No. 408.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 977 
Finding Flaws. — Every scientific man knows that science is 
progressing and ideas are changing. Aristotle’s writings on animals 
read strangely to-day, but we are not therefore to lay stress on his 
limitations. Darwin wrote the first edition of the Origin of Species 
over forty years ago, and it would be strange indeed if every part 
of it were acceptable to-day. Every bit of Darwin's earlier evolu- 
tionary writings was not acceptable to Darwin himself before he died 
— a fact to be put down to his credit. The author of this book’ 
devotes over three hundred pages to pointing out Darwin's changes 
of views, * special errors and inconsistencies,” ‘‘ looseness and con- 
tradictions." Some of the *flaws" which the author holds up to 
view and takes great delight in pointing to again and again belong to 
the category of natural advances in knowledge; others are still debat- 
able points; in other cases the author seems to be straining things 
to make a point. The worst of it is that the whole book is written 
in a style of oiled fluency, cocksureness, and conceit, which makes 
the reader doubt the author's sincerity. Thus on page 193: 
I have tried to understand many things, but Mr. Darwin I cannot under- 
stand. You cannot have * uniformity of conditions " and uniformitarianism 
of process and result too; for the one is based on fixity and the other on 
fluctuation — it may be slow, but ceaseless — though it may be very, very 
slow, yet also of a necessity very, very sure. Hegel's Absolute was always 
a becoming ; phenomena, conditions, are always a-coming and a-going; it 
is because of this that they are phenomena and conditions, and to have to 
write thus in the year of grace 1899, in reference to the work not only of 
a great naturalist but of a thinker, makes me rather ashamed of falling 
back so much and so fully on what I was well taught in the logic and 
metaphysic classroom of Edinburgh University by the worthy successor 
of Sir William Hamilton, * forty years ago, my boys, forty years ago." 
But after all, if only one can be undisturbed by these personal 
things, he will find in the book many interesting facts which the author 
has collected and which are new to speculative books of this sort. 
Recent Work in Electrotaxis. — In two papers? published within 
the year, Dr. Oskar Carlgren has considerably advanced our 
1 Alexander, P. V. Darwin and Darwinism, Pure and Mixed. A Criticism, 
with Some —— London, John Bole, Sons, and Ecol 1899. 346 
2 Carlgren, O. Ueber die Einwirkung des constanten galvanischen Seain 
auf niedere Organismen, Arch. Anat. u. eden rie gee Abth., 1900, pp. 49-76 
Carlgren, O. Ueber die Einwirkung u. s. w.: Zweite Mittheilung: Versuche an 
sdiudüctóorn Entwicklungsstadien einiger  abodeibiéqn: Arch. Anat. u. Physiol., 
Physiol. Abth., 1900, pp. 465-480. 
