesting 
and pleasing account of the first happy portion of 
that tragic existence. Strangely unlike a morose 
apostle of hardness is the almost painfully well- 
behaved child in the country parsonage, the bril- _ 
liant schoolboy with all the German idealism and 
schwarmerei, the student shocked by the coarse- 
ness of university conviviality, the youthful pro- 
fessor of classics, the heroic but too sensitive am- 
bulance volunteer in the Franco-Prussian war. 
The book takes us to the end of the friendship 
