period, such as this from Albano. We must probably go many ages back from the date of the Italians of the Bronze Age, who dwelt in these neat huts, to the date of the rude Stone Age cave-men of Central France, the contemporaries of the reindeer and the mammoth, which they delineated with such remarkable artistic vigour. One of these people's interesting drawings (p. 324) is given here, representing a snake or eel, two horses' heads, and a human figure (which Lord Monboddo would probably have claimed as special evidence). This may possibly be the earliest known portrait of man.
STONE-AGE SCULUPTURES.
The advocates of the theory that savages are degenerate descendants of civilised men, have still full scope in pointing out the imperfections of their adversaries' evidence and argument. But the new facts, as they come in month by month, tell steadily in one direction. The more widely and deeply the study of ethnography and prehistoric archæology is carried on, the stronger does the evidence become that the condition of mankind in the remote antiquity of the race is not unfairly represented by modern savage tribes.
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES CONTROVERSY.
I.
The flood of light that has been thrown on the obscurest and most recondite of the forces and forms of Nature by the researches of the last few years, has led many acute and speculative intellects to believe that the time has arrived when the hitherto insoluble problems of the origin of life and of mind may receive a possible and intelligible, if not a demonstrable, solution. The grand doctrine of the conservation of energy, the all-embracing theory of evolution, a more accurate conception of the relation of matter to force, the vast powers of spectrum analysis on one side, showing us as it does the minute anatomy of the universe, and the increased efficiency of the modern microscope on the other, which enables us to determine with confidence the structure, or absence of structure, in the minutest and lowest forms of life, furnish us with a converging battery of scientific weapons which we may well think no mystery of Nature can long withstand. Our literature accordingly teems with essays of more or less pretension on the development of living forms, the nature and origin of life, the unity of all force, physical and mental, and analogous subjects.
The work of which I now propose to give some account, is a favourable specimen of the class of essays alluded to, for although it does not seem to be in any degree founded on original research, its author has studied with great care, and has, in most cases, thoroughly understood, the best writers on the various subjects he treats of, and has brought to the task a considerable amount of original thought and ingenious criticism. He thus effectually raises the character of his book above that of a mere compilation, which, in less able hands, it might have assumed.
The introductory chapter treats of the characteristics of modern scientific thought, and endeavours to show, "that the chief and most distinctive intellectual characteristic of this age consists in the prominence given to historical and genetic methods of research, which have made history scientific, and science historical: whence has arisen the conviction that we cannot really understand anything unless we know its origin; and whence also we have learned a more appreciative style of criticism, a deeper distrust, dislike, and dread, of revolutionary methods, and a more intelligent and profound love of both mental and political freedom." The first six chapters are devoted to a careful sketch of the great motive powers of the universe, of the laws of motion, and of the conservation of energy. The author here suggests the introduction of a useful word, radiance, to express the light, radiant heat, and actinism of the sun, which are evidently modifications of the same form of energy,—and a more precise definition of the words force and strength, the former for forces which are capable of producing motion, the latter for mere resistances like cohesion.
He enumerates the primary forces of Nature as, gravity, capillary attraction, and chemical affinity, and notices as an important generalisation that all primary forces are attractive; there is no such thing in Nature as a primary repulsive force" (p. 43). Now here there seem to be two errors. Cohesion, which is entirely unnoticed, is surely as much a primary force as capillary attraction, and, in fact, is probably the more general force, of which the other is only a particular case; and elasticity is the effect of a primary repulsive force. In fact, at p. 26, we find the author arguing that all matter is perfectly elastic, for, when two balls strike together, the lost energy due to imperfect elasticity of the mass is transferred to the molecules, and becomes heat. But this surely implies repulsion of the molecules; and Mr. Bayma has shown, in his "Molecular Mechanics," that repulsion is as necessary a property of matter as attraction.
The eighth chapter discusses the phenomena of crystallisation; and the next two, the chemistry and dynamics of life. The reality of a "vital principle" is maintained as "the unknown and undiscoverable something which the properties of mere matter will not account for, and which constitutes the differentia of living beings." Besides the formation of organic compounds, we have the functions of organisation, instinct, feeling, and thought, which could not conceivably be resultants from the ordinary properties of matter. At the same time it is admitted that conceivableness is not a test of truth, and that all questions concerning the origin of life are questions of fact, and must be solved, not by reasoning, but by observation and experiment; but it is maintained that the
