Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/599

 REVIEWS 581

(p. ix). He does not claim that it contains new material that can be called established conclusions, but "really a program of work to be carried out as fully as circumstances may permit." He also says: " My book is addressed to disciplined minds, and in especial to biolo- gists'' (ibid.}. In contrast with this, the English dress and announce- ments, while slurring over this caution (p. vii), obviously calculate upon the suggestibility of the undisciplined, the half-educated who cannot measure the stretch between competent evidence about details and valid generalizations, nor discriminate between speculation and proof.

In whetting the appetite of the general public for something that the author does not claim to offer, the editor and publishers have com- promised the author's fame. He has not founded, nor proposed, a new system of thought. He has elaborated the idea of functional harmonies and disharmonies with the special aim of directing attention to study of possible adjustments to the conditions of human life. So far as any new philosophy is suggested in the book, the author would doubtless be the first to point out that it is in the stage of mere sup- position, with no more scientific authority than if it were poetry pure and simple. M. Metchnikoff has won a place in the front rank of investigators in biology. His methods have stood the severest experi- mental tests. In everything that falls within his competence his right to speak with authority, if not finality, is unchallenged. In the words of his editor, however (p. v): "In the volume that he has now given to the public he has addressed himself to the gravest and the most serious problems of humanity to life, and sex, and death and

the fear of death Now for the first time in the history of thought

the exact methods of science have been brought to the statement of the problems." When he is advertised in this fashion, he must either "make good," or bear perhaps more than his share of the discredit of being placed in a false position. I can find nothing in the book that justifies the implications of this language. M. Metchnikoff has dis- cussed these subjects as a hundred biologists have before him. He has made some suggestions that are decidedly stimulating. He has lighted up the problems with brilliant imagination, but his addition to what other biologists have done is merely a dash of color focalized at last in a series of conceits about the ultimate duration of life and the typical attitude toward death.

I do not feel sure, however, that the most serious count against the book can be charged against the editor. Apparently the author