SEPTEMBER 14, 1899] 
as these philosophers suggest, and that we must rather, 
with Hegel, look upon the universe from several points 
of view, though even Hegel, if we are not mistaken, 
would have made the various categories develop out of 
one another; but whether that be so or not, and how- 
ever impossible it is at present to point to any 
scientifically complete demonstration of the correctness 
of the opposite hypothesis, it is necessary to inquire very 
carefully into the positive basis on which this revived 
vitalism, of which the present volume is an exposition, 
rests. 
Starting with sundry somewhat loosely connected re- 
marks on the nature of knowledge in general, and the 
method of biology in particular, the author, after giving 
a brief account of the functions of assimilation and repro- 
duction in the living organism, touches, in a chapter on 
the relation of that organism to its surroundings, the key- | 
note of his whole system. Since, we are told, the human 
organism is a knowing subject, the organism in general 
is to be regarded as not only object but also as subject ; 
and hence all mechanical, or physical, or chemical 
explanations of organic function are and must ever be 
inadequate, because they take no account of that in- 
explicable residuum, the “ spontaneous choice” or “ selec- 
tion,” the “subordination to a purpose” which an organ- 
ism displays in every function it performs, and most 
obviously of all in sensation, the act which puts it in 
immediate communication with its environment. 
Now such a view as this seems to us to be pervaded 
by a most vicious anthropomorphism, due to an -unfor- 
tunate confusion between the organism, or its nervous 
system, to which those parts of the phenomenal world | 
outside it are related during the act of knowledge, on the 
one hand, and on the other the metaphysical ego or sub- 
ject of knowledge. For knowledge is most certainly not, 
as the author seems to imagine (for he tells us that know- 
ledge is part of the subject-matter of biological science) a 
relation between the organism and its environment, 
both of which are phenomenal, that is to say are events 
occurring in space and time, but a relation between 
phenomena and a timeless and spaceless noumenon, with 
which metaphysics alone is concerned, but with which 
science has nothing to do at all. 
The endeavour to locate in the organism, regarded as 
matter for scientific inquiry, a ‘‘ subjective” residuum is 
apt to remind one of the now discredited search for that 
metaphysical phantom, the “thing-in-itself,” and it is 
incumbent upon biology, advancing along rigidly deter- 
“freedom of the will” which psychology cannot allow 
for the human organism, under the name of “spontaneous 
selection,” to the purely objective phenomena exhibited | 
in organic function. 
There are, indeed, no grounds either in theory or in 
fact for regarding the organism as anything else but 
the transitory product of certain causes which it is the 
aim of the biologist to discover. When Mr. Earl speaks 
of constant form under an ever-changing material, he 
momentarily forgets the dominant fact of the evolution 
of form ; and to whatever causes we assign this evolu- 
tion, its existence is beyond a doubt; and when he 
speaks of the impossibility of applying quantitative con- 
ceptions to organic phenomena, he either ignores or is 
NO. 1559, VOL. 60] 
NATURE 
| 
459 
ignorant of certain recent work in this direction, in 
which, indeed, alone lies a hope for the progress of 
biology as a science. 
Serious though the misconceptions seem to us to be 
which mar this essay, apart from certain minor details of 
arrangement to which exception might possibly be taken, 
and the mistake of discussing epistemological problems 
in a book apparently intended for beginners, we may at 
least hope that it will serve to convince those who may 
still be in doubt of the futility of attempting to apply to 
the living organism, which, like the subject-matter of 
any other science, should be studied from a strictly zeti- 
ological point of view, teleological conceptions which 
have not even a place in human psychology. Not that 
it is therefore to be supposed that when the sciences 
have said all they have to say our knowledge of the 
universe is at an end: the last word must always remain 
with metaphysics, in which those ideas of ‘ freedom” 
and the “‘final cause” which science cannot accept may 
find their true proportions ; for metaphysics looks upon 
the universe not merely as a continuous time-process, 
| but as a whole, time and space being only the forms under 
which phenomena appear to a transcendental subject, in 
which the ultimate interpretation of them is to be 
sought, but which it is as fatal for metaphysics as it is for 
| science to confound with the living organism. 
OUR BOOK SHELF. 
An Account of the Deep-Sea Ophiuroidea collected by 
the Royal Indian Marine Survey Ship “ Investigator.” 
By R. Koehler. (Calcutta: 1899.) 
| THIS monograph, published by erder of the Trustees of 
the Indian Museum, is well worthy its predecessors, now 
famous, and adds one more to the brilliant results of the 
/nvestigator, memorably associated with the names of 
Dr. A. Alcock, its editor, now superintendent of the 
Indian Museum, and his indefatigable co-workers in 
the Zoology of the Indian Seas. It is chiefly devoted 
to the description of forty species of Ophiurids which 
are new, the majority of the larger number obtained 
during the cruises of the ship having been already re- 
ported upon by Prof. Koehler in the Annales des Sciences 
Naturelles, as explained in the text. The new forms 
are of the genera Ophizacantha (7 species), Amphiura 
(5 sp.), Ophioglypha (4 sp.), Ophiomustum, Ophiactis, 
Ophiochiton, Ophiomitra, and Gorgonocephalus, each 
2 sp., and thirteen other genera each 1. Interest chiefly 
centres in a new genus, Opfzotypa, obtained in the Gulf 
of Bengal at 1997 fathoms. O. szmplex is the name by 
ministic lines, to resist any attempt to transfer that | which the author would have it known, its special struc- 
tural peculiarity being the great size of the primary 
plates of the disc, the aboral region of which is beset 
by an enormous pentagonal centro-dorsal and five equally 
large radials, separated by small but regular inter-radials. 
Interbrachial plates are present on the ventral face. 
Radial shields are absent, and the author, regarding this 
| character and the small number of plates present in the 
disc of the adult as primitive, proceeds to a comparison 
with the young stages of Amphiura, as described by 
Ludwig and Fewkes, which would seem to justify the 
conclusion that Opfzotypfa, as regards its skeleton, may 
be a persistently embryonic form. 
The monograph is elaborately illustrated by fourteen 
| exquisite plates, photo-etched from the author’s drawings 
at the Survey of India Offices in Calcutta, and on perusal 
of its contents the mind reverts to the interesting series 
| of Astrophiurids, whose “ primary larval plates” and 
