The second congress of Americanistes will meet in Luxembourg September 10 to 13 next. Information and tickets may be had in England of Mr. F.
A. Allen, 15 Fitzwilliam Road, Clapham, S.W. It is to be hoped there will be less speculation and more research than at the last congress.
Persons desirous of procuring brook and salmon trout for restocking the waters of New York State can do so by addressing Seth Green at Rochester, who will send them on the payment of the travelling expenses of a messenger and the giving of full directions as to route and whom to call on.
A cla.s.s in plain cooking was lately formed at the New York Cooking School. The course consisted of twelve lessons. The tuition fees for girls who bear their own expenses are fifty cents for a single lesson, or $5 a course; for charitable societies, in behalf of their protegees, $5 a course; for ladies sending their cooks for instruction, $10 a course.
A shower of stones is reported to have fallen February 16 in Social Circle, Walton county, Georgia, varying in size from a hen"s egg to that of a man"s two fists, irregular in shape, dark grayish color, interspersed with a bright, shiny substance resembling mica. The shower was brief, extended over about four acres of ground, and followed an explosive sound.
Panic fears are likely to prove the destruction of the Spitz dog. The belief that this species is peculiarly liable to hydrophobia, and inclined to bite on small provocation, has led a great many owners to deliver up their Spitz dogs to the police for destruction. In one city, East Brooklyn, there was said to be 4,000 of them, but the number is now much reduced. Is it not possible that a similar panic among brutes may account for the extinction of some wild species of animals?
According to one of the German papers, the Zoological Garden at Cologne has been the scene of a tremendous fight between two Polar bears. They were male and female, and the latter, being overcome, was finally dragged by the male to the reservoir of water in the den, and held down until she was dead. Then her lifeless body was dragged around the place for some time by her furious conqueror.
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Miss Martineau"s "Autobiography,"[2] which comprises two-thirds of this voluminous publication, is an interesting specimen of an interesting sort of book. It appeals much more to the general reader than most of the mult.i.tudinous volumes which she gave to the world during her lifetime, and we shall not be surprised if it takes its place among the limited number of excellent personal memoirs in the language. (For this purpose, however, we must add, it would need to be disembarra.s.sed of the biographical appendage affixed to it by the editor, which, though carefully and agreeably prepared, we cannot but regard as rather a dead weight upon the book. It repeats much of what the author has related, and envelopes her narrative in a diffuse, eulogistic commentary which strikes the reader sometimes as superfluous and sometimes as directly at variance with the impression made upon him by Miss Martineau"s text.) Miss Martineau was indeed, intellectually, one of the most remarkable women who have exhibited themselves to the world. She was not delicate, she was not graceful, or imaginative, or aesthetic, or some of the other pretty things that literary ladies are expected to be; but she was extraordinarily vigorous; she had a great understanding--a great reason. She gives, intellectually, a great impression of force. She was a really heroic worker, a genuine philosopher, and she made her mark upon her time. Her reader"s last feeling about her is that she was thoroughly respectable. He will have had incidental feelings of a less genial kind; he will have been irritated at the coa.r.s.eness of some of her judgments and the complacency of some of her claims; at her evident want of tact and repose; at a disposition to which he will even permit himself, perhaps, to apply the epithet of meddlesome. But he will have a strong sense of Miss Martineau"s care for great things--her sustained desire, prompting her always to production of some kind, to help along and enlighten the human race. She was a combatant, and the whole force of her nature prompted her to discussion. Such natures cannot afford to be delicate--to be easily bruised and scratched; neither can they afford to have that speculative cast of fancy which wastes valuable time in scruples that are possibly superfluous and questions that are possibly vain. In spite of any such apologetic view of her disposition as may be put forth, however, it is probable that Miss Martineau"s autobiography will give offence enough. She speaks out her mind with complete frankness upon most of the persons that she has known, subject to the single condition of her book being published after her death. Of its being postponed until the death of the objects of her criticism we hear nothing, though this would have been more to the point. Miss Martineau deals out disapproval with so liberal a hand, that among those persons concerned who are still living much resentment and disgust must inevitably ensue. Downright and vigorous as she is in spirit, there is no mistaking the degree of her censure, and as (whatever else she may be) she is not a flippant writer, it has every appearance of being deliberate and premeditated. We do not pretend to decide upon the propriety of her hard knocks, or to point out the particular cases in which they might have been a little softer; but we cannot help saying that there is something in Miss Martineau"s general att.i.tude toward individuals which inspires one with a certain mistrust. She was evidently always judging and always uttering judgments. Her business in life was to have opinions and to promulgate them, and as objects of opinion she seems to have regarded persons very much as she regarded abstract ideas--attributing to them an equal unconsciousness of denunciation. This eagerness to qualify her fellow members of society would have been perhaps a great virtue if Miss Martineau"s powers of observation had been of extraordinary fineness; but in spite of an occasional very happy hit, we hardly think this to have been the case.
