Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/307

 Reviews and Notes 301 were relatively free agents. The laws of nature were almost unknown, their universal validity, the infrangible chajn of cause and effect were inconceivable to those generations. When Jean Bodin ventured to proclaim that man was dependent on his environment, he took care to postulate the human reason as the absolute part of the mind, and as such not subject to surrounding influences. So it was but natural that he regarded education as the remedy for social ills, as though an environment tending to develop vicious propensities at the expense of the good would not leave its impress upon education. J. G. Kohl, 1 who wrote three centuries later, expresses similar views, though he admits that this seeming independence may be an illusion. Bodin, though a clear and deep thinker, could not entirely free himself from the influence of his times, and so we discover in De la rtpublique, and especially in his Demonomanie (Paris, 1581) a strong leaning to the belief of his age that Satan and his demons had power over the world, and that magic and astrology were true arts. As the conception of the universe becomes more and more deterministic, the influence of environment upon man is per- ceived more clearly. Our own age is wholly deterministic as far as western civilization is concerned. The structures of all the natural sciences rests on the assumption that no law of nature is ever suspended, that there exists an unbroken and unbreakable chain of cause and effect. All sociologic and political thought proceeds likewise from these premises. As soon as we see a phenomenon or a series of phenomena which we consider detrimental, we start to seek for the cause or causes and try to remove them. We may well ask ourselves whether we are not going too far in that direction, for at present man is almost regarded as a machine, and experts of various kind are busily at work to obtain for him the maximum of efficiency, which nine times out of ten means merely a maximum of material productiveness. Cui bono? From a strictly deterministic point of view, all these efforts for and against are absolutely inevitable, without, however, really altering the determined course of events. Previous causes determine the marshalling of opposing forces, the time, the place and the form of the clash, as well as the outcome. The truly philosophical among the determinists 1 We may mention here that Kohl in his work Der Rhein (Leipsic, 1851) pointed out what role the rivers always have played in the development of peoples and nations, referring for illustration not only to the principal rivers of the old world, but also to those of North and South America. He really sug- gests the theme which Metchnikoff dealt with in detail in Les civilisations^ et les grands fleuves historique, confining himself, however, to Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China.