444 



NA TURE 



[September 30, 1922 



human being is due to harmoniotropism rising in its 

 higher stages to aristotropism. " The new born 

 infant," we are told, " emits a first sound or cry which 

 is a spontaneous activity of its vocal chords. From 

 this moment numerous somatocentric and centrobaric 

 activities proceed which — unconsciously to the infant 

 itself — establish its relationship to its own functioning 

 body and to the outer world. But with the growth of 

 sentience and nervous activity all the physiological 

 activities of the child are somatocentric, and manifest 

 geometrical or rhythmical regularity, establishing the 

 harmoniotropic tendency and principle of activity." 



The book contains a great amount of autobiography 

 and many long extracts from the author's other writings. 

 So far as aesthetics is concerned Sir Charles seems to 

 come nearest to Groos's play theory. He makes no 

 mention of the more recent aesthetic theories, that of 

 Benedetto Croce for example. Art, we are told, is the 

 product of an aesthetic instinct, and we seem to be 

 expected to find the full explanation of it in this descrip- 

 tion. The purpose of the book is practical, however, 

 rather than theoretical. The idea that inspires the 

 whole scheme is the desire to find a way to reap the 

 full benefit of the awful experience of war and direct 

 to good purpose the agencies, such as the League of 

 Nations, which aim at superseding the conditions which 

 are making strife on the colossal scale a menace to 

 civilisation. 



(2) Mr. Prescott's book is a research work in con- 

 nexion with, or at least undertaken at, Cornell Uni- 

 versity. It is a laborious attempt to prove a thesis by 

 accumulating examples and illustrations. The thesis 

 is that poetry is a product of the human mind which is 

 to be correlated with dream consciousness. We are 

 thinkers and dreamers. Most of us are both, but in a 

 general way we may class people as one or the other 

 according as imagination or reasoning is their pre- 

 dominant mental activity. It was therefore even more 

 to M. Jourdain's credit than he supposed that he should 

 have been speaking prose all his life. Mr. Prescott is 

 a disciple of Freud and Jung and his thesis is that the 

 dream interpretation of those psychologists is applic- 

 able, not merely in general, but in minute detail, to the 

 interpretation of the imaginative content of poetry. 

 It is a thesis which bears very hardly on the poets, 

 and if it is right, they, being dreamers and not thinkers, 

 will find it difficult to put in a defence. Our quarrel, 

 however, is not with his psychology but with his in- 

 adequate conception of aesthetics. Poetry is indeed, 

 as Vico was the first to hold, the primitive language, 

 but surely when dreams find expression in poetry they 

 cease to be dreams. 



Both these volumes seem to illustrate the impossi- 

 bility of treating sesthetic subjects without coming to a 

 NO. 2761, VOL. I IO] 



clear decision first as to what precisely the aesthetic 

 function is, and second, as to what is the exact relation 

 in which it stands to the logical function. It is no use 

 short - circuiting the inquiry by dismissing aesthetic 

 activity as an instinct, or by degrading it to descriptive 

 psychology. Moreover, the work of Benedetto Croce in 

 this field, open to criticism as it may be, has left 

 research students with no excuse for ignoring the issue. 

 Notwithstanding this defect, each of these books is, 

 in its own way, fresh and original and distinctly 

 stimulating to thought. 



Our Bookshelf. 



A Naturalist in the Great Lakes Region. By Elliot 

 Rowland Downing. (The University of Chicago 

 Nature-Study Series.) Pp. XXV + 32S. (Chicago, 

 111. : University of Chicago Press, 1922.) 3.50 

 dollars. 

 This book has been written by a member of the School 

 of Education at Chicago University as one of its nature- 

 study series of handbooks, and it is designed for teachers 

 of nature-study as a guide to the ecology of the country 

 bordering Lake Michigan in the vicinity of Chicago. 

 It is written on ecological lines, and shows abundant 

 evidence of the influence of the American school of 

 ecologists headed by Dr. C. G. Adams and Dr. V. E. 

 Shelford. An account of the geology of the district 

 is given first, followed by a resume of the geological 

 changes which have led to the present conformation 

 of the country, with special reference to the glai ial 

 period and the formation of the basins of the Great 

 Lakes. The animal and plant associations of the 

 district are then dealt with in some detail under the 

 headings : dune, forest, swamp, prairie, and the various 

 aquatic types. 



The book is abundantly illustrated by line drawings, 

 which will serve at any rate for a preliminary identifica- 

 tion of the animals and plants met with, and a very 

 good series of photographs illustrating the various 

 geological phenomena and biological associations which 

 are described in the text. Many of the maps, however, 

 are too small and so overloaded by unnecessary detail 

 as to render obscure the point they are designed to 

 illustrate. The book will serve admirably the purpose 

 for which it is designed, and should be of the greatest 

 use to teachers and students of Nature in the area with 

 which it deals. 



It is evident, however, that the author is not himself 

 familiar with the scientific names of the animals and 

 plants of which he writes. There are dozens of mistakes 

 in the spelling of these names, and if a second edition 

 is called for, the author would do well to enlist the 

 services of a competent zoologist and botanist and 

 submit his scientific names to them for correction. 

 The index, too, shows evidence of hasty compilation. 

 It is neither complete nor accurate. These defects 

 are a serious blot on an otherwise useful book and 

 should be remedied as soon as possible. Fig. 56, too, 

 might usefully be replaced by a series of new and more 

 accurate figures. 



