84 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
THE WORLD BEFORE THE DELUGE * 
F ANCY a handsome volume, full of beautifully-executed ideal illustrations, 
and no less fertile in errors of science, containing much useful instruc- 
tion, conveying many absurdly-erroneous doctrines, and harmonizing Scrip- 
tural and scientific evidence, and you may see M. Figuier’s book. It is 
likely to have a success, nevertheless, for its English version is clearly trans- 
lated, and it is profuse in sensation pictures. So that a book is readable, is 
printed in agreeable type, and is studded with handsome plates on tinted 
paper, it matters very little now-a-days whether the views it puts forth be 
sound or not. Such at least is the only explanation we can offer of the fact 
— for fact it is — that bad books in good covers sell, and good books in 
bad ones very often do not. We cannot say that we are desirous of seeing 
works like those of^ which M. Figuier’s is the type circulate very freely in this 
country. Our popular science has of late years attained to a very bad odour, 
and we believe it is entirely because of the publication of books which are 
said to be popular, but which are nothing but blundering expositions of true 
science. Scientific teaching should have two objects : the cultivation 
of the memory and observing faculties, and the development of a love 
of the beautiful in nature. Books like M. Figuier’s cannot effect this 
entirely ; teaching a mind to reason falsely is more injurious than not 
teaching it at all, and an inaccurate scientific work must either simply 
record facts or warp the reader’s mind by leading him to false conclusions. 
Of the subject matter of the treatise before us we may say that it traces the 
world, from its first commencement as a nebulous mass, to its condition at 
the present day. The writer supports Laplace’s doctrines, the incandescence 
theory, and the modified Biblical record of the deluge. There is too much 
space given to abstract considerations, and Cuvier’s discoveries are dwelt 
upon so frequently that there is no room, apparently, for the mention of 
equally worthy observers. Not the least valuable of the author’s specu- 
lations are those upon the future state of man. He considers that man will 
be succeeded by a “ being yet more perfect. This new being religion and 
modern poesy would present in the ethereal and radiant type of the 
Christian angel, with moral qualities whose nature and essence would escape 
our perceptions — of which we could no more form a notion than a man 
born blind could conceive of colours, or the deaf and. dumb of sound.” We 
do not approve of M. Figuier’s volume, and we should like to know why 
the translator’s name is omitted from the title-page. Are we to attribute 
the introduction of the book to the enterprise of the firm which publishes it, 
or to the praiseworthy discriminating powers of the person who has given it 
an English garb ? 
* “ The World before the Deluge.” By Louis Figuier. Translated 
from the Fourth French Edition. London : Chapman & Hall, 1865. 
