372 
Notices of Books. 
I May, 
A paper— or shall we say a sermon — in reply, by Mr. J. A. 
Pidton, entitled “ On Scientific Materialism from a Non-scientific 
Point of View ” contains a very remarkable utterance : — “ If 
there is one point more than another insisted on by Evolutionists 
it is the denial of the possibility of miracles.” Would Mr. 
Pidton be surprised to learn that the ablest reply extant to Hume’s 
attempted demonstration of the impossibility of miracles is from 
the pen of one of our most eminent English Evolutionists ? 
Perhaps, however, the word “ Evolutionist ” is used in some 
special — perhaps local — acceptation. This is the more probable 
because in a paper by the Rev. H. H. Higgins, entitled “ Deve- 
lopmentalists and Evolutionists, or the Use of Dogma in 
Science,” we find the term *• Evolutionist ” used in a sense 
which we never met with before, and which we cannot for one 
moment accept. It has been used as the common generic name, 
including alike Messrs, Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, 
Asa Grey, St. George Mivart, J. J. Murphy, Oscar Schmidt, 
Leconte, J. J. Allen, Huxley, Spencer, Belt, Bates, and their 
followers. If this term is taken away and applied to some par- 
ticular though not very clearly characterised section who are to 
be distinguished from certain “ developmentalists,” we have no 
common name left for all those naturalists who recognise deve- 
lopment as opposed to individual creation. 
The essays on the Credibility of Venerable Bede, on Amy 
Robsart, on the Proverbs of European Nations, on Moses Men- 
delssohn, and on Trevelyan’s Macaulay, do not come within our 
cognizance. 
To one, indeed, of these literary papers we feel compelled to 
refer. Mr. E. R. Russell, in his essay on Trevelyan’s Life of 
Macaulay, gives utterance to these sentiments : — “ He never 
thought it worth while to quit more attractive studies for the 
blind and groping physicism which now almost monopolises the 
name of Science. Whatever good it may have done in other 
directions, physical science has of late discouraged and debili- 
tated moral and historical inquiry, which is of much more value 
to the world !” It has always seemed to us, as well as to far 
abler men, that in England at least — on account of the prepon- 
derant attention paid to history, to scholarship, oratory, and 
polite literature — physical science is neglecfted, and that by reason 
of this very negledt we are drifting more and more into the back- 
ground as compared with some of our neighbours. 
The passage we have quoted shows how little sympathy and 
compatibility exist between literature and physical science, and 
how injudicious, to say the least, is the attempt to form societies 
for their joint cultivation. Whereas in England public interest 
centres in words rather than in things, in criticism and com- 
mentation rather than in observation and experiment, literature 
will always succeed in engrossing more than the lion’s share of 
