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M. Danysz, a scientist of renown in France, has, after devoting a large part of his life to material investigations in the Pasteur Institute, turned to less concrete and more speculative fields. Evolution has always attracted him, as seen in two volumes dedicated to the principles of evolution in infectious diseases and to the origin, evolution and treatment of noncontagious diseases. This has led him to fields purely metaphysical, and the present volume is a scientific and scholarly attempt to define the status of the human mind in relation to its surroundings—geological, biological, and sociological—past, present and future. Human intelligence, developing very slowly during the vast prehistoric ages, progresses with a constant acceleration, particularly in the recent, relatively short space of our authentic knowledge, and leaves us at our present point aghast at the possibilities, even certainties, of the future, with a mental power that will surpass physical forces. Present