Such are a few of the many odd ideas upon the Creation and the first man which human wit, that “dangerous instrument” when not kept within due limits, has been continually devising ever since the beginning of history. The logic
of the nineteenth century rejects them all; nevertheless, while we laugh at the extraordinary suppositions of our ancestors, it is pleasant to observe that, even in the most extravagant about our common father, the sentiment of the first man’s innate nobleness is always present. Adam always shines forth greater and grander than his sons—stronger, both physically and mentally. The old fathers of the church, nay, even the pedants of the Middle Ages, adhered to the Scripture text, and believed that in the “looks divine” of the first human pair
“The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severe and pure.”
Is it not curious that the queerest crank of all concerning Adam—that which strives to prove that he was an ourang-outang—should have been reserved for our own days of culture, of philosophical research and science?
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Spiritualism and Allied Causes and Conditions of Nervous Derangement. By William A. Hammond, M.D. 8vo, pp. 366. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1876.
It is evident, from the appearance of this work so speedily after the publication of a larger volume on Diseases of the Nervous System, that Dr. Hammond has contracted the cacoëthes scribendi in its worst shape. He is not easy unless the pen is in his hand, and so delightful must be to him the sensation of a calamus currens that, we fear, he pauses not to reflect over the fate of the cyclical writer of old whose long-continued parlurient efforts resulted in the production of a ridiculously small animal. For all that, he must be quite jealous of his reputation as a strong-minded and rational man, since he has undertaken the vindication of reason, even at the expense of reasoning. We give him credit indeed for research, but of that doubtful sort which delights in jumbling together facts gathered from the most opposite sources—
Rudis indigestaque moles—