Sometimes, evidently, she went straight to the point, and often, independently of the justice of her appreciation, this is expressed with an extremely vigorous neatness. But frequently her descriptions of people strike us as both harsh and superficial, and more especially as _heated_, even after the lapse of years. She goes out of her way to p.r.o.nounce very unflattering verdicts upon men and women who have apparently had little more connection with her life than that they have been her contemporaries. This is apart from the rightful spirit of an autobiography, which, it seems to us, should deal only with people who have been real factors in the writer"s life. The latter pages of Miss Martineau"s first volume contain a series of portraits, some brief, some more extended, of which it must be said that their very incisive lines make them extremely entertaining. Miss Martineau"s style is always excellent for strength and fulness of meaning, and at times she has a real genius for terseness. Lord Campbell "was wonderfully like the present Lord; was facetious, in and out of place; politic; flattering to an insulting degree, and p.r.o.ne to moralizing in so trite a way as to be almost as insulting." That has almost the condensation of Saint-Simon. There is a very vivid, satirical portrait in this same chapter of a certain Lady Stepney, who wrote silly novels of the "fashionable" type which Thackeray burlesqued, and boasted that she received 700 a piece for them; and there are sketches of Campbell, Bulwer, Landseer, and various other persons, which if they are wanting in graciousness, are not wanting in spirit. Miss Martineau gives _in extenso_ her opinion of Macaulay, and a very low opinion it seems to be. It is, however, very much the verdict of time--save in regard to the "dreary indolence" of which the author accuses him, and which will excite surprise in the readers of Mr. Trevylyan"s "Life." Of Lockhart and Croker and their insolent treatment of herself and her fame in the early part of her career, she gives a lamentable, and apparently a just account; but stories about the underhandedness and truculence of these discreditable founders of the modern art of "reviewing" are by this time old stories. There is also a story about poor Mr. N. P. Willis, which, though it consorts equally with the impression which this _litterateur_ contrived to diffuse with regard to himself, it was less decent to relate. When Miss Martineau left England for America, Mr.
Willis gave her a bundle of letters of introduction to various people here; and on arriving in this country and proceeding to present Mr.
Willis"s pa.s.sports, she found that the gentleman was unknown to most of the persons to whom they were addressed. A fastidious delicacy might have suggested to Miss Martineau that her lips were sealed by the fact that, of slight value as these doc.u.ments were, she had at least accepted and made use of them. We suppose there was no case in which, even when repudiated, they did not practically serve as an introduction. But Miss Martineau was not fastidiously delicate.
[2] "_Harriet Martineau"s Autobiography._" With Memorials by MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN. In 3 vols. Boston: Jas. R. Osgood & Co.
This copious retrospect appears to have been written about the year 1855, when the author had ceased to labor; having earned a highly honorable repose, and being moreover incapacitated by serious ill health. She appears then, at fifty-three years of age, to have thought her death very near; but she lived to be a much older woman--for upward of twenty years. Her motive in writing her memoirs is affirmed to be a desire to take her good name into her own hands, and antic.i.p.ate the possible publication of her letters, an event which, very properly, she sternly deprecates. As to these letters, however, Mrs. Chapman publishes several, and makes liberal use of others. The reader wonders what her correspondence would have been, since what she destined to publicity is occasionally so invidious. Another motive with Miss Martineau appears to have been a desire to set forth, in particular, the history of her religious opinions--the history being sufficiently remarkable. Born among the primitive Unitarians (the city of Norwich, her paternal home, was, we believe, a sort of focus of this amiable form of Dissent), she pa.s.sed, with her advance in life, from a precocious and morbid youthful piety to the furthest limits of skepticism. The story is an interesting one, and it forms both the first and the last note that she strikes; but we doubt whether (even among persons as little "theological" as herself) her reflections on this subject will serve to exemplify her judgment at its best. Her skepticism is too dogmatic and her whole att.i.tude toward the "superst.i.tion" she has cast off too much marked by a small eagerness for formulas in the opposite direction, and a narrow complacency in the act of ventilating her negations. She cannot keep her hands off affirmations about a future state, and she lacks that imaginative feeling (so indispensable in all this matter) which suggests that the completest form of the liberty which she claims as against her theological education is tacit suspension of judgment. In general Miss Martineau is certainly not superficial, but here, in feeling, she is.
