synonymous with the Darwinian theory of the origin of species, we fail to see that any favorable arguments can be drawn from the science of Paleontology. The Darwinian hypothesis demands the existence in past time of a graduated series of types intermediate between existing forms. But, even in the case of the genealogy of the horse, and a fortiori in all other cases at present known to us, no such graduated series can be shown to exist or to have at any time existed. We do know, thanks to recent discoveries, many and striking links between Reptiles and Birds, but assuredly, in this as in other cases, we know of no such intermediate series of transitional forms as would in any way support the Darwinian theory. Evolution may have been at work; but, if so, it has been a kind of evolution which has not as yet been dreamed of in the philosophy of the Darwinian school.

The tenth essay, though certainly not such pleasant reading, is almost as famous as the ninth, and deals with those who have criticised Mr. Darwin's doctrines, and more especially with Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart. Into the merits of the controversy between the latter and Prof. Huxley we shall not enter; it being, in our opinion, sufficient to indicate that Mr. Mivatt stands in the astoundingly anomalous position of being at the same time a well-known scientific observer, an advocate of the general doctrine of evolution, and a Roman Catholic by religion. As regards Mr. Wallace's argument that if man be descended from the same stock with the monkeys, it is inexplicable that the brain of the savage should be so large and well developed, Prof. Huxley seems to us to put himself into a fatal dilemma. He asserts, namely, that the brain of savage man is not disproportioned to his requirements, as Mr. Wallace states, because savage life requires great intellectual activity, and "the intellectual labor of a good hunter or warrior' considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman." If this be so—and we are delighted to believe upon such high authority that it is so-what becomes of the doctrine so persistently harped upon by so many Darwinians that the lowest races of men are little elevated above the highest monkeys? Surely, it is not merely human vanity and arrogance which makes us think that even an "ordinary Englishman," with all his imperfections, is of a different and higher order than the Chimpanzee, the Gibbon, or the Gorilla?

The eleventh essay is in many respects one of the most remarkable in the book, but anything like adequate criticism of it would demand a special article. It is professedly a review of Dr. Ernst Haeckel's Natural History of Creation; but it has much more of Huxley in it than of Haeckel. We cannot criticise it now, and, indeed, its real date of publication (1869) is so old that criticism is almost superfluous. We note in it with regret the extent to which the author has been led by his preconceived opinions to accept in their entirety theories which are at best but theories, and which are as yet supported by few facts,

and these certainly capable of a different explanation. We had not thought that the Doctrine of Design, for example, was so wholly dead, that it could reasonably be said that the belief "that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow." Nor do we think that "the fundamental proposition of evolution," as defined in this article, can, upon the most favorable showing, be regarded as anything more than an unproved and probably unprovable hypothesis.

The last essay in the work, on the metaphysics of sensation, and especially on Bishop Berkeley's views on this subject, we are still less inclined to criticise. It may be regarded as an exposition of the author's views as to the relative position held by the schools of Idealism and Materialism respectively. If obliged to choose between absolute Materialism and absolute Idealism, Professor Huxley explicitly states that he would choose the latter; and though we cannot but welcome such a powerful adherent, we do not clearly see how any form of Idealism can be practically reconciled with the theory of Evolution in which our author is such a firm believer. To the study of this problem, and to the earnest perusal of this earnest and genuine book, we relegate our readers, firmly convinced that there is no nature strong enough to maintain its own equilibrium in the face of even the highest authority, but will be materially benefited by being brought into intellectual contact with such a fearless and independent mind.

"Literature and Dogma."

READERS of The Cornhill of two years ago will remember the beginning of Mr. Matthew Arnold's new book (J. R. Osgood & Co., publishers), which was first published in the pages of that magazine, and somewhat abruptly left unfinished. The continuation and conclusion, which now at last, after a long delay, are furnished, will sadly disappoint those whose expectations were based on the first chapters. So far as the book is a protest against a narrow and "proof-text" style of interpreting the Scriptures, it is a book deserving of praise for its good intention; but even then we may well dread an ally so savage in his sarcasm, so destructive in his negations, and so lacking even in good taste, as Mr. Arnold shows himself. "Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis," is the cry with which we read his most readable pages. Surely one can hold Mr. Arnold's main position-that the Bible needs a broader and more literary style of interpretation than it has ever yet received at the hands of dogmatic commentators, without jumping at all his radical conclusions, which have sometimes an ugly pantheistic look, and sometimes a well-nigh blasphemous and brutal tone. In the interests of truth, and even of courtesy, we can only hope that his present temper may not be of long continuance. It is easy for a critic to fall into such

temptation that he becomes a literary Ishmaelite, "his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him," and it looks as if Mr. Arnold had not prayed sufficiently to be delivered from that evil!

