Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/577

Rh in the accompanying plates. An interesting chapter in the history of fish-culture is the record of several attempts at Transplanting Lobsters to the Pacific Coast, by Richard Rathbun. The volume contains also several shorter papers.

New Religion unfolded in these pages is an exposition of the doctrine of Christ that love is the law of life. The author holds that the introduction of this motive of growth differentiates the Christian faith from all antecedent beliefs. The Egyptian, Brahman, Buddhist, Greek, Roman, and Jew are spurred on by fear under inexorable law—"the gods of the old religion are not gods of sympathy and love."

In judging Christianity it must not be confounded with any parasitic "ism." Superstition must be stripped away, the dogmas of Church fathers and apostles disregarded until the teaching of Christ himself is reached. This is found to be greatly at variance with the commonly accepted notions of Christianity. "The practice of going into public for the express purpose of prayer and worship has no sanction in the New Religion," neither has a paid priesthood, nor public worship as such. The Church is overgrown with externalism which saps its life. Educational ministries are, however, productive of good, and the public meeting of the people beneficial for instruction. Another ecclesiastical excrescence is the undue value of organization. For the first two hundred years, Christians did without church or creed, "and it may well be doubted whether both the organization and the creed have helped more than they have hurt Christianity." Dr. Gray believes that Jesus was not God and man, but God-man, and his explanation of the Christ-nature is at least ingenious. He asks whether the domain of animated existence may not be extended, and suggests that, "for a specific and expressed purpose, an addition of another order of being was made." Christ was sui generis, a new variety. The transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension are received in their entirety as revelations of spiritual existence. The author holds that "if we accept Christianity at all, we must accept what is called the supernatural." Miracles are not contrary to the laws of Nature, but transcend them, and may be in agreement with laws still unknown.

Dogmas of later date than the creed are not gently entertained. "An instantaneous transformation of character" is "one of the chief postulates of the New Religion." This is effected not by faith, or redeeming blood, but by the compelling love of Christ. Dr. Gray points out that Christ teaches plainly a new and positive morality: "Do good to them that hate you"; "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." He insists that these directions are practical and obligatory for all Christians. Statistics are cited to show that one church controls $150,000,000 of property; another, twice this amount; and he dryly observes, "There is no scarcity . . . but the scarcity of love—the virtue of the second commandment." The author is never consciously evasive, but direct, as well as reverent in his search for truth.

little work is devoted exclusively to an investigation of the mechanism of attention. The subject is divided into two distinct forms. The one, which is spontaneous and natural—the true primitive and fundamental form of attention—has been neglected by psychologists; while the other, which the author calls voluntary, is but an imitation, a result of training and education. It is derived wholly from spontaneous attention, and yet it is the only form to which psychologists have given much consideration. In this volume Prof. Ribot goes to the root of the matter in the emotional states of animals and young children; and he holds that it is only by a study of its primitive form that we can reach an intelligible explanation of the higher forms of attention.

In his chapter upon spontaneous attention, the author discusses its physical manifestations: vaso-motory phenomena, motory phenomena, or phenomena of expression; explains that its supposed effects are really its constitutive elements, that it is only the subjective aspect of the physical manifestations