world to grant a prayer. In Book V, letter 6, Wolmar tells his wife that her prayers for his conversion would have been heard long ago if there had been a God, and in a sort of ecstasy Julie answers: "They will be heard....I know not the time and the occasion. Might I obtain this in paying for it with my life! My last day would then be the most useful." And here again the presentiment on the one hand is realized, and the prayer is granted. How shall we account for two philosophers so much alike in their departure from objective truth and separated from each other by a century and a half? The explanation is not far to seek. They both were men before being philosophers; they both cared for the welfare of humanity to such an extent that they could not remain impartial in their attitude towards plain truth as the latter seemed to point to another direction than the one they wanted, and which would always be in full agreement with human ethics. And each lived at a time when society was threatened by scientific theories which were dangerous for the equilibrium of sound moral life int he community: the 18th century was facing materialism; our epoch is facing agnosticism. Rousseau and James both felt that scientific truth was not good for all, that it could easily be misinterpreted byt he unprepared minds of the masses, and they proposed pragmatism, i. e., to subordinate philosophy to ethics, to identify truthfulness and usefulness. That the intention was generous, no thoughtful person can deny. Whether the method is commendable is another question; but it is not my intention to discuss this here. I would rather end by asking another question. Are Rousseau and James themselves satisfied with their theories? As far as James is concerned I have tried to answer in my book in the chapter called: "Is James a Pragmatist ?" Moreover I have discussed above his pluralism and meliorism; nobody wilfully admits that his philosophy lacks a principle of unity; James needed it in order to remain a pragmatist. What about Rousseau? I doubt whether he was ever entirely convinced by his own philosophy. As early as the time when he wrote his first "Discours" he realized the difficulty of his position (see the last pages of it): if science and art are really bad for civilization, bad morally for nations, then one ought to do away with them. Rousseau obstinately refuses to draw this conclusion; and after several attempts, to reconcile things, he gives this as his final theory: "When people are corrupted [as we are] it is better that they should be educated then not (savant qu'ignorants); when they are good it is to be feared that science will corrupt them" (Letter of July 15, 1768). Now this cannot be understood otherwise than: Prevent people from getting corrupt by allowing them to get objective truth, science and art; but once they are corrupt, it is better that they should corrupt themselves more....Of course Rousseau could not mean that. Further, I should like to call attention to Rousseau's inconsistency, when he maintains that botany, which is a science also, ought not to be studied for merely practical purposes. At the end of his life especially he strongly objects to those who feel like asking the pragmatic question: A quoi cela est-il bon?, who study plants "only with the purpose of getting drugs and remedies." This "disgusting prejudice" is especially strong in France, he thinks: a bel esprit of Paris, seeing in London a public garden full of trees and rare plants, was "barbarous" enough to cry out "in matter of praise these words: 'Here is a beautiful garden for an apothecary!" As to himself "all this pharmacy did not sully his enjoyment of the country.' "1Œuvres, IX, pp. 375-6. 1137 Finally I refer the reader to the third Réverie, where in later years Rousseau discusses his own philosophy. Among other things he says: "I confess that I did not solve to my satisfaction all the difficulties which embarraassed me, and which philosophers constantly opposed to us. But determined to reach at least some decision in matters on which human intelligence has so little hold, and finding everywhere impenetrable mysteries and unsolvable objections, I adopted in every question the 'sentiment' which apepared to me best established by direct data...." and so forth.38 One sees that there might be room for a chapter "Was Rousseau a Pragmatist ?" corresponding to the one on James discussing the same question. BRYN MAWR COLLEGE. *Euvres, IX, pp. 342-343. ALBERT SCHINZ, FERTILIZATION AND HYBRIDIZATION.1 [English Translation by Prof. C. Stuart Gager, University of Missouri.] IN "Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Führen, Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur N these lines lies the whole problem of heredity and fertilization. What everybody can see, Goethe has voiced clearly and concisely in beautiful, simple words. We have one part from the father, the other from the mother. Or, as it is now usually put, the hereditary characters of the two parents are combined in the offspring. { It became the problem of scientific investigation to seek out the cause of this phenomenon. It could not be limited to man. The law mentioned by Goethe must be general, it must be true of the entire plant and animal world, wherever two beings unite for the production of progeny. Furthermore it cannot concern ordinary fertilizations only, but also those abnormal cases in which unlike individuals, belonging to different varieties or species, fertilize each The paper, read in Haarlem in the Dutch language, appears here in an enlarged form. My conception of the life-processes in the nuclei is chie based on the renowned investigations of van Beneden and of Boveri, as well as the most recent researches by Conklin (Contr. Zool. Lab. Pennsylvania XII, 1902), Sutton (Biol. Bull. IV, Dec., 1902), Eisen, (Journ. Morpho XVII, 1), Errera (Revue Scientif., Feb., 1903), and of many others. For the literature I refer to E. B. Wilson, The Cell in Development and Inheritance and V. Häcker, Praxis und Theorie der Zellen- und Befruchtungslehre. My presentation of the processes of fertilization and hybridization is outcome of the experiments which I have described in the second volume my Mutationstheorie (Leipsic, Veit & Co., 1901-1903. English translation preparation by Open Court Publishing Co.) H. DE V. 2 Goethe, "Sprüche in Reimen," Gesammelte Werke, III, 83, 1871. other. The products of such crosses we call hybrids, and for science they possess the great importance that, in them, the manner in which the characteristics of the parents are combined, can be studied more easily and clearly than in the children of a normal union. For, the more the parents differ from each other, with the greater certainty must it be possible to determine the share of each in the characteristics of the offspring. Everywhere this law is confirmed, that the child inherits one part of its nature from the father, the other from the mother. The child is, therefore, on the whole, a double being, with twofold qualities, more or less distinctly separated, that may still be traced back to their origin. This principle of duality, as we might call it, dominates the entire theory of heredity; it forms the thread that binds together apparently separated cases; it serves as a guidance for the whole investigation. This investigation occupies two different fields. On the one hand we have experimental research, on the other hand microscopical. Physiology ascertains the relations of the offspring to their parents; it analyzes their characteristics into their individual units, and tries to demonstrate their origin. The history of development discloses to us the corresponding microscopic processes; it looks for the smallest visible bearers of heredity in the cell, and investigates how they are maintained during life, and how, during fertilization, they pass on from father and mother to the offspring. Few investigators master both provinces; their extent is much too great for that. And especially has the study of hybrids so greatly advanced in recent years, that even here a division of labor will soon be necessary. Both lines of work have therefore developed more or less independently of each other. In both, the main features of the problem begin gradually to arise out of the abundance of |