288 
REVIEWS. 
MAN’S ORIGIN.* 
T HERE are some who would doubt the propriety of translating a work 
like the present one into the English tongue, and we almost fancy that 
the editor is to some extent of this class. But for ourselves we do not per- 
ceive its disadvantage. Indeed, on the other hand, we approve of the effort 
to introduce into our language so fearless and outspoken and honest a labour 
as that which Dr. Biichner has performed. In regard to the editor, we 
think he has been engaged in a task which must in every page have run 
hard against his conscience ; and we wonder therefore that, if he did per- 
form a task which must have so completely gone foul of his ideas, he did not 
conceal his name, and so have, to a certain extent, prevented the injurious 
influence — injurious at least to the author’s views — which must follow a 
preface in which he states that he “ is by no means inclined to accept all the 
results at which Dr. Buchner has arrived.” Indeed, it seems us that Mr. 
Dallas must have found almost all of Dr. Buchner’s views unacceptable ; 
for it certainly appears that the author’s one distinct and clearly-drawn con- 
clusion is, that there is no such thing as a Deity, and his other, that man’s 
existence comes to an end as soon as his life is finished. However, we must 
thank Mr. Dallas for having given us an excellent and clear translation of a 
most interesting and forcibly-written hook, in which the author puts for- 
ward his views as clearly as he did in his former work, “ Force and Matter,” 
but without any of that offensive manner which created for his previous 
essay so many fierce opponents. Further gratitude is due to Mr. Dallas for 
not inserting a number of sharp, opposing foot-notes, showing what parts of 
the work he especially objected to. The book contains nothing that will be 
new to those who have followed minutely anthropological science for the 
past ten years, though it certainly contains, in a pithy and masterly style, 
nearly everything that has been achieved by the English and foreign 
savants in that space of time j but to the general reader, or to the dabbler in 
science, it offers a masterly summary of the facts, reflections, and ultimate 
conclusions that have been put forward in regard to man’s origin during the 
period referred to. Indeed, in this respect we know of no volume that can 
be at all compared with it, not only for the facts it contains, but for the 
scholarly shape in which these facts have been put together and laid before 
* u Man in the Past, Present, and Future,” from the German of Dr. L. 
Buchner. By W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. London : Asher & Co., 1872. 
