454 NATURAL SCIENCE. Dec. 1894. 



the "something not ourselves that makes for righteousness," which, 

 whether false or true, as we now choose to understand falsehood and 

 truth, has been the motive force in the rise of many nations and of vast 

 empires. This is the force, strictly subordinate to the great principle of 

 Natural Selection, and subject like all else in this world to the process 

 of Evolution, this is the force that has worked side by side with the 

 simple struggle for the life of the individual, to produce the world 

 as we see it to-day, with its men and its women, its fathers and its 

 mothers, its citizens and its patriots. 



But Drummond understands neither this, nor Mr. Kidd, nor even 

 Professor Huxley. Wresting from its meaning a sentence by the 

 latter, he tells us (p. 4) that " Evolution is simply ' history "... 

 neither more nor less than the story of creation." Tliis is disin- 

 genuous : Evolution is more than this ; it implies, as Huxley 

 proceeds to say, " a series of genetic changes," " progressive differen- 

 tiation," and " the growth and modification of primordial germs." 

 " Evolution," says Drummond again on p. 20, " began with proto-. 

 plasm and ended with Man." Who is this person, so ignorant of 

 Laplace and Kant, of Lockyer and Crookes ? Who is this pre- 

 sumptuous prophet that sets a limit to the thoughts of God ? After 

 this we do not wonder that every thesis of this chatterer should be 

 vitiated by his idea of his own self-importance. He knows the end of 

 Creation, and so he tells us that, " the beginning must be interpreted 

 from the end " : the cart, with Professor Drummond holding the reins, 

 must be put before the horse. We prefer to wait ; the end is not yet. 

 With its cheap philosophy and its reading into the lower world 

 all the passions and ideas of our own highly-organised consciousness, 

 this book is a sad example of teleological argument. Teleology it is 

 that causes Drummond to speak of " the gradual tempering of the 

 Struggle for Life. Its slow amelioration, &c." The nature of the 

 struggle changes, it passes to a higher plane ; but the fight is not less 

 keen, the pain not less bitter. Let this Professor in his chair con- 

 trast the social wreckage of our race, the tramp, the prostitute, the 

 starving seamstress, with the jelly-fish stranded on the beach or the 

 larvae swallowed at a gulp by the monsters of the deep, and then let 

 him dare repeat to a despairing world, that the harsher qualities of 

 the struggle are passing awav ! 



Our author is pledged by his preface to be original, and this is 

 how he effects his purpose. " One has only to read the average 

 book of science," he writes on p. 42, " to wonder at the wealth 

 of knowledge, the brilliancy of observation and the barrenness of 

 idea. On the other hand, though scientific experts will not think 

 themselves, there is always a multitude of onlookers waiting to do it 

 for them. Among these, what strikes one is the ignorance of fact and 

 the audacity of the idea." " The Ascent of Man," then, is original 

 because it falls under neither of these censures ; for it combines 

 " ignorance of fact " with " barrenness of idea." F. A. Bather. 



