beings you could find in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place them as citizens in this beatified community, my belief is, that in less than a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some revolution by which they would militate against the good of the community, and be burnt

into cinders at the request of the Tur."

This passage is suggestive of many reflections. Perhaps we cannot do better than leave our readers here to the meditations it excites. We leave them face to face with a very clever book. After the extracts we have given, it will be needless to deal largely in the language of praise. We are certain that it will be very extensively and very admiringly read.

But as all authors, even reviewers, have ever a one word more to say, we would, apropos of this final passage, suggest just this one consideration. Although a citizen of the United States, or an English squire, or even a German professor, might find such a Utopia as is here described, whether under ground or above ground, or in the third heavens, very dull and oppressive, flat, stale, and unprofitable, it does not follow that the natives, bred and nurtured in their serene homes, would experience any such weariness

or dissatisfaction. Civilised life itself requires a training, and we may well suppose that this highly-cultivated condition would be acceptable to those only whose sentiments and habits have, in fact, been harmonised to and by the society they live in. A savage, captured and decently clad, and taught good manners to boot, shall, when the opportunity occurs, fling off his tight-fitting garments and all the conventionalities of which he seemed to be very proud, and betake himself to the jungle, or his canoe, or his miserable hut, and enter once more on his old perilous and terrible struggle for existence. What we, who call ourselves philanthropists or progressionists, or by some other flattering title, have evidently to do, is this: we have to labour for some definite and unmistakable improvement. We cannot altogether foresee that future whole which may be the outcome of many such accomplished purposes; but we may rely on this, that at each stage society will model the individual to live in the new medium, and probably fit him to labour still further, and ever further, for this or that advance in knowledge, or in art, or social habitude.

THE mind of the general reader, brought up in the creed common to Christendom, and holding, as the majority of people do, the faith taught in the Bible, has been much exercised of late by the progress of scientific inquiries. Philosophers and materialists have ceased to content themselves, as they once did, with darkling investigations: they have begun to take up the quite inappropriate vehicle of lively style and literary art to force us into attention to their abstruse inquiries; and as these inquiries are nothing if not heterodox, and carry in their very front audacious banners, labelled with such legends as "No Faith," and "Believe nothing," a great many of us, it must be allowed, have been much frightened, and have felt our fundamental beliefs, our best hopes, in danger. It is, curiously enough, a distinctive feature of the timid faith of the public -a faith which is infinitely stronger than it looks, but which never can be brought to believe in itself-that it takes periodical fits of fright, and feels, like the nervous millionaire, that it is about to be brought to ruin; whereas scepticism, like most young and penniless adventurers, is daring to bravado, and fears nothing. But it is worth while to inquire what is the cause of the fright and we are glad to think that we have under our hand a reassuring utterance from the lips of one of the great heresiarchs of the day, which ought to go far to compose the popular apprehensions. Professor Tyndall is not a man to shrink from saying what he means out of any fear of shocking his audi

ence; and he is proud and triumphant in those researches of the materialist which have gone so far and discovered so much; but yet there is, in his recent book,* consolation for the most timid believer. It is not a likely quarter, we allow, to seek for consolation: but he is a bold and frank speaker, not dealing in mysterious hints and darkling intimations, but speaking his mind, whether to his own advantage or disadvantage, in a way which speculatists of all classes would do well to follow. Science has taken for itself a peculiar position in our days. Of old it was supposed the sphere of theology to deal with the spiritual unknown, and of philosophy to ascertain how the movements of thought and feeling originated in the unseen and impalpable soul. These two ethereal sciences held the field in respect to all that was higher in man. Mental philosophy has even taken its distinguishing name in opposition, as it were, to natural philosophy, which had a totally dif ferent sphere of operations. Natural Science has gradually pressed forward through sphere after sphere, until she has arrogated to herself the chief place, and proclaimed her readiness to elucidate all problems--not those only which were supposed to belong to her individual range, but the still more important questions which are more vital to man than any discussions about strata or stones, gases or elemental influences. She has taken the question of the origin of man out of the hands of theology. She has taken his actions and motives out of the keeping of the philosopher. She has done her

