1881 .] Analyses of Books . 351 
The hypothesis advanced by some recent writers, that all 
matter is in some sense alive, the author pronounces “ the wildest 
notion that ever emanated from a bewildered materialist.” The 
probability of man “ giving place to a superior animal evolved 
from him grows,” he thinks, “ very small.” The following re- 
flection is happy : — “ God did not make the world beautiful that 
we might enjoy it, but rather He constructed us so that we could 
see and appreciate the beauty of the world.” 
Passing over the chapter on Free Will as scarcely within our 
competence, we come to the consideration of Evil. 
Our author finds himself unable to accept literally the “ biblical 
account of the Fall,” which he considers “ inconsistent with the 
development theory.” It would seem, however, to some of our 
friends that the world gives aCtual indications of a great change 
for the worse, of which glaciation was perhaps the most striking 
manifestation. The expulsion of man from his original garden 
home, the use of “ skins of beasts ” for clothing, and the adop- 
tion of an animal diet, all seem to point to a permanent deterio- 
ration of climate. But however this may be, the account of the 
Fall is either a history of faCts or an apologue. If the latter, it 
can have but one root — the necessity felt by early thinkers for 
some means of reconciling the vast amount of evil existing in 
the world with the supremacy of a wise and benevolent God. 
“ A Scientific Layman,” without adopting the extreme creed of 
the Optimist School, seems to us rather to under-estimate the 
amount of suffering in the world. When saying “ Death, if 
sharp, is a short event,” he scarcely gives due weight to the fac5l 
that multitudes of animals perish yearly from the sheer want of 
food. We have not clear evidence that there is “ keen pleasure 
in the excitement of the very strife which animals wage.” Such 
pleasure will assuredly not be felt by the mother-bird vainly 
striving to defend her nestlings against rats, weasels, or snakes. 
It will have scant room in the frog chased by a cobra, or in the 
antelope seized by a tiger. We must also bear in mind that the 
struggle for existence, as between species, is far from leading to 
the survival of the most useful and the most beautiful. The 
species, animal or vegetable, that gain ground in the world appear 
to be mainly vermin and weeds. 
In the chapter on God we read : — “ It would certainly seem as 
if the Divine Architect had aimed at magnitude rather than per- 
fection, and the good of the greatest number rather than the good 
of all. It would seem that His great problem was the utilisation 
of energy for the support of immense multitudes of successive 
beings in a state of partial happiness.” This view differs after 
all but little from that which the author quotes from the “Journal 
of Science,” viz., that if a maximum of earthly enjoyment and 
the minimisation of earthly suffering had been the objects of the 
Creator, the world would assuredly have been constituted very 
different from what it is. 
