548 Reviews. | July, 
“ Perfect truth would be a sentence of death for him who has acquired 
it, and he must perish in apathy and inactivity.” The idea of a 
“Free Will” is based upon superficial observation of nature; if man 
have a free will, it is of the most limited kind. His will is dependent 
upon “a fixed necessity,” upon climate; upon “ intellectual indi- 
viduality”’ which prescribes to him “his mode of action with such 
force that there remains to him but a minute space for free choice.” 
This is, we believe, the gist of the author’s philosophy, and it 
cannot be denied that he not only possesses a large amount of super- 
ficial information, but that here and there he has displayed con- 
siderable tact in dovetailing it into his theories. Nevertheless, we 
cannot find that these are based upon the revelations of modern 
science, and furthermore, if the numerous contradictions and incon- 
sistencies in which his work abounds, and of which examples will be 
given hereafter, and the confusion of ideas that may be found in almost 
every page may serve as our guide, we are justified in believing that 
the author is himself far from comprehending his own teaching. 
Let us examine one or two of the fundamental principles on which 
his whole doctrine is based. 
All the “ so-called imponderables, such as light, heat, electricity, 
magnetism, &c., are neither more nor less than changes in the aggre- 
gate state of matter;” in other words, they are modes of motion; 
motion is, of course, a force, and “ there is not a single case in which 
force” “can be born or annihilated.” But motion, according to the 
author’s views (in common with all force), is “immanent in matter ;” 
“the motion of matter is as eternal as matter itself,” and finally, the 
laws of heat, light, &., are “everywhere the same.” 
Now, if we liked to dogmatize, we should be quite justified in say- 
ing that “empirical” knowledge teaches us that force is not immanent 
in, but always, as far as we can judge, external to matter, and that all 
conversions of force as well as changes in matter are performed by a 
governing will, and guided by a reflecting reason, notwithstanding the 
existence of apparent exceptions to this rule in nature. On a limited 
scale human reason and human will are constantly bringing about 
more or less important changes of this kind, and we have the author’s 
precedent for holding that we have ‘‘not merely the right but the 
duty, in accordance with the laws of induction, to infer the unknown 
from the known, and to maintain that a universal law which is true for 
a portion of organic phenomena is applicable to all.” * 
However, we will not be so ungenerous as to turn the author’s 
weapons against himself and assume to be his teacher; we will rather 
sit meekly at his feet, and be attentive listeners and learners. Let us 
hear how his “matter” and its “immanent forces” have comported 
themselves from eternity. 
Matter, then, began its operations “by the rotary motion of 
specks,” and all the modifications of motion which subsequently 
ensued are “merely the result of a single universal law of nature— 
the law of attraction.”t ‘Why matter assumed a definite motion at a 
