SPREAD-EA GLE PHIL OSOPHY. 



129 



ers " have planted the standard of speculation, 

 to adopt a phrase of Mr. Hannibal Chollop's, in 

 the remoter gardens of that country. We do 

 not know exactly what these lecturers said, but 

 they seem to have spoken about protoplasm, the 

 origin of life on the planet, and other matters of 

 an interest that cannot be said to be urgent. 

 The " small philosophers," as Mr. Cook cruelly 

 calls them, thought otherwise, and many thinkers 

 feared that, unlike the dying pauper of the story, 

 they would soon " have no hell to go to." To 

 stem this current of opinion, Mr. Cook was set 

 up by a committee of ministers to deliver ad- 

 dresses, in which he was to bring a Roland for 

 every one of Mr. Huxley's Olivers, a fresh Ger- 

 man professor to meet Haeckel, and a new and 

 tremendous " sociologist " to tackle Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer, " whose star," says Mr. Cook, finely, " is 

 now touching the Western pines." 



The conferences of the Boston Monday lect- 

 urer have been printed, and are now before us. 

 In several ways they are rather instructive. They 

 show one what the metaphysics of Massachusetts 

 are like, and the kind of style and of argument 

 that pleases a serious American audience. The 

 topics are not much to our taste, and we do uot 

 intend to say much about them. The lecturer is 

 concerned with the origin and aim of life, as life 

 appears when it is looked at through a micro- 

 scope. Where did it begin, where is it going? 

 Mr. Cook asks ; old questions enough, and not 

 much elucidated by ingenious arrangements of 

 lenses and ground glass. A German philosopher 

 says, "In a rapidly-cooling planet, who knows 

 what might happen ? " just as Miss Braddon 

 makes one of her characters declare that " any- 

 thing might happen under the Plantagenets." 

 Mr. Cook does not think that the origin of life 

 could have happened under such circumstances, 

 because, if we understand him, even in a rap- 

 idly-cooling planet it was rather too hot. No 

 germs could have stood the weather. Then there 

 are arguments about the size of a monkey's 

 brain, and of a savage's ; and why, it is asked, 

 has a savage so big a brain, as he is not so very 

 much more clever than an ape, and does not give 

 his mind much exercise ? Perhaps, however, the 

 savage, an astronomer in his way, and a bit of a 

 metaphysician after his kind, uses his intellect 

 more than Caucasian and cultivated persons sup- 

 pose. These questions need not delay us here. 

 It is more important to live well, and even to 

 write and speak with good taste and in a sen- 

 sible way, than to guess at what occurs in planets 

 which have begun to cool down. Whether our 



81 



nerves have loops at the end of them, or not — 

 on which seems to hang human destiny — it is as 

 well not to foam at the mouth. Fustian is fus- 

 tian, loops or no loops, and we intend to show the 

 fustian that Mr. Cook supplies to a Boston audi- 

 ence, an audience which, he says, " will not be 

 cheated." 



Mr. Cook throws off with a determined attack 

 on Bathybius, which he calls " an amazingly 

 strategic and haughtily trumpeted substance." 

 The word "strategic" is as dear to Mr. Cook as 

 the Cyclades were to an American poet who made 

 them rhyme to spades and glades, and, pleased 

 with the sound, wove it into his song, regardless 

 of sense. Bathybius, says the " cultured " Cook, 

 comes" from two Greek words, meaning deep and 

 sea." We would like Mr. Cook to tell us which 

 part of the term means sea. Is it possible that 

 he, who is always referring to Aristotle, does not 

 know more Greek than his countryman who ex- 

 plained the etymology of hippopotamus : " It comes 

 from two Greek words, hippos, a river, and pota- 

 inos, a horse ? " Alas ! this " very Hercules," as 

 the Scotsman's correspondent calls him, who " has 

 suddenly risen before an admiring nation to do 

 battle for what he believes to be the truth," is 

 smitten with a pebble from the brook before he 

 has joined battle. He derives Bathybius from 

 two Greek words meaning deep and sea, in his 

 very first page. He falls, and his brazen armor 

 rings round him in his fall ; his spear, of the di- 

 mensions of a weaver's beam, flying from his 

 grasp. He should consult his Webster, if he 

 has not a Liddell and Scott, before he ventures 

 on Greek. To return to poor Bathybius : he is 

 not only amazingly strategic and haughtily trump- 

 eted, "but he is also the presumably triumphant 

 key-stone " of Mr. Huxley's doctrine. In the 

 next page he is " a bridge between the inorgan- 

 ic and the organic." In about a dozen lines he 

 is a " watchword," and in the same sentence " a 

 victorious weapon ; " while in September, 1876, 

 Bathybius was publicly interred, and he is now 

 taking " his place with other ghosts." One does 

 not know where to have Mr. Cook. How can a 

 haughtily - trumpeted key-stone be publicly in- 

 terred ? How can a strategic bridge be a watch- 

 word, or a victorious weapon become a ghost? 

 Mr. Cook raises too many questions, philological 

 and logical, in his first three pages. How can 

 we expect to reach the loops at the end of the 

 nerves, and the skull of the cave-man at Men. 

 tone, and the tower of St. Mark, and all the oth. 

 er arguments in Mr. Cook's collection, if he is to 

 delay us with these inscrutable mysteries ? Prob. 



