Heredity and Social Progress

Abstract

Useful as analogy may be for purposes of illustration, it forms a precarious basis for scientific argument. Dr. Patten's book exemplifies the danger of attempting to formulate general laws on the strength of more or less superficial resemblances between phenomena belonging to diverse natural conditions. Such first-sight correspondences may legitimately be employed in the way of suggesting or indicating an underlying law, but in the absence of verification by comparison with all related facts, they are incapable of carrying an induction beyond its preliminary stages. These principles, which would seem to be sufficiently obvious, are practically ignored in the present work, which accordingly, in spite of some clever reasoning, is vitiated throughout by its faulty method. The author's premises being unsound from the outset, his arguments cease to be of interest except as exercises of logical ingenuity. A few examples will show the kind of biological doctrine to which Dr. Patten asks our assent. It is not such as to justify confidence in either his facts or his method. “The germ cell. . . has, therefore, the conditions of consciousness and more readily may be assumed to be the seat of consciousness than any other part of the body. In fact, by a process of exclusion.it would seem to be the only possible seat of consciousness.” “The nerve, in its effort to emit its sex products, presses against the skin and partially breaks through. The skin hardens over the injured part and the tooth results, which holds the nerve in.” “The brain ... is a sex organ that never attains its elementary functions.” “The play of the emotions is sufficient to account for the reduction and disappearance of organs.” It will be seen that the author is not to be taken seriously. His book is simply a monument of misapplied ingenuity.