natural science required it. It was the view taken by two of our ablest commentators, Bishop Stillingfleet and Mat. Poole, in the seventeenth century. Then comes geographical biology, and shows us, under the regions of creation sketched by Mr. Sclater, how for long time a parallelism, but not an identity, of type has pervaded the whole, and how impossible it is to commingle the creations of Australia or South America, for instance, with that of the northern Old World; while to it (the Palæarctic), apparently the most recent of all, belong the animals most indispensable to man, and, with a few trifling local exceptions, all those which have been domesticated by him. Read by the light of theology, the Scripture history simply demands such a flood as should have destroyed man; read by the light of science, there is no impossibility shown of such a catastrophe. One of our great geologists has emphatically declared that geology can yield no testimony for or against the Noachian deluge. We know that the crust of the earth has been in perpetual motion; of its gradual upheavals and depressions the rocks are our register, but of a great cataclysm in the plains of Central Asia, so short and so rapidly subsiding, we could not expect to find traces.

Much has been said and argued on the uniformity of nature. True as it is in one sense, in that sense in which it is commonly objected against Scripture we demur to the aphorism. In one sense there is a uniformity in nature, in another there is a variableness in the course of nature, as there is in the achievements of man,-as Columbus might or might not have discovered America,-as a plague might or might not be stayed by the discovery of a specific. We know not the laws which regulate the upheavals and depressions of the earth's surface; we cannot tell what law produced the glacial epoch, nor why Scandinavia is rapidly rising, Greenland subsiding, and the Spanish coasts stationary. Auvergne in France, and the Ledjah in Syria, tell us of tremendous forces which have not operated uniformly, for in a recent geologic epoch they have changed the face of the land, during the historic period they have been dormant. Such a hidden force as has upheaved and rent the Ledjah could have lifted or depressed the plains of Persia and Armenia, and desiccated them into the Caspian and the other inland seas, as surely as the Sahara has been more slowly desiccated. Into the question of chronology, as applied to the human period, we do not enter; it will be sufficiently early for that, when geologists shall have even approximately settled the unit which is to measure geologic time. We only observe that the popular interpretation of the Mosaic diluvian chronology is of no moment to the narrative, and is accidental, not essential to the record.

So as to the origin of our living species. The view of progressive de

velopment may or may not be true; it awaits the interpretation of facts: but we must emphatically protest against the too popular theory which excludes all recognition of teleology in the question. Morphology and teleology it has been truly said, the recognition of a general model and of specialized modes,-can never be justly conceived as at schism. till concessions to symmetry in works of human art are pronounced incompatible with a regard to use, or again till the skill of the consummate musician is held to be impeached by the simplicity of the strings. Morphology, rightly viewed, is not the negation, but one grand phase of the revelation of plan. Teleology is the other. A prospect glass or a forceps is an instrument; they each had a final cause. The use did not make them, they were made for the use, which use was foreseen and premeditated in the mind of the maker of them. We unhesitatingly say of each of them, If this had not first been a thought it could never have been a thing. Now, is the eye or the hand an instrument adjusted to a certain use, and thus revealing an antecedent purpose in the creative Mind, or is it not? For our part, it seems far most rational to admit that before it became a fact in nature it must needs have been a thought in God. Nature is full of plan, yet she plans not; she is only plastic to a plan. The plan has its warp, indeed, as well as its woof. The exquisite variety of creative adjustments reposes on a basis of a fundamental order; exhaustless specialities of adaptation are engrafted on a pervading unity of type.

We accept every fact of science, but we are entitled to demur to the theories of scientific men when only partially based on fact, or when based on partial facts. We object to such an inference as the following being classed among scientific facts :—

"If man constitutes a separate family of mammalia, as he does in the opinion of the highest authorities, then, according to all palæontological analogies, he must have had representatives in meiocene times. We need not, however, expect to find the proofs in Europe. Our nearest relations in the animal kingdom are confined to hot, almost to tropical climates; and it is in such countries that we must look for the earliest traces of the human race."-Pre-Historic Times, p. 334.

