Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 25.pdf/422

 Reviews of Books

397

PRESIDENT HADLEY delivered consequences of great importance in this nationalistic movement, high tariffs and at the University of North Caro lina last year a series of lectures on a large standing armies. In the new pragfoundation endowed with the object of matistic view of life that is now making throwing light on the relations between headway, the criterion whether a thing science and theology. The religious is right or wrong is its permanence. interest of these lectures, which have We must not misconceive the struggle been issued in a slightly modified form, for existence as a struggle solely between is secondary. Some attention is paid to individuals, it is also a struggle between the aspirations of recent poetry and a groups, so that the lesson of natural spiritual view of the human struggle selection is not individualism, such as for existence is harmonized with the the early half of the nineteenth century doctrine of natural selection. The writer stood for, but an attitude which recog also lays great emphasis on the growth nizes the broad range of social interests of the modern spirit of tolerance, which and judges questions of morals by the has succeeded the intellectual com criterion of what is permanent in the life placency of the first half of the nine not merely of individuals but also of teenth century and which finds expres communities and groups. sion today in the pragmatism of Wil It seems hardly likely that the sup liam James and other exponents of the posed ethical implications of the prin same philosophical principle. ciple of natural selection will long con The more suggestive and important tinue to give writers the concern which element of the lectures, however, lies in has been exhibited in much recent dis the singularly attractive recapitulation cussion. It is scarcely a topic which of intellectual tendencies of the past can long continue to excite curiosity. hundred years. The characteristics of It is natural that the implied corollary, the thought of the earlier half of the extermination of the unfit, should have nineteenth century, particularly in Eng become almost a by-word, and should land and France, are sketched in general have colored the moral beliefs of many outline, the subject being skimmed in in a age eager for conflict and hungry consequence of the limited compass of for success. Whether it has supplied a the lectures, a break coming in the moral conception that will fill a large middle of the century with three great space in the intellectual history of the discoveries which revolutionized thought age, and merit the same serious atten and marked the beginning of a new stage tion as such dogmas as laisser faire and of intellectual development. These dis human equality, would raise an inter coveries were the law of the conservation esting problem. Without offering any of energy, the theory of cellular tissue, judgment on probable developments of and the process of elimination by natural the future, we may hazard the view selection. There has come about in con that any distorted version of biological sequence a change of feeling not only facts, such as is represented in this about the problems of the universe, but overemphasis on the principle of natural about politics, trade, and morals as selection to the disparagement of other well. Nationalism has succeeded indi factors of equal value, like symbiosis, vidualism, as the Darwinian theory has cannot long prevail in an age of criticism, and that biological facts are not likely taken the place of positivism and utili tarianism. There were two industrial to remain confused with biological dog