230 Notices of Books. (April, 
multiply difficulties. That the ‘forces” which we know as 
‘‘matter” are in some way dependent on the supreme mind 
appears to us the only alternative to pure materialism; and this 
view renders it perfectly conceivable that ‘‘matter” may ‘be 
made out of nothing,” or may be again resolved into nothing by 
the withdrawal of the mental action which is the sole cause of 
its existence. But if we conceive the material universe to be 
thus the product of the supreme mind, we may equally believe 
that there is a mental or spiritual universe, of which we our- 
selves form a part, and that the former is the means by which 
the latter is developed with the greatest capacity for happiness 
and eternal progress. Now Mr. St. Clair’s deity is just sucha 
being as we might suppose to be the highest in our material 
universe, and who might be charged with utilising to the utmost 
the powers of that universe in developing mind. He would 
“not violate natural law, but work by means of it,” and his work 
would be liable to those ‘incidental results” often temporarily 
painful, injurious, or useless, which are such a stumbling-block 
to the usual ideas of divine government. The slow process of 
development—first of systems, then of worlds, then of matter 
into complex forms and qualities, and lastly, of organisation and 
life—has probably its own high uses, of which we can form no 
adequate conception. It may help the development of higher 
intelligences than ourselves; it may be the only mode by which 
multiplied forms of those higher intelligences can be produced. 
At all events, it is the system of nature; and it is hardly likely 
that any other possible system would be more intelligible to 
beings like ourselves—produced by it and still forming part of it. 
Having thus indicated how we think Mr. St. Clair’s theory may 
be made more consistent and more comprehensive, we proceed 
to give a few examples of his style of illustration and mode of 
reasoning. ‘The argument against design from the existence of 
: 
fi 
rudimentary organs or traces of structures that were useful only — 
in ancestral forms, is answered by supposing a town, in which 
one of the main water-pipes goes half a mile into the country, 
and then bends back again with various windings for no useful 
purpose. ‘ We ask where is the wisdom of carrying the water 
through this mile of pipe when it might go by the short cut? 
Why waste the tubing, and waste the time, and do what has to 
be undone immediately, in sending the stream to a point from 
which there is no course but to return? On the supposition that 
the town was originally built as it now stands, every street and 
square having the position they now have, and not a house more 
or less—our objection is valid. But if we learn that the diverging 
bend of pipe follows the route of streets which formerly existed, 
and that although the shorter cut would now seem better, yet it 
would cost more to take up the old pipes from the long route and 
lay down pipes on the short route than could possibly be gained 
by the process, we see the wisdom of leaving the arrangement 
