272 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or the enjoyment found in the best of his Indian tales. The personification 

 of the familiar locomotive or, for that matter, the horses in a Vermont pas- 

 ture, inevitably comes, if not as an anachronism, at least as a wound to that 

 desire for the possible which unconsciously guides adult readers of pure 

 fiction. Nevertheless, all this treatment of applied science is, as we have 

 said, the opening of a new territory, in which we believe Mr. Kipling will 

 find many lasting additions to English song and also to English fiction. 

 While a few exceptions have been taken to the correctness of his technical 

 phrases — for example, by Mr. Cy Warman in his verses on No. 007 — Mr. 

 Kipling's accuracy is phenomenal. Noting this in the London Academy 

 a year ago, a sailor remarked: " The secret of his success is that he always 

 goes straight to the fountain head for his information. . . . His mind can 

 best be compared in acquisitiveness to a sleepless octopus, always gather- 

 ing in something with each of its tentacles." So far as his work in fiction 

 is concerned, we think the human interest of the lives on an overinsured, 

 unsea worthy tramp steamer will make a more direct appeal than the con- 

 versation of cylinders and piston rods, notwithstanding the usual moral. 

 Like Cromwell's soldiers, Mr. Kipling believes in the moral law, the wrath 

 of God, a stout arm, and a sharp sword. Like a Roundhead also, he feels 

 at times a stern sense of judicial responsibility toward the quick and the 

 dead, especially if they are Americans. 



This brings us to one last point, barely to be touched upon, which is that 

 Mr. Kipling's remarkable power of perception and analysis is not accom- 

 panied by a corresponding power of synthesis. This is quite at variance 

 with the common judgment, but it may be illustrated by comparisons of 

 sketches of individuals with the romantic passion of his devotion to the 

 Empire, or, again, by a comparison of single types with the curious image 

 which Mr. Kipling has evolved in The American — a poem which should 

 have had as its logical complement some verses on the Jameson raid, the 

 British war ships at Crete, and the Armenian atrocities. But this is a small 

 matter, so far as we are concerned, and youthful tendencies to sweeping 

 generalizations are commonly too unimportant to call for any other rem- 

 edy than time. Mr. Kipling has so many qualities essential to a scientist 

 that one is the more disposed to deprecate occasional broad assumptions 

 and the influence of acid prejudices; but any limitation is suggested with 

 reluctance when one writes of the young genius who within ten years has 

 become the foremost active figure in the English literature of this day, the 

 most sonorous singer of verses, and the most impressive story teller. We 

 have yet to mark his arrival as a novelist. Meantime the perfectly ap- 

 pointed edition of the Messrs. Scribner is a necessity for those who would 

 have their libraries include some of the best gifts which English letters 

 have offered to the world — gifts from a young man of thirty-two, with his 

 richest years yet before him. 



In The Present Evolution of Man* Mr. Reid discusses the question 

 whether the struggle for existence has ceased with man. Dr. Moxon, 

 whose declaration is quoted among those of other authors to furnish a text 

 for the essay, affirms that it has, and that the conflict is now one against 

 mere existence. The latter aspect of the question is not touched in the book. 

 Dr. Moxon's attitude is treated as characteristic of that of the majority of 



* The Present Evolution of Man. By G. Archdall Reid. London : Chapman & Hall. Pp. 370. 



