Apbil 14, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



531 



we are brought to the plain fact that no 

 such inheritance is yet known to take place, 

 and no one can j'et say that it does not. " I 

 find," he says, " as little value in the apriori 

 arguments of those who hold that ' acquired 

 characters ' cannot be inherited as I find in 

 Haeckel's assertion that ' belief in the in- 

 heritance of acquired characters is a neces- 

 sary axiom of the monistic creed.' " In 

 other words, a jri'iori arguments are simple 

 expansions of definitions or assertions, and 

 can have no validitj^ beyond that of the 

 statements from which they are drawn. 

 There is no truth to be derived from argu- 

 ment, a priori. If it is truth it is already 

 known and needs no argument. 



Dr. Brooks sums up his final conclusion 

 that, whether " it be a i-eal factor or not, the 

 so-called Lamarckian factor (inheritance 

 of acquired characters) has little value as a 

 contribution to the solution of the problem 

 of the origin of species, and renewed study 

 has strengthened this conviction." 



Dr. Brooks has a suggestive and valuable 

 chapter in reproof of those who would place 

 the law or principle of evolution as some- 

 thing apart or above the forces which are 

 known to bring about orderly change or 

 adaptation in living organisms. 



" The tendency to regard natural selec- 

 tion as more or less unnecessary or super- 

 fluous, which is so characteristic of our day, 

 seems to grow out of reverence for the all- 

 sufficiency of the philosophy of evolution, 

 and pious belief that the history of all living 

 things flows out of this philosophy as a 

 necessary truth or axiom. 



" As no one can say that the basis for it 

 [the philosophy of evolution] is not true, 

 and as it seems much more consistent 

 with scientific knowledge than any other 

 systems of philosophy we must admit that, 

 for all we know to the contrary, it may be 

 true ; and we may ask whether, if trne, it 

 is any substitute for science ; although we 

 must remember that there is no end to the 



the things which, while no one treats them 

 seriously, may nevertheless be true. * * * 

 While anything which is not absurd may 

 be good poetry, science is founded on the 

 rock of evidence. 



"So far as the philosophy of evolution 

 involves belief that nature is determinate 

 or due to a necessary law of universal 

 progress or evolution, it seems to me to be 

 utterly unsupported by evidence and totally 

 unscientific. 



" Men of science repudiate the opinion 

 that natural laws are rulers and governors 

 over nature ; looking with suspicion on all 

 ' necessary ' or ' universal ' laws." 



Again he says, " ISTatural laws are not 

 rulers or governors over nature, but gener- 

 alizations from an experience which seems 

 to teach, among other things, that progress 

 is neither necessary nor universal. 



" The hardest of intellectual virtues is 

 philosophic doubt, and the mental vice to 

 which we are most prone is our tendency 

 to believe that lack of evidence for an 

 opinion is a reason for believing something 

 else. This tendency has value in prac- 

 tical matters which call for action, but 

 the man of science need neither starve nor 

 choose." 



Most suggestive chapters are those on 

 the mechanism of nature with reference 

 to Paley's famous ai'gument for design in 

 nature, and the varied changes which the 

 argument for teleology has undergone. 

 There is a constant plea against reading 

 into the relations of nature mox-e than is 

 actually seen there, as also against the de- 

 nial of that which may occur and yet has 

 not been actually seen. 



" We can give no reason why life and 

 protoplasm should be associated except the 

 fact that they are. And is it not equally 

 clear that this is no reason why they may 

 not exist separately ?" In this connection 

 we are given a charming analysis of the 

 idealism of Agassiz, with the reason why 