But

best to abrogate altogether the spiritual and mental kingdoms, and range all within the vast dreary material wilderness of a world in which everything is done on mechanical principles. It is her day, and she has been allowed, with much commotion, but as yet little serious resistance, to proceed on her career. That fancy for fairness, impartiality, and tolerance of everything, which is the prevailing fashion of the time, has induced everybody to listen politely; and the powers of thought and expression which, as it is her day, natural science has enlisted in her favour, have carried a great deal of superficial belief, and that hollow conviction which lasts as long as the argument, throughout the world. Natural Selection and the Molecular theory are in the ascendant, intellectually. Our origin is traced for us from the ape and the jelly-fish; our actions are accounted for by the movement of currents of atoms in the lining of our frames. This is an undignified solution of the difficulties of humanity; but Science sternly refuses to consider the matter under any such secondary light, or to be influenced by the consideration that it would be better for us to be made in the image of God than to be improved out of the image of a beast. She has nothing to do with what is best or pleasantest; she only considers (she says) what is true. She bids us give her our hand boldly while she marches without fear or hesitation into the unknown. We have thought ourselves mysterious beings. She is going to find out all about us. "Come on," she says, with a certain scorn of our weakness. She is going to show us how it is all done, as the creator of Frankenstein might have managed to do, had not that timid philosopher been a great deal too much frightened by his own performance. But Science is not at all frightened.

She waves her smoky torch about her head as she stands at the dark entrance to that invisible world. We have called it by such names as Heaven, Infinitude, the Unknown; to her it is a labyrinth of catacombs requiring nothing but the torch and the clue.

Now the question is, Does Science face the question fully which she professes to explain? She has chosen to take Man for her field of investigation; and Man is a complex being. He is something more than flesh and blood-the meanest, least observant eye, looking at him, is compelled to feel that his inscrutability is something which differs from the inscrutability of the earth, or the air, or the animal creation. Supposing him to have been developed out of the brute, at some certain moment in the progress of that development, at some stage in the process, a certain change must have come over him. Argument is ineffectual on this subject, because the fact is above argument; it cannot be denied or contested. He is different from everything else in the world by a vast, an unexplainable, an infinite difference. The phenomena which occur in him occur in no other creature.

It may

be possible for some minds to conceive how the Greek Aphrodite or the fair English girl, who is dearer to us than any Venus, might be developed out of a monkey, though we avow that to ourselves the process is inconceivable; but who can imagine that Shakespeare was the product of the higher refinement and gradual civilisation of the loftiest Chimpanzee? A philosophy which insists on the lobe of our ear as characteristic of the race, and omits to consider Shakespeare as a still more important characteristic, begins its investigations on very insufficient ground: for we have a right to insist that we should be considered as whole creatures, not as half. Upon this curious

ly disingenuous foundation, however, all the investigations into our nature which have filled the public ears and mind are founded. Our bodies are discussed to nausea; but our bodies are not us. They are the most marvellous of earthly machines- - the most delicate and noble-but no one has ever pretended that they were inscrutable or divine. Since Man has known himself, it has never been this part of him which has been his chief pride. Everywhere and in all circumstances he has felt that he was not as the brute. The world has been wonderful to him, but he himself to himself has always been much more wonderful than the world. He has never questioned whether or not he was superior to the rest of the visible creation, for he has always known it, and taken it for granted. And in every age the great question has been-The thing within us, which is not flesh and blood, which is will and emotion and sentiment, which makes us grieve and rejoice, which makes us think and speak, whence comes it? -what is it? This unexplainable creature, deriving strange powers which we cannot fathom, from some strange source which we do not know, what is its pedigree, its origin, its law of being? This has been the question of humanity, and it is, let us do what we will to exaggerate lesser questions into importance, the great problem of the universe. Our eyes always light up, and our ears are intent to hear of anything that may solve it. Any inquiry which looks as if it might by possibility clear up for us some part of this problem, becomes immediately interesting. If we could but ascertain anything for ourselves, not by tradition or revelation, but by discovery, we feel that it would be an unspeakable satisfaction

to us.

