(1) Les Inconnus de la Biologie déterministe (2) Einführung in die Tierpsychologie auf experimenteller und ethologischer Grundlage (3) L'Espèce et son Serviteur (4) Life and Human Nature (5) Controlled Natural Selection and Value Marking

Abstract

(1) A. DE GRAMONT LESPARRE makes a very eloquent protest against determinist biology which has no use for the soul. He indulges in not a little sarcasm at the expense of those who regard the psychical life as an epiphenomenon of cerebral metabolism, and hold that physics and chemistry are sufficient, or will eventually be sufficient, for the description of an animals daily life. He considers sensation, memory, heredity, reproduction, instinct, intelligence, and so on, and shows that the way of determinist biology is hard. Instead of clearing things up. it lands us in an intellectual fog. He will not have anything to say to “psychoids” and the like, but stands for the oldfashioned soul, an active intellectual principle, simple and autonomous, existing alongside of or rather above physiological phenomena. It is well that the difficulties in the way of mechanistic interpretation should be firmly pointed out, and the authors passionate eloquence need not be taken amiss in these days of compromise; it is well to point out the dangers of question-begging phrases like “the life of crystals,” and “the memory of a twisted thread”; it is also well to proclaim the inestimable value of the concept of personality; but we think it far from well that one of the authors standing should give in the closing pages of his book an account of the present state of the theory of organic evolution which we do not hesitate to call a pessimistic and reactionary misrepresentation.

(1) Les Inconnus de la Biologie d terministe.

By A. de Gramont Lesparre. Pp. 297. (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1914.) Price 5 frs.

(2) Einf hrung in die Tierpsychologie auf experimenteller und ethologischer Grundlage.

By Gustav Kafka Erster Band Die Sinne der Wirbellosen. Pp. xii + 594. (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1914.) Price 18 m.

(3) L'Espèce et son Serviteur.

(Sexualit, Moralit .) By Prof. A. Cresson. Pp. 347. (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1913.) Price 6 frs.

(4) Life and Human Nature.

By Sir Bampfylde Fuller. Pp. xii + 339. (London: John Murray, 1914.) Price 9s. net.

(5) Controlled Natural Selection and Value Marking.

By J. C. Mottram. Pp. ix + 130. (London: Longmans, Green and Co.., 1914.) Price 3s. 6d. net.