Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/583

569 the question must be left open." "Every portion of the cortex has, of course, been submitted to the finest microscopical examination. I am not ignorant of the work of Ramon y Cajal, Flechsig, Waldeyer etc. But it is none the less true that on the functional side the human brain is still terra incognita." I may be doing the author an injustice in inferring that he apparently yet hopes to find consciousness in some region even more obscure than the pineal gland!

When the author comes to discuss the paleontological evidence bearing upon the "dawn of humanity" and "The Advance of Mind," he is dealing with a question with which he is apparently more at home. His treatment of the growth of the higher primates and earliest man-like forms in the different geological eras—of the slow development of higher mental processes in man, of the causes (crises, etc.) which led to a more rapid mental development—are all interestingly dealt with, but in a highly speculative way.

In conclusion we may say that the book cannot be judged by a scientific standard. In view of its many defects on the factual side and of the one-sided and warped view-point of the author, it is not even the type of readable book which ought to be recommended to the general public.

This member of the series of Oxford translations of Aristotle, published pursuant to the desire of Benjamin Jowett, is in itself insignificant, being in no sense the work of Aristotle, and the translation does not compare favorably with that of the major works already issued. But the treatise possesses a certain curious interest and the translation is adequate for the purposes of those who are likely to depend upon it.

Gustaf Björklund is a compatriot of Swedenborg, and the present volume is characterized by the translator as "undoubtedly one of Sweden's most remarkable and interesting contributions to contemporary philosophy" (p. xv).

The author believes that he finds in the results of modern cytology a new way of solving the problem of the immortality of the soul. "Life is not a material force; no living being can therefore arise from dead matter; all life has a supernatural origin in a higher immaterial world" (pp. 122 f.). This is Björklund’s position. He finds physical force and life to be two "essentially different principles" (p. 91). Opposing Büchner's endeavor to reduce human life and personality to "Force and Matter," Björklund shows the scientific inadequacy of materialism. Modern science has shown the impossibility of generatio spontanea. Harvey, Spallanzani, Hoffmann, and Pasteur have indicated with increasing certainty the truth of the principle Omnem vivum ex