This however is the penalty of having been narrowly theological in one"s earlier years; it always leaves a bad trace somewhere, especially in reaction. The chapters in which Miss Martineau describes these early years are admirable; they place before us most vividly the hard conditions of her childish life, and they describe with singular psychological minuteness the unfolding of her character and the growth of her impressions. They have a remarkable candor, and it certainly cannot be said that the author"s portrait of her youthful self is a flattered one. We doubt whether, except Rousseau, any autobiographer ever had the courage to accuse himself of so ungraceful a fault as infant miserliness. "I certainly was very close," says Miss Martineau, "all my childhood and youth." Her account of the circ.u.mstances which led to and accompanied her first steps in literature, of the first money she earned (she was in sore need of it), and of the growth of her form and development of her powers, and her confidence in them--all this is extremely real, touching, and interesting. She succeeded almost from the first, but her success was the result of an amount of unaided exertion which excites our wonder. What fairly launched her was the publication of her "Tales in Ill.u.s.tration of Political Economy," and there was something really heroic in the way that as a poor young woman with "views" of her own and without helpful companionship, she explored and mastered this tough science. Her views prevailed, and floated her into distinction. We have no s.p.a.ce to allude to the details of the rest of her career, one of the princ.i.p.al events of which was her visit to America in 1834. It lasted more than two years, and was commemorated by Miss Martineau, on her return, in no less than six volumes. Mrs. Chapman deals with it largely in her supplementary memoir, treating chiefly, however, of the visitor"s relations with the Abolition party. Miss Martineau evidently exaggerates both the odium which she incurred and the danger to which she exposed herself by these relations. They were natural ones for an ardently liberal Englishwoman to form, for the Abolitionists, to foreign eyes, must at that time have represented the only eminent feeling, the only sense of an ideal, visible amid the commonplace prosperity of American life. In her last pages Miss Martineau indulges some gloomy forebodings as to the future of the United States, which offers, she says, the only instance on record "of a nation being inferior to its inst.i.tutions." This was written in 1855; we abstain from hazarding a conjecture as to whether she would think better or worse of us now.
We have two good novels, one very foreign and the other very domestic.
The first is by Auerbach,[3] whose high purpose and truly ideal treatment of the narrative all who have read "On the Heights" will remember with pleasure. He preserves the same style essentially in this story, although it is of an entirely different character. A painter visiting a country village in company with a young scholar and philosopher who is an a.s.sistant librarian and is called the collaborator, paints as a Madonna the beautiful daughter of the keeper of the village inn. He falls in love with her, attracted no less by her unconcealed love for him than by her beauty. He takes her to town with him, a town where there is a little German court, very refined _esthetik_, and very high-dried old manners. The poor girl drives him almost mad with her awkwardness, her ignorance of polished life, and her independence. It does not help the matter that in the latter respect she wins the favor of others, even of the Prince himself. After a while he avoids her, takes to wine-drinking, and comes home drunk.
She sees her position, and from what he is suffering, and she goes back to her parents, leaving behind her an unreproachful, fond, and most touching letter of farewell. Poor girl! sad as it was for her, what else could she do? It was the best course under the circ.u.mstances; for although her heart broke over it, she at least kept her love for him, and that by remaining she might have lost. After a while she dies, and he after a long time betrothes himself to another woman, who loves him, and to whose love he responds with such a feeling as beauty and sweetness and devotion might raise in the breast of a man whose heart is really in the grave of his dead wife. He dies before a second marriage from injuries received in a dispute with his brother-in-law.
