734 
[December, 
ANALYSES OF BOOKS, 
Chapters on Evolution . By Andrew Wilson, M.D., F.R.S.E., 
F.L.S., &c. London : Chatto and Windus. 
The objeCl of this work, as declared by the author himself, is 
“ to present, in a popular and readily understood form, the chief 
evidences of the evolution of living beings.” To some extent, 
therefore, it covers the same ground as a work by Mr. Romanes 
which we had the pleasure of noticing in our October issue. 
Dr. Wilson, however, takes a wider scope, and at the same time 
enters more into the details of the evidences for the New Natural 
History, and his work is necessarily of greater extent. In the 
opening chapter he calls attention to a distinction commonly 
overlooked by gainsayers and outsiders. “ Darwinism,” he 
shows, is not synonymous with Evolutionism, but is “ to be re- 
garded merely as one, but also as probably the strongest, phase 
of those speculative endeavours to show the ‘ how ’ of living 
nature.” In this same chapter a consideration is put forward 
which, though taken from Mr. Herbert Spencer, is not as widely 
known as it deserves to be. Early ideas, whether belonging to 
the childhood of the individual or to that of the race, are not 
usually true ideas. We have been compelled to rejeCt the astro- 
nomy, the physics, and the chemistry of the ancients. Why then 
should it be different with their biology, and especially with its 
leading tenet, the doCtrine of special creation, or rather of special 
origination?* “ If the interpretations of Nature given by 
aboriginal men were erroneous in other directions, they were 
most likely erroneous in this direction. It would be strange if, 
whilst these aboriginal men failed to reach the truth in so many 
cases where it is comparatively conspicuous, they yet reached 
the truth in a case where it is comparatively hidden.” What 
candid thinker can help feeling the great weight of this con- 
tention ? 
After summarising the teachings of Darwin in a series of eight 
propositions, Dr. Wilson shows that the term “ biology,” first in- 
troduced by Lamarck, is a more precise, and therefore a prefer- 
able, name for the discipline formerly known as “ Natural His- 
tory.” We must here, however, join George Henry Lewes in his 
* We must remember that the men who uphold the fixity of species are by 
no means necessarily Theists. France can show abundant evidence to the 
contrary, especially the Positivists. 
