Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/438

418 it is itself the property and purpose and highest issue of that system. The completest type of organism has been reached through countless ages of struggle and profuse destruction of the lower grades of creatures. In those distant periods Mallock was only a potentiality, and it has been a very expensive process to bring him to pass. A few years ago Mallock was but a globule of English protoplasm, involving whatever life possibilities heredity had imparted to it. He grew from a germ until his brain acquired the power of thinking and asking questions. He is a product of that long process of life-unfolding that makes him now competent to reason about the universe, and to deduce from it ideas of the existence and attributes of God. Having been brought forth in this way as a result of cosmical operations to which no bounds can be discovered either in time or space, he looks about him and asks whether the whole concern is not a blunder and a fizzle. And the question he raises he is abundantly ready to settle. We might perhaps ask for some suspension of judgment on the ground that, as the universe is in a state of evolution, and has come up from a lower or more worthless condition to a higher or more worthy one, it will go on increasing in worthiness so as finally to become tolerable, if not valuable. Granting that Mallock is no great result, possibly we might, after a time, get something better than Mallock. But he allows no postponement of judgment. He has all the data of the case, and is prepared with a final conclusion. He argues the subject through three hundred and twenty-three pages of his book, and the upshot is a contingent answer. Life is worth living, if you belong to a particular theological school; if you belong to any other theological school, or to no school at all, it is not worth a pin. If you are a Methodist, or a positivist, or a pagan, life is not worth living, but if you are a Roman Catholic, it is. When the mental evolution of man lands him in the bosom of the Papal Church, the long process was well worth while; when it leaves him elsewhere, it is a dead failure. We have here the last brilliant exploit of the theological mind in its warfare with modern science.

The logical implications of Mr. Mallock's position are somewhat curious. He holds that there is no sound morality without Christianity, and no Christianity without a hell. When the heretic and the unbeliever and all beyond the pale of Mother Church die, they sink into perdition, but when the true Catholic dies he has a passport to the happiness of heaven. Now, one would think that this is decisive as to which parties should most prize the continuance of life. Life ought to be best worth living to those who have most to lose when it terminates, and least worth living to those who have everything to gain when it comes to an end. But great is the mystery of logic to those who vacate their reason in deference to infallible authority.

human beings live together in considerable numbers for any length of time, we expect the conditions of health will soon become impaired unless constant and well-directed efforts are made for their protection; and, in spite of the popular notion to the contrary, life on shipboard is no exception to the rule. Indeed, there are few places where sanitary precautions are more necessary, or where they may be applied with better effect.

The present work is intended as a help in this direction, and contains much that, if brought together in a compact form, would be of service to medical officers and others filling responsible positions in the naval and mercantile marine. The author has chosen, however, to include a great deal that has only a remote relation to the subject, and that here serves merely to encumber and obscure what could otherwise be made practically available. Fifty pages, for example, are given to zoölogy and botany, while the immensely more important subjects of clothing, food and its preservation, the storage and management of the water-supply, and the cleansing and ventilation of the ship, are compressed into an almost equal space; and much of this even is taken up with matter