Pain, Sex and Time by Gerald HeardReview by: M. F. Ashley MontaguIsis, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1940), pp. 394-396Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226278 .

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394 ISIS, XXXII, 2

classic studies on the finer structure of the cell and his concept of the cell state is regarded as a pure anthropological concept. The most important medical inroads upon cellular pathology have been made by the localization aspect of clinical medicine and the results of therapy based thereon with the consequence that the purely cellular aspect sinks into a subordinate relation to the problem of disease.

Another very valuable part of this historical monograph is Professor SCHMIDT'S comprehensive and critical summary of the work of the Bohemian scientist, PURKINJE (1787-I869), professor of physiology at Breslau and Prague, based in part on the reviews by STUDNICKA (I927- 1933). PURKINJE reported (I825) the vesicula germinativa in the hen's egg and later (I836) found the nuclei in ganglion cells and in the cells of the cerebellum, which now bear his name, and elaborated the cell concept in his work on the finer structure of the glands of the stomach in I837. His pupils VALENTIN, ROSENTHAL, and others extended his observations and ideas. It was the happy conjunction of SCHLEIDEN, the botanist, and SCHWANN, the zoologist, that made feasible a cell theory of general biological import later in I838-1839.

The value, as a work of reference, of this very interesting historical survey would have been much greater had a bibliography of titles, or even a more generous use of dates been made. The book is of little help to one seeking verification in original sources. The facts of biological discovery justify the preponderance of German citations, but even in these days of nationalistic expansion there is not an iota of scientific excuse for the omission of PAsTEuR, even in the index, in a historical account of cellular phenomena.

CHA.RLES A. KoFoID.

Gerald Heard.-Pain, Sex and Time. XX1I+30I p. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1939. ($3.00).

This is, in a way, a significant book,-significant not so much for what it savs as for what it means. Monsieur JULIEN BENDA should be very interested in adding it to the case-histories which he has collected and so brilliantly interpreted during the last thirty years. In Mr. HEARD we have a phenomenon which BENDA was the first to recognize and to describe, and it mav at once be said here that those who want to read the ultimate criticism of the point of view which Mr. HEARD presents, had better go at once to BENDA'S Belphegor and his La Trahison des Clercs (available in English translation as Belphegor, New York, I929, and The Treason of the Intellectuals, New York, 1928). The significance of HEARD's book lies in the fact that it is a pertect demonstration of what may happen to an intellectual when his intellect is not built upon a

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REVIEWS 395

firm foundation of fact. There is not a page in Mr. HEARD'S book which is not marred by some error of fact. Mr. HEARD quotes works in support of fundamental theses, such for example as UNWIN on the relation between repression and cultural energy, but he appears to be quite unacquainted with the fact that no scientist worth his salt has been able to accept the conclusions of UNWIN'S misguided work (see BENEDICT'S devastating review of Sex and Culture by J. D. UNWIN, in The American A?ithropologist, vol. 37, I935, pp. 6XI-692). There are few ' authorities ' whom he quotes of whose work the same could not be said. According to Mr. HEARD man's physical evolution has ceased. We have heard this before, and it is simply untrue. Not only is it untrue, but anyone who makes such a statement instantly reveals a fundamental ignorance of the relevant scientific facts and of the nature of man. Man is to-day more profoundly involved in the maelstrom of his own evolution than at any previous time in his history. At this very moment, in this very country, new local types of man are being produced with astonishing rapidity, and for this, do let us all be properly grateful. When man's genes grow stagnant and his chromosomes stultified he will cease " evolving," but that is never likely to occur, and Mr. HEARD really ought to be persuaded to give up worrying upon that score. Moreover, I should like to make Mr. HEARD an offer. If he will do me the honour to set foot in my laboratory, I there promise to set before his eyes the conclusive evidence that the whole species of mankind is still in process of evolution. If that cannot be arranged, let Mr. HEARD read my The Premaxilla in the Primates (Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. io, I935, pp. 32-59 and I8I-208), and The Premaxilla in Man (Journal of the American Dental Association, vol. 23, I936, pp. 2043-2057), and he will there find the phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and genetic evidence for the fact that man's face is right now undergoing serious and profound modifications. But this is a large subject, and evolution does not proceed by such changes alone. Anyway, Mr. HEARD assumes that our physical evolution is at a standstill and that it is now desirable to concentrate attention upon our psychical evolution. We must achieve an enlargement of consciousness, and draw upon those hidden and unused powers, such as extra-sensorv perception and those which the Yogi have demonstrated, to increase our percipience and effectiveness as human beings. We must produce a psychology as powerful as our physics, if we are to be saved. "Our physical powers have advanced to world-embracing and world- destroying proportions, while our psychological powers have remained arrested growths, have actually atrophied." Mr. HEARD recommends courses of training in special colleges in the enlargement of human consciousness and sympathies, and the creation, from its graduates whose

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396 ISIS, XXXII, 2

sole loyalty would be to humanity, of an international moral police force of " philanthropologists."

Can Mr. HEARD's sojourn in Hollywood be blamed for this contribution to the welfare of mankind ? Or can it be that he is so far ahead of his time that his ideas seem childish to some of us ? Perhaps some future student of the cultural history of our times mav be able to answer this question, for ourselves we see in Mr. HEARD'S book yet another token of the hopeless confusion into which some of our intellectuals have fallen,-a confusion akin to the neurosis into which the banker who has run out of capital retires when confronted with the fact that bankruptcy staes him in the face. It is a great pity, and the lesson is clear: The scientific uses of the imagination can and should be many, but no man should allow himself to take off for a flight unless he has first acquired a capital of facts which he can utilize as that firm foundation from which he can begin his flight-and at the end of it, to which he can return.

Hahnemann Medical College, M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU.

Philadelphia.

Arthur William Meyer.-An analysis of the De generatione animalium of William Harvey. xx+I67 p., I]I pis. Stanford University, California, Stanford University Press, 1936. $3.00.

Arthur William Meyer.-The rise of embryology. XVI+367 p., 97 figs. Stanford University, California, Stanford University Press, I939. $6.oo.

The first of these two critical works by Professor MEYER is historically an introduction to the second since it deals with one of the leading figures in embryology in the post-renaissance period. The author has based his discussion on the English edition of I653, WILLIS'S translation of " dull excellence " (I847) and on one made for him directly from the original Latin text. This subject was one in which HARVEY had a life-long interest, having been introduced to it by his teacher FABRICIus at Padua in his student years I597 to i6o2. It is evident that his observations antedated De motu cordis in which he several times refers to his observa- tions on the heart of the chick embryo and that his observations on the embrvology of the deer were continued for many years.

In contrast with his discovery of the circulation of the blood HARvEY's work in embryology is on a very different level. In the one case the order of magnitude was such that the elements under observation and experiment were such that philosophical considerations were over- shadowed by concrete evidence while in the other the magnitudes wvere so minute as to remove essential parts and processes from view and from experimental interference. Hence his equivocal attitude on spon-

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