1871.] ( 527 ) 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



The Beginning : its When and its How. By Mungo Ponton, 

 F.R.S.E. London : Longmans, Green, and Co. 1871. 

 Pp- 572. 

 This may fairly be described as an extraordinary work. Touch- 

 ing upon upwards of a thousand topics, laying under contri- 

 bution almost every member of the circle of the sciences, 

 obtaining aid from philological research, and entering, sometimes 

 deeply, into the mazes of metaphysics, it induces upon the 

 reader a feeling of almost perplexity, which is only overcome by 

 the extreme interest which it inspires. The author divides 

 his work into two parts. In the first part, the teachings of the 

 Sciences are laboriously examined with the object of obtaining 

 the most probable notions concerning the antiquity and the con- 

 ditions of matter, the origin of suns and planetary systems, the 

 luminiferous ether, the evolution of vitality, and the origination 

 of genera and species. In the second part, these teachings 

 of science are placed parallel with the biblical records ; and the 

 conclusion is drawn, that faith and science can go hand in 

 hand ; that true philosophy and religion, far from offering 

 violence the one to the other are, when viewed in the true spirit 

 of scientific enquiry, mutually corroborative. 



After an ingenious argument, reducing to philosophical cer- 

 tainty the view that the luminiferous ether must be infinite 

 in extent, the author, in regard to the question of the antiquity 

 of matter, considers that the probabilities that matter existed from 

 all eternity, and that it was created by the volition of an eternal 

 mind, are nearly equally balanced. Obviously as the human 

 mind can, from the very nature of things, form no conception of 

 matter apart from force, every dietum concerning it abstractedly 

 must be pure speculation ; but the author considers that matter 

 which existed in space was at first an " assemblage of sub- 

 stantial ultimates, each having definite size, definite form 

 and impenetrability, but having no relative properties whatever, 

 each ultimate being absolutely indifferent to every other ultimate 

 in the universe." The first species of physical force was 

 probably the endowment of these ultimates with mutual repul- 

 sion ; hence the first conception of ether. The next step was 

 the application of the divine energy to produce a vibratory 

 motion upon the ultimates, those constituting the luminiferous 

 ether and those which afterwards became ponderable being 

 at first probably indistinguishable. Thus the same vibration 

 which in the case of the imponderable ultimates constituted 

 light, in the case of those subsequently endowed with gravity 

 constituted heat. The laws of gravity could of necessity be 



