REVIEWS. 



277 



capable of being reduced within an extremely limited compass, and recog- 

 nized as effects evolved from a few simple decrees, the ideal offspring of a 

 superior intelligence." Even in the first sectional paragraph, however, 

 the author shows his tendency to break off into that overweening word- 

 picked style which puts the mind on a continual rack to comprehend his 

 meaning, and will cause a painful feeling of labour and fatigue in ordinary 

 readers. 



"Similar," he continues, "to the notes which regulate our musical combinations, so 

 do the nature forces appear to the imagination of the truthful inquirer, who desires and 

 seeks a cause for the various modes of cohesion, interfusion, and repulsion. As thought 

 dates backwards and endeavours to simplify its ideas it seems extremely probable that 

 like the first simple arrangement of our musical notation, so are the prime cosmical 

 actions capable of being arranged. A few points are taken where power becomes force, 

 and motal progression is generated and evolved." 



This, however, is very mild compared with the following, whi^h occurs 

 at page 123, and is only a fair sample of what meets the eye wherever we 

 open the book : — 



" Contemplatively pausing awhile, and reducing all sensuous perceptions within the 

 limits of rest aud motion, and viewing these uuder the terms electricity and magnetism, 

 the bounds of knowledge may be still more tersely and clearly denned. Assuming 

 electricity to be rest, rest as unitedly one is imperceptible, and is therefore a something 

 apart from the perceptive electricity of science, which depends upon differential actions 

 within this same vivic fluid or electricity; because to induce an electrically perceptive 

 state there must be an opposition equal in power but different in balanced gradation to 

 that which a certain subject has assumed," etc. 



Or we may take the description of an atom at page 180 : — 



"The atom, then, is individually a rigid atomic tetraedron capable of quadrate conic 

 balance, so as to remain and continue stationary within the gravitating action of a 

 sphere. Likewise, that although rigid radiation is the rule of its form, it can be divided 

 into three distinct classes, for which the terms radiate, ovate and cordate are appropriate ; 

 the heading of these classes being oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. These again disclose 

 to us the how and why of chemical and mechanical assumption, and the theoretical prin- 

 ciples of colour, sound, and heat ; colour as radiant force, sound as voluminous distinc- 

 tion, and heat as spiral inclination." 



Quaint, dogmatic, and semi-unintelligible as Mr. M'Donald's work is, 

 we by no means condemn it, but we sincerely wish he had put his views 

 clearer for the uninitiated, to whom his arguments must be incompre- 

 hensible. The following general summary, or rather selection of passages, 

 will give the principal points of his views. We cannot undertake to trans- 

 late into vernacular English even these, but this selection will enable our 

 readers to judge whether they will be inclined to undertake the study, it 

 cannot be merely the reading, of Mr. M'Donald's lucubrations : — 



" Taking the two kinds of existence to which all the components of the universe can 

 be referred, there is evolved space — or, as it is ordinarily termed, vacuity — and solidity, 

 or a something which ever retains the continuous impress of distinct characteristic indi- 

 viduality, endowed with formal repulsiveness. 



" As regards space, void and vivic, it seems that it is and must be a creation, because 

 the genetic record tells of the creation of the heaven and the earth in the beginning ; 

 and if a creation, it of necessity exerts a more potent influence than the mere individual 

 atomic solid, because its subtension is various aud consonant to the mode and manner of 

 its outline, being thus the working principle of the universe, the atom is the thing or 

 material worked upon ; accordingly as is the outline of a space varied, so is the internal 

 influence. The outline may be varied, but a space created cannot be annulled. It may 