It will be seen that this simple story of humble life presented temptations to treatment in the most literal and realistic way. But in Auerbach"s hands it is ideal. Its likeness in certain respects to the story of "A Princess of Thule" will strike all the readers of William Black"s most charming novel. But the treatment is as unlike as the incidents and the localities. Auerbach"s little novel is essentially German in thought, in feeling, in purpose, in treatment. We have never read a more thoroughly German book. This character is given to it, and its ideality is very much enhanced by the character of the collaborator, who is constantly looking upon every incident of life from a lofty philosophic point of view; serious generally, sometimes humorous, often serio-comic. "Wilhelm Meister" itself is not a more thoroughly characteristic production of the German mind. But it is nevertheless a sweet, simple, touching story, the sentiment diffused through which has a peculiar charm. It forms one of Mr. Henry Holt"s well selected "Leisure Hour Series." The translation is marked by idiomatic vigor and a very skilful adaptation of the rustic phraseology of one language to that of the other.
[3] "_Lorley and Reinhard._" By BERTHOLD AUERBACH. Translated by Charles T. Brooks. 16mo, pp. 377. New York: Henry Holt.
--As unlike to this as can be is a novel by an author whose name is entirely new to us, but whose work bears the traces of some literary experience.[4] Its double t.i.tle is very well chosen. In it a number of people, young and middle-aged, are gathered together for the summer in the beautiful Connecticut country house of one of them--a wealthy young bachelor. There they all fall in love. We can hardly say that everybody falls in love with everybody else; but it is pretty nearly that.
Everybody is in love with some one else; and the consequence is, after a good deal of cross-purposing and some suffering, half a dozen marriages.
The change that has taken place in the purpose of the novel and in the manner of treatment of character by the novel writer could not be more clearly exampled than by "Love in Idleness." It is absolutely without plot, has hardly enough coherence to be called a story, is entirely without incident. And yet it is very interesting from the first page to the last, although its interest is not of the highest kind even in the novel range. To give our readers any notion of it is quite impossible without telling them almost all that happens, all that is said, thought, and felt by the various personages. The book is strongly American; but its Americans are of the most cultivated cla.s.ses; and it is guiltless of hard-fisted farmers, Southern slave-drivers, and California gold-diggers. It is entirely free from that irritating intellectual eruption sometimes called American humor. In fact, its personages are taken both from the Old England and the New; and side by side, one set can hardly be distinguished from the other as in real life. He who must perforce be called the hero is a Senator, forty-eight years old, who is engaged to marry a rather cool, reserved, and stately woman of thirty, but is loved almost at first sight by Felise Clairmont, a girl of nineteen, half French, half American, of enchanting beauty, and still more captivating ways. She is loved by almost every other man in the book; but her avowed lover is the Senator"s younger brother, who is the host of the a.s.sembled company, exclusive of Felise, who lives near by with her guardian, a certain judge. The Senator loves the young girl as fondly as she loves him, and still more deeply, and what the result is we shall leave our readers to find out from the book itself, which will richly repay the novel reader. It is exceedingly well written, and its social machinery is managed with skill; but it is a little too much elaborated in the conversations, which are rather excessively epigrammatic at times. The author of such a novel, if not an old hand, should give us something better and stronger ere long.
[4] "_Love in Idleness._ A Summer Story." By ELLEN W. OLNEY. 8vo (paper), pp. 131. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
--"The Man Who Was Not a Colonel"[5] is an amusing story of that kind that may be denominated "light" even in fiction. The author rattles on through a variety of incidents, and adventures, and true-love tangles, without trying the reader"s intellect with any particularly severe infliction of character study. It is a model of that literature which has received the distinctive t.i.tle of _railway_, because in travelling we do not care to be bothered with thinking on our own part or others.
[5] "_The Man Who Was Not a Colonel._" By a High Private. Loring, publisher. $0.50.
