the general public, and also of the majority of medical men, who, "while observing the effects of disease on man the individual, have signally failed to observe its effects on man the species." While he accepts evolution in its widest and most absolute sense as a certainty, the author differs from the usual views, in that in his opinion acknowledged authorities have not recognized or have not laid sufficient stress on certain processes of evolution which appear to him of the greatest importance. The book is intended to lead up to the presentation of these processes, and is divisible into two parts, in the first of which the problem of evolution in general is briefly considered, with an attempt to penetrate somewhat deeper in certain directions than has hitherto been done, and in the second part the conclusions arrived at are applied to the problem of man's present evolution, with an endeavor to show that this evolution is proceeding in a direction hitherto altogether unexpected. The processes of evolution are supposed to be singly, inappreciably minute, and all as still going on—even spontaneous generation, which we do not discover, because the really earliest forms of life are beyond all devisable means of observation. The inheritance of acquired qualities as a factor of evolution is rejected, and the process is held solely dependent on the survival of the fittest. Yet the variations acquired by every normal individual have a magnitude and importance far beyond that which is commonly attributed to them by biologists. The present evolution of man, while development in bodies and brains is an element in it, is mainly an evolution against disease. The stage of evolution reached by European races is the result of a long process of selection against certain classes of diseases to which they have become comparatively proof. The natives of other regions into which European civilization is extending itself have this immunity yet to acquire. Hence the deadly influence of our civilization upon them when they are subjected to it. Other agencies which are the causes of the elimination of the unfit are the narcotics. The influence of these two classes of factors, and the nature and extent of the modifications affected by them in physical and mental conditions, are the subjects of the second part of the book.
To the American Lectures on the History of Religions, given under the direction of an association representing a number of co-operating institutions and local boards, Dr. Daniel G. Brinton has contributed a course on Religions of Primitive Peoples[1] which were delivered during the winter of 1896-'97 at Boston, Brooklyn, Ithaca, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, and Providence. By primitive peoples are meant those of the earliest stage of culture of which trusty information exists, while religion, hardly susceptible of a limited definition, is regarded as in some form or other universal in the human race. The study, of which these lectures present the fruits, undertaken without bias or partisanship, but looking upon all religions alike "as more or less enlightened expressions of mental traits common to all mankind in every known age," is pursued by the historic, the comparative, and the psychologic methods. Laying down his postulates in the first lecture, Dr. Brinton discusses in the five succeeding lectures The Origin and Contents of Primitive Religions, Primitive Religious Expression—in the Word, in the Object, and in the Rite—and The Lines of Development in Primitive Religions. All the religions are regarded as unconsciously directing and impelling the mind toward the abstract stage, when the idea
- ↑ Religions of Primitive Peoples. By Daniel G. Brinton. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 264. Price, $1.50.
