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[August, 
ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
Modern Science and Modern Thought. By S. Laing, M.P. 
London : Chapman and Hall. 
“ The obiecT of this book,” as the author tells us “ is to give a 
clear and concise view of the principal results of Modern Science 
and of the revolution which they have effefted in Modern 
Thought.” The author disclaims all pretensions to bring tor- 
ward either new faas or new generalisations, but puts before his 
readers the orthodoxies of Science as laid down by Lyell, 
Lubbock, Huxley, and Proaor. The successive chapters of the 
first part of the work discuss space, time, matter, life, the anti- 
quity of man, and man’s place in nature. As a whole, the picture 
given of the universe and of its development is clear, and on a 
level with the present state of human knowledge. Mr. Laing, 
however, seems to retain faith in the Bathybius as “a sort of 
living slime.” In the matter of spontaneous generation he 
accepts a verdidt of not proven.” He writes “ To enable us 
to talk of the Darwinian ‘ law’ and not of the Darwinian theory 
we require two demonstrations : — 
“ i. That living matter really can originate from inorganic 
matter. „ , r . , 
u 2. That new species really can be formed from previously 
existing species.” 
Now it certainly is no part of Darwin’s teachings that life ori- 
ginated spontaneously from inorganx matter; and a demonstra- 
tion that such was the case, however welcome it might be as 
confirming the law of Continuity, is not necessary to the esta- 
blishment of the law of Evolution. 
In raising the question of species, the author scaicely brings 
into sufficient prominence the consideration that the permanence 
of varieties and races within the historical epoch undermines the 
evidence supposed to be drawn from mummies, paintings, &c., as 
to the permanence of species. If the cat and the crocodile were 
created just as we find them, because their mummies present no 
essential differences from living specimens, then, by a parity of 
reasoning, the greyhound and the turnspit, or the Semitic man, 
the Egyptian, and the Negro, are primordial beings, not modih- 
Ca it°seems to us that the author, in speaking of human develop- 
