546 Reviews. _ [July, 
ral knowledge than those whom they seck to pervert, and quite enough 
sophistry to turn what they do know to bad account; but whose 
theories will not bear a critical examination, and whose practice can 
hardly be expected to be such as would recommend them to honourable 
men, or even to justify their admission into respectable society. 
We have deemed these prefatory observations necessary before 
acquainting our readers with the nature and contents of a work, the 
perusal of which has been a most painful task to us, although we are 
ever ready to listen to the theories of scientific sceptics, and to allow 
them a large share of liberty in their speculations. 
The following is the philosophy of the author and of his school :— 
Matter and Force are both immortal. The forces are inherent, or 
immanent in matter; they are, in fact, properties of matter. Matter 
is infinite; it is “dignified,” for “it is the vehicle of all mental 
power, of all human and earthly greatness.” 
The laws of nature are immutable and universal. “Spirit and 
nature are the same,” and “reason and the laws of nature are identi- 
cal.” 
The worlds were formed ‘“‘from a shapeless mass of vapours by 
the rotary motion of specks, so as gradually to have become condensed 
into compact globular masses,” and are kept in constant and regular 
motion by the law of attraction. 
The idea of an “external personal” activity, or God, is excluded 
“by the many irregularities, contingencies, &c., in the economy of 
the universe and individual bodies.” If there had been a personal 
creative power, “there would not have been these enormous waste 
useless spaces in which but here and there suns and planets swim, 
floating about as imperceptible points;” the moon would have had 
an atmosphere and water; the planets would have been all the same 
size; and, asks “Hudson Tuttle,” an eminent atheistical authority, 
whose opinions are frequently quoted, but of whose writings we can- 
not help pleading ignorance beyond what we find in this book,* 
“Why did the Creator give rings to Saturn, which, surrounded by his 
eight moons, can have little need of them, whilst Mars is left in total 
darkness?” All changes in the Earth have been produced by ordinary 
known physical forces during enormous periods of time, and it would 
be absurd to suppose that an arbitrary Almighty power “should re- 
quire such efforts to attain its objects.” 
When the Earth had cooled down from the state of a “fiery 
globe,” and the watery vapours were precipitated upon it, then 
“organic life developed itself.” In the lowest deposits in which 
organic forms could have existed, we find their traces, and they 
became developed with each ascending stratum, until in the upper- 
most man appears, “the climax of gradual development ”—“ Man is 
descended not from several, but from very many pairs.” 
There is no such thing (in the abstract) as design in nature, nor 
are there any traces of an active creating hand. Our reflecting reason 
* Tt appears he published the ‘ History and Laws of Creation,’ in 1860, but we 
are not told who and where is the publisher, or we might have included the work 
in this notice. 
