My Life by Havelock EllisReview by: M. F. Ashley MontaguIsis, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1940), pp. 367-368Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226261 .

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REVIEWS 367

homogene, il ne faut pas oublier que les savants positivistes-qui se crurent philosophes uniquement parce qu'ils etaient savants- n'eurent aucun motif de s'interesser a CLOTILDE DE VAUX, a la religion de l'humanite sous la forme un peu naive qu'elle prit chez son auteur, et a diverses autres conceptions de COMTE. II ne faut pas oublier que si COMTE eut le merite d'encourager les recherches d'histoire des sciences, l'historien des sciences tout en lui rendant hommage peut rejeter la loi des trois etats et le positivisme lui-meme afin de mieux ressusciter le developpement effectif de la pensee humaine qui ne se laisse pas emprisonner dans une doctrine car 1'esprit souffle ou il veut. Sans insister ou discuter ce point de vue, souhaitons que M. DUCASSE rende dans un prochain ouvrage un nouvel hommage a COMTE en depassant la personnalite tres forte qui I'a attire et seduit pour atteindre les raisons passageres ou permanentes du succes de cette ceuvre elle-meme.

Paris. HEL'ENE METZGER.

Havelock Ellis.-Mlfy Life. xIII -4-647 p. Boston, Houghton Mifflin CO., 1939. ($3.75)-

This is the spiritual autobiography of HAVELOCK ELLIS (I859-1939). It is not a work which calls for criticism, or even discussion. As a life-long hero-worshipper of ELLIS I am perhaps too much disposed in his favour to acquit myself satisfactorily of such a task. I cannot say whether this autobiography will rank with those of ST. AUGUSTINE or RoussEAu. That it will always hold an important place in the hearts of men as the story of the development and growth of a great and unique love is certain.

ELLIS' life work was born out of his own early spiritual struggles. Before he was twenty he had already decided what that work was to be. He dedicated himself to the self-appointed task of helping others to solve the problems of life which had sorely troubled his own adolescence; problems which, in his own time, no one dared even to discuss. Through his numerous important books and essays ELLIS

accomplished this task with a universality and effectiveness beyond his wildest dreams. With the same continuing purpose of helping others ELLIS wrote this his spiritual autobiography. It is a fitting conclusion to his life and to his life's Nvork. It will help others for generations to come, as his other works have helped the last two generations and will help untold generations to come. It is by HAVELOCK ELLIS and it is running over with the qualitv that we associate with that name.

In the history of science ELLIS will always hold an important and honoured place. He was the first natural historian of human sexualitv in the modern world. His Stutdies in the Psvchology, of Sex (7 volumes) is still the standard work on the subject. Yet when it was first published

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368 ISIS, XXXII, 2

in I898 in London and immediatelv afterwards fastened upon by the police as a " bawdy " book, there was not a scientific man in the whole of England who had the courage to come forward in its defence. Some day I hope to be able to discuss the contributions to science made by ELLIS, possiblv in a future issue of this journal, when I shall have occasion to discuss these events in greater detail. In the present work ELLIS

is not too greatly concerned with such mundane affairs, and so in his most interesting account of the prosecution of his book, he rather tends to underemphasize its importance. In fact, ELLIS contrives to introduce an element of comedy into his account in the person and mvstifications of his most unfortunate publisher. For the rest, there is not much about his books in the present work. But this is not a physical biography, a material autobiography, as ELLIS has himself described the autobio- graphies of our own day; it is a spiritual autobiography by HAVELOCK

ELLIS. One does not need to say more than that.

Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital, M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU.

Philadelphia.

Mabel L. Robinson.-Runner of the iMountain Tops. The Life of Louis AGASSIZ. VII+290 p. New York, Random House, 1939. ($3.00).

It is impossible to imagine a more inspiring book about a scientinfc man than this life of Louis AGASSIZ. I read it through at one sitting, and when I had finished I did not wish that it had been either a word shorter or longer; it was just the right length. But I did wish that the eight beautifully reproduced coloured plates of fishes and turtles, which are grouped together at the end of the volume, had run to eight hundred instead. The marvel is that the publishers were able to make them available at all. It was a splendid idea to have included them in this altogether beautiful book.

Good formal factual biographies of Louis AGASSIZ (I807-I873) as well as his collected letters are available to all serious students of AGASSIZ or of the development of science and science teaching in America, but Miss ROBINSON'S book is the first creative interpretation of AGASSIZ to appear in any language. A training in zoology in the great Museum of Comparative Zoology which AGASSIZ created at Cambridge, added to a training in the studv and teaching of English, have given Miss ROBINSON an unusual equipment for her task. But without her great enthusiasm and sympathy for her subject her book might have been merely well written and adequately accurate,-as it is it is all that, and a great deal more.

Miss ROBINSON'S portrait of AGASSIZ is that of a man possessed and

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