In spite, however, of all the grave objections to the book, both in regard to its statements and its temper, -objections so serious as to make its general circulation undesirable, it is easy to see how it may be useful. Over-emphasized as it is, the main position of the book-the premise on which all its argument and statement rests-is most important.

An improved

method of scriptural interpretation,-more free and broad, and, to use the word which Mr. Arnold gives us, more literary,-is fundamental to all other improvements in Christian theology. We may thank Mr. Arnold for compelling our attention to a truth of such immense practical importance. Moreover, there is on almost every page some felicity of literary style, or some profound suggestion of thought, for which the judicious reader will be deeply grateful.

"Scottish Chap-Books."*

MR. FRASER gives in this little volume a novel and entertaining account of the literature that circulated among the lower classes in Scotland during the last half of the eighteenth century. He prefaces it by a hasty but sufficiently accurate sketch of the habits of a rude and isolated population, neglected by government, and repressed by puritanism. With public amusements frowned upon, and intercourse almost impossible, owing to the primitive state of roads and conveyances, the wandering peddler or chap-man became the connecting link between these secluded rustics and the outer world. Not the least welcome part of his pack consisted of the broadsides and coarse penny prints containing ballads, stories, and satires, which supplied the only intellectual food known to his customers. These chap-books were of great variety. Some were historical or biographical, giving metrical accounts of events old and recent, and of the lives of heroes, sacred, profane, or felonious, in a wonderful medley. Others offered manuals of instruction for various homely arts, or the solaces and promises of religion, in doggerel verse or rough prose. Others again were romances, either founded on national tales, or borrowed from the great repertory of unfathered legends as old as the race and common to all mankind. But whatever their subject, they were all coarse, vigorous, and humorous, often sharply satirical, and always intensely Scotch in their filling up of incidents and manners. Many of the more popular ones took the form of dialogue, presenting wonderfully fresh and natural descriptions of persons and customs. To these primitive communities the chap-books were what the newspapers of our day would be to our rural neighborhoods, if reporters were natural poets and dramatists.

Scottish Chap-Books. By John Fraser. New York: Henry L. Hinton.

As reflections of a past time, these collections would be invaluable, had not the more genuine portion of them in their original form been allowed to perish through neglect. Filling up the interval between Allan Ramsay and Burns, otherwise barren of literary production, these homely educators both influenced and revealed the popular mind and feelings. They were the only literature known to the middle and lower classes in Scotland. They were universally diffused, and in the most effective form and manner, those of quaint rhyme and dramatic recitation by the minstrel-peddlers, who thus became at once schoolmasters and recorders for the time. The authorship of the greater part of this fugitive literature that remains extant is ascribed to Dougal Graham, a bellman of Glasgow, a natural humorist of uncouth but genuine power, whose name this tribute will keep unforgotten. Scott confessed himself indebted to these classics of the vulgar for many a stroke of manners and thread of legend; and Motherwell did not think them unworthy of the attempt to preserve and classify their remains. In the interest of curious research it is to be hoped that Mr. Fraser will perform the promise he holds out of further exploration in this original field, and will add to the few specimens he gives us of these quaint and pungent relics of popular literature.

Hamerton's "Intellectual Life." *

IT seems easy to give the advice to learn what is fittest, to learn that thoroughly, and to learn nothing besides. This has often been done already, both in particular and general ways, and if that had been Mr. Hamerton's only aim, we should still have to thank him for a book full of wise direct counsels, enforced by acute applications. In choosing for his work the frame of fictitious letters, addressed to persons imagined like the real ones with whom his experience has brought him in contact, he avoids didactic formality, and follows his subject with natural ease through its relations to the various conditions of life. But his object is not merely to point out what kinds of knowledge are serviceable for different kinds of men, and which are the best ways each may take for gaining that kind which he requires. He explains why it is well to have knowledge at all, not because it is power, but because it is delight. Its aspects and uses as an instrument are subordinated to its worth as the satisfaction of a divinely-given instinct. For its own sake it will be sought by many, and should be sought by all, and the purpose of the book is to show the errors to be shunned, and the helps to be used, if we would make the search its own sure reward. The distinction is made between the intellectual man and the merely learned man, and the intellectual life described as flowing from a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct, and as consisting

*The Intellectual Life. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Roberts Brothers, Boston.

mainly in a constant preference for higher thoughts over lower thoughts. But as the intellectual life is never on all points perfectly in accordance with man's instincts, it is always a contest or a discipline. The art or skill of maintaining it consists chiefly in compelling every circumstance and condition of our lives. to yield us some tribute of intellectual benefit or force. These clearly-stated, simple truths are then applied to the different classes of men, and used to demonstrate the elevating proposition that any mind of large natural capacity, without regard to its amount of information, may reach the state in which it seeks earnestly and habitually for the highest and purest truth.

