Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/437

Rh ingenious spiders who build trapdoors and turrets. Social homes are those of the mason, carpenter, and leaf-cutting ants; of the wasps manufacturing paper and cardboard, including the Nectarinia that construct globular nests with a spiral flight of stairs.

Thousands of insects possess no other defense than their protective resemblances. Other classes decoy their prey by simulating some alluring object. Under the head of variation of color some account is given of the experiments in regard to larval susceptibility. Brightly colored insects find protection in a nauseous taste or smell, irritating hairs or spines, the power to discharge a noxious fluid or inflict a sting. Insects otherwise defenseless escape their foes by mimicry of the behavior and appearance of distasteful species. This curious phase of insect life is considered at some length in the closing chapter.

The book is well illustrated, and contains both glossary and index.

results of the reasonings submitted in the nine essays constituting this volume may be regarded as having arisen from a judicious survey of the branches of philosophy treated. That on Darwin and Hegel, as the author explains, has been selected as the title of the work, because it emphasizes more particularly the especial point of view, or basic relations which form a juncture in the criticisms under consideration. This is certainly the pivotal essay as tending to reconcile a measured acceptance of the "general principles" arising out of Kantian criticism which governs that idealist philosophy originating with Plato and Aristotle, with an acceptation in the fullest of the intellectual advances made by, residing in, and betimes overlying the historical method of treating institutions and ideas; as well as the theory of natural selection and its logical outcome.

The papers now published in bulk originally appeared in Mind, are recorded in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and other periodicals.

Regard this book in whatever light acknowledged scientific data may shed, evidence is not lacking of Mr. Ritchie's logical acumen, linked with a genuine spirit of inquiry. In the general presentation of the author's position, these essays, if only cursorily read, might seem totally isolated, whereas a careful perusal reveals a well connected thought undercurrent. The true worth of the volume is best attested by the number of considerations posited in the form of queries, not a few of which are solved outright in Mr. Ritchie's own way, while others remain to be determined by the reader or the future philosopher. Besides the main essay, forming the title, we have one on Origin and Validity, which involves a briefer paper on Heredity as a Factor in Knowledge. The others following are. What is Reality? On Plato's Phædo; What are Economic Laws? Locke's Theory of Property; The Social Contract Theory; On the Conception of Sovereignty, and the Rights of Minorities.

In his analysis of the philosophies of Darwin and Hegel, as applied in their social and scientific bearings, the author intimates that while materialism and idealism are ordinarily referred to as philosophically antagonistic, he nevertheless endeavors to prove that a certain "form of idealism" is not at all incompatible with that monism of materialistic teaching which has nowadays become "the working hypothesis of every scientific explorer." To Mr. Ritchie the monism of materialism alone seems false when posited as an absolute philosophy of the universe. From this he is forced to infer that any such doctrine will necessarily put out of sight conditions of knowledge which true philosophy must not ignore, though the special sciences may. In the paper on Origin and Validity as applied to philosophy, the cords that bind a certain class of popular dogmas presumed to determine real worth Mr. Ritchie severs with relentless logic, and then proceeds with marked caution to distinguish between the philosophical problem and that of psychology and history. Dilating upon what he considers most permanent in Kant's Critical Philosophy, he proposes to examine the relation existing between speculative metaphysics and Kant's theory of knowledge, and supplies not a few illustrations of the import attaching to the