REVIEWS 525 



It is impossible, in the short space of a review, to discuss the later chapters 

 of this book, in which the author deals with such subjects as variation, inheritance, 

 natural selection, isolation, and adaptation, although these are really valuable 

 contributions to many disputed problems. Mr. Pycraft has an exceedingly happy 

 way of dealing simultaneously with arguments and instances, and presents to the 

 general biologist a novel range of material for discussion, whilst the ornithologist 

 is led gently from familiar facts to the most difficult and generalised problems 

 of evolutionary science. P. Chalmers Mitchell. 



Science, Matter and Immortality. By R. C. Macfie. [Pp. x + 300.] (London : 

 Williams & Norgate, 1909. Price s^. net.) 



" Science," says Robert Louis Stevenson, " writes of the world with the finger of 

 a starfish" — Mr. Macfie devotes his book to showing that she writes with the 

 " radiant finger of a star." He brings much knowledge, the fruits of wide reading 

 of philosophy, poetry and science to his task. There is much natural eloquence 

 in the book, but in too many places the dignity of the theme is marred by over- 

 emotion. "The grip of the atoms is the grip of the great Hand of God," or 

 " Evolution and dissolution are merely the systole and diastole of the Heart of 

 God," are phrases which, with due reverence, we feel may fittingly compete with 

 the saying of the greatest oracle of obscurantism : " Whereby why not ? If so what 

 odds ? Can any man say otherwise ? No. Awast, then ! " 



The book begins with the atomic theory and ends in a Pantheism of the 

 vaguest character. " All ideas give place to the final integrating emotional idea — 

 God. Nor is the God an unknown God." If He be indeed known to the author 

 the latter manages the introduction but lamely, for God seems to be in turn force, 

 matter, beauty, or the universe at large ! It does not help us much to be told that 

 to science " there is one 'God, the greatest among gods and men, unlike mortals 

 both in mind and body." Or that " the God of Science speaks in the thunder 

 and smiles in the sunshine. He is so great that the stars eddy round His feet not 

 ankle-high, yet so loving that He makes roses and sunsets for the human heart." 



Apart from these unfortunate rhetorical weeds, the book gives an interesting 

 though very brief account of the growth and nature of modern theories of matter 

 and ether, of the matter of life and evolution. The growth is traced from the 

 Greek atomists to the electrical theory of the atom, and, as is fitting, the histori- 

 cal survey includes a chapter devoted wholly to Lucretius. It is well to be 

 reminded, as the author reminds us, of the prescience of great minds ; for in- 

 stance, of Faraday's conception of " Radiant Matter," as he called it in 1816, half 

 a century before Crookes' experiments on electric discharges in high vacua gave the 

 first experimental demonstration of this fourth state of matter which Becquerel's 

 discovery of material radiations in 1896 has helped to elucidate. The author's 

 historical sketch suffers, however, from the defect that it is too one-sided. The 

 backwaters and eddies might at least have been indicated as well as the main 

 stream of advance in knowledge. For example, the memoir by Prof. Puluj 

 on the inherent absurdity and dynamical impossibility of the fourth state of matter 

 might well have been mentioned. It was considered to be of such importance at 

 the time as to deserve translation and republication by the Physical Society, along 

 with Helmholtz's wonderful study of contact potential ! Crookes' amazingly skilful 

 experiments received scant recognition, and his insight provoked something 

 akin to contempt until the study of radio-activity enlarged the current physical 

 concepts. 