The treatment of the matter is of course discursive, since its plan ranges through all conditions of life, as age, sex, health, or social position determines them, and fragmentary, because no symmetrical arrangement of such materials is possible. But the main thought ' is kept steadily in view, under the different lights in which it is presented, and enforced with a wealth of illustration and apt anecdote. Of course, many of the so-called social problems and questions of the day attract incidental consideration. Without discussion or decision, they are treated as elements of opinion and prejudice with regard to their effect in furthering or disturbing the search for knowledge or truth in any given case. Thus the letters upon women and marriage arrive at no choice between the differing views of the equality of the sexes, but dwell on the influence over the intellectual life which either supposition, if proved to be true, would exert. Yet while leaving the conclusion of the controversy to each one's individual conviction, they state its present aspect and the reasons why it is in debate with great clearness and a strong leaning toward the generous side. So the letters which find occasion to speak of religion carefully mark the dividing line between it and philosophy. They frankly declare that the religious life and the intellectual life are quite distinct, and that it is disingenuous to call philosophy the religion of the intellectual. The religious life is founded upon authority, the intellectual life upon personal investigation. The difficulty of the intellectual life is, that whilst it can never assume a position of hostility to religion, it is nevertheless compelled to enunciate truths which may happen to be in contradiction with dogmas received at this or that particular time. Yet we are not on that account to restrain the spirit of investigation, which will always lead ultimately to truth. The state of modern thought in this respect is well illustrated by the anecdote of the erection of a monument to Copernicus at Warsaw in 1829, when a scientific society waited in the Church of the Holy Cross for the sanction of a religious service, but waited in vain, no priest appearing to countenance a scientific discovery once condemned by the spiritual power.

Another striking letter, addressed to a conservative, and defining the power to regulate morals exerted in our day by spiritual authority and by public opinion respectively, should be read in connection with the chap

ter which enlarges upon disinterestedness as the essential virtue. To be ready to accept the truth, even when it is most unfavorable to ourselves, is a mark of intellectual strength and openness rare among most classes and professions, yet more common now than in the past. It is an approach on the part of the individual toward that altruism which Spencer insists on as the term of human improvement. It falls in with that truer public opinion of modern times, eloquently adduced by Littré as the proof that "humanity growing ever better, accepts more and more readily the duty and the task of widening the domain of justice and good-will." There is a chapter of sensible suggestions for economizing time, and another, its proper complement, on the value of occasional idleness, illustrating that "immortal sentence" of Claude Tillier, expressing a dangerous doctrine, but one full of intellectual truth, that "the best-employed time is that which one loses." One letter explains the paradox involved in congratulating a friend on his miserable memory, by dwelling on the advantage of a memory that selects and rejects, instead of storing up promiscuously, and condemns the patent systems for improving that faculty by cultivating absurd associations of ideas closely allied to a common form of insanity. An admirable chapter is that on the counterbalanced effects on the intellectual life of newspapers. It enlarges on the false emphasis they give to mere novelty, the wasteful uselessness of their constant speculations on the near future, their controversial unfairness which pains and humiliates the cultivated reader. Against these it sets the considerations that they are the daily house-talk of mankind, that their rough common-sense keeps the mind out of isolation, and sympathetic with the interests and ways of thinking of ordinary men, that their spirit is alive and modern, and that though their work is neither complete nor orderly, it is the fresh record of the mighty drama of the world.

Many other letters and detached passages would repay meditation on the sound sense and experience they embody. Thus the impatience in intellectual work felt by amateurs and men of temporary purposes, and the imperative need of continuity and deliberation, are strikingly expressed in the saying, which might have a far wider application, "You cannot take a bit out of another man's life and live it, without having lived the previous years that led up to it, without having also the assured hopes for the years that lie beyond." So too the lines addressed to an English democrat are full of grave matter for thought, generalizing as they do in a manner that recalls the broad philosophy of De Tocqueville, upon democratic intolerance of dignity and compulsion to uniformity in mental views as in manners. Indeed, there is scarcely a page without some thought new in its turn and application, if not of original substance, or some sprightly illustration or anecdote. And such is the variety of subjects touched upon in the book, and the ingenuity with which they are all attached to its thread, that it may be opened almost at random with the

certainty of finding something to attract and in

struct.

