The Scottish Natnraltsf. 5 



surprised — surprised on two accounts ; firsts because such a 

 fact would at last wholly undo any distinction in kind between 

 man and animal ; and second^ because, when there was in reality 

 no such distinction, the fact to show there was none had been 

 so long in making its appearance. If such a fact were established, 

 it would be decisive. On the day of its discovery, we might 

 have to say, we have found strange things to-day ; but we would 

 rejoice to have got the truth at last. I do not think such a fact, or 

 any fact quite near it, is yet on record. None of the facts which 

 I have seen or heard, with all their difficulty of psychological 

 analysis and explanation, can be held necessarily to demand a 

 self-conscious, self-regulated intelligence, as their source. 



The third book in Dr. Lindsay's list is Dr. Draper's well- 

 known "History of the conflict between Science and Religion.'^ 

 In reference to it, I have to say, that a more unfair history by 

 a more biassed historian, it were hard to find between the two 

 boards of any book on any side of the Atlantic. Dr. Draper's 

 book is a beacon, not a model. 



Herbert Spencer's " Study of Sociology," the fourth book to 

 which I am referred, is one of a different and higher order. 

 Comparatively, it is candid, and fair, and penetrating ; and its 

 theorising spirit is admirable, while its research is immense. 

 All Spencer's writings are infinitely valuable, even to those, or 

 I should say, most of all to those, whose thinking leads them 

 to conclusions farthest away from such as the books themselves 

 teach. Spencer is unable to deal with facts in the way of 

 simply recording and mechanically classifying them. His 

 theorising tendencies draw him on to a laborious treatment of 

 his facts of a kind higher than a mere narrative. That theoris- 

 ing faculty and its exercise, though not all the theories that are 

 its product, I beg to commend to Dr. Lindsay, in re the animal 

 soul. The two volumes last named belong to the able and use- 

 ful and deservedly popular series, " The International Scientific 

 series.' When Dr. Lindsay's promised volume, for which we 

 have waited always with great interest, and now wait with not 

 a little impatience also, shall have taken its place by their side 

 in the same series, no reader shall be held competently posted 

 up in the subject who has not read it. But if it shall accomplish 

 nothing beyond what the article in the " Journal of Mental 

 Science," and some other writings of similar contents, have 

 accomplished ; if it present only a vast accumulation of facts ot 

 animal instinct and intelligence, arranged though they should 