Mr. Wallace has done well in selecting the comprehensive t.i.tle "Russia"[6] for his book. It is no mere record of a journey, or description of a country or people as a traveller sees them. The author spent six years in the land of the Tsars, studied the language, and lived with the people, and now he endeavors to show the origin and composition of the nation, its past history and present struggles, besides making minute studies of the serf system, the communes, emanc.i.p.ation in its methods and results, the peculiar conjunction of autocracy and democracy in the principles and practice of government, the agriculture, the religion, politics, population, and other important factors of a great empire. The book is sufficiently praised when we say that all these subjects are well treated. The author is careful to point out, as an a.n.a.lyst should, where his studies are incomplete, and he modestly tells us that his work is not presented as an una.s.sailable summation of truth, but as the conclusion to which an unprejudiced observer came after long and careful study. We could not ask for better evidence of his sincerity than in the defence which he, an Englishman, makes of the Tsar"s policy of foreign annexation! He tells us that this is not the result of autocratic choice, but is the only available one of three modes of restraint against marauding tribes. These three are a great wall, a military cordon, and annexation. The first is impossible in a country that for hundreds of miles has no durable building material, the second has been tried and found impracticable. As to the last, there is a choice between an armed frontier and occupation of the marauder"s country, and the latter course is followed because it is cheaper in a pecuniary sense. To the question so often asked in England, How far is Russian "aggrandization"
to go? Mr. Wallace answers that the Russian arms cannot stop until they reach the frontier of some stable power. In short, to those Russophobists in England who look with such alarm upon the approach of the Russians toward India, he calmly replies that this approach is both inevitable and desirable! No wonder he tells his countrymen that it is their duty to know Russia better. It is plainly impossible to even review in the most concise manner the numerous important discussions in this remarkable book, without producing another book in doing so. Mr.
Wallace"s work is one of the most valuable studies in social and governmental economy ever written, and several causes, aside from his personal fidelity and fitness, combine to make it so. In general, Russian society exhibits, so far as the peasantry are concerned, a simplicity of life and thought that carries the imagination irresistibly back to prehistoric times. No civilized race, no _culturvolk_, presents such aboriginal relations in its family and commonwealth. The n.o.bles, on the other hand, and all the cultured cla.s.s, are fermenting with great views and plans of social reform. The ideas that made such havoc in the early days of the French revolution have again swept within human vision, but this time they were caught up by a practical-minded Emperor and crystallized into the greatest premeditated political reform of this century! The wonderful feat of quietly emanc.i.p.ating forty million bonded servitors, at one stroke, the inst.i.tution on a tremendous scale of what the dreamers have declared to be the cla.s.sic relation of social man--communism, the division of land, taking about one-half from the rich and giving it to the poor--such marvels as these throw a halo of Arabian magic about the history of this simple people since 1861. When to these attractions is added the fact that this land of social cla.s.sicity and political ideals is entirely accessible to study, as no other nation of like simple culture is, we think that reasons enough have been given for saying that our author has chosen the ripest field in the world for his harvest labors.
He has shown himself a most conscientious and able worker in it, and our own country will be fortunate if the social revolution that has taken place in its Southern States ever finds so unprejudiced and painstaking a historian as he. To Americans Mr. Wallace"s book should be more interesting and valuable than to any other readers, for many of these questions which he discusses so thoroughly have been settled in precisely the opposite way in this country! For instance, emanc.i.p.ation here was violent, the severance of master-and-slave relations complete, the future _status_ of the two interested parties was not previously fixed, and no compensation was given to either. Here land is held solely by individual tenure; no person has enforced local bonds, but is free to move everywhere--that is, with the sole exception of Indians.
We reject the colonization plan of dealing with marauding enemies, and adopt the armed frontier system. In short, we are diametrically opposite in our conclusions, and yet we have a national problem that is in two important respects essentially the same as Russia"s. The settlement of a continent and the amalgamation of races is the double task imposed on us as well as them. One mode of accomplishing it we can see going on about us; its precise opposite is well exhibited in Mr.
Wallace"s "Russia."
[6] "_Russia._" By D. MACKENZIE WALLACE. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Mr. Anderson cannot be considered a model traveller. His "Six Weeks in Norway"[7] gives hardly anything but the starting out on each morning, the names of places pa.s.sed, and the arrival at night. But the traveller in that country needs something of just this kind, and this book will therefore do very well for a guide. Indeed, it is well filled with facts suitable to such a service. Norway is a hard country to travel in. The frequent rains and steady fish diet are depressing to dry foreigners with a previous sufficiency of phosphorus, and like our own country there is little besides the scenery to engage attention. Nor is the interior the best part of the country. It looks best in a profile view seen from the water. Whoever would see Norway must visit the fiords in a yacht, and not trouble the land much.
[7] "_Six Weeks in Norway._" By E. L. ANDERSON. Robert Clarke & Co.
