174 
and consideration by teachers in schools. The point in 
the report to which objection may be made is the rigid 
declaration that “set lectures giving mere informa- 
tion in a didactic manner should be avoided.”’ Most 
teachers of science would agree that at an early stage 
the teaching of science should be mainly practical and 
objective. If it is not, the true spirit of scientific know- 
ledge is lost. But why should the didactic manner be 
avoided ? In the course of study in zoology, for example, 
why should there not be occasional lectures on some of 
those wild beasts of the world which naturally excite the 
interest of boys and girls. Lectures on whales, on 
kangaroos, on the great carnivores, on tropical insects, 
or even on the fauna of coral reefs, would surely 
be stimulating and instructive. Entirely to avoid 
didactic instruction is to make the teaching of science 
too parochial in character and to leave unsatisfied the 
thirst for knowledge of the wonders of the world beyond 
our own shores. 
The new method may be admirable as a substitute 
for the older dry-as-dust didactic teaching, but it tends 
to lead into the new danger of discouraging boys and 
girls from reading about natural phenomena beyond 
the reach of their personal observation and about the 
thoughts and discoveries of the great men of science. 

Human Character. 
Human Character. By Hugh Elliot. Pp. xvi+272. 
(London : Longmans, Green and Co., 1922.) 7s. 6d. 
net. 
E are accustomed to judge of a man’s char- 
acter by his behaviour, that is to say, by the 
manner in which he reacts to the countless vicissi- 
tudes of everyday existence. In our experience these 
reactions differ according to the individual, and we 
interpret this variability of response by saying that 
the characters of the individuals affected are corre- 
spondingly diverse. Although character is an attribute 
of the man himself, it can only be known by the man’s 
actions, and is a rough description of the mental and 
nervous constitution on which the reactions depend. 
This constitution is partly inborn, partly acquired. 
The pattern of the cells and nerve paths which make 
up the central nervous system is already laid down 
before birth, but the resistance which any impulse 
meets with in its passage through the central nervous 
system is the resultant not only of the inherited 
pattern, but also of experience, every reaction which 
has occurred having left some trace of its passage and 
produced facilitation along certain paths and blocking 
of certain other paths. 
Character is thus a product both of nature and 
NO. 2780, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 








































[FEBRUARY 10, 1923 
of nurture, the former supplying potentialities of 
behaviour, the latter limiting and modifying the extent 
to which any given reaction may take place. Although 
character is a question of the arrangement and 
resistance of a complex systet of neurones, the only 
possible way of describing it is in terms of the re- 
actions which it is able and wont to produce. Without 
taking a dynamo to pieces and measuring the physical 
properties of its various parts, the only method by 
which we could describe its potentialities would be by 
making it work and finding out what current and what 
electromotive force it gave us at varying speeds of 
rotation, 7.e. by its performance ; and the same holds — 
good for any attempt to describe under the term of 
character the complex structural arrangements which 
determine the reactions of a man. Character itself 
we cannot with any accuracy describe or classify, but 
we can analyse the different factors, mental or physio- 
logical, which are involved in its formation and 
determine behaviour. This is the manner adopted by 
Mr. Hugh Elliot in the book now before us. 
Since character determines behaviour, it is possible 
to form an idea of the essential nature of human 
character by analysing the motives which determine 
human action. The older philosophers (and their 
teaching is reflected in current thought) were wont to 
draw a marked distinction between the actions of 
animals, which were determined by instinct, and those 
of man, which were guided by reason; whereas we 
have now recognised that the intellectual processes 0! 
reasoning have very little to do with behaviour. 
Although the emotions have long been described as 
the springs of action, the preponderating and almost 
exclusive role of emotions in determining human 
activities has only been fully recognised during the 
last twenty years. Emotions are the representation 
in consciousness, the subjective side, of the complex 
series of automatic reactions which in animals we ca 
instincts and which in their case we only occasionally 
endow with emotional attributes. Thus the quest fo i 
food, flight from an enemy, pursuit of a mate, are all 
automatic reactions which are shared by man with 
the lower animals, but in the former case we say they 
are due to the emotions of hunger, fear, or love. 
In the first chapter of this book, which Mr. Ellio 
entitles “‘ General Principles,” the author emphasises 
the all-importance of the emotional states in th 
determination of behaviour. Man’s life thus becomes 
a series of instinctive reactions differing from those o 
the lower animals only in their greater complexity, 
and in the extent to which they are varied as the result 
of individual training or education. Reason does not 
dictate behaviour. Party government would be im- 
possible if this were the case, nor would two nations 

