I884.J 
Analyses of Books. 
287 
Evolution in Animals,” by Mr. Romanes, selections from “Alps 
and Sanctuaries,” and the “ Psalm of Montreal,” mentioned on 
the title-page. Two of the works in question — to wit, “ Evolu- 
tion, Old and New,” and “ Unconscious Memory” — we have had 
the pleasure of noticing in the “Journal of Science ” some time 
ago. Two others — the “ Fair Haven ” and “Alps and Sanctu- 
aries ” — cannot legitimately come within our cognizance, though 
they may assist us in reaching a correct estimate of the author’s 
opinions and ways of thinking. To form such an estimate is no 
easy task. The whole work, indeed, bears marks of an ability 
which it would be idle to depreciate. But we can scarcely say 
whether it is richer in ideas of value or in matter to be con- 
demned. The author’s views, on most questions, go completely 
askew of those commonly accepted at home or abroad in the 
present or in the past. He sees the world as no one else sees it, 
and therefore often in a very instructive light. 
We must not forget to point out that in all this there is no 
affeCted singularity, no straining to be original. By birth and 
breeding he is a citizen of the realm of paradox. These charac- 
teristics appear most strikingly, perhaps, in “ Erewhon,” — the 
strangest, and probably the most repulsive, Utopia ever written. 
So repulsive, indeed, that were the “ Erewhonians ” aCtual 
beings a crusade for their extirpation would seem not merely 
legitimate, but imperative. But in reading the chapters taken 
from this book we are constantly in doubt whether Mr. Butler 
propounds Erewhon as a model for imitation, whether he is not 
satirising certain world-betterers and maudlinists in our own 
country, or whether he is not simply following his natural bent 
for inverting, reversing, and turning things in general topsy- 
turvy. He says, indeed, of the Erewhonians, — and the remark 
is not uncharacteristic, — “ The people whose sense of the fitness 
of things was equal to the upraising of so serene a handiwork” 
(i.e., an architectural masterpiece) “ were hardly likely to be 
wrong in the conclusions they m’ght come to upon any subjeCt.” 
Surely a most delusive test ? 
The main peculiarity of the Erewhonians is that they punish 
sickness, and cure, or pretend to cure, crime. They have no 
physicians, but in their stead a class of beings called 
“ straighteners,” one of whom is voluntarily called in by a 
scoundrel who has committed arson, forgery, robbery with vio- 
lence, or the like, in order that he may be restored to moral 
health, — a most improbable supposition, especially among a 
community which does not attach to crime the disgrace which it 
incurs among sane people. It may be useful to meet the 
sophistry of the judge by pointing out those distinctions between 
disease and crime which ought to forbid any rational person from 
even imagining that their respective treatment can be con- 
vertible. Disease is a state for the most part entirely out of the 
control of the sufferer. Crime is an aCt or series of aCts, each 
