LITERARY NOTICES. 



273 



Annual Report of the Board of Regents 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, for 

 the Year 1881. Washington : Govern- 

 ment Printing-Office. Pp. 837. 



The scale and magnitude of the work 

 accomplished by the Institution have been 

 greatly increased in comparison with the 

 work of previous years, while the expendi- 

 tures have not been augmented. The build- 

 ing for the National Museum has been com- 

 pleted and occupied, and a large proportion 

 of its material has been provisionally ar- 

 ranged for instructive display. Suitable ac- 

 commodations have been provided within 

 it for the chemical laboratory. A consid- 

 erable number of original researches have 

 been undertaken under the direction of the 

 Institution, among the most important of 

 which were, perhaps, those in Alaska. The 

 twenty-third volume of the " Contributions 

 to Knowledge " has been published, and 

 contains six treatises; and the twentieth 

 and twenty-first volumes of the " Miscel- 

 laneous Contributions " contain three parts 

 or memoirs each. A valuable work has been 

 done by the Ethnological Bureau, under the 

 direction of Major Powell, particularly in 

 the line of Mr. Cushing's investigations 

 among the Zunis, and Mr. James Steven- 

 son's among other Pueblo tribes. Other sci- 

 entific enterprises with which the Institu- 

 tion is allied are noticed ; and the report- 

 volume itself embodies the results of a 

 considerable amount of research in meteor- 

 ology and allied subjects, astronomy, phys- 

 ics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and anthro- 

 pology, with numerous special papers in the 

 last-mentioned subject. 



God and Creation. By Robert Reid How- 

 ison. Richmond, Virginia : West, John- 

 ston & Co. Pp. 578. 



The author of this work is a Presbyterian 

 clergyman of Richmond, Virginia, who here 

 deals with scientific as well as theological 

 questions, bringing to aid him in his task 

 the results of the thoughts and studies of 

 years. Starting with the principle that be- 

 lief in Eternal Being is a necessary result 

 of human experience and of all thought on 

 the origin of things, the question arises 

 what is this Eternal Being ? To the author 

 it is not solely matter or solely spirit or 

 mind, but and this is what it is the avowed 



vol. xxiv. 18 . 



purpose of the book to maintain it " con- 

 sists in God, the Eternal Spirit, or Mind, im- 

 manent in and working upon eternal mat- 

 ter, and bringing out of it, in time, the best 

 results that perfect wisdom, benevolence, 

 and power can produce." This at once 

 brings the doctrines of materialism into the 

 discussion. " But as materialism necessarily 

 denies the existence of a spiritual and per- 

 sonal God, and asserts itself as a rival and 

 conflicting system of faith, of course its ad- 

 vocates can not be overthrown by appeal to 

 the authority of Scripture. ... If met at 

 all, they must be met on the ground of un- 

 revealed knowledge." A summary of the 

 history of materialism and the materialists, 

 from Democritus down, is given, and the 

 conclusion is expressed that " Darwin, Hux- 

 ley, Spencer, and Tyndall, have not ad- 

 vanced a step nearer to the construction of 

 the universe without the aid of a spiritual 

 intelligence than Lucretius did in his poem." 

 The attempt is next made to show that the 

 doctrine of creation out of nothing is not 

 found in any of the canonical books of the 

 Bible, nor in any authoritative Christian 

 creed or confession of faith of a date older 

 than a. d. 1500 ; and the idea of a creation 

 in six days is dismissed as untenable. The 

 atomic theory of the constitution of matter 

 is reviewed, and declared not competent to 

 account for the phenomena, and a counter- 

 hypothesis is advanced, which is called the 

 nomian theory, or the hypothesis of law, 

 the substance of which is that " God is the 

 Eternal Power, Force, and Cause, in the 

 universe." The rest of the book is mainly 

 theological, and the conclusion is reached, 

 agreeably to the philosophies of Kant and 

 Hamilton, that " a science of ontology in 

 its full meaning is impossible to man," or 

 that, though we know that spirit w, and 

 that matter is, we do not know, and proba- 

 bly never will know, what is the essence 

 either of spirit or of matter." 



A New School Dictionary of the English 

 Language: On the Basis of the Latest 

 Edition of the Unabridged Dictionary of 

 Joseph E. Worcester, LL. D. Philadel- 

 phia : J. B. Lippincott & Co. Pp. 390. 

 Price, 90 cents. 



The former edition of Worcester's " Ele- 

 mentary Dictionary " was published in 1835, 

 and was revised and enlarged in 1860. So 



