Dec. 1, 1885.] 



* KNOWLEDGE 



65 



and .social devotion — that is to a liuman religion." He is 

 right in this beyond question. But all the more need is 

 there for the recognition and mastery of the laws accord- 

 ing to which human enthusiasm and social devotion have 

 been evolved and will hereafter be developed. It is to 

 the study of evolution, which he so despises, that he must 

 turn even for the evidence on which his own opinion is 

 based. 



In fact, while Mr. Harrison is probably the ablest, as 

 certainly he is the most eloquent advocate in England, of 

 what is strangely called the Religion of Humanity, there 

 is no man living who has implicitly expressed more utter 

 hopelessness as to the future destiny of humanity. 



Doubtless he feels as he says, " A deep and living 

 trust that the might}- stream of human civilisation is 

 not destined to waste itself like the Rhin? in trackless 

 swr,mps, but will pass on whilst the race continues, in a 

 fuller and stronger tide ; a trust that this might}' stream 

 is one which each little drop of our own lives can deepen 

 and swell, whilst it gives to that drop a true course, and 

 a value in the sum of all things." Yet he has rejected and 

 opposed Herbert Spencer's teaching that in all the religious 

 systems the human race has known there is a common 

 element of truth. And how can humanity, with all that 

 its history teaches of the universality of the religious 

 feeling, be presented in a more utterly hopeless case thn,u 

 by the teacher who thus maintains that hitherto the 

 mighty stream of human civilisation has wasted itself in 

 trackless swamps ? 



On the other hand, he who believes that thei-e is a 

 common element of truth in all the religious ideas men 

 have held, who sees that the progress of the human race 

 implies the action of a law of evolution of which the 

 sense of duty, the desire for advance, the enthusiasm for 

 good (even the earnestness of Mr. Frederic Harrison and 

 his zealous fellow-Positivists) are products, may reason- 

 ably hope for what Mr. Harrison sees in the future of 

 humanity but should logically reject. 



THE SKIES OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, 



Br Richard A. Proctor. 



GIVE another example of the sky seen from 

 our northern hemisphere towards the south, 

 and from the southern hemisphere towards 

 the north, each map being shown on the 

 same plan and scale. Next month I begin 

 the series of twelve maps of the southern 

 skies, on the plan which I have already 

 adopted for the northern skies, only that instead of 

 latitude 51 A degrees south, which would only suit 

 Patagonians, I adopt 38 degrees south, which suits well 

 all the most important centres of population in the 

 southern hemisphere. 



The American barque Cnismler, Captain C. H. Scott, has been 

 l;ring in the Regent's Canal Dock for inspection. The Crusader has 

 just made the first successful transatlantic trip with a cargo of 

 refined petroleum in bulk. This is the initial movement in what 

 promises to revolutionise the present system of ocean transportation 

 of petroleum, turpentine, and other liquids. 



In 1874 there were 117 rag-stores in Marseilles, of which fortj"-six 

 were in one district. In that district the number of dead from 

 small-pox was three times larger than in any other district, while of 

 1. "5 7 cases of death sixty-four occurred in rag-pickers' houses or in 

 houses in close proximity to rag-pickers' or rag-stores. In that 

 district M. Gilbert found a cellar, a secret store-room for rags, 

 which infected six persons, of which fpur died. 



CHARLES DARWIN.* 



is understood that Mr. Francis Darwin i.s 

 engaged upon a biography of his f.'.mous 

 father, and from the ampler materials r.t his 

 disposal we may expect fuller details con- 

 cerning Mr. Darwin's inner and domestic 

 life than are given in this luminous and well- 

 proportioned monograph which Mr. Grant 

 Allen, with the concurrence of Mr. Francis Darwin, has 

 prepared. But the moi'e official story can hr.rdly make 

 the man in all his lovable .simplicity, modesty, and sweet 

 temper of mind, better known' to us, neither supply r, 

 clearer summary of his work during the lung years when, 

 pos-se-^sing his soul in patience, he was nccumulatiug the 

 enormous dat?, on which his immortal theory is founded. 



Written with that gr.ice of style — happy vehicle of 

 r.ccurate statement — which is the characteristic if Mr. 

 Allen's work, and which enables him to make the rough 

 ways of science easy to tr.ivel over ; indeed, so easy thst 

 one's only fear is lest the cursory rer.der may think he 

 has the Darwinian theory r,t his fingers' ends — this is not 

 a book to b3 borrowed from Mudie's, tut to be read, 

 inwardly digested, cud then assigned a place on the shelf 

 by the side of Huxley's '• Htime. ' 



The volume opens with a prefatory sketch of the state 

 of biological science at the time when Darwin was born, 

 and traces the shadowy, undeveloped shape in which the 

 theory of evolution which he was to convert from a guess 

 into a certainty then existed. In the following chapter, 

 perhaps the most interesting in the book, Mr. Allen con- 

 sistently applies the theory of descent with modificatiou, 

 the " evolution of the evolutionist,'' to his subject, 

 tracing the physical and spiritual ancestry, alike rich and 

 varied, from which Darwin derived his wealth of energy 

 and intellect. Limited though his space is, Mr. Allen 

 succeeds in presenting in a few sharp lines the striking 

 personality of the grandfather Erasmus Darwin, between 

 whose rhapsodical rhymes on the " Loves of the Plants " 

 there are scattered sober descriptions indicating partial 

 glimpses of the theory of which the grandson had full 

 vision. 



In the generous spirit of Darwin, who was sensitively 

 anxious to acknowledge his debt to the past, Mr. Allen 

 has played the part of Old Mortality in restoring the 

 obscured names of men who had applied the theory of 

 natural selection in detailed instances, yet had failed to 

 grasp it as a universal. Such, among others, were Patrick 

 Matthew, in his book on naval timber ; Dr. "VN^ells, in hia 

 speculation on the production of varieties in the human 

 race ; and, in a limited degree. Sir Charles Lyell. But, 

 as Darwin himself states in a letter to Hacckel, quoted 

 by Mr. Allen, it was to the much-maligned and gentle- 

 souled Malthus that he was most indebted for the idea of 

 natural selection through the strurfgle for exidence which 

 is the central idea of the theory called after Darwin's 

 name. "Darwinism," as Mr. Allen remarks, " is Mal- 

 thusimism on the large scale ; it is the application of the 

 calculus of population to the wide facts of universal life.'' 

 No heed should be paid to Mr. Allen's suggestion that 

 his analysis of the theory of natural selection be skipped, 

 for even to those who are familiar with Mr. Darwin's 

 numerous works, the synopsis given of the more im- 

 portant among them, notably of the " Origin of 

 Species," is refreshing to the memory. With the 

 monitory illustrations of arrested development which 

 are supplied in the ossified intellectual state of savants 

 who have shrunk from accepting conclusions drawn 



* " Charles Darwin.' By Grant Allen. Longman. 1885. 



