Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/128

118 mental nature. The volume is full of fresh and suggestive facts, and the author discusses the doctrines put forth by some of the recent biologists in the most liberal temper. Natural selection is recognized as a true principle of Nature, producing real effects; but it is held insufficient to account for much that is attributed to it. We cordially indorse his claim for greater breadth of culture as indispensable to a true understanding of the science of human nature: "It is with a deep conviction of the need of the hearty cooperation of the cultivators of different fields of science, especially of Naturalists and Mental Philosophers, in the full study of man, that these Lectures are presented to the public. Broad culture as a foundation for scientific attainments, respect for other sciences than our own, and intercourse with those who view the same subjects from other standpoints than our own, are absolutely essential for safe generalizations in those complex sciences that relate to animal and rational life."

this little book the great French compiler turns religious romancer, as he has a perfect right to do if it suits him. But the pretence [sic] that his childish vagaries are "according to science" is in the last degree absurd. A great deal of talk about science is mixed up with the most preposterous speculations concerning the supernatural, until the reader is puzzled to decide whether the writer is wag, fanatic, or fool. If honest, it is a case of emotion upsetting intellect. The author begins by propounding to the reader the safe induction that he must die. He then says that he lost a beloved son, and, falling into great grief, he at once began to speculate about the future life and the spiritual world, and came to the conclusions that light and heat are emanations of soul substance; that some human souls migrate into the bodies of newborn children; and that the sun is the home of human souls after death. The book is not worth reading, and would not be worth mentioning, but that the writer has a sort of reputation which may mislead many as to the character of his performance.

is a painstaking and exhaustive work on the derivation of English words from other languages, and the origin and history of their meanings. It has passed to a second edition, and the author has had the assistance of Mr. George P. Marsh in making its thorough revision. We took it up in utter innocence, supposing it to be sound and safe, and never for a moment dreaming of any thing wrong or dangerous between its honest looking lids. But what was our astonishment to find that the pestilent doctrine of "Darwinism," that is thrusting itself into every place where it is not welcome, and taking away the peace of so many worthy people, had got in here also. Darwinism, rank and outright, in an arid etymological dictionary! It seems that the author could not escape it. Etymology opens the question of the origin of words and language. It goes back to beginnings, and is fundamentally concerned to know by what law or method language has been formed. As language is an attribute of man, it links itself at once to the question of the origin of man. Were man and language created perfect at first, and has their onward course been a movement of degeneracy; or did they begin low and imperfect, and has the movement been a gradual unfolding—an evolution? This is more than a mere speculative question; it involves the interpretation that shall be given to the facts before us. If man and language have come to be what they are through a principle of slow and gradual evolution, our mode of regarding them will be very different from that which must be adopted if they came by an opposite method. And so the author prefixes to the second edition of his volume an elaborate essay on the origin of language, in which he rejects the old and still current view, and declares for the doctrine of evolution. We extract a portion of his statement: "If man can anyhow have stumbled into speech under the guidance of his ordinary intelligence, it will be absurd to suppose that he was helped over the first steps of his progress by some supernatural go cart, in the shape either of direct inspiration, or, what comes to the same thing, of an instinct unknown to us at