are shaken off by this atavism, have reference to secondary adaptations, to new circumstances, and, in many cases, to the wants of man, this reversion is virtually a retrogression under feeble progressive forces. . . . New powers and new beauties may arise in the transfer of inheritance under inscrutable causes, and yet may be taken-up by heredity and consolidated among more primitive endowments."
Now, having gone so far, we see not how Dr. Bascom could refrain from going further, and carrying out the doctrine to its logical consequences. For, if evolution be true at all, its truth is fundamental; and, if it have any influence upon ethical method, it must be a determining influence. If development be the method of nature, as Dr. Bascom tacitly admits, then must the moral sentiments and faculties of man be a product of it; and, if man's moral attributes have been evolved in immense time by slow experience, if our present morality has been derived from a lower stage by processes that are carrying it to a higher stage, then surely we have upon us the most important of all ethical questions, viz., by what causes and under what conditions is morality growing better? We have forced upon us the problem of the genesis of moral relations—how lower conduct is passing into higher conduct—what are the present imperfections of moral impulse and guidance which may be expected to disappear in the future—and how far is ethical requirement relative to the progress of the social state. It may not detract from the practical value of Dr. Bascom's manual, that these considerations are not pursued with the thoroughness and in the direction implied by his title and commencing chapter; but the failure of the exposition in this respect leaves it open to the charge of not fully representing the present state of ethical inquiry.
Dr. Bascom makes frequent and critical reference to the ethical views of Herbert Spencer as presented in his "Social Statics," published twenty-nine years ago. But it is nowhere stated, as we observe, that this was a transitional work that no longer accurately represents Mr. Spencer's views, and that, because of its unsatisfactoriness, he entered into a more extensive development of the subject, in which the "Principles of Morality" were to be treated after an exhaustive elucidation of the chief sciences that bear upon the subject. If it was worth while to quote Spencer at all—if his views of a generation ago have still sufficient insight to demand critical attention—it would certainly have been proper to state that the author held them so insufficient that he has devoted his life to the task of placing morals upon a sounder and more scientific basis than was possible when his first work was written.
Freedom in Science and Teaching. From the German of Ernst Haeckel. With a Prefatory Note by T. H. Huxley, F. R. S. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 121. Price, §1.
The collision of two such minds as those of Virchow and Haeckel over the evolution question could not fail to strike fire and create light. Much able discussion has followed, in which certain important aspects of the question have been scanned and sifted with a thoroughness that would hardly have been secured in the absence of conflict. The reply to Virchow that has been called out from Haeckel and fills this volume is an extremely interesting and instructive contribution to the popular literature of the subject.
It needs hardly to be said that in his celebrated address, which has been received with such favor by the non-scientific portion of the public, and by such scientific persons as are dominated by traditional ideas, Virchow took the ground that evolution is an hypothesis not proved, and that therefore it should not be taught in the German schools; that the evidence of anthropology is thus far against the doctrine of the derivation of man from lower forms of life; and, finally, that there is such an affiliation of Darwinistic theories with modern communism as to raise the question whether the state is not justified in interfering for the suppression of a dangerous teaching. For the reply that Professor Haeckel makes to Virchow's charge that evolution is an "unproved hypothesis," we must refer the reader to the book, which is valuable as showing—1. What kind of evidence is required; 2. That it is abundant in quantity; and, 3. That the difficulty with