"Ups and Downs." *

MR. HALE carries us back thirty years in American history to gain a rather clearer field, in the beginnings. of out-western civilization, for illustrating his belief that "the man who always does the duty that comes next to his hand finds that the world needs his help as much as he needs to help the world." This manly, common-sense faith leavens all the crotchety forms in which the author likes to throw out ideas in his writings, for the sake of drawing our attention to it. It is put forth in the didactic tone Athens usually adopts when she condescends to speak to Boeotia and the rest of the republics; but for all that the story is lively and true, and ranges through most of the diversities of American social life in the youth of this generation. It detects the romance of every-day existence, while bringing together, and parting, and reuniting young people of very different origin and ways, as occasions naturally spring from the changing incidents that affect a mixed and restless population in a new country. A Harvard collegian, losing his fortune, learns a trade, and falls in love at Detroit with a German girl, who returns to Hamburg in pursuit of an East Indian inheritance, fascinating and refusing an agreeable Englishman on the way. No one regrets that the oriental vision fades, and she comes back to join her humble fortunes to those of her constant lover, turned editor. The subordinate romance between his Norwegian apprentice and the pretty Manito schoolmistress is still more naturally and cleverly worked out. The shiftless, abstracted German papa of course plays his partmostly a musical one-and the swindling German merchant, with his coarse wife, helps out the situations and the contrasts; nor does native shrewdness, both in its honest and dishonest works, miss recognition.

The difference existing between even so near a

past and our present is very well sustained, except in one or two minor points, at which the author fails through carelessness or overdrawing. He forgets, in making Jasper say, not more than twenty-seven years ago, of a time just preceding, "there was no attorney then at what is now Chicago," that the city, when incorporated thirty-six years ago, held more than a dozen lawyers. If he chooses to overlook Memphis and New Orleans in speaking of New York, at the same period, as the worst city in America-well, probably we owe that to invincible Athenian habit, with a bit of exaggeration not far from Cretan in this instance.

There is another difference between that time and our own worth developing more fully. In a story of action, not reflection, like this, which brings the lives of its personages into incidental connection with so many others, an art of epitomizing biographies is required for the satisfactory explanation of these touchand-go influences. Mr. Hale is very skillful in this art, and employs it well in the few sentences which give a résumé of Dr. Withers's work and power. five-and-fifty he was a good deal younger than he had been at five-and-twenty." His moral qualities and his observation had preserved his freshness. But something of that sympathy with his juniors must have been due to material circumstances which have ever since tended with greater force to lessen the difference between old and young. Apart from the change in manners which has suppressed reverence, the greater freedom of intercommunication, and the fact that the same subjects are brought home by the press to minds of every possible degree of maturity, and are considered and discussed by them in common, have aided in effacing the distinction between juniors and seniors, and equalizing the ages of this generation. It is worth considering what the effect of this continuing process may be upon the next, in promoting unity and coherence in the mental labors of mankind.

Anesthesia by Cold.

THE question of the existence of separate conductors for impressions of touch, tickling, pain, temperature, and for the muscular sense, was originally broached by M. Brown-Séquard, who brought much pathological evidence to bear upon the point.

A series of researches has just been published by Dr. A. Horvath, of Kieff, which give some support to Brown-Séquard's theory, so far as impressions of pain are concerned. Dr. Horvath states that, having been

Ups and Downs. By Edward E. Hale. Roberts Brothers.

engaged in some investigations upon the effects of cold on frogs, he was struck with the fact that, although immersion of the hand in ice-cold water soon produced intolerable pain, no pain was experienced when it was plunged into alcohol, even though this might be several degrees below the freezing-point of water (-5°C.). Further experiments showed that icecold glycerine was equally ineffective in producing pain; whilst cold ether, on the other hand, caused severe suffering, and mercury was still less easily borne. The curious point about these experiments was, howthat when the finger was plunged into cold alco

ever,

hol, although the sense of pain caused by cold appeared to be deadened, the finger was perfectly sensitive to even slight contact of another body or to pressure, and yet more, pricking with a needle to a degree which produced considerable pain in any of the other fingers was only perceived as a simple contact on the one immersed in cold alcohol. Thus it was apparent that, whilst the sense of pain for mechanical injury and for cold was abolished, the tactile sensibility of the skin was retained. Dr. Horvath suggests that the explanation may be found in the power of alcohol to withdraw water from the nerve-tissue, or perhaps in its capability of inducing temporary coagulation of the nerve-substance.