We have found nothing yet in the researches of science to prove that the barbarous dwellers on the kitchen-middens were not the wandering outcasts from the pre-existent civilization of the valleys of the Euphrates or the Nile, nor is there any chronological argument against it. Nor have we yet seen the traces of the barbaric epoch underlying the vestiges of the earliest civilization in its sites. Nor, in the face of the relics of the Mississippi valley, of Central America, or of Mesopotamia, can we admit that there is no evidence before us of man relapsing from civilization. We object to such an assumption as was

the basis of a recent paper before the Zoological Society, that “ our differences and affinities are not teleological but signs of identity of origin," that "the varieties in the structure of the hair of the marsupials prove that species had not, at the date of the marsupial origin, become clearly defined," or that certain points of resemblance between the structure of the hair of rodents and of the felidæ prove the descent of the cat tribe from the former.

We freely admit that,—

"With the increasing influence of science, we may confidently look to a great improvement in the condition of man. But it may be said that our present sufferings and sorrows arise principally from sin, and that any moral improvement must be due to religion, not to science. This separation of the two mighty agents of improvement is the great misfortune of humanity, and has done more than anything else to retard the progress of civilization."Pre-Historic Times, p. 488.

But is all the blame on the side of religion? Is it not too often on that of science? To apply the remarks of a writer in a recent periodical (Rev. J. Ll. Davies),—

"Science has been so victorious of late years, and has been adding so constantly to the strength of its main positions, that it is scarcely safe to doubt anything which is affirmed by cautious and scientific men as a fact within their own domain. But when from the proper and recognised conclusions of science, inferences are drawn which affect the spiritual life, then it cannot be complained of if we scrutinize those inferences carefully. If there is a region of genuine mystery, into which the science of phenomena is pushing forward its methods too confidently, it may be forced to retire, not, indeed, by spiritual intimidation, but by the opposition of realities to which it is self-compelled to pay respect."

"How long will men think of God as if He were man-of the Creator as if He were a creature-as though creation were but one intricate piece of machinery, which is to go on ringing its regular changes until it shall be worn out, and God were shut up, as a sort of mainspring within it, who might be allowed to be a sort of Primal Force to set it in motion, but must not be allowed to vary what He has once made? We must admit the agency of God,' says the Westminster Review, 'once in the beginning of things, but must allow of His interference as sparingly as may be.' Most wise arrangement of the creature if it were indeed the god of its God! Poor hoodwinked souls, which would extinguish for themselves the Light of the World, in order that it may not eclipse the rushlight of their own theory!" Our conviction is certain that the spirit of truth-seeking investigation applied to zoological research will lead us by a sure induction not to a God "unknown and unknowable," but to a God revealed in all the harmony of Divinity, alike in the book of Nature and the book of Revelation. H. B. TRISTRAM.

* Pusey's "Minor Prophets," p. 273.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Primary Beliefs. By RICHARD LOWNDES. London. 1865.

RE

EVIEWING has been called "the ungentle craft;" and there is one branch of it at least in which it is difficult for the critic to discharge his duty without appearing to give some countenance to the accusation. In dealing with works of a controversial character, or treating of topics provocative of controversy, it is almost indispensable for a reviewer to lay especial stress on the points wherein he differs from his author, even though these should be fewer in number and importance than those on which he agrees with him. Assent may be sufficiently stated in general terms: dissent requires to be supported by special reasons; and the more so in proportion to the general merit of the work, and the exceptional character of the points dissented from.