The discussion of the mutual att.i.tude of religion and science, particularly in regard to what is known as the theory of development, goes ceaselessly on. Books upon the subject follow each other so rapidly that it would seem that they must long since have ceased to find any considerable number of readers, much more of buyers. We confess that we are somewhat weary of the controversy; particularly as it is kept up chiefly on the side of those who call themselves religionists, who mostly seem to be unable to bring forward any new arguments, and no less to fail to appreciate the att.i.tude and the purpose of those whom they have made their antagonists. Science, as we believe, did not seek this controversy, but was forced into it by the attacks of the champions of religion, and is now necessarily kept somewhat on the defence. It would seem that nearly all that can be said, and all that need be said, has already been brought forward. But each new disputant that enters upon the defence of theological dogma seems to be convinced that he is the man of men who is to protect religion against what he believes to be the danger in which it is placed by the observation of nature and the speculation upon discovered facts which now occupies so many physicists, including some of first-rate ability.
We may as well say, if we have not already said in our previous remarks upon the books upon this question which have been reviewed in the pages of "The Galaxy," that we do not regard the theory of evolution as established. Facts of great interest bearing upon it have been discovered, and deductions from those facts have been made and set forth with great ingenuity and plausibility, so that it demands serious attention _from the scientific point of view_. But this seems to us all that has been done. Our feelings and our convictions, not to say our creed, are all against it. It is a degrading and a hopeless view of the universe, and particularly of man. Him it places in the att.i.tude of a mere physical item in the cosmos--one link, although the last and a golden one, in a chain of events the beginning and the future of which are alike unknown. All our instincts revolt against it. We don"t believe it; and we candidly confess that we are in the position, abhorrent and ridiculous to the scientific mind, of not wishing to believe it. We believe, and we desire to believe, that man was made, however and when, as man; and that however inferior he may have been in his first condition to what he is now, he was never anything less than human.
Feeling thus and believing thus, we nevertheless cannot see that those who are resisting science on the ground that its a.s.sumed discoveries are at war with the a.s.sumed teachings of revealed religion are doing wisely, or that they, even the best of them, have written one word which in the least impairs the value or the significance of the facts and the deductions which science has set forth. Science is only to be met by science. Theology cannot touch it. A beast and a fish cannot fight: one must stay on land and the other must stay in the water. Religionists, on the one hand, say that if science has discovered, or professes to have discovered, anything at variance with the Mosaic cosmogony, it is not to be believed. Scientific observers say on the other that if theology teaches anything at variance with fact and logic, so much the worse for theology. This att.i.tude of the two will be maintained. It is natural, and in a certain sense right, that it should be maintained. Each will hold its position. Neither can accept the conclusions of the other or its methods without both ceasing to be what they are. Notwithstanding this difficulty, which is radical, the controversy will go on, until it is decided, not by argument, but by time, experience, and the moral and intellectual development of mankind.
A laborious contribution to the controversy has been made, by Clark Braden,[8] who announces himself as president of Abingdon college, Illinois. It is our own fault, probably, that we have never heard before of the president or of the college. Neither he, however, nor his publishers will fail through lack of confidence to make themselves known, or because they have any misgivings as to the sufficiency of their work. The author, in a prefatory note addressed "to reviewers and critics," invites the most searching criticism of his book, but earnestly requests that it shall be carefully read, and asks to have all criticisms, particularly those which are adverse, sent to him, that they may, as he says, "aid him in his search for truth." But plainly he has little doubt that he has settled "the question of the hour," and what he wishes is to enjoy the spectacle of science vainly struggling in his giant grasp. His tone throughout the book is one of overweening self-confidence. Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, Carpenter, and the rest are to be snuffed out by the president of Abingdon college, Illinois; nay, their very methods of research and modes of reasoning are to be swept into the intellectual dust-bin of that inst.i.tution by his besom. And in a long address which accompanies his book, in which the publishers speak, but the style of which bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Mr. Braden, it is pointed out with unction that while much has been written by the advocates of the theory of creation by intelligence, in refutation of the evolution hypothesis, yet "no thoughtful reader has ever felt satisfied with any one book"; "no one has attempted to present, in all its infinity, mystery, and unfathomable depth, the problem for which evolution is offered as a solution. This is a fundamental failure." Of course this great need is to be supplied, this fundamental failure made good, by Mr. Clark Braden"s book. And then the publishers break forth in words which seem to be the genuine utterances of their own feeling: "The book is a compactly printed volume of four hundred and eighty pages, printed on the best quality of paper, and printed and bound in the best style of art. It contains as much matter as most three-dollar books, and more than many of them.... Every preacher and believer of the Bible should have a copy. All who profess to believe these theories of evolution should, above all others, have a copy. We want to place a copy in the hands of all parties." Doubtless.
