Allgemeine Biologie

Abstract

A BAD hypothesis is better than none at all, is a saying of which many have taken advantage; but able minds have agreed with the substance of the remark, and few can dissent from it in connection with that everlasting puzzle—Protoplasm. It is in vain to inveigh against the uselessness of speculations as to the structure or constitution, nature—what you will—regarding the physical basis of life, or regarding attempts to picture, however roughly, the movements, rearrangements and evolutions in that veritable witches' dance, the quadrilles of the molecules in which life consists. The inquiring mind is so constituted that it cannot resist the temptation to fashion some rough hypothesis as a tool wherewith to make one more attempt to pick the lock which hides the secret, and the criticism of the serious as to the futility of his efforts is no more powerful than the epigram of the debater to prevent him returning to the ruins of previous speculations, with renewed efforts to rebuild his frail image of something approaching, as nearly as may be, the inconceivably complex, and exposing it once more to the blows of the critic.

Allgemeine Biologie.

By Prof. Dr. Max Kassowitz. Vols. i. and ii. Pp. xv + 411 and x + 391. (Vienna: Moritz Perles, 1899).