560 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of the strongest-minded thinkers of the time, religiously and devoutly in- 

 clined, expressing his anxiety ahout subjects that need not have troubled 

 him at all if he had been permitted to read his Bible without thinking of 

 things that really belong outside of it, but are taught us all in childhood as 

 gospel truth. The spirit in which his pages are penned, he says, " is not 

 that of agnosticism, if agnosticism imports despair of spiritual trvith, but 

 that of free and hopeful inquiry, the way for which it is necessary to clear 

 by removing the wreck of that upon which we can found our faith no 

 more. To resign vintenable arguments for a belief is not to resign the 

 belief, while a belief bound up with untenable arguments will share their 

 fate." Three of the five essays in the book have appeared in periodicals ; 

 the others are new in print in their present shape. In the first, which 

 gives its name to the book, the w^orks of Drummond, Kidd, and Balfour 

 relating to man, his origin and destiny, are reviewed. lu the second, The 

 Church and the Old Testament, the authenticity of the Old Testament is 

 questioned. The other essays relate to the doctrine of another life, the 

 miraculous element in Christianity, and morality and theism. While 

 theologians have done harm w^ith their hard-and-fast interpretations "es- 

 sential to salvation," evidence that is added to and never contradicted with 

 every new season's explorations in the Orient shows that the critics whom 

 Mr. Smith seems inclined to follow have egregiously erred in the ground 

 and method of their attacks on the authenticity of the books of the Old 

 Testament. These explorations show that those books reflect the very life 

 and spirit of the times to which they relate, and must have been contem- 

 porary with them or compiled from contemporary documents, giving in 

 the cosmogonies, etc., the earliest traditions of mankind, and in the histor- 

 ical statements references to facts concerning which other evidence has 

 been or is likely to be at any time found. 



GENERAL NOTICES. 



The life and work of Pasteur have been 

 afPectionately and appreciatively described 

 from the familiar and the French point of 

 view in M. Vallery Radot's Histolre (Pun Sa- 

 vant par un Ignorant and in M. Duclaux's 

 Histoire d\m Esprit, and from a more pure- 

 ly scientific point by Mr. Roux in his article 

 on i' (Euvre Medical de Fasteur. Now, Dr. 

 and Mrs. Percy Frankland* acknowledging 

 indebtedness to all these authors, present the 

 subject from the point of view of English 

 students of science. Their purpose is to ex- 

 tend and make more universal the general 

 world's acquaintance with the great master 

 and the methods through which his wonder- 

 ful discoveries were made. His achieve- 

 ments, they say, " are so interwoven with 



* Pasteur. By Percy Franklaud and Mrs. 

 Percy Frankland. New York : The Macmillan 

 Company (Century Science Series). Pp. 234. 

 Price, $1.25. 



the circumstances by which our daily life is 

 surrounded, that it is all but impossible to 

 find any one who is not directly or indirectly 

 concerned with some part or other of his great 

 life work." The authors make a straightfor- 

 ward, clear, and attractive presentation of 

 the early life and studies and successive re- 

 searches by means of which Pasteur achieved 

 the highest point of scientific fame and won 

 the right to be regarded as one of the world's 

 greatest benefactors. A full account is given 

 of the organization and methods of the In- 

 stitut Pasteur and of the work of Pasteur's 

 associates there and of his students. 



The chief aim of Mr. Claris Laboratory 

 Manual of Practical Botany, Yie are informed 

 by the publishers,* is not to find the names 

 of flowers, but to gain some real knowledge 



* A Laboratory Manual of Practical Botany. 

 By Charles H. Clark. American Book Com- 

 pany. Pp. 271. Price, 93 cents. 