This is delicious. Every one who believes the Bible should "have a copy," and every one who don"t believe it should "have a copy." In a word, to "have a copy" of this book is the chief end of man, the first requisite to reasonable existence for every human being. And then the publishers wind up with a request for copies of the reviews of the book, as "we desire to use them in the sale of the book, and in selecting papers in which we will advertise." Innocent creatures! that last touch shows how guileless they are; how they wouldn"t think of such a thing as offering a bribe to editors and publishers of newspapers; and how purely disinterested they are in their desire to place "a copy" in the hands of "all parties."
[8] "_The Question of the Hour, and its Various Solutions, Atheism, Darwinism, and Theism._" By CLARK BRADEN. 8vo, pp. 480.
Cincinnati: Chase & Hall.
We fear that our pages will not be selected for the advertising of this book; which, by the way, is commonly printed and meanly bound. Candidly we do not think that it is the end of all things. Possibly there may be some controversy hereafter; some men may go on investigating nature and believing in facts alone. The book reminds us of a social sketch in "Punch," which shows two dilapidated field preachers, evidently among the most ignorant and feeble-minded of their cla.s.s, meeting on the edge of a heath from which people are going away. One says to the other, "Been on the "eath? What did you preach about?" "Oh," is the reply, "I give it to Darwin an" "Uxley to rights." Not that Mr. Braden is in any sense ignorant, or in any way to be compared to "Punch"s" field preacher except in his evident belief that he has "give it to Darwin an" "Uxley to rights," and in the perfect indifference with which Darwin and Huxley will regard his performance. Briefly, nothing worthy of particular remark in Mr. Braden"s book. Those who wish to find the whole question between science and revealed religion set forth as it appears to Mr. Braden, and the facts and arguments of science met by the usual stock-in-trade weapons of the theologian and the metaphysician, may find all this in Mr. Braden"s book, in which the author certainly does go pretty well over the whole ground. What is really his theme is found in this pa.s.sage of one of his appendices (p.
382): "The issue between theist and atheist is: What is the necessary, absolute, uncaused, unconditioned being or substance? What is it that is the self-existent, independent, self-sustaining and eternal? What is the ground, source, origin, or cause of all existences and phenomena?
This is the problem of problems, that determines all systems of science, philosophy, and thought." Well, to these questions science answers, We don"t know; we don"t pretend to know, and we probably never shall know. We have discovered by patient observation certain facts, and, according to the laws of right reason, we think that between these facts there are such and such relations. In this we may be mistaken. If we are, very well; we shall be glad to correct our error. In either case we shall go on observing, considering, and reasoning, but confining ourselves strictly to fact. If any dogma or transcendental notion that you know of is at variance with fact or with reason, we may be sorry or we may not; but in either case we can"t help it. Dogmas and notions are nothing to us. And as to that self-existent, unconditioned, eternal intelligence that you talk about, pray tell us what you know about it. We shall be glad to learn. Don"t tell us what you think, believe, or have an inward conviction of, but what you know. What _do_ you _know_ about it? Give us at least a solid basis of absolute knowledge to stand upon and to start from, and we are ready to listen to you. If you cannot do this, good morning; look you after your dogmas, and we will keep to our facts. The truth is that not Paul and Barnabas were more driven to part company than the disputant who sets up as of any authority a theological dogma, no matter what, or a metaphysical abstraction, no matter what, and the man who studies nature scientifically. One believes because he believes, and really at bottom from no other reason; the other is in a chronic state of inquiry; he believes nothing in regard to any subject of inquiry but that which rests upon the ground of absolute knowledge. Mr. Braden"s book, although it is filled with evidences of wide reading and high education, reads like a book of metaphysical and theological commonplace. It reminds us of our college days in the lecture room of the professor of moral philosophy. It is well enough in its way, but it will attract little attention in the pending controversy. Of its style we must say that, considering the position of its author, we wish it were better, and that in the use of language it were an example more worthy to be followed. Its first sentence is: "One of the _wise_ utterances of one _whom_ his contemporaries declared spoke as never man spoke, was that no _wise_ man would begin," etc. On the next page we have such vulgar error as "_transpiring_ before our eyes," "decay and dissolution _transpiring_ in every department of nature"; and as to _shall_ and _will_ the author seems to have no conception of their proper functions in English speech. This, for the president of Abingdon college, is not well.
