56o 



NA TURE 



[October 4, 1906 



Watt was obliged to circumvent them in order to 

 carry on his business. Moreover, the State un- 

 doubtedly profits directly. It is asserted by men 

 competent to judge that the amount received in patent 

 fees is greater than all the profits made by in- 

 ventors. In other words, the average profit made on 

 an invention is not sufficient to cover the charges 

 made by the State. Herr du Bois-Reymond's book 

 may be recommended to those who take an interest 

 in the philosophic analysis of these questions, and 

 they may also hope to find much worldly wisdom 

 scattered throughout its pages, and a wealth of illus- 

 tration, drawn from the experience of a busy life. 



W. H. S. 



BIOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



Psychology (pp. 124); Sociology (pp. 124); Ethics 

 (pp. 118). By Dr. C. W. Saleeby. Three vols. 

 Scientific Series. (Edinburgh and London : T. C. 

 and E. C. Jack.) Price is. net each. 



DR. SALEEBY discusses the problems of philo- 

 sophy from the Spencerian standpoint in an 

 interesting fashion. Of the three volumes, that on 

 Psychology appears much the best; it is the most 

 serious, and though the author has there one bete 

 noire in the person of Dr. Ward, who suffers vicari- 

 ously for all the sins of "academic psychology," the 

 reader is not wearied, as in the Ethics volume, by 

 incessant declamation against Nietzscheanism, on the 

 one hand, and what is politely called " hell-fire 

 morality " on the other. 



On psychology our author has nothing very start- 

 ling to say. He defines his subject as the science, not 

 of consciousness, but of mind. He favours the 

 Wundtian theory of psychophysical parallelism. He 

 regards mind as a product and phenomenon of evolu- 

 tion ; or rather, having boldly stated that life is prior 

 to mind, he closes one of two chapters on the evolu- 

 tion of mind by maintaining that the responsiveness 

 of the leucocyte to irritation points to sentiency on 

 its part, and by withdrawing his bold statement in 

 favour of a bolder, that life and mind are co-equal, 

 co-extensive, and of common origin. That is to say, 

 he levels up the leucocyte to man. In the latter part 

 of his book he dwells much more on the will than 

 on the intellectual functions, as he wishes, not fo 

 lead up to a text-book on logic, but to the consider- 

 ation of conduct. The result is that many questions 

 which one finds discussed in the ordinary handbooks 

 are not even mentioned in this ; but, of course, amid 

 the multiplicity of cheap introductory works there 

 is no reason why all should go in the same ruts. 



In the volume on Sociology one notes that our 

 author follows the Spencerian line that the State has 

 no consciousness of its own, and therefore the welfare 

 of the State never means anything more or otlier 

 than the welfare of the citizens. He follows his 

 master, too, very closely in his opposition to free 

 education, which he thinks as bad as free breakfasts 

 for the children. A later chapter is occupied with an 

 indictment of the modern city, and others with a 

 discussion of socialism, conservatism, and liberalism. 

 NO. 1927, VOL. 74] 



The volume on Ethics has some excellences — the 

 discussion of the origin of morality, for example, with 

 what the author regards as the most important pro- 

 position he has to offer, viz. that organic evolution, 

 reproductive evolution, and moral evolution are inter- 

 dependent. Some other things are not quite so con- 

 vincing — the statement that there has been far more 

 vicious than virtuous obedience in human historv, or 

 another that morality is aeons of jeons older than the 

 oldest creed, the proof offered being that a cat cares 

 for its kittens. Apparently morality began ages before 

 man was ever heard of, though, in a different context, 

 Dr. Saleeby describes a baby as " non-moral, pre- 

 moral, or if you like, immoral." 



There is a hard saying on one page to the effect 

 that historians of the (inaccurate and picturesque) 

 school of Carlyle and Froude are no longer in request. 

 This comes with rather a bad grace from one 

 whose merits are probably — quanta intervallo! — much 

 like those of the writers named ; while his defects 

 include an inadequate appreliension of the real issues 

 involved and a stumbling knowledge of Greek. For 

 logos does not mean science, nor is teleology derived 

 from the word meaning " at a distance." 



BIOLOGY OF THE FROG. 

 The Biology of the Frog. By Samuel J. Holmes, 

 Ph.D. Pp. vii + 370. (New York: The Macmillan 

 Company; London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1906.) 

 Price 6s. 6d. net. 



IN the vast literature that treats of the frog there 

 is no comprehensive summary of its biology. 

 Every natural history teacher has realised this want, 

 which has increased in proportion with the great 

 recent extension of instruction in elementary natural 

 phenomena. No animal is more thoroughly known 

 from the anatomical, histological, and embryological 

 aspects, but on the side that appeals to teachers and 

 commencing students, the study of habit and function, 

 existing knowledge of the frog is scattered and often 

 untrustworthy. This gap the author strives to fill, 

 writing primarily for the student. His book is a 

 compilation of what is known of the behaviour of the 

 frog and of its several organs. Unfortunately it is 

 not only this. Dr. Holmes has not freed himself 

 sufficiently from formal and dogmatic zoology. He 

 must have all the nomenclature and the anatomy of 

 the medical school, as though we could never learn 

 or teach zoology without a load of descriptive struc- 

 tural details. The new wine of comparative physio- 

 logy has been poured into the old vessel and has 

 burst it, leaking out now here now there, so that no 

 good draught is obtainable. The wine, however, is 

 good, and the more pity the framework was not 

 better adapted to hold it and yield it to the thirsty 

 soul. 



The frog enters on p. 62, chapter ii. Here " we 

 begin our study." Unfortunately there are two 

 earlier chapters, with which most readers will begin. 

 The first deals with the classification of Amphibia, 

 and ought to have been simplified or postponed. The 



