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A RATIONALIST REVIEW.

[ESTABLISHED 1885.]

No. 18. (N EW SERIES. )

DECEMBER I, 1897-

MONTHLY; TWOPENCE.

mew lPublications.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN announce for publication Tlte Scientific P apers of T. H Hltxley, in four volumes. These will consist for the most part of reprints from the journals of scientific soc ie ties, magazines, and other publications. They wiII be edited by Professor Michael Foster.

MR. SHADWORTH H. HODGSON, form erl y P resident of th Aristotelian Socie ty, has writte n a new philosophical

, erk entitled The Metaphysic of E xperience. It is divided ~Ot' four books and volumes d ealing respectively with the 1110 ... hI' general analysis ?f expe ri ence; Ploslt.lve sCIence; t e ana YSlS of conscious actIon, and the rea ulllverse.

MR. ALEXANDER SUTHERLAND is publishing with Messrs. Longmans a volume on The Origin and Grow/It of the Moral Instinct.

MESSRS. WATT. & Co. have in the press, and will issue the first week in the new yea r, a rema rkable volume, covering about 350 pages, entitled Some Accoullt of Clmrcit-going " tlte Declining B elief ift tlte SIIPenwtltra/ ; and tlte Uselessness of Religious IVorslup as a Merl1ls of Purify ing lIte SOIt/; logelller willt Matters purely SeClt la r. The author, Theophilus Binks, which is transparently a pen·name, chats discursively on every subject occupying the Rationali st mind - science, rel ig io n, philosophy, ethics, natural hi story, e tc. , etc. He has a positive geniu s fo r prob ing all form s o f superstition, th eological or political, and withal he is never bitter or malevolent. The book is altogether an extraordinary production, and it will probably win the enthusiastic approval o f iconoclastic F reethink ers. The information it contains is encyc1opccdic, and yet th ere is not one chapter that may be regarded as dull o r un in te resting.

PRO FESSOR CASE, of Oxford, is engaged upon a work Metaphysics, which is likely to prove an important on 'bulion to Oxford Philosophy. It is to be divided contn . r d d A' . , . t parts- MetaphysIcs, ,oun e on rIstotle s Meta· II1to wo I' h f d I ' .

h · corrected by the Ig,/t 0 mo ern p lyslcal sCIence; p YSICS, as l\K h" . and Psychology, founded on metap YSICS, ~V1th the sp eCIal view of explaining our knowledge of the objects of physical science.

MESSRS. CHAPJ\IAN AND HAL~ announce. a volume of

. . cences by Mr. WaIter WhIte, some tIme assistant- remlO1 S . .

t to the Royal SocIety. M r. White was naturally secre ary. . . . b ht into contact wllh many famous men, IIlclud111g roug 'I' d II d Tennyson, Carlyle, Far~day, yn. a , an Huxley, ~nd these extracts from his dIary (fo r ot such the book consIsts) should be interesting.

M ESSRS. MACM ILLAN have published Canon C heetham's Hulsean lectures for 1896--7, treating of Tile AfYsteries, Pagan and Christiil11.

MR. WALTER SCOTI' has added t,o th ~ Scott Librar~ an t · Iy new translation of Renan s Life of J esus. fh e en Ire . I I 'b

I tor J's Mr William G. Hutchlson, W 10 a so contn utes trans a . a lengthy introduction.

MR. Hg.~BERT SPENCER has passed through the press all volume entitled Various Fragments, and it will be ~ smed as soon as the American edition is ready. JSSU . d d' .

MESSRS. T. & T. C LARK have pubhshe a ne w e Itlon, entirely revised throughout, of Canon Dri ver's I ntrodltcliolt 10 the Literature of the Old T es tall/m !.

MESSRS. KEGAN P AUL, TRENGH, & CO. have publ ish ed a novel by Mrs. Alice M. Dale, entitled Mtlreus ~Varwick. The story purports to deal with the attitude of an Atheist to the . criminal law, and to show how, by a strange recompense of fate, he was brought to believe in the necessity of punishment and of Christianity.

MESSRS. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN have iss ued a work by Professor H. Sidgwick dealing with Practical Ethics.

COLONEL INGERSOLL has re·wrilten and e nl arged hi s lecture on WIry I am an Agnostic. In thi s new edition he tells the story of his conversion from Christianity to 'Agnosticism, and indicates the books which most influenced liim ..

~he ]6"olution of the 3bea of

The E volution of ilte Idea of God: A" fllquiry i llto tlt e Origins of

Religioll s. By GRANT ALU::-I. (Grant R ich:uds. ) 447 pp.; 20S.

WE suspect that the name of Grant Alien is better known to th e public at large as tha t of a writer of sundry pleasing and one or two" q uestionable" stories than as the author of Pltysiologica/ ./Estlutics, The Colollrs of Flowers, Force and Ellergy, a Life of Darwin, a nd other books of a scientific and philosophical cha racte r. The publi c at large does not read " science" and" philosophy," although we are sometimes invited to beli eve that tha t public is composed, in the main, of thoughtful people. It is the few only who are thoughtful, and who know Grant Alien in his higher character as teacher of great and important truths, as th e creator of works that will rank as standard authorities generations after his "pot·boiler " and "hill·top" novels have been lost to memory, along with tons of similar literary products of " thi s so·called nineteenth century."

The massi ve volume before us is one with regard to which it would be next to impossible to speak in too high terms of prai se. To give some idea of the th oroughness of the work, we may mention that 1\1r. Allen has been engaged upon collecting and comparing mate ria ls for it for more than twenty yea rs, and that he spent ten years in the actual writing of it. While the volume is complete in itself, it contains but the fir st sketch of the conclusions a t which the author has a rrived; and he lays down the lines of the general theory which, after so many years of study, he inclines to accept. The work is an attempt to reconcile the two main schools of re li gious thinking that exist in our midst at the present day-the school o f humanists and th e school of animists. It contains the fir st extended effo rt that has yet been made to trace the genes is of the belief in a God from its earliest origin in the mind of primitive man up to its full est development in advanced and eth ereali zed Christian theology. Instead of setting out to a rgue away or demolish a deep·seated or ancestra l element in our complex nature, th e book merely posits fo r itself the psychological q ues ti on, " By what successive steps did nl e n come to fram e for themselves the conception of a deity?" or, in other words, " How did we arrive at our knowledge of God?" It seeks provisionally to answer these profound and important questions by reference to th e earlies t b e li efs of savages, past or present, and ' to the testimony of historical documents and ancient