--Of a somewhat different character, and of much greater importance, is a little book which presents James Martineau"s last utterances on this subject.[9] It is made up of an address delivered in Manchester New College, October 6, 1874, and two papers which appeared subsequently in the "Contemporary Review." Dr. Bellows, in his introduction, expresses the feeling with which religious minds will read these papers when he says, "it is refreshing in the midst of the crude replies which alarmed religionists are hastily hurling at the scientific a.s.sailants of faith in a living G.o.d, to hear one thoroughly furnished scholar, profound metaphysician, and earnest Christian entering his thoughtful and deeply considered protest against the tendencies or conclusions of modern materialism." Mr. Martineau may now be justly regarded as the leading champion of faith. He has this distinction because he is not hampered by creeds, or articles, or hierarchal responsibility; he is yet an earnest believer in the essentials of the Christian religion as it is accepted by all orthodox Protestant denominations, while to these qualifications he adds a wide range of knowledge and eminent ability as a reasoner. He is able to meet the men of science on their own ground, and he does so.
They will not acknowledge themselves vanquished; and perhaps from the very nature of the case, as we have already remarked, they cannot be vanquished by any argument in which revelation or metaphysics enters as a premise; but they will not refuse their admiration at the union of subtlety and strength, of ability and courtesy with which they are treated. We find many admirable pa.s.sages in this book marked for reference, as we went through it; but we must pa.s.s them by. During the last few months we have devoted so many pages of our department of literature to the discussion of this subject, that readers with whom it is not a hobby might reasonably object to a further continuance of the subject here. We content ourselves with recommending this little, thoughtful, strongly written book to the attention of our readers. They will find the best array of arguments with which to meet scientific materialism.
[9] "_Modern Materialism in its Relations to Religion and Theology._" By JAMES MARTINEAU, LL.D. With an introduction by Henry W. Bellows, D.D. 16mo, pp. 211. New York: G. P. Putnam"s Sons.
--From the same publishers, who seem very catholic in their reception of authors, we have a volume which, the more because of its ability and its calmness of tone, Mr. Martineau would regard with sadness, and with horror, and perhaps with dread.[10] Mr. Frothingham has undertaken the task of studying the records of the foundation of Christianity from a purely literary point of view and with all the aids that can be derived from criticism. The result of his studies may be said to be the satisfaction of his own mind that Jesus of Nazareth was not and did not intend to be the founder of a new religion; that he believed himself to be and set himself up as the Messias, the temporal Messias, expected by the Jews; and that Christianity was founded by Paul. His conception of Paul is striking, and however he may fail in establishing his position in regard to him, it certainly must be admitted that he has made of him a very interesting and energetic figure, and one which is consistent with itself and with all that we are told of the great apostle to the Gentiles. He calls him both Jew and Greek--Jew by parentage, nurture, training, and genius, Greek by birthplace, residence, and a.s.sociation, an enthusiast, even to fanaticism, by temperament, and yet freed from extreme narrowness of mind by intercourse with the people and the literature of other nations. He was a Jew whose feeling upon the Christ question was always intense, so much so that he worried and tormented the people who did not believe as he did. He was a Messianic believer of the school of the Pharisees, or strict Jews; but all at once, as such things do happen to such men, another aspect of the Messianic expectation burst upon him with the splendor of a revelation, and determined his career. To the conception of the Messias and of Jesus"s conformity to it which suddenly took possession of Paul, Mr. Frothingham a.s.signs the origin of the Christian religion as it was known in the second century. With a cool and almost humorous adaptation of a political phrase of the day, he calls this Paul"s "new departure." That Mr. Frothingham"s book is clear in thought, interesting in substance, agreeable and good in style every one acquainted with his writings will readily believe. As to the points that he has undertaken to establish, we are pretty sure that after reading his book few will think with him who were not ready to do so before they began it.
[10] "_The Cradle of the Christ_: A Study of Primitive Christianity." By OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM 12mo, pp. 233.
New York: G. P. Putnam"s Sons.