What Natural Science does for us, by way of clearing up this mysterious

difference of which we are conscious between ourselves and all the rest of creation, is-to slump us up in one general mass with the animal and even the vegetable world. Our grand difficulty is the immense pressure of that conscious difference which isolates us from every other race as no race except our own is isolated. And Science replies by pitching us contemptuously into the common heap of life. Yet there never was a greater proof of our inalienable identity than herself. Man only inquires, man only wonders, ponders, demands of heaven and earth to know who and what he is-has alone the faculty of being scientific. This is the most wonderful distinction in nature, but it is the one thing which Science declines to consider. She will make the most elaborate calculations to show us how our shape was modified, our flesh moulded into new forms; but when we ask her how we got our mind she is obstinately silent: yet our mind is our grand characteristic in the world. It is as if an ornithologist should enter into an elaborate discussion as to how a nightingale had developed out of a hedgesparrow, commenting minutely upon the tiny marking of its feathers, and omitting all reference to its song. Yet the song is the nightingale's grand characteristic, just as mind is our grand characteristic. Fifty years ago, the wonder and mystery which surrounded so common an occurrence as the germination of a seed of corn was a favourite argument with believers in Revelation against the sceptic's refusal to believe anything he could not understand. "Can you understand how the seed grows into the green plant, and then into the ear of corn?" asked the defender of religion. Science has plucked, or thinks she has plucked, the mystery out of this. She answers, Yes, she can understand it. In Professor Tyndall's paper on Scientific Materi

a

alism he describes the process to us. It is done by a union between the molecules of the seed and the molecules in the soil brought together by heat. And exactly in the same way is the human body constructed. It is less easy to identify the processes carried on in the latter case; but the difficulty "is not with the quality of the problem, but with its complexity." The molecules are small, and they are very many-their action is hidden-there are obstacles in the way of observation; but Professor Tyndall is convinced that " simple expansion of the qualities we now possess" would overcome all these difficulties. From this it is apparent that to master even the mystery of the body, Science requires to grow wiser and stronger. Were she so-were all the faculties so expanded that she could "deduce" the chick "rigorously and mathematically from the egg"-she would still be in no position to pronounce upon the central wonder of humanity. She has given us to understand that she was in a position to do so. She has kept us shivering and wondering, as on the edge of some great precipice of discovery, within reach of that mysterious secret which has been hid from us all our lives. We have felt that the wonder was about to be taken out of us-that we were going to be accounted for, our nature fathomed, and our identity settled for ever. Science has claimed to do this for us through Mr Darwin's ape and Professor Huxley's protoplasm. She has given us mysterious warnings not to think too highly of ourselves to beware lest we should be proved to be mere automatons, puppets moved by a stream of atoms. Deeply and solemnly has Professor Huxley sounded in our ear this more than likelihood, this almost certainty. But hear what his brother Professor says, and you begin

VOL. CX.-NO. DCLXIX.

to breathe again. Mr Tyndall is scarcely less interested in molecules than his colleague. He believes in them-venerates them, so to speak, as probably the parents of his own thoughtful musings; and is as ready to believe in their all-importance as any fetish-worshipper in his idol. Yet here is his decision on the subject-his avowal of that tether which limits Science, and beyond which, up to this time at least, she has shown no power to go. He has been candidly stating his conviction that the animal body is the product of molecular force.

"You see I am not mincing matters, but avowing nakedly what many scientific thinkers more or less distinctly believe. The formation of a crystal, a plant, or an animal, is in their eyes a purely mechanical problem, which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the processes involved. Here you have one-half of our dual truth; let us now glance at the other half. Associated with this wonderful mechanism of the animal body we have phenomena no less certain than those of physics, but between which and the mechanism we discover no necessary connection. A man, for example, can say, I feel, I think, I love; but how does consciousness infuse itself into the problem? The human brain is said to be the organ hurt, the brain feels it; when we ponder, of thought and feeling. When we are

it is the brain that thinks; when our passions or affections are excited, it is through the instrumentality of the brain. Let us endeavour to be a little more precise here. I hardly imagine there exists a profound scientific thinker who has reflected upon the subject, unwilling to admit the extreme probability of the hypothesis that, for every fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of

thought, or of emotion, a definite molecular condition of motion or structure is set up in the brain; or would be disposed even to deny that if the motion or structure be induced by internal causes instead of external, the effect on consciousness will be the same. Let any nerve, for example, be thrown, by morbid action, into the precise state of motion which would be communicated to it by the pulses of a heated body; surely that

nerve will declare itself hot-the mind will accept the subjective intimation ex

E