LITERARY NOTICES. 



125 



all in a very natural way. But it has been 

 objected to on account of the amount of 

 subsidence in the floor of the Pacific and 

 Indian Oceans which it would imply, and for 

 other reasons. Mr. Murray attempts to find 

 a foundation at a suitable depth for the cor- 

 als to begin work upon without supposing 

 subsidence. He thinks this could be fur- 

 nished by the accumulation of skeletons of 

 minute animals and plants, upon natural ele- 

 vations of the sea-floor, although when such 

 remains fall to greater depths they are 

 mostly dissolved by the aid of the carbon 

 dioxide in the water. He thinks that a coral 

 plantation rising on such a base would tend 

 to assume the atoll form owing to the more 

 abundant supply of food to the outer por- 

 tions, and the removal of dead coral rock 

 from the inner portions by the force of cur- 

 rents and by solution. Ee believes that bar- 

 rier reefs have been built out from the 

 shore, and that the channel within them is 

 hollowed out by the same agencies as the 

 lagoon of an atoll. The death of Darwin 

 occurred so soon after the promulgation of 

 this theory that he did not have an oppor- 

 tunity to publish any examination of it, but 

 to a friend, Mr. T. Mellard Reade, who had 

 expressed the opinion in a letter that it was 

 " a very far-fetched idea," he replied : " I am 

 not a fair judge, but I agree with you ex- 

 actly that Murray's view is far-fetched. It is 

 astonishing that there should be rapid disso- 

 lution of carbonate of lime at great depths 

 and near the surface, but not at intermedi- 

 ate depths where he places his mountain- 

 peaks." Besides a statement of Murray's 

 theory, Prof. Bonney's appendix contains 

 abstracts of the views of Alexander Agassiz, 

 II. B. Guppy, G. C. Bourne, Bayley Balfour, 

 W. 0. Crosby, and J. D. Dana, together with 

 an expression of his own opinion as to the 

 value of the various objections to Darwin's 

 theory. The volume contains three folded 

 charts, and has an adequate index. It is 

 bound uniformly with the other works of 

 Darwin issued by the same publishers. 



Natural Religion. ByF. MaxMulleu. Lon- 

 don and New York : Longmans, Green & 

 Co. Pp. 608. Price, $5. 



This book includes the first course of 

 Gifford lectures, twenty in number, deliv- 

 ered by Prof. Miiller before the University 



of Glasgow in 1888. The Gifford lectures 

 rest upon a fund of eighty thousand pounds 

 which was left by Lord Adam Gifford by will 

 in 1885, to be applied in specific sums to the 

 establishment in four Scotch universities of 

 chairs for " Promoting, advancing, teaching, 

 and diffusing the study of Natural Theology," 

 or " the knowledge of God, the Infinite, the 

 All, the first and only cause, . . . the knowl- 

 edge of his nature and attributes, the knowl- 

 edge of the relations which men and the whole 

 universe bear to him, the knowledge of the 

 nature and foundation of ethics or morals, 

 and of all obligations and duties thence aris- 

 ing." The will provided for changes of lect- 

 urers at short intervals, so that the subject 

 might be presented by different minds ; that 

 no tests should be required of them save 

 that they be " able, reverent men, true think- 

 ers, sincere lovers of and earnest inquirers 

 after truth " ; and that they should treat 

 their subject as a strictly natural science, 

 and under no restraint. Prof. Miiller's 

 course naturally assumes the character of 

 an introduction to the courses that are to 

 follow. Much of it is therefore given to lay- 

 ing down the lines and adjusting the bear- 

 ings ; and the discussions comprised in it 

 touch chiefly upon the three points of the 

 definition of natural religion ; the proper 

 method of its treatment ; and the materials 

 available for its study. The definition is 

 found in the seventh lecture to be, " Religion 

 consists in the perception of the infinite un- 

 der such manifestations as are able to in- 

 fluence the moral character of man." Of 

 methods, the historical is preferred as the 

 one most likely to lead to results of perma- 

 nent value. Its object is to connect the 

 present with the past, to interpret the pres- 

 ent by the past, and to discover, if possible, 

 the solution of our present difficulties, by 

 tracing them back to the causes from which 

 they arose. It has to be, and is, defended 

 against the common misapprehension that 

 the historian cares only about facts, without 

 attempting to interpret them ; and against 

 the opposite school of philosophers who 

 think that our own inner consciousness is 

 the one and only source from which to draw 

 a knowledge and understanding of natural re- 

 ligion forgetting that their inner conscious- 

 ness " is but the surface of the human intel- 

 lect, resting on stratum upon stratum of an- 



