1918] CURRENT LITERATURE 279 
himself. There seems to be a certain inconsistency in this preference for 
qualitative interpretations. If scientific biology is essentially quantitative, 
as LorB maintains, we have the right to demand adequate grounds for his 
rejection or failure to discuss quantitative as opposed to qualitative interpreta- 
tions. 
Few biologists of the present day will deny the importance of chemical 
or transportative correlation, that is, the production, transportation, and action 
in the organism of chemical substances, many of which are supposed t 
specific. There is, however, another sort of physiological correlation, namely, 
transmissive or conductive correlation, which finds its carer development in 
the nervous system. In this sort of correlation the essential f is the trans- 
mission of energy rather than the transportation of materials. There can be 
no doubt that in organisms which possess a differentiated nervous system this 
is the chief factor in maintaining the integration of the organism as a har- 
monious whole. But biologists are very generally agreed that the nervous 
relations between parts which exist both embryologically and phylogenetically 
before its development. Unless we assume the existence of an entelechy or 
Supergenes or some other non-mechanistic ordering and controlling principle, 
we cannot escape the conclusion that the starting-point of physiological integra- 
tion is to be found in the initiation and transmission from one part to another 
of dynamic changes, not of material substances. 
In a discussion of the organism as a whole we should expect to find some- 
thing concerning the nervous system, and how it has become of such importance 
in physiological integration. LorB, however, merely refers in the preface to 
his “comparative physiology of the brain” as supplementing the present book. 
The German edition of that work appeared in 1899. It seems to many of us 
that after 18 years there might at least be something to add to the original dis- 
cussion, particularly as regards the integrating function of the nervous system 
or of protoplasmic conduction in general. Apparently, however, transmission, 
conduction, and nervous function possess no — significance for the 
author in relation to the wholeness of the o 
The analogy between the biological tndbebduak the organism, and the 
social organism, the state, has often been noted both by biologists and sociolo- 
gists. The reviewer believes that there is more than an analogy here. Both 
the organism and human society represent the reactions of living protoplasm 
to its environment, and in the integration of human individuals into an orderly 
and harmonious whole we find a fundamental similarity to the process of 
physiological integration within the organism. A moment’s thought is 
sufficient to show that in the integration of human beings into an orderly 
community or state the transmissive relations are the primary factors. The 
