NA JURE 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 



THE PRIXC1PLES OF HEREDITY. 

 7 lie Principles of Heredity, with Some Applications; 

 Bv G. A. Reid. Pp. xiii + 359. (London: Chap- 

 man and Hall, Ltd., 1905.) Price 12s. 6d. net. 

 THE publication of this book marks an epoch in 

 the history of the relation between medicine and 

 biology, inasmuch as it is an embodiment of the 

 recognition by medical men that they depend ulti- 

 mately for a precise knowledge of nature on the 

 professional biologist — who may or may not, at the 

 same time, be a medical man. 



The book should be welcomed by doctors as con- 

 taining, in the earlier chapters a straightforward 

 though rather brief account of theories of organic 

 evolution, and by biologists as giving a very full 

 account of the medical aspect of these problems, and 

 bv both as an interesting' collection, under the title of 

 "The Principles of Heredity," of a mass of informa- 

 tion and ideas connected with that phenomenon. 



The reader may object to the antithesis between 

 medicine and biology, but will, we hope, withdraw 

 his objection when it is explained that all that is 

 meant by it is the antithesis between applied and pure 

 biology. 



The recognition bv medical men of the value to 

 them of the information with which the biologist is 

 able to supply them is unquestionably a good thing ; 

 yet it is a curious illustration of the fact that a new 

 movement of opinion cannot stand isolated and alone, 

 cannot be without consequences of one kind or 

 another, that one result of the popularity of the 

 entente between the doctor and the biologist may 

 prove harmful to biology, and through it perhaps 

 ultimately to medicine. 



The danger is that the biologist, pure and simple, 

 the man who works at his subject for the mere joy 

 of investigation and discovery, may cease to exist. 

 So many workers of this type are becoming applied 

 biologists, whether they be sporozoologists devoting 

 themselves to malaria, students of heredity to eugenics, 

 or cytologists to cancer. We do not, of course, com- 

 plain of the application of biological knowledge; it is 

 obviously fitting and right that as much use should be 

 made . f it as possible. But we do complain loudly 

 of the opinion that the application of such knowledge 

 is, or should be, the ultimate goal of him who acquires 

 it. Huxley strongly insisted on the fact that the fruits, 

 useful to mankind, of the tree of natural knowledge 

 fell unsought for and unexpected on the back of the 

 head of some obscure worker under its shade, and 

 never to him who worked there with outstretched 

 palm. Dr. Reid says, p. 331, 



" Hitherto the nature of their training has tended to 

 render medical men excessively conservative. Never- 

 theless they have already assimilated and put to 

 magnificent practical use one of the two great 

 scientific achievements of the age — Pasteur's discovery 

 NO. 1884, VOL. 7^ 



of the microbic origin of disease. The other great 

 achievement, Darwin's discovery of the adaptation of 

 species to the environment through natural selection, 

 has hardly been assimilated, and certainly put to no 

 practical use as yet. Both these discoveries should 

 have been made by medical men." 



The fact that they were not is an illustration of the 

 truth of Huxley's words. 



Let it be emphasised again that we do not hold 

 that the gradual desertion of biologists from the ranks 

 of the pure to those of the applied is other than of 

 the greatest service to mankind. But if this de- 

 sertion means that the opinion that the natural 

 goal of the young biologist is to obtain a posi- 

 tion in applied biology will grow, it is a bad 

 thing for science. So that even if it is only on 

 the ground that the utilitarianism which may lead 

 to the extinction of the pure biologist is a bad one, it 

 is to be deplored. If we are going to be utilitarians 

 let us at least be good ones, and let us recognise the 

 demonstrable fact that the only way in which the 

 knowledge and consequent control of nature can be 

 acquired is by encouraging the existence of the type 

 of man who works at his subject for its own sake. 

 Let us have less of the talk about the profound 

 significance of such and such a branch of investigation 

 to the sociologist and the statesman and more of the 

 frame of mind which finds expression in Bateson's 

 words : — " We are asked sometimes, Is this new 

 knowledge any use? That is a question with which 

 we, here, have fortunately no direct concern. Out- 

 business in life is to find things out, and we do not 

 look beyond." 



Willi regard to this utilitarianism Dr. Reid appears 

 to us to steer the right course in his book, except, 

 perhaps, that he sails rather too near it when, pointing 

 out that a classical education is inefficient and does 

 not make us like the Greeks and Romans, he says, 



" the true modern representatives of the great Pagans 

 are not to be found in college halls or country par- 

 sonages, but in thinkers and workers like Darwin, 

 Huxley, Kelvin, Cecil Rhodes, the strenuous men 

 who rule Egypt and India. ..." 



Surely the patient inquiring spirit which prompts a 

 man to devote himself to classics is the same as that 

 in the heart of the true man of science. One of the 

 greatest steps forward in the study of heredity itself 

 was made by a monk. 



Dr. Reid's book is tolerably free from that looseness 

 in the use of scientific terms which is common enough 

 in purely scientific works, but which is simply ram- 

 pant in books on popular science. 



The reader who wishes to familiarise himself with 

 the subject of heredity should be very careful to dis- 

 tinguish between the two meanings of the term re- 

 gression, the one which is a purely biological pheno- 

 menon and the other which is a purely statistical 

 conception. With regard to the use of that much- 

 abused word "law," our author makes a statement 

 that at first sight seems to show that he has not 

 thought very seriously about the meaning of that 



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