We owe this admission to Mr. Lowndes, because our remarks on his book will be chiefly dissentient, while at the same time we have a high opinion of its merits. The author tells us in his Preface that he began his work with the intention of producing an epitome of the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, and ended with dissenting from his master on the best known and most popular portion of his teaching. Though Mr. Lowndes is by no means a servile follower of Hamilton in the points where he agrees with him, yet his general relation to the Scottish philosopher may be fairly stated by saying that he follows him in his doctrine of Primary Beliefs, but dissents from him as regards the Philosophy of the Conditioned. In most of what Mr. Lowndes says in defence of primary beliefs, against Mr. Mill and others of the empirical school, we fully concur, and have great pleasure in recommending the first portion of his book, as a concise and lucid statement of what we believe to be the true doctrine on this disputed question. With the second part of the book commence the positions from which we are compelled to dissent; and it is these which, according to our estimate of a critic's duty, we feel bound to notice in detail.

Part II., chap. 2, "Of Belief," contains a criticism of Sir W. Hamilton's theory of "Belief in the incognisable," which is both incorrect in itself, and

inconsistent with the critic's own admissions. After some preliminary remarks on the three states of mind called respectively Knowledge, Belief, and Doubt, Mr. Lowndes continues :---

"Each of these, as of all other acts of judgment, being the mental bringing together of two objects of thought, requires as a condition that the object concerning which we say that we know, or believe, or doubt its truth, shall at least have been apprehended by the mind, so that we know what it is. Obvious as this appears, it seems to have, by some accident, escaped the acuteness of Sir William Hamilton, when he pronounces the Infinite to be incognisable, and yet affirms that we are so framed as necessarily to believe in its existence."-(P. 106.)

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It would have been marvellous indeed if Hamilton, or anybody else, had overlooked so obvious a truth as this, in the sense in which Mr. Lowndes maintains it. That in order to believe, as well as to know, it is necessary that we should be able to bring together objects of thought, is unquestionable; and if this is all that is required to make an object cognisable," a belief in the incognisable is of course an impossibility. But Mr. Lowndes does not seem to be aware that he is only repeating Toland's old argument against belief in anything mysterious. To believe any proposition, we must understand it; to understand, we must have the simple ideas corresponding to our words; if we have the simple ideas, we have the complex ideas composed of them; and if so, nothing is mysterious which can be expressed in intelligible language. The error of this reasoning consists in overlooking the fact that a complex idea is not a mere aggregate of simple ideas, but an organized whole, in which those ideas exist in a certain relation to each other. It no more follows that a man has a complex idea by having the simple ideas of which it is composed, than it follows that he can make a watch if its different parts are given to him separately. I may believe that certain wheels, springs, &c., may be so put together as to make a watch, though I do not know how they are put together. So I can believe that certain given ideas may be so combined as to form a complex whole, though I do not know, and am unable to conceive, how they are to be combined. Belief is possible in the mere fact of their coexistence knowledge, or even conception, must extend to the mode of coexistence. But Mr. Lowndes's objection is not only founded on a misapprehension of Hamilton's meaning, but it is also inconsistent with his own admissions in another place. A little later on, he tells us that the existence of the substances, self and not self, is a matter of universal belief, though the substances themselves are unknown; and he actually goes so far as to say, "the belief in this unknown something, therefore, has existed in us, and been operative, before we were conscious of it." (P. 140.) Are we then to conclude that a belief in the unknown is necessary to all the rest of mankind, and only forbidden to Sir William Hamilton?

We do not think that Mr. Lowndes has succeeded in refuting Hamilton's principle, that it is legitimate, nay, necessary, to believe in the incognisable and inconceivable. Nor does he succeed better in criticising the application of this principle to the case of the infinite. In attempting to refute Hamilton's assertion that we cannot conceive an infinite regress of time, he falls into the same mistake into which Mr. Mill and some other critics of Hamilton have also fallen-that of supposing that the same difficulty must equally belong to any large finite number. "To realize the notion, a million," he says, "we ought, it seems, to count a million."--(P. 215.) Not so, for we may begin to count from any point. We may begin from 999,999, and then, to reach a million, we have only to count one. But infinity is essentially distinct from all finite quantities. All finite time, however great, is limited by a further time beyond it. Unconditioned time,