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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



Man and Woman: a Study of Human Secondary Sexual 

 Characters. By Havelock Ellis. Walter Scott Limtd. 

 1896. 



This publication forms a recent addition to the " Contem- 

 porary Science Series," of which the first volume, which appeared 

 in 1889, was written by Geddes and Thomson, and devoted to the 

 question of the " Evolution of Sex " — a biological problem of no 

 mean importance, and one which few zoologists have not in some 

 form, or at some time or other, been forced to consider. There 

 is therefore a somewhat natural sequence in Mr. Ellis's more 

 special contribution to a knowledge of the real differences which 

 divide the human sexes — a study of the deepest importance to the 

 anthropologist and of no little interest to the zoologist. Perhaps 

 no fact in nature has been more universally observed, and as well 

 by the ignorant peasant as by men of the highest culture, that in 

 thought and sentiment men and women are diverse. But, as our 

 author observes, though perhaps with some asperity : — " For the 

 most part questions of sexual difference have been left of recent 

 years to magazine essayists — whose lucubrations are generally 

 too slight and too purely literary to deserve mention — and to 

 philosophers ; of the latter, Lotze, Schopenhauer, and Herbert 

 Spencer have perhaps touched the matter with most acuteness, 

 though perhaps in an incomplete and one-sided manner." This, 

 however, can scarcely be said of Darwin's masterly exposition of 

 " Sexual Selection in relation to Man," with which the question 

 in recent years was really focussed. 



One of the main contentions of Mr. Ellis is that woman is 

 not "undeveloped man," but rather that " women remain some- 

 what nearer to children than do men.' To understand the gist 

 and real tendency of this argument it is necessary to remember 

 that in animal life there is much deterioration, or departure from 

 the evolutionary ideal in the adult stage. " The infant ape is very 

 much nearer to man than the adult ape." " The ape starts in life 



Zool. 4th ser. vol. jf., May, 1897. s 



