quiry. In this respect, also, Arnott's "Elements of Physics" is more harmonious and well-proportioned than many of the later works upon the subject. Its careful editors have brought it up to date by introducing clear accounts of the various advances in physics that have been made during the last twenty years. The modern doctrines of Energy, Correlation of Forces, the Mechanical Theory of Heat, the Kinetic Theory of Gases, Barometric Gradients, Weather Areas, and Storm-signals, Tyndall's and Helmholtz's Acoustical Investigations, Spectrum Analysis, the Radiometer, and many other results of research in recent years, are all introduced in their appropriate places, and briefly and succinctly explained. But they fall into their proper relation as but a small part of the great system of truths that must now be comprised in any standard treatise upon the science of physics. The editors, we observe, have caught the spirit of the work, and assimilated the new matter to the method of exposition adopted by the author.
And it is in this that the unrivaled merit of Dr. Arnott's work chiefly consists. The style in which it is written, as is well known, is a model of easy simplicity. It is the most readable book on natural philosophy that we have in the language. Another admirable feature is the copiousness and diversity of its illustrations and concrete applications of physical principles. These are mainly drawn from the familiar field of every-day life, and, notwithstanding the numerous books that have appeared on common things, familiar science, etc., Arnott's "Physics," is still our best book of this kind. He has been much copied, but his statements have not been improved upon. The new edition of this work may therefore be strongly recommended to schools as a text-book, a reference-book, or a reading-book, and, however used, it will be pretty sure to do good service.
Modern Physical Fatalism, and the Doctrine of Evolution, including an Examination of Mr. Herbert Spencer's "First Principles." By Thomas Rawson Birks, M. A., Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy, Cambridge. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 311. Price, $2.25.
We have here another attempt to demolish Herbert Spencer, and it is noteworthy chiefly as emanating from a dignitary of the University of Cambridge. Those in quest of objections to Spencer's system, and not very particular about their quality, will find in this volume a great deal of material adapted to their purpose. But as a polemic it is by no means equal in subtilty, force, or originality, to various replies to Spencer that have previously appeared. In our judgment, it is quite inferior in logical acuteness to Prof. Bascom's criticism in the Bibliotheca Sacra of last October, while in candor, courtesy, and philosophic liberality, the English author is not for a moment to be compared to the American reviewer. The book is dominated by an intense theological bias, and is written from the standpoint and in the interest of the most unmodified type of orthodoxy. The author writes in behalf of such vast interests that he cannot be trusted. Absorbed in the interests of the eternal world, he is lax and careless about the things of this world—does not represent them as they are. In the first chapter, and on the very first page, he says that in Spencer's system of thought "science is identified with physics," and that this is the way he reconciles religion and. science. This, of course, is absolutely false, and not only so, but it is a misrepresentation so fundamental as to taint the work through and through. A writer who would commit so flagrant a misrepresentation at the threshold of his work forfeits at once his claim to the confidence of intelligent readers, who will see that a discussion so vitiated and loosely carried on is not worth pursuing.
Dr. Birks makes wholesale objections to the doctrines of the Unknowable, the Relativity of Knowledge, the Indestructibility of Matter, the Conservation of Force, Evolution and Natural Selection, and closes his book by saying: "The doctrine of the Unknowable is a lower depth in the scale of intellectual and spiritual darkness than the old Athenian idolatry. The Persistence of Force, and the Indestructibility of Motion, when set up to replace the true and living God of the Bible, the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, will be found on inquiry to be still meaner and more worthless than the old heathen idols of wood and stone. One sentence of the Word of God, in the song of the heavenly elders, lays the foun-
