truth of religion, Mr. Fiske suggests a striking and original argument. Life consists, in Mr. Spencer's phrase, in the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations. The eye is formed in response to the stimulus of rays of light, the ear to the excitation of vibrations of air, maternal love is called forth by the helplessness of infancy. Now, in analogy with this, the author argues, there must have been something objectively real to produce the religious beliefs of humanity. " If the relation thus established … between the human soul and a world invisible and immaterial is a relation of which only the subjective term is real and the objective term is non-existent, then I say it is something utterly without precedent in the whole history of creation" (p. 189). This argument evidently proves too much; there is nothing to prevent its being applied to any belief whatsoever. The religious conceptions of mankind certainly had some cause, arose in response to some external conditions. But whether those objective conditions are rightly interpreted by the religious postulates here enumerated, or are even partially and inadequately stated by them, we cannot say.
Second edition, amended. Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood & Sons; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899.—pp.
xviii, 338.The appearance of a new and revised edition of these lectures affords the opportunity of recalling attention to their importance as among the best products of the Gifford Lectureship. After the full reviews which the two successive volumes of the work in its original form received in this Review (Vol. V, pp. 406 ff.; Vol. VI, pp. 176 ff.), it is only necessary now to note the changes which the author has introduced into this edition. In the first place, the original two volumes are now condensed into one, a change which, with the corresponding reduction in price, brings the book within reach of a larger circle of readers, and ought to prove especially serviceable in promoting its use as a text-book for students. But, with characteristic care and industry, Professor Fraser has availed himself of the opportunity of a new edition to recast, and to a great extent rewrite, the book. The new arrangement of the argument in three parts is particularly useful. These parts are entitled respectively: Part i, "Untheistic Speculation and Final Scepticism"; Part ii, "Final Reason in Theistic Faith"; Part iii, "The Great Enigma of Theistic Faith." "The five lectures in the First Part deal with three forms of speculation, each of which would reduce the universe of reality to One Substance or Power." These are Universal Materialism, Panegoism and Pantheism; and the author represents total Scepticism as the reductio ad absurdum of all these alike, "when those
