The Causes and Course of Organic Evolution: A Study in Bioenergics

Abstract

THIS book is the outcome of a lifetime of biological reflection and investigation, and will be read with much interest. The author, who left Edinburgh for Philadelphia many years ago, was early disciplined in zoology, as well as botany, but it is to the latter that he has especially devoted himself as professor in the University of Pennsylvania. His treatise is erudite and careful, very instructive, even apart from its theories; it expresses the convictions of a patient and independent thinker; it states a number of piquant conclusions more or less peculiar to the author; and it is carefully written. It covers a very wide range—the origin of organisms upon the earth, the phylogeny of plants and animals, the evolution of morals and man, the ethical factor in organic evolution, the rôle of religion in the ascent of man, the competitive and the co-operative systems among animals and in mankind, the human environment as it has been and is, and the evolution yet to come. We must restrict our attention to a few of the salient features.