His statement that right and wrong "are to be understood by studying the progress, the development, of the race, just as we find out any other truth," cannot well be contested by the advocate of any ethical theory. When he affirms this life "to be only manifestations as the years go by, out-blossomings everywhere of that life which is God,—the mystery and yet the explanation of all things," he expresses an opinion that most men who have given the subject serious thought will accept—subject only to the reservation that they are allowed to understand "God" in their own way.
The answer given by Mr. Savage, in his concluding discourse, to the question "What is it all for?" will meet with less acceptance. He remarks that all the theories which can be found as to the outcome of things are only variations of three chief theories: (1) that of a future life of rewards and punishments, the theory of Milton's "Paradise Lost"; (2) that of M. Comte, which is well named the religion of humanity; (3) that which regards spirit as having the pre-eminence over matter. As to the first theory, Mr. Savage declares it to be condemned by the intellect, the heart, and the conscience of men. He affirms that the second theory ends in nothing, and he endorses the statement of Mr. John Fiske, that "considered intellectually, such a theory puts the world to permanent intellectual confusion." Mr. Savage, therefore, accepts the third theory which "makes immortality a wholly rational thought." He sees the proof of it in the existence of the brain, the conscience, the heart of man, which "are prophecies, since they are the expression of the nature of things, and since they demand the perfect thought, and love, and right."
Ω.
PROTOPLASM AND LIFE. By Charles F. Cox, M. A. New York: N. D. C.
Hodges.
The first part of Mr. Cox's contribution to the study of what may be termed the literature of the interesting subject he discusses, treats of the Cell doctrine. He traces clearly the changes that have taken place in the protoplasm theory, to which that doctrine belongs, with particular reference to Doctor Beale's germinal matter and Prof. Huxley's physical basis of life. In his summary of conclusions, Mr. Cox shows that the original idea of the cell, as propounded by Schleiden and Schwann, has gradually faded away. As he states, the attention of the defenders of the cell doctrine has been forced from one position to another until it is fixed on a germinal point. The same fate has befallen Dr. Beale's ideal living matter, which if an actually visible thing is reduced to "a mere skeleton of his original bioplasm," an attenuated reticulum; while Huxley's physical basis of life, like his Bathybius, is relegated to the realm of the imagination. Thus there is "no one visible and tangible substance to which the name protoplasm is rigidly and exclusively applied." Mr. Cox's conclusion as to the nature of the basal life-stuff is that "the only admissible alternative is matter plus vitality or matter minus vitality." This brings us to "the impassable gulf between the not-living and the living"; which we would observe, however, might cease to be impassable if we could properly define the terms "matter" and "vitality."
The second part of Mr. Cox's brochure is devoted to a consideration of the spontaneous generation theory, and its relation to the general theory of evolution. Mr. Cox's personal conclusion is, that, to the better part of the scientific authorities, "the spontaneous generation theory is a necessary part of the general theory of evolution, but that no experimental evidence has as yet been produced in support of the belief in the occurrence of abiogenesis, and that therefore the evolution theory hangs upon a link of pure faith." Mr. Cox finds in the gap between lifeless substances and living forms the veritable "Missing Link."
Ω.
NOUVEAUX APERÇUS SUR LA PHYLOGENIE DE L'HOMME. By Madame Clémence Royer. Extracted from the Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie for 1890.
Madame Royer, in this admirable memoir, taking for a text the fact that an Australian lizard was seen by M. de Vis walking on its hind feet, criticises severely Haeckel's genealogy of man, whose line of descent she declares to be distinct from that of the apes. The first terrestrial ancestors of man and of other anthropomorphous animals issued from pelagic forms of distinct origins, whose evolution had been parallel, but the human ancestors acquired the upright position in a phase of amphibious ichthyophagy, while the ape ancestors adapted themselves directly to an oblique position. This original difference of attitude adapted men from the first to an entirely pedestrian motion, and the apes to a life more or less arboreal, but neither men nor apes have had any terrestrial ancestor adapted to the horizontal position.