WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS — CONKUN 



to discover, in the present status of biology, any demonstration 

 of error in the assertion that life is different from matter and 

 motion," but "I cannot find any contradiction between anything 

 we find in our nature and the ultimate reduction of all nature, 

 including all the phenomena of life and of mind, to mechanical 

 principles ; for most students of the principles of science agree 

 that natural knowledge is no more than the discovery of the 

 order of nature. . . . Order is no explanation, but a thing 

 to be explained." "It is a hard thing," says Berkeley, "to. sup- 

 pose that right deductions from true principles should ever end 

 in consequences which cannot be maintained." To which 

 Brooks responds : "In my opinion there is nothing in the preva- 

 lence of mechanical conceptions of life and mind, or in the 

 unlimited extension of these conceptions, to show that this 

 hard thing to suppose is true." 



It is as impossible to summarize this book as it would be to 

 summarize the Book of Proverbs, or the Meditations of Marcus 

 Aurelius. It is, indeed, a compilation of many meditations 

 which appear to have been written down at many different 

 times, and afterwards joined together with more or less care. 

 The result is a book which contains more pithy, quotable sen- 

 tences than can be found in any other book dealing with biology 

 with which I am acquainted, but at the same time it is a book 

 which is difficult to analyze, and in places difficult to understand. 

 The titles of the chapters will, in a general way, give the trend 

 of the book; these are: "Huxley and the problem of the natu- 

 ralist," "Nature and nurture," "Lamarck," "Migration in its 

 bearing on Lamarckism," "Zoology and the philosophy of evo- 

 lution," "A note on the views of Galton and Weismann on 

 inheritance," "Galton and the statistical study of inheritance," 

 "Darwin and the Origin of Species," "Natural selection and 

 the antiquity of life," "Natural selection and natural theology," 

 "Paley and the argument from contrivance," "The mechanism 

 of nature," "Louis Agassiz and George Berkeley." In the 

 course of these lectures very many important facts and obser- 

 vations on the topics suggested are introduced, and the book 

 is of value from this more usual standpoint of science, but 

 attention is chiefly directed to the underlying philosophical 

 significance of these phenomena. On the whole his chief 



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