418 SCIENCE. 
of it, this statement implies that there is a 
mental and an organic sphere, which may be 
treated as if each stood in isolation from the 
other. Whether such an idea be compatible 
with the Theory of Evolution appears very prob- 
lematical. Be this as it may, the precise prob- 
lem of Epistemology is just the question, can 
there be any sphere for man, in which anything 
may be regarded as if it were out of relation to 
mind, or to ‘the mental,’ using the more 
abstract language supplied us? Till this has 
been determined—and many advance valid 
reasons for concluding that it has been deter- 
mined in the negative—discussion of ‘ teleology ’ 
and the like is so much beating the air. 
But, fortunately, there happens to be far more 
community between Brooks and Ward than the 
printed page reveals. That Brooks should be 
moved to consider Ward’s book at all, that he 
should attack some of the questions so signif- 
icantly discussed in his brilliant ‘ Foundations of 
Zoology,’ and that Ward should go entirely to 
the positive sciences for his materials are right 
hopeful signs of the times. No doubt Brooks’ 
review bears witness to an appreciable remnant 
of that estrangement between science and 
philosophy which was at its height in the six- i 
ties and seventies. In the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries Descartes, Spinoza, Leib- 
niz and Kant drew their materials from the 
sciences as then formulated; and the ‘plain 
historical way’ of Locke, and to some extent 
of Hume, commended itself to the sober meth- 
ods of scientific inquiry. But at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, thanks to the new 
‘social sense’ that arose with Lessing and 
Herder and Goethe, philosophy forsook its 
commerce with the natural sciences and sought 
aid from the so-called human sciences, especi- 
ally in those aspects which may be lumped un- 
der the name Culturgeschichte. This movement 
reached its zenith with Hegel and his follow- 
ers. Meanwhile, the natural sciences, particu- 
larly in that development of them which Brooks 
ornaments, had themselves taken up and pro- 
jected along new lines the very suggestions of 
the COulturgeschichte group, and had summed 
the results in the term Evolution. This term, 
as we now understand it, is no more than half 
a century old, a brief period in the life of any 
[N. S. Von. X. No. 247. 
great operative conception, and we are far from 
clearly perceiving all it implies. ‘‘ There is 
‘something more’ at work,’’ as Romanes said 
to me time and again. Ward’s book is a prod- 
uct of this conviction of ignorance, so is 
Brooks’ review. Further, the book must be 
taken as a powerful witness to the return of 
philosophy to the old, amicable relationship of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The 
pressing affair of philosophy is to elicit the im- 
plications of theories which are not simply pro- 
visional groupings of phenomena scientifically 
observed, but profess to be Weltansichten. Just 
because they are at once scientific and philo- 
sophical, neither the scientist nor the philoso- 
pher can deal with them in his own corner. 
Brooks and Ward are at one in proving this. 
Indeed, the most interesting—some would say 
the most promising—factor in contemporary in- 
tellectual activity crops out in the fact that 
scientists are becoming more and more alive to 
philosophical problems, while philosophers are 
beginning to discover that, after all, their main 
concern is with the fundamental conceptions 
incident to that highly organized portion of 
human experience which goes by the name of 
science. Each side will better the prospect for 
a more thoroughly rational explanation of 
things known and to know by foregoing its own 
idola. 
T should not have ventured to intrude at this 
‘sreat assize’ but for the fact that Brooks at- 
tributes to Ward idola from which the Cam- 
bridge epistemologist has shaken free. On the 
other hand, and far more important, Brooks 
himself has already escaped many others which, 
in the not very distant past, generated that 
amazing hybrid—a mechanical biology. 
R. M. WENLEY. 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 
THE ORIGIN OF MEASUREMENTS. 
To THE EDITOR OF SCIENCE: My small boy, 
aged 5 years, was discovered this summer to 
have originated a system of measurement which 
he used in conversation with other children. 
Certain distances were described as four men, 
and certain other distances were spoken of as 
aboyorhalfaboy. Certain others were spoken 
of as two men and a boy. Perhaps this may 
SS” 
ei 2 
