Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/726

710 of unconsolidated material that make up the regolith, and tells something of their chemical, mineral, physical, and other characteristics. The volume contains a total of twenty-five plates and forty-two smaller figures, and the mechanical execution of both illustrations and letterpress is excellent.

The secret of Darwin's strength, according to Prof. Poulton, lay in the perfect balance between his powers of imagination and those of accurate observation. His hereditary endowment unquestionably fitted him to become a typical scientific discoverer, whether or not this nice adjustment of the creative and critical faculties would have produced equally well a poet or a historian, as it is claimed here. It is a noteworthy example, however, of the immeasurable stimulation of thought that both Darwin and Wallace should ascribe to a reading of Malthus's Essay on Population the discovery of the principle of natural selection. Wallace constructed almost the whole of the theory in two hours, and in three evenings finished his paper on the subject. Darwin devoted four years of study to the hypothesis before writing it out fully, two years more to the collection of further data and enlargement, and after fourteen years of deliberation gave the theory to the public in the Origin of Species. The effect of this doctrine upon Lyell, Gray, Hooker, and other scientific men, the misunderstanding and opposition it incurred, the position of Huxley in regard to it, and his noble championship of the fundamental truth of evolution, are topics of especial interest discussed by the author. Brief accounts of other works of Darwin, some letters not heretofore published, and an index are also included in the volume, which, for the most part, was first given during 1894 and 1895 in the form of lectures in Oxford University Museum.

A most valuable and scholarly contribution to Egyptology is Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, by Alfred Wiedemann. Written by a professor in the University of Bonn, the subject is handled with German thoroughness and accuracy. He does not theorize on the religion, maintaining that to be fruitless in our present limited state of knowledge of the subject; he investigates the data found in the records and inscriptions concerning the beliefs of a people whose whole life was dominated by religion. The writer's aim "is a modest one; avoiding any attempt to interpret or to systematize, he has endeavored to set before the reader the principal deities, myths, religious ideas, and doctrines as they are to be found in the texts, more especially dwelling on such as have Important bearings on the history of religion." The worship of the sun occupying an important place in the Egyptian ritual, the sun god Ra is discussed at some length, together with the solar myths, and the subordinate deities entering into them. There are chapters devoted to the other deities, both domestic and of foreign origin, the worship of animals and plants, Osiris and his cycle, and the Osirian doctrine of immortality, magic, sorcery, and amulets. The author has admirably succeeded in getting order out of the complications of the Egyptian pantheon in which the many deities of the numerous provinces entered, each province claiming superiority for its own deity. Many passages have been translated from the Book of the Dead, hymns and sepulchral texts, and numerous illustrations from the monuments accompany them.

The author of I Diseredati believes that outer material influences, instead of being the single predominant factor in social phenomena, as is commonly believed, are only one of several concomitant elements of which the social fact is the resultant. He seeks to present in their exact proportions the importance of the material element in social development, and the influence exercised by it upon the institution of property. The error pointed out is supposed to be accompanied by grave consequences in legislation and practical life. In the former, civic capitalism has been created, and the doctrine has been inculcated that the state should provide for everything, depriving the individual of his initiative and responsibility. The institution of wages is condemned as