NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
This volume of the "Columbia University Biological Series" perhaps prompts, rather than explains, the question as to what are "the foundations of Zoology." Are they to be sought in the laboratory, or are they to be derived largely by purely mental processes? Or are physical demonstrations to be allied to, made altogether subservient, or treated only as secondary in position to philosophical conceptions? This problem must occur to the reader as he studies in these pages the author's views and commentaries on the writings of Huxley, Lamarck, Galton, Weismann, Darwin, Paley, Agassiz, and Berkeley.
Prof. Brooks has a philosophical position of his own. He is clearly not Neo-Lamarckian, a term applied at present to so much American speculation; he may be better described as Anti-Lamarckian. He is not a Pyrrhonist, though on many questions he gives the verdict only of "not proven." Perhaps an extract may give a better clue to the foundation on which he rears a philosophy which is more critical than affirmative, and vibrates between the idealistic and materialistic conceptions. "I am not able to answer the question whether, in ultimate analysis, the principles of science are physical or metaphysical. I know nothing about things ultimate. I do not know what the relation between mind and matter is. I do not know whether the distinction between 'things perceived by sense' and 'relations apprehended by the mind' is founded in nature or not; but I am sure that natural knowledge is useful to me, that it is pleasant, and profitable, and instructive; and I must ask whether all this does not show that nature is intended?"
The main issue is seemingly whether these questions are biological or metaphysical; or whether, appertaining to both
