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enable us to comprehend eternity, and to grasp the idea of space. It seems 
so hard to have to admit that in thought we shall go “ thus far and no 
farther.” On reading the first few chapters of Mr. Bray’s book, we were 
pleased to find an intelligible exposition of the relations of physical and 
mental energy. It seemed as if the author were a worthy disciple of Grove 
and Tyndall, from the painstaking manner in which it was shown that matter 
is merely force, and that vital phenomena are nothing less than the 
correlates of physical ones. But as we travelled through the pages of the 
book, we found the author wandering from the paths of legitimate reasoning, 
and indulging in speculations of a very visionary character. Indeed, the 
present work is interesting from the circumstance that it shows into what 
absurdities even an extremely intelligent and sceptical writer may be led by 
that extremely deceptive “ will-o’-the-wisp,” primary causation. At first 
Mr. Bray sets out as the champion of rationalism, and ere he concludes 
his : book, he stumbles about, after a fashion painful to observe, in a quagmire 
of spiritualistic nonsense. He is up to his very waist in the mud and 
muck of clairvoyance, ghosts, and spirit-rapping. We almost feel inclined to 
ask whether Mr. Bray is not satirizing spiritualistic doctrines when he 
makes the following observations. Surely no one familiar with the facts of 
modern science could commit himself to such suggestions as these : — “ May 
not the spiritualistic theory be merely casting its shadow before ? Plants 
prepare the food for animals, and the elaborate machine of the animal body 
prepares the food for mind, that is for sentiency and conscious intelligence ; 
and may not this result of cerebration, which has been intensifying for 
centuries, furnish ground for a new start — for the existence of mind in an 
individual form, without all the present cumbrous machinery for the corre- 
lation of force ? We have a world of spiritual food already prepared, so 
that there would be no necessity for the old apparatus. If it be true ? 
as is testified by the Spiritualists, that hands and arms are now formed in 
such an atmosphere, who can tell what will be the ultimate effect of will- 
power — for I hold the whole universe to be the effect of will-power on 
certain prepared conditions, — as the thought of spirit atmosphere intensifies 
by the greatly increased action of brain now going on?” We calmly ask 
is this satire, or is it the raving of one who has become metaphysically mad ? 
TAPE-WORMS* 
T HIS is a little volume forming an admirable introduction to the author’s 
splendid treatise upon Entozoa. Here Dr. Cobbold has given very 
graphic accounts of the habits, sources, character, development, and influ- 
ence of all those terrible tape-worms which infest the human intestines, and 
the numerous good wood-cuts which accompany his descriptions clear up 
the whole history of these parasites. The book has more than a zoological 
* “ Tape-worms : their Sources, Nature, and Treatment.” By T. Spencer 
Cobbold, M.D., F.R.S., Lecturer at the Middlesex Hospital. London : 
Longmans, 1866. 
