96 



author. Without implying any real analogy, one cannot help 

 but recall here Harvey's statement in his epoch-making book, 

 "The motion of the heart and blood in animals," viz: "Fer- 

 nelius, and many others, suppose that there are aerial spirits 

 and invisible substances . . . but Medical Schools admit three 

 kinds of spirits: the natural spirits flowing through the veins, the 

 vital spirits through the arteries, and the animal spirits through 

 the nerves ; . . . but we have found none of all these spirits by 

 dissection, neither in the veins, nerves, arteries nor other parts 

 of living animals." One is also reminded here of the primordial 

 units of "mind-stuff," in which Clifford believed, though on 

 evidence (so James tells us) that seemed quite worthless to Bain. 

 It seems to the reviewer as though the author were reviving for 

 the microcosm a conception analagous to that formerly held of 

 the macrocosm, but long since abandoned in the light of the 

 scientific investigation and interpretation of nature. The 

 ancient polytheism, for example, postulated a spirit presiding 

 over every natural process, and over every act of daily life — -a 

 god of the east wind, and of the west wind, of the sea and of the 

 depths of the earth ; a god of going out, and a god of returning 

 home, a god of planting, and a god of harvest. So the book under 

 review postulates a special kind of energy for the various kinds 

 of functions, and each kind differs from all the other kinds in 

 its "perfectness." A botanical reviewer may prudently re- 

 frain from a critical discussion of the purely physical question of 

 kinds and qualities of energies, but it would be interesting and 

 no doubt profitable, to hear what comments a physicist would 

 make. An acceptance of the author's theory would demand a 

 considerable readjustment of the mode of thought of contempor- 

 ary experimental physiologists. 



Another idea to which the author assigns much prominence 

 and for which he coins a new term (as noted above), is "proen- 

 vironment" (Chapter IX, and passim). -This is defined (p. 242) 

 as "that great and ever-expanding law of organic life, by which 

 varied environal stimuli are linked into a summated and uni- 

 fied response, that brings each organism into satisfied relation to 

 the environment;" or again (p. 629), "the capacity of an or- 



