[June, 
356 Analyses of Books . 
“ A Late Boat Race” does not fall within our cognisance. 
“Are we Jews?” is, again, a paper with an equivocal title. 
Seeing its title in the contents, we expected a discussion on our 
alleged “ Israelitish Origin.” We find, on the contrary, an essay 
on Sabbatarianism, with reference to the refusal of the inhabi- 
tants of St. Kilda to land provisions sent for their relief on a 
Saturday lest the work might not be completed by midnight. 
The author further denounces the discontinuance of the weather 
warnings sent to the Continent from our Meteorological Office, 
as far as the Sunday is concerned. In so doing he has abundant 
justification. But we cannot go with him in the following con- 
tention : — “ Sabbatarians lay great stress on the assumed fact 
that the rest is found good for body and brain — a fact which, if 
proved, would mean little more than that long-continued habit 
has made sudh rest a necessity. But they pay little attention to 
the fact that nature knows no seventh day’s rest. The earth 
does not pause in her orbital motion round the sun, nor the moon 
on her motion round the earth. The tides and currents of the 
ocean continue their motion, and the waves rest no more on the 
Sabbath than on week-days. Winds blow and rains fall on that 
day as on the rest. All forms of life, vegetal and animal, con- 
tinue unaffected, save only as they are related to man in those 
countries where the seventh day’s rest is observed ! ” 
To this strange argument we may reply that the comparison 
here drawn from the inanimate world is utterly beside the ques- 
tion, and if it could prove anything at all, it would show that our 
nightly rest had been made a necessity merely by long-continued 
habit. Plants have, under various forms, intermissions of rest 
and activity. Wild animals are nowhere goaded into unceasing 
toil from the beginning to the end of the year. Hence, for them, 
a seventh day’s rest is not required. As to man, he has never, in 
the savage or in the barbarous state, or in the ancient civilisa- 
tions, been driven to work as at present. Of this overwork, the 
consequences are only too patent. So far, then, from fancying 
that a day of rest is a mere matter of habit which might be 
dispensed with, we hold that our leisure wants increasing. If 
the easy-going shepherds and herdsmen of Syria needed one 
day’s rest in seven, we require more. What name we give our 
rest, whether it should come in the form of entire days, or of 
portions of days, or whether an entire community should desist 
from its toil at once, are secondary questions with which we 
cannot meddle. We presume Mr. Proctor wrote this essay 
before the appearance of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s memorable fare- 
well address to the American people. 
“ Paradoxes and Paradoxists,” though written eleven years 
ago by occasion of De Morgan’s “ Budget of Paradoxes,” is still 
worth careful reading. The criterion given for distinguishing 
the mere paradoxist from the great discoverer will, we believe, 
in most cases, be found to work satisfactorily. “It is a thing 
