The last chapter sketches the rise and progress of intellect, and pictures its probable future. The theories of evolution and natural selection form the ground-work of the plan. The author acknowledges his indebtedness to others for his facts, but is entitled to some credit for originality in the conception and arrangement of the work. The style is vigorous, and entices the reader into more than a cursory perusal.
The Structure of Animal Life. By Louis Agassiz. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 128 pages, 8vo. Price, $1.50.
This book comprises a series of six lectures, delivered in 1862, before the Brooklyn Institute, and first published in 1865, but now reissued, the former editions having passed out of print. The lectures were delivered for the purpose of showing that there is "order in Nature; that the animal kingdom, especially, has been constructed upon a plan which presupposes the existence of an intelligent being as its author," and the "scientific grounds of the working of a Providence in the world." In the last respect, the view advanced is that the present diversity of animal life, or species, has not resulted from the influence of outward circumstances upon a few primarily simple forms, but from the direct and continually-repeated workings of a Divine Will or Providence; in other words, that the diversity has resulted from Divine creations. The arguments adduced to prove this part of the theory are grounded upon the fact that geologic revelations show certain low forms of animal life to have existed in former periods, in greater diversity than at present. The first lecture presents the plan of the animal kingdom as exhibited in its four great divisions; the second presents the relative standing of each division to the other, and of the various members of each division; the third proves the antiquity of animal life by the existence of coral-reefs; the fourth gives an outline of the geological history of the earth. The remaining two lectures are devoted to proving the theory of an intervening Providence. The book is full of interesting facts, and eminently adapted to the theology of the day.
Present Status of Social Science: A Review, Historical and Critical, of the Progress of Thought in Social Philosophy. By Robert S. Hamilton. New York: H. S. Hinton, 744 Broadway. 332 pages. Price, $2.00.
A well-executed book, upon the subject here designated, would be very valuable: the present one seems to be not up to the requirement. Upon a class of questions which, of all others at present agitating the scientific world, are the freshest and the newest, this is an old book. It was prepared for publication seven years ago, and was not even then up to the times. An example of the antiquated and unreliable character of the work is afforded by the author's treatment of the most eminent thinker of the tune on problems of social science. Mr. Herbert Spencer is judged as a sociologist by his views developed in "Social Statics;" how fairly will appear from the fact that "Social Statics" was Mr. Spencer's first work, published twenty-four years ago. And not only this, but he was himself so dissatisfied with it that he would not consent to its republication in this country, without incorporating a preface which indicated that his views had undergone important modification. It was, in fact, from the incompleteness of the basis of this discussion for a true sociological science that Mr. Spencer was led to devote himself for twenty years to the development of a system in which the foundations of sociology should be more deeply and securely laid in the sciences of life and mind, and the laws of Nature, in their latest and highest interpretations.
Mr. Hamilton's book ranges wide over the field of social philosophy, and discusses the views of many men in relation to it, but, with much information, there is a vague speculation, and more of criticism than history. Of social science, as a simple generalization of social phenomena, or a body of principles based upon facts of observation, like other sciences, he seems to have but an obscure conception, as is evinced by the fol lowing statement of the problems of social philosophy: "What are the causes or laws which determine the social destiny of the individual, which determine in the long-run, and in the absence of extraordinary disturbing causes, whether he shall be prosperous or the contrary; whether he shall
