which treat of motive, will, and conduct as subjects of moral approbation and resentment, are among the finest in the book. The last half of this volume is devoted to the first of six different modes of conduct regarded in the concrete, i. e., that mode of behavior which affects the welfare of other men. It is here particularly that Westermarck's acquaintance with classical and ethnological sources is most skillfully and effectivetyused. Here is portrayed the actual moral and immoral life of mankind set in its natural environment of social conduct. Westermarck's method and material are alike destined to exert a profound influence upon the science of ethics. The reproach of 'objectivity' is certain to be brought; the criticism that the moral consciousness is made to dwell too exclusively upon the ethical value of the acts of others, to the disregard of the subject's own good or bad will. But this reproach is to be met, in the reviewer's opinion, rather by an effective system of moral prophylaxy and moral hygiene than by the introduction of a subjective attitude into the scientific study of the moral life.Madison Bentley.
Cornell University.
In this volume, published Nov. 24, 1909, on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species, Professor Poulton has brought together the various essays and addresses which he prepared for the Darwin celebrations in England and the United States. His general standpoint is defined in the Preface as follows: "The Darwinian of the present day holds an intermediate position between the followers of Buffon and Lamarck and the Mutationists … The disciple of the two first-named naturalists, in these days calling himself an oecologist, maintains that organisms are the product of their environment; the Mutatiouist holds that organisms are subject to inborn transformation, and that environment selects the fittest from among a crowd of finished products. The Darwinian believes that the finished product or species is gradually built up by the environmental selection of minute increments, holding that, among inborn variations of all degrees of magnitude, the small and not the large become the steps by which evolution proceeds." This, then, is the point of view of the book. Ch. i, Fifty Years of Darwinism, reprints, with some important changes, the essay which gave its title to the volume of Centennial Addresses reviewed in the Journal, xx, 1909, 578 ff. Ch. ii touches lightly but appreciatively on the Personality of Charles Darwin. Ch. iii, on the Darwin Centenary at Oxford, discusses the reasons for Darwin's self-confessed loss of the faculty of aesthetic enjoyment; the writer seems to have missed Titchener's paper on the same subject in the Pop. Sci. Mo. Ch. iv rehearses Darwin's relation and debt to the University of Cambridge. Ch. v, The Value of Color in the Struggle for Life, is a somewhat extended reprint of the author's contribution to the English memorial volume, Darwin and Modern Science. Ch. vi, Mimicry in the Butterflies of North America, shows by reference to special cases that the study of mimicry possesses great advantages for an understanding of the history and causes of evolution, and incidentally outlines a number of problems for American investigators.
Ch. vii breaks new ground; it contains a series of letters written by Darwin to Mr. Roland Trimen between the years 1863 and 1871. The letters belong to an interesting period and, as the editor remarks, "show all the characteristics of Darwin, in his relations with younger men who helped him in his work."
