[page] 932

POPULAR SCIENCE

THERE are two aspects in which Mr. CHARLES DARWIN is to be regarded, and in respect to which the value of his contribution to the world of letters must be measured. He is equally remarkable as an observer and as a philosopher. It is his philosophy which has attracted the greatest attention and provoked the greatest criticism, and the conclusions which, from a wide range of observation, he deduces and embodies in his last work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (D. Appleton and Co.), will probably provoke more. But as an observer Mr. Darwin has rendered a service to the cause of science which the future will not fail to recognize, whether it accepts or rejects his philosophical deductions; and no one of his books shows more strikingly his praiseworthy spirit and his indefatigable research than this his latest treatise. Of his spirit we have a striking illustration in a single sentence on page 66 "Our subject is obscure, but, from its importance, must be discussed at some length; and it is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance." It is this perfect readiness to confess partial knowledge and even ignorance, and to report (as on page 114) facts which militate against his theory, and this without pretending always to explain them, which has given Mr. Darwin such an influence among candid men. His research and original reports give his works an interest which their scientific hypotheses could not alone impart to them, and which belongs to no author who is content only to philosophize without taking the trouble also to observe. Thus, in the volume before us, we have not only an immense number of facts respecting the expression of emotion in animals and man gathered from other treatises and the author's own observations carried on ever since 1838, but also a record of observations prosecuted by disinterested witnesses all over the world.

In 1867 Mr. Darwin circulated printed questions, sixteen in number, relating to emotional expression, which he gives in his introductory chapter, and which were sent to various observers in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America. From thirty-six persons, several of them missionaries, answers were received, and the information thus gathered certainly throws much light on the problems which Mr. Darwin discusses. Whatever may be the verdict of posterity respecting the philosophical hypotheses of which Mr. Darwin is the most distinguished representative, there can be no question as to the value of such a work simply as a report of facts whose value is enhanced because it embodies the testimony of many distinct and disinterested witnesses. Indeed, the book is mainly devoted to a report of facts, though they are grouped around three propositions which Mr. Darwin proposes as explanatory of emotional expression. The book appears to have no definite dogmatic purpose; though the author expresses his conviction that the "study of expression to a certain limited extent the conclusion that man is derived from some lower animal form, and supports the belief of the specific or sub-specific unity of the several races." [Expression, p. 367]

It is a book which will be read with interest, and may be studied with profit even by those who are most skeptical respecting the conclusions which the author thinks may be reasonably deduced.