'As to the successions or coming in of new species, one might speculate on the gradual modifiability of the individual; on the tendency of certain varieties to survive local changes, and thus progressively diverge from an older type; on the production and fertility of monstrous offspring; on the possibility, e.g. of a variety of auk being occasionally hatched with a somewhat longer winglet and a dwarfed stature; on the probability of such a variety better adapting itself to the changing climate or other conditions than the old type; of such an origin of Alca torda, e.g. ; but to what purpose? Past experience of the chance-aims of human fancy, unchecked and unguided by observed facts, shows how widely they have ever glanced away from the gold centre of truth.'-Owen on the Classification of Mammalia, p. 58.

'Turning from a retrospect into past time for the prospect of time to . I may crave indulgence for a few words.

come

There seems to have been a time when life was not; there may, therefore, be a period when it will cease to be. The end of the world has been presented to man's mind under divers aspects :-as a general conflagration; as the same, preceded by a millennial exaltation of the world to a paradisiacal state, the abode of a higher and blessed state of intelligences. If the guide-post of palæontology may seem to point to a course ascending to the condition of the latter speculation, it points but a very short way, and on leaving it we find ourselves in a wilderness of conjecture, where to try to advance is to find ourselves "in wandering mazes lost."'-p. 61.

It is by putting such a restraint upon fancy that science is made the true trainer of our intellect :

A study of the Newtonian philosophy,' says Sedgwick, 'as affecting our moral powers and capacities, does not terminate in mere negations. It teaches us to see the finger of God in all things animate and inanimate, and gives us an exalted conception of His attributes, placing before us the clearest proof of their reality; and so prepares, or ought to prepare, the inind for the reception of that higher illumination which brings the rebellious faculties into obedience to the Divine will.'-Studies of the University, P. 14.

It is by our deep conviction of the truth and importance of this view for the scientific mind of England that we have been led to treat at so much length Mr. Darwin's speculation. The contrast between the sober, patient, philosophical courage of our home philosophy, and the writings of Lamarck

and his followers and predecessors, of MM. Demaillet, Bory de Saint Vincent, Virey, and Oken,* is indeed most wonderful; and it is greatly owing to the noble tone which has been given by those great men whose words we have quoted to the school of British science. That Mr. Darwin should have wandered from this broad highway of nature's works into the jungle of fanciful assumption is no small evil. We trust that he is mistaken in believing that he may count Sir C. Lyell as one of his converts. We know indeed the strength of the temptations which he can bring to bear upon his geological brother. The Lyellian hypothesis, itself not free from some of Mr. Darwin's faults, stands eminently in need for its own support of some such new scheme of physical life as that propounded here. Yet no man has been more distinct and more logical in the denial of the transmutation of species than Sir C. Lyell, and that not in the infancy of his scientific life, but in its full vigour and maturity.

Sir C. Lyell devotes the 33rd to the 36th chapter of his 'Principles of Geology' to an examination of this question. He gives a clear account of the mode in which Lamarck supported his belief of the transmutation of species; he 'interrupts the author's argument to observe that no positive fact is cited to exemplify the substitution of some entirely new sense, faculty, or organ-because no examples were to be found; and remarks that when Lamarck talks' of 'the effects of internal sentiment,' &c., as causes whereby animals and plants may acquire new organs, he substitutes names for It may be worth while to exhibit to our readers a few of Dr. Oken's postulates or arguments as specimens of his views:

'I wrote the first edition of 1810 in a kind of inspiration.

4. Spirit is the motion of mathematical ideas.

10. Physio-philosophy has to.... pourtray the first period of the world's de velopment from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and in man attained self-consciousness.

42. The mathematical monad is eternal.

43. The eternal is one and the same with the zero of mathematics.'

things, and with a disregard to the strict rules of induction resorts to fictions.

He shows the fallacy of Lamarck's reasoning, and by anticipation confutes the whole theory of Mr. Darwin, when gathering clearly up into a few heads the recapitulation of the whole argument in favour of the reality of species in nature. He urges :

1. That there is a capacity in all species to accommodate themselves to a certain extent to a change of external circumstances.

4. The entire variation from the original type... may usually be effected in a brief period of time, after which no further deviation can be obtained.

5. The intermixing distinct species is guarded against by the sterility of the mule offspring.

6. It appears that species have a real existence in nature, and that each was endowed at the time of its creation with the attributes and organization by which it is now distinguished.*

We trust that Sir C. Lyell abides still by these truly philosophical principles; and that with his help and with that of his brethen this flimsy speculation may be as completely put down as was what in spite of all denials we must venture to call its twin though less-instructed brother the Vestiges of Creation. In so doing they will assuredly provide for the strength and continually growing progress of British science.

Indeed, not only do all laws for the study of nature vanish when the great principle of order pervading and regulating all her processes is given up, but all that imparts the deepest interest in the investigation of her wonders will have departed too. Under such influences a man soon goes back to the marvelling stare of childhood at the centaurs and hippogriffs

*Principles of Geology,' edit. 1853.

Creator

of fancy, or if he is of a philosophic turn, he comes like Oken to write a scheme of creation under a sort of inspiration;' but it is the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas. The whole world of nature is laid for such a man under a fantastic law of glamour; and he becomes capable of believing anything: to him it is just as probable that Dr. Livingstone will find the next tribe of negroes with their heads growing under their arms as fixed on the summit of the cervical vertebræ; and he is able, with a continually growing neglect of all the facts around him, with equal confidence and equal delusion, to look back to any past and to look on to any future.

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.*

(January, 1861.)

THE volume entitled 'Essays and Reviews' has met with a circulation, and excited a measure of remark, which appear to us to be far greater than it would naturally have obtained by its mere literary merits. There is in truth in the volume nothing which is really new, and little which having been said before is said here with any new power, or with any great additions, either by way of amplification, illustration, or research.

With the exception of the last Essay, we think the mere literary character of the volume below what we should have been led to expect from the names of the several essayists. Especially does this apply to the contribution of Dr. Temple, with which the volume opens. There is really nothing in it but the working out, with often a pleasant fancifulness, and oftener still something of the prolixity into which the writer of allegory is so apt to be betrayed, of a rather forced similitude between the growth and progress of the race of men and that of the individual man from infancy to age.

To what, then, is to be attributed the degree of interest

Essays and Reviews.' London, 1860.

1. The Education of the World.' By F. Temple, D.D., Head Master of Rugby School.

2. 'Bunsen's Biblical Researches.' By Rowland Williams, D.D., Vice-Principal, Lampeter College.

3. On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity.' By Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry, Oxford.

4. The National Church.' By H. B. Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton.

5. On the Mosaic Cosmogony.' By C. W. Goodwin, M.A.

6. Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750.' By Mark Pattison, B.D.

7. On the Interpretation of Scripture.' By Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford.