NOVEMBEK 25, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



761 



in your recent issue 'would be engaging in 

 their frankness, did they not suffer from the 

 vice of banality. It is such a commonplace 

 to start with the premise that this nation is 

 through and through " commercial," and to 

 deduce therefrom the conclusion that our col- 

 leges and universities are commercialized, 

 from which, in turn, all the deficiencies of our 

 educational practise are explained. This de- 

 ductive method, which would now-a-days be 

 dismissed as absurd in the natural sciences, is 

 still the common approach to educational prob- 

 lems, and is precisely the method which must 

 be gotten away from before educational reform 

 can have a scientific basis. Another defect of 

 the author's method is a loose use of such 

 terms as " commercial." Now commerce is at 

 once a gigantic business and a pursuit of gain. 

 In the latter respect it does not differ, to be 

 sure, from other economic activities, yet its 

 name, when used as a tool of deprecation, 

 seems to contain a reference to sordid profits. 

 If, however, the author, and others who talk in 

 the same vein, wish to convey this meaning 

 when they speak of the administration of 

 American colleges as commercialized, they are 

 certainly far afield; for no evidence, as far as 

 I know, has been presented tending to show 

 that presidents and trustees so administer as 

 to make profits for themselves. Probably the 

 author does not mean to include this partic- 

 ular implication of " commercial " when he 

 speaks of college administration, though he 

 does distinctly include it when he turns to 

 apply the term to the student and his aims. 

 As applied to the administration, " commer- 

 cialized " probably means " desirous of doing 

 big business " ; but certainly a more precise 

 characterization of American university ad- 

 ministration is necessary before its excellen- 

 cies can be intelligently strengthened or its 

 vices corrected. As applied to the teaching 

 force of our universities, the author's stock 

 adjectives apparently mean neither that the 

 professor is intent above all things on gain, 

 nor that he is enamored of the ideal of great 

 enterprises, but rather that the atmosphere of 

 American life makes it impossible for him, or 



for any one, to enter upon any but commercial 

 pursuits with entire seriousness and enthu- 

 siasm. Hence the professor, if naturally en- 

 ergetic, becomes a pedant, or, otherwise, a 

 dilettante; in neither case can he be an in- 

 spiring teacher, or rise to true scholarship ; in 

 consequence of which the nation's achieve- 

 ments in pure science " have been insignifi- 

 cant." A third defect of the author's method 

 appears in these superlatives and absolute 

 statements, when comparative measures can 

 alone represent the truth or afford a basis and 

 incentive for advance. What we need is the 

 facts, inductively determined, accurately for- 

 mulated, and if possible put into such shape 

 that quantitative comparisons may be possible 

 between our own conditions and those in more 

 advanced countries, and between our condition 

 now and hitherto as well as hereafter. I have 

 no doubt, however, that such a suggestion will 

 appear to the author as simply one more illus- 

 tration of that commercial tendency which 

 forms the chief weakness of American educa- 

 tion and scholarship — " a disposition to deal 

 with facts and to neglect principles." 



E. S. Wood WORTH 



Columbia Univebsity, 

 October 29, 1910 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 The Laws of Heredity. By G. Archdall 



Keid, M.B., F.R.S.E. London, Methuen & 



Co. 1910. 



Dr. Archdall Eeid has already given us 

 books and articles on heredity that are both 

 interesting and instructive, and the present 

 volume not only lives up to the standards set 

 by its predecessors in these particulars, but 

 surpasses them in the breadth of its scope, 

 which is much greater than its title would 

 seem to imply. For not only does the author 

 give an exposition of the laws of heredity and 

 abundantly criticize them, but he discusses at 

 length their bearings, as he sees them, on such 

 sociological questions as eugenics, intemper- 

 ance, insanity and education, on such psycho- 

 logical problems as the relation of mind to 