Some interesting points are opened by these researches, and it would be important to know how far cold alcohol might be applied to alleviate the pain of wounds and especially of burns. Dr. Horvath states that in one or two instances of slight degrees of burn that have occurred to himself and in his friends he has found it has a remarkably calmative effect, the pain almost entirely disappearing, and the subsequent progress of the case being singularly favorable.

He sug

gests that the fatal termination of the severer cases of burn, which is generally attributed to the depression produced by the pain, might thus be prevented. -Lancet.

Wines in Fevers.

In a recent work on the use of wines as medicine Dr. Robert Druitt says: One of the important medical uses of the Bordeaux wines is to relieve the restlessness, nightly wandering, and thirst of the exanthemata, and especially of scarlatina and measles in children. If a child is very stout and red-lipped I should not press the use of wine during the first day or so: neither, in fact, need one press it at all. Mix one part of pure Bordeaux wine with one or two of pure cold water, according to the patient's age, and let him drink it at night ad libitum. I know of no diaphoretic, saline, or sedative, so admirably adapted to allay the miserable wandering, the headache and thirst of scarlet fever. In measles, as soon as the rash becomes dusky, Bordeaux wine allays the great restlessness. This, be it observed, is not a treatment founded on any hypothesis that alcohol is a good aliment for the nervous system, but on observation of facts at the bedside.

Original Research.

THE Editor of Nature urges the necessity for the endowment of institutions of research, and the proper remuneration of the men engaged therein. The dearth of original investigation in England he attri butes to the greater attractions offered by professional life. "A glance," he says, "at the condition of things in France and Germany, will strengthen this view. Why was Germany, till lately, the acknowledged leader in all matters connected with the advancement of knowledge? Because there were no such brilliant and highly-paid careers open there as here to those who choose politics, the bench, the bar, or commerce, in

preference to science. And what is happening there at present? a decline visible not alone to the farsighted, because Germany is getting rich as England has long been rich. Why is France now endowing research on a large scale, and even proposing that the most successful students in her magnificent Polytechnic School should be allowed to advance Science as state servants? Because in France there is a government instructed enough to acknowledge that a decline of investigation may bring evil to the state, and that it is the duty of the state to guard against this condi tion of things at all cost."

Identity.

The Lancet, in discussing the question of identity, says: The difficulties of proof and the dangers of making positive assertions as to personal identity have again been shown by the extraordinary mistakes which have occurred in relation to Mr. Robinson, whose attack of delirium tremens has thrown his widow into weeds and his friends into mourning. When Mr. Robinson disappeared six weeks ago, a body found in the Thames, near Greenwich, was identified as his beyond, it would have seemed, a possibility of doubt. The deceased not only resembled Mr. Robinson in general configuration, but a tuft of hair on the forehead, his baldness, his dress, a scar on the right leg, an overlapping tooth, together with the positive assertions of his wife, his servant, and a friend who had known him twenty-six years, left no doubt in the minds of the coroner's jury that the body had been properly indentified. All writers on medical jurisprudence recognize the occasional difficulties of identifying dead bodies. This is due, it is said, to "a peculiar change" which comes over the features after death. The mistakes, however, are obviously caused, not by any change of features, but by the absence of all that enables us to recognize a living man-expression, voice, gesture, and the like. The late Lord Mansfield, in the celebrated Douglass Peerage case, said that, in an army of a hundred thousand men, every one may be known from another. This may be true of living men, but we strongly suspect that amongst the dead upon a battle-field the mistakes as to the identity are numerous, though such mistakes would of course be easily remedied. The resemblance of separate features of individuals is usually tolerably strong, and the difference in the noses, eyes, lips, etc., of the average of mankind (except of course in such cases as Socrates, the late Duke of Wellington, and the race of Hapsburg), is not such as to enable us to swear positively to identity.

With regard to "change of feature” after death, we have heard, on undoubted authority, a curious account of a gentleman who was killed some ten or twelve years since in a railway accident. A friend went to recognize the body, which he was enabled to do by the striking resemblance which the features of the deceased gentleman bore to those of his sister, a resemblance which was not recognizable during life. The face