LITERARY NOTICES. 



627 



us to go into this inquiry, but the case was 

 so well stated, the other day, in relation to 

 Mr. Mill, in the editorial columns of the New 

 York Times, that we cannot do better than 

 to quote a passage or two from the article. 

 The writer says : 



"Much as Mr. Mill had labored in the 

 field of modern metaphysics, he was by no 

 means so familiar with the modes of reason- 

 ing of modern science. Had he been more 

 so, he could never have indulged in his ir- 

 reverent and almost flippant objections to 

 the perfection and the ends of the workings 

 of Nature. Nor would he have been so con- 

 fident of the tendencies in Nature toward 

 pain and degeneracy. The truth is, to the 

 modern natural philosopher Nature is by no 

 means so simple a machinery, or collection 

 of guided forces, as it was to the investigator 

 even twenty years since. Darwinism has 

 changed all that. The simplest results in 

 natural phenomena are plainly the effects 

 and balancings of countless forces and forms 

 of life, perhaps through millions of ages. 

 The aspect and features, for instance, of a 

 summer field its flowers, insects, shrub- 

 bery, and animals, the soil and rocks and 

 contour, the very hue of the flowers and the 

 color of the insects every simple phenom- 

 enon in it is the result and final balance of 

 struggling forms of life and opposing forces, 

 which must have been working under a 

 guiding hand to produce this effect for ' eons 

 of eons.'' The philosopher who should say 

 that this did not show contrivance, or the 

 perfection he expected, or that this compli- 

 cated machinery suffered from jars, friction, 

 and defects, would now, in the judgment of 

 the most skeptical scientific men, be like a 

 savage criticising the machinery of a steam- 

 engine or the operations of a Babbage count- 

 ing-machine. The matter is too complicated 

 for any human observer to form any intelli- 

 gent opinion upon. He neither sees the 

 beginning nor the end. He is not certain 

 that he can trace out a few threads of the 

 intertwined web, even for a short distance. 

 His best theory, that of ' the survival of the 

 fittest,' is only a negative theory. It shows 

 why forms of life are destroyed, but never 

 ' the origin of species.' The only thing 

 which a philosophical observer can do with 

 any reason is to observe, during the sbort 

 space of human history, the drift of things. 

 Now, modern science, whether it be cor- 

 rectly based or not, is singularly opposed to 

 Mr. Mill's pessimism in this. 



" According to Darwinism, at least (which 

 Mr. Mill certainly would recognize as a good 



working hypothesis), there is nothing in the 

 universe existing or created for pain alone. 

 Every instrument of destruction or torture 

 the claws of the tiger, the sting of the 

 hornet, the venom of the rattlesnake, the 

 teeth of the shark, the beak of the hawk 

 are not designed, or have not arisen, to give 

 pain without purpose. They are all origi- 

 nally means of defense, or means of gaining 

 sustenance, or weapons of attack in the 

 struggle for food, or variations of harmless 

 organs. Pain is incidental to them. And 

 pain, in the Darwinian theory, is never an 

 object per se, except as it tends to improve 

 the subject. We are not now defending this 

 theory of the universe ; we only urge that 

 modern science, on which Mr. Mill so con- 

 fidently rests, does not present us with a 

 universe where pain is the apparent object 

 of creation, or where it has no useful ends. 

 "Moreover, Mr. Mill would be surprised 

 to find that under the Darwinian hypothesis 

 there is no degeneracy of the world, no drift 

 toward the worst. Nature, to the Darwinian, 

 is by no means so black as the elder and 

 younger Mills paint her. According to the 

 development hypothesis, there is an eternal 

 progressive movement through the whole 

 universe toward higher forms of life; in 

 other words, modern science believes in nec- 

 essary and ever-continuing advance. But a 

 current toward the Best, a plan of the Cos- 

 mos which points toward perfection, a drift 

 in the direction of what is complete, a move- 

 ment like that of the stars of heaven, con- 

 tinuing slowly but surely through countless 

 millions of ages, toward one centre of the 

 universe the perfectly Good is surely one 

 of the grandest of all indications in natural 

 theology of a benevolent and perfect Creator. 

 And for an observer, who has but a moment's 

 time for observation, to criticise the move- 

 ment because it is slow, reaches the height 

 of irreverence and conceit." 



The Elements of the Psychology of Cog- 

 nition. By Robert Jardine, B. D., D. 

 E. Sc. Macmillan & Co. 289 pp. 

 Price, $2. 



This volume has nothing marked about 

 it that calls for attention. It belongs to a 

 class, already numerous, which purport to 

 be introductions to the study of the human 

 mind. It is metaphysical in its method, 

 and old in its inculcations. While the au- 

 thor designs it " principally for the use of 

 students" who are beginning their philo- 

 sophical studies, he confesses to another 

 purpose, as follows : " The writer is ready 



