750 
Analyses of Books. 
[December, 
physiological, and pathological, seeking in all these departments 
essential unity. In bringing into prominence the fa Ct that all 
human races are subject to almost every disease, he might fit- 
tingly have extended his observations to the apes, who undoubt- 
edly share many of our maladies, and under certain circumstances 
would doubtless be susceptible to them all. It is known that in 
the most unhealthy part of the season monkeys migrate away 
from the Terai'. In the last Book he traces the elements of 
unity in the intellectual, moral, and religious features of the 
entire human race. 
The main, essential portion of the work is very much less 
open to criticism than the preliminary sections, and even those 
who do not admit that the human race might have sprung from 
a single initial pair may read it with pleasure and profit. 
Das Princip des Westganzen und der Polar ismus .* Von D. E. 
Mielke. Berlin : Theobald Grieben. 
We have here, in brief compass, a far-reaching work. The 
author criticises the received scientific system, and proposes a 
substitute in its place, which he works out in astronomy, in the 
doCtrines of atoms and cells, in botany and zoology, and in human 
thought, consciousness, and will. His fundamental principle is 
polarity. He considers that the mechanism of the heavenly 
bodies as commonly taught, as well as the hypothesis on the 
origin of the planetary system, due to Kant and Pezholdt ( i.e ., 
the nebular hypothesis), appear unsatisfactory and “one-legged.” 
The dualistic motor provided for the planets, consisting of the 
centrifugal and centripetal force, excites alarm lest the heavenly 
bodies, in consequence of total loss of heat, should perish from 
excessive condensation and from the shortening of orbits. The 
author considers it as unsatisfactory that the planets should be 
masses agglomerated out of chaos without internal organisation 
and polar activity. He considers that the problem of philosophy 
is to find the true mean between the subjective idealism hitherto 
cultivated and a materialism degenerated into the unnatural. 
Turning by predilection to the chapter in which the author 
applies his principle to the organic, and especially to the animal 
world, we find him remark that plants and animals have this in 
common, that at one end the root or the head is organised for 
the reception of nourisment. At the opposite extremity the re- 
productive organs. But how about the many cases where the 
intersusception of food and the production of seed or ova are not 
placed at opposite extremities ? We need only refer to the 
The Principle of the Universe and Polarism. 
