NOTES AND LITERATURE 



HEREDITY AND "THE INFLUENCE OF 

 MONARCHS" 



In "The Influence of Monarchs" (xiii and 422 pp., 1913, The 

 Macmillan Co., New York, $2.00) Dr. Frederick Adams Woods 

 makes a second and firmer step along the path entered on with his 

 interesting "Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty" published 

 in 1906. Dr. Woods's goal in beginning and continuing his an- 

 alysis of the character of royalties and the circumstances of their 

 reigns is one probably not immediately to be reached but also 

 probably one not impossible of attainment. It is indeed not one 

 goal that he has before him, but two, the ways to which lie close 

 together and parallel. One is the establishing of a new science of 

 history to be called historiometry ; the other is the making ap- 

 parent of the dominance of heredity over environment in deter- 

 mining human fate. 



That the methods and even the aims of most historical study 

 are not satisfying to all historical students is made obvious by 

 the constant complaining of historians to and of each other. 

 There are two conspicuous groups of these protestants, one de- 

 manding more interest, more imagination, a more literary treat- 

 ment of historical fact, and the other demanding a more signifi- 

 cant, more inductive, more scientific treatment. The former 

 wants more "humanity." the latter more biology, in history. 

 Dr. Woods is of the latter group. 



But Dr. Woods is not primarily of any historical camp. He is 

 biologist, especially evolutionist and student of heredity. How- 

 ever, he marches very boldly into the ranks of the students of his- 

 torical human history — to distinguish thus the last few thousand 

 years of human history from the earlier many thousand years 

 of it— with the new methods and results of his historiometry, 

 just as Pearson, several years ago, invaded the biological camp 

 with his biometry. Something of historiometry in history there 

 has always been, just as there has always been something of 

 biometry in biology. But these reformers want to make history 

 and biology wholly, or, at least, most importantly, sciences of 

 measure. And each of them finds that his use of measure in them 

 leads him to discover that the facts that he is measuring offer, in 

 the new significance they are thus made to yield, a special argu- 

 ment for some particular one of the major factors in evolution. 

 255 



