490 
Analyses of Books. [August, 
view he begins his task with an historical introdu<5tion, tracing 
human progress to ideas, “ theories crystallized into palpable 
faCts.” He insists on the importance of acquainting ourselves 
accurately with the vicissitudes of public opinion. Creeds — and 
we presume the author does not here mean religious beliefs only 
—are “ normal growths, not loose, independent occurrences to 
be chronicled like the items of an auctioneer's catalogue. Let a 
system of belief be ever so false or absurd, to speak of it as an 
outburst of mere caprice” is a misinterpretation. “ Call it a 
weed, if you like, but remember even the most noxious weeds 
require roots and appropriate pabulum no less than the choicest 
flowers.” At the same time it must be admitted that many 
beliefs and “ movements,” ancient and modern, are distinctly 
pathological — normal only in so far forth as like a cancer or a 
carbuncle they are not uncaused. 
Mr. Griffith, proceeding with his survey of the history of 
opinions, has a good word for the Alexandrian School, though 
fully admitting that it produced “ no standard original works in 
Science.” He does not appear to share the recent, and as it 
seems to us well-grounded, scepticism concerning the destruction 
of the Alexandrian library by the Islamite conquerors. We sus- 
peCt that the worthy Bishop Cyril and his monks had left little of 
scientific value to be destroyed. 
Mr. Griffith’s views on one of the burning questions of the 
day are given in the following masterly passage : — “ All my in- 
dividual proclivities are in favour of liberty. But that confession 
notwithstanding I can find no possible room for doubt in regard 
to the broad declaration that Mind no less than Matter is subjeCt 
to definite law. A thought or emotion, absolutely self-evolved and 
self-sustained, is nothing short of an absolute self-contradiCtion. 
We have still much to learn on these points, perhaps also not a 
little to unlearn, before we arrive at anything like logical con- 
sistency. Happily freaks, exceptions, abnormalisms, lusns 
Nature e, and all ideas of the kind have long since been banished 
from Philosophy. It is full time to get as cleanly rid of them in 
Theology. It they have any meaning at all it must be an essen- 
tially Godless one, however veiled in Scripture phraseology.” 
Mr. Griffith, in commenting on the faCt that we cannot help 
having the notion of causality, and that our inability to point out 
the cause of any given phenomenon is no proof of its lawless- 
ness, takes the illustration of an observer seated on the top of a 
coach and looking down one side at two of the wheels. “ Pre- 
cisely because the said wheels are actually running the same 
way, each on its own centre, they must appear to him to be 
turning in exaCtly opposite directions, though to outside spec- 
tators it is clear that all the said wheels are working in obedience 
to one common impulse.” Hence he asks : — “ May there not 
in this strangely composite world be a thousand other seeming 
contradictories which a change of position on our part would in- 
