1883 .] Analyses of Books. 485 
selves the most complete agreement. There is obviously no 
scope here for a re-discussion of the evidences of phrenology, and 
we, therefore, pass on to some remarks upon instincft to which 
we must give a hearty assent. Mr. Bray writes : — “ His (man’s) 
pride disclaims any relationship to his fellow creatures lower in 
the scale of being, so he makes a difference in kind instead of 
in degree between himself and them, and where he recognises 
mental superiority, or indeed any kind of intelligence he does not 
understand, he calls it instindt, which is a mere name to cover 
his ignorance, and to. support a foregone conclusion about some 
kind of soul which the brutes are supposed not to possess.” 
Again, “ We do not understand the language of the creatures 
below us, the study of which would be much more profitable and 
very much more interesting than Greek and Latin ; for we should 
then learn how Nature in its infinite experience has found out 
how best to do most of the things we wish to accomplish, has 
stereotyped the knowledge and handed it down to us in what we 
call instindts.” 
Mr. Bray is an Evolutionist of the Darwinian School, and 
believes in the beneficence, or rather the necessity, of natural 
seledtion. He considers pain essential. He holds with Herbert 
Spencer that “ pressure of population has been the proximate 
cause of progress,” and he quotes with approbation the proverb, 
“ necessity is the mother of invention,” taking the word 
necessity in its ordinary sense. Here we can agree with him, 
but to a very limited extent. Inventions are seed of very slow 
growth, and are about the unlikeliest expedient that a man 
suffering from necessity, i.e. want, can embrace. They gene- 
rally require much time, considerable outlay in experiments, an 
undisturbed mind, all of them conditions incompatible with 
necessity. As for discoveries, as distindt for inventions, they, 
as a rule, bring no pecuniary reward to their originators. What 
did Darwin profit, in the commercial sense of the word, by his 
researches ? If not in independent circumstances he could never 
have undertaken them. It is this principle which makes us 
dread the increasing competition of the present day, which by 
compelling men to spend an ever increasing portion of their 
time in business, leaves them less and less scope for improve- 
ment. Nay, why need we argue further? Mr. Bray himself 
writes (p. 289). “ Our race is over weighted and appears likely 
to be drudged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its powers. 
Men are over-worked and require an artificial stimulant before 
the jaded nervous system is capable of enjoyment.” It may be 
granted that if competion were absolutely removed, the bulk of 
the race might fall into a state of listlessness not favourable to 
improvement. But like heat, food and rest — all of them prime 
necessaries of life — it is fatal, individually and racially, if in ex- 
cess. And that excess, or in other words intemperance, is well- 
nigh forced upon the bulk of mankind in civilized communities. 
