WATTS’S LITERARY GUIDE B E I N G A M O N T H L Y R E C O R D O F L I B E R A L A N D A D V A N C E D P U B L I C A T IO N S .
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No. 71.]
OCTOBER 15, 1891.
[P r ice O ne P enny.
N E W P U B L I C A T IO N S .
O UR L I B R A R Y S H E L VES.
M essrs. Watts & Co. will issue on the rst o f next month an aggressively anti-Christian work, entitled “ Antidotes to Superstition” (cloth 2s. 6d., boards is. 6d.). The author, G. H. Martin, who recently published a meritorious volume o f verse, states that the “ antidotes” are “ prescribed for the purpose o f de-hypnotising the victims of sacerdotal quackery, rectifying theologic strabismus, and relieving sufferers from the mental paralysis designedly induced by orthodox practitioners.” We may add— what the author does not— that the tone of the book, though so pronouncedly militant, is singularly inoffensive, the arguments being stated with considerable skill and effectiveness.
Messrs. W. Stewart & Co. have just issued a novelette from the pen o f Saladin (W. Stewart Ross). The subject is “ The Whirlwind Sown and Reaped ” (6d.), and the story is intended to illustrate the hypocrisy and duplicity o f priests.
M essrs. Watts & Co. are now publishing a second edition o f Mr. Gerald Massey’s two volumes of poems, “ My Lyrical Life : Poems Old and New ” (3s. 6d. per volume, each separate and distinct). The same firm also announce a cheaper edition o f Mr. Massey’s masterly work, “ The Secret Drama of Shakespeare’s Sonnets” (7s. 6d.).
T he late Mr. Bradlaugh’s last literary work, “ Doubts in Dialogue” (is.), is issued by his surviving daughter.
M r. Forder announces as ready “ Essays in Rationalism ” ( is . 6d.), by Charles Robert Newman, “ Atheist brother of Cardinal Newman.” Mr. G. J. Holyoake contributes a preface, and Mr. J. M. Wheeler a brief biographical sketch.
M essrs. Watts & Co. have just published, with permission, a cabinet photograph] of Professor Momerie (is. 6d.). The portrait is beautifully executed, and is a striking presentment of the distinguished Rationalist expositor.
T he new volume o f Bohn’s Standard Library consists of the more important of “ Voltaire’s Tales ” (3s. 6d.), translated by R. B. Boswell, M.A.
P rofessor Momerie’s lecture on “ The Corruption of the Church” (is.)., which created such a sensation at the time o f its delivery, is now published, with the addition of a portrait and a biographical sketch.
A new edition is ready of Mr. Foote’s “ Atheism and Morality ” (2d.).
D r . B ithell has determined to considerably expand his projected treatise on “ The Agnostic Method,” and will probably issue it as a shilling “ Handbook of Scientific Agnosticism.”
T he Progressive Publishing Company has published “ The Code o f Nature” (2d.), by Diderot and D ’Holbach, with a preface by G. W. Foote.
M r . D a r w i n , in the historical sketch prefixed to his “ Origin o f Species,” states that “ excellent service” was done in preparing public opinion for the reception o f the theory of natural selection by a work which appeared anonymously in 1844, but is now known to have been written by Robert Chambers,
“ VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION ” (reprinted in Morley’s Universal Library; Routledge ; 1887; 286 pp.; is.). Robert Chambers’s leading idea is that the universe is one great exemplication of the reign of law. The starry heavens, the genesis of rocks, the growth of animals and plants, and the physical and moral phenomena of man himself are the results of continuously acting law. Near the close o f the work he writes: “ The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, gravitation. The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, and that is development. Nor may even these be, after all, twain, but only those branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression of that nnity which man’s wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself.” There is a loud whisper of Pantheism in the concluding sentence just quoted, and the author’s evident tendency is to abolish anthropomorphic conceptions of a God who makes and unmakes and meddles and muddles his creation. He does not apologise for his independence of theological traditions, but coolly points out that, the Bible having been already “ reconciled ” with the Copernican theory and with geology, there may be ample room in a “ liberal interpretation ” for a system which bases itself on law and development rather than on Divine interposition.
The author devotes a preliminary glance to the nebular hypothesis ; and though, in his time, spectrum analysis was an unborn science, he speculates that “ our globe is a specimen of all the similarly-placed bodies o f space, as regards its constituent matter and the physical and chemical laws governing it.” Nine chapters follow, in which a fairly detailed view is afforded of the petrological story of the earth, with notes on the fossils found in successive formations. All the facts here gathered up support the argument that the same laws and conditions of nature now apparent to us have existed throughout previous ages. Special stress is imparted to the point that there has been “ an obvious gradation among the families of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectively, up to the highest order of«dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia.” In his principal section, entitled “ Hypothesis of the Development of the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms,” the author presents an ingenious table in which, side by side, are displayed the advance of organic nature as represented in the geological series, and the evolution o f the human brain through corresponding stages. With the foetal brain of the first month we are asked to compare the avertebrated Crustacea, etc., of the Silurian a g e ; the fish-like brain of the second month suggests the appearance o f fishes in the carboniferous period; in the
