560 
Correspondence. 
[September, 
such non-entities, of which human reason can take no account 
whatever. Man thus can think nothing higher than Self, and 
all notions that thus transcend humanity are seen to be Utopian 
dreams of its non-age. As I have before stated, this vital theory 
seems to be the only equitable one. As centripetal it confines 
our activity stri<5tly within the confines of Self, any other which 
transcends such natural limits being demonstrably incompatible 
with fust views of personal responsibility and free will, to say 
nothing of its incoherence. Religion thus, as Self adoration, 
quite disappears. Hygiene, or complete culture of body, mtra- 
as well as extra-cranial, is its more than substitute. 
T.BWTOS. M.D. 
MR. O. DAWSON ON DARWIN’S MASTERPIECE. 
Without intending to decide whether Mr. Dawson, in writing 
the article which figures in your last number, had any other 
objecft in view save to damage Darwin’s reputation (a question 
more difficult than important), I must beg leave to call attention 
to a passage of apparently wider scope. Mr. Dawson asks 
“ When will these blind partners, tottering Theism and capering 
Agnosticism, curvet together into the proverbial ditch ? 
I ask, supposing Theism and Agnosticism both disposed of, 
what remains ? Blank, dogmatic Atheism, which is fast becoming 
recognised by all minds above the “ Cat and Ladle level as 
simply unthinkable, or perhaps Positivism. Now Positivism 
must either deny the existence of any Being higher than man, 
or it must declare that we know nothing about such a Being. 
In the former case it is simply Atheism, in the latter a form 0 
Agnosticism ! 
T. G. 
DARWIN AND MR. OSWALD DAWSON. 
In the very curious article by Mr. Dawson which you have 
thought proper to insert at the beginning of your issue for the 
present month, I note the following most curious passage . 
^ it has been proposed that in that edifice [Westminster Abbey] 
a medallion be placed, purchased with a margin of the Darwin 
Memorial Fund not absorbed by the statue or devoted to the 
promotion of biological [italics Mr. Dawson’s] research, in 
honour of the writer on Coral Reefs, Volcanic Islands, South 
American Geology, and the Formation of Mould.” It will be, I 
