BOSTON MONDAY LECTURES. 



fragments in the papers, or by general hearsay; or very likely by 

 those who themselves know little of science, or at least, who are not 

 versed on all sides of his subjects. His work, as it now stands, aftei 

 many and careful revisions, represents fairly the present state of 

 science on the subject of which he treats, of the very latest and 

 best researches. Indeed inquirers who will read all of his work, and 

 not part of it, and who are sufficiently endowed with the scientific 

 sense to separate the philosophical reasonings from the facts on 

 which the reasonings are based, will find therein the clearest and 

 most compact statements of the theories and difficulties of evolution, 

 of the movements of bioplasm, and of physiological experiments on 

 decapitated animals and on the electrical irritation of the brain, that 

 appaar in popular literature. 



Professor John McCrady, in The Literary World. 



Mr. Cook's Lectures upon Biology have done good service in 

 making known to a Boston audience the researches of such men as 

 Lionel Beale in England, and the thoughts of such men as Hermann 

 Lotze in Germany, besides the admissions and inconsistencies of the 

 practical materialists, and a vahiable review of the whole state of 

 the battle by an able and fearless theological observer like himself. 

 The publication of these Lectures cannot fail" to be of service to the 

 extra-scientiric world in general. The book well presents to out- 

 siders a certain little-known stage of conservative scientific thought, 

 which they cannot reach anywhere else in so accessible and compact 

 a form. Its extremely popular form, though quite disturbing to the 

 nervous equilibrium of a confirmed man of science, is, nevertheless, 

 well fitted for those it aims to inform, the great free, intelligent, 

 and religious-minded public, who have not had their heads squeezed 

 by specialistic boards and bandages into strange and fantastic 

 models of approved scientific monstrosity; the people, in short, who 

 have not made philosophical Flatheads of themselves for the sake 

 of some narrow mole's track of scientific investigation known as a 

 " specialty." 



This specialism, indeed, is aiming to destroy all freedom of thought 

 and speech, and, by consequence, all philosophic thought whatsoever, 

 by forbidding every man to express an opinion on any subject save 

 his own specialty. It has all the narrow intolerance of Comte's 

 Positivism; and I, for one, honor Mr. Cook for his courage in taking 

 it by the beard, and defying it. I. heartily recommend his book to 

 tl.e careful reading of. everybody who lias the interest of scientific 

 conservative thought at heart. Such an one will, at the least, rise 

 from its perusal with a conception of the existing state of the great 

 battle between spirit and matter, very different from that which Mr. 

 Huxley, with the voice of a dragon, lays down in his " Physical Basis 

 of Life ; " and, instead of " matter and law devouring spirit and 

 spontaneity," he will see how great cause there is for anticipating 

 the opposite result. 



Indeed, the progress of science means, to my apprehension, the 

 very opposite of all that Mr. Huxley contends for in that essay. 

 Spirit and spontaneity are slowly indeed, but surely, advancin; 

 along a path which will end in their completely devouring matt"' 1 

 and law. The reality of the universe will prove to be the spirit : 

 the illusion of it, the matter ; while natural law will declare itself 

 nothing more than the self-consistency of untrammelled spontaneity 



