Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/871

Rh for its essential conformity with the true order of nature.

It is hard to say whether Mr. Collins has rendered a greater service to those who are already familiar with Mr. Spencer's writings or to those who will first obtain some knowledge of them through his book. Certainly the former will thank him warmly for having placed within their reach a compend which will enable them at any moment to study to the greatest advantage the connection of the different parts of Mr. Spencer's system, and to refer at once to any portion which requires for its full comprehension that more complete elucidation which Mr. Spencer's own works supply. In the preface he has written for the present work Mr. Spencer says that he was somewhat surprised to find that it had been possible "to put so much into so small a space without sacrifice of intelligibility." We are not surprised at his surprise. The result must be attributed to Mr. Collins's skill; but it also testifies to the essential lucidity of the text on which Mr. Collins was working. With the utmost skill he could not have made pages intelligible that were involved in obscurity and self-contradiction. No one who is really interested in Mr. Spencer's writings will care to be without the present manual. Giving, as it does, the gist of every paragraph in the original volumes, it will in many cases render the consultation of those volumes unnecessary. What Mr. Spencer thinks is here, we might almost say, fully set forth. His own books give us in addition confirmatory reasonings and illustrations. Any one, therefore, who, without knowing anything of Spencer, becomes interested in Mr. Collins's epitome will probably seek the fountain-head whence so much of striking thought and compact argument has been derived.

Naturally, certain parts of the present epitome are more effective than others. The section on the Unknowable in Mr. Spencer's "First Principles" does not admit of much condensation, and here the epitome is too abstract for anything like general reading, though possessing in common with all the rest a high degree of usefulness for serious students of Spencer. The same remark applies to large portions of the "Psychology;" but in the biological and sociological portions Mr. Collins has given us a version of Spencer that is at once pithy, vigorous, and thoroughly interesting. We could quote scores of paragraphs that tell their tale with admirable condensation and point, and that make good reading for any day in the year. The effect, therefore, of the present work, we may hope, will be to popularize to some extent a system of thought which, abstract as it may seem, has been elaborated by its distinguished author in the most practical spirit possible and which can not become more widely known without conferring proportionate benefit upon society.

states in his preface that it has been his "endeavor throughout this volume to lay before the reader the main facts of physiological science, and as far as possible to state these facts in terms of measurement. The time has gone past for vague generalities in the description of physiological phenomena, and physiology is year by year drawing nearer to her true position as a science, dealing as strictly with the phenomena and basis of organic life as physics deals with those of dead matter."

The book is divided into sections, subdivided into chapters. The sections deal, in order, with nutrition; food; digestion; absorption; the blood and its circulation; respiration; assimilation or nutrition; glycogenosis; excretion; the income and expenditure of the body; animal heat; the nervous system; the senses; the voice; animal locomotion; and reproduction. There are four hundred and eighty-five illustrations.

Dr. M'Kendrick's well-known scholarship is a guarantee that this book is a valuable one. But that such is the fact would be quite apparent from inspection, even were his name not placed on the title-page. It gives the latest results of physiological study with accuracy and exactness. Whether or not his expectations, quoted from the preface, are ever to be realized, he certainly has aided to advance the science of