AMONG THE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1891, 1 May 1890, Page 30

AMONG THE BOOKS.

PROBLEMS OP THE FUTURE, Under the above title we have to welcome another book, by the author of " Modem Science and Modern Thought," and " A Modern Zoroastrian," admirable alike in the amount of information it conveys, the style in which it is written, and the earnest love of truth by which it is throughout pervaded. Mr Laing is, of course, frankly agnostic in his views, and there is, therefore, much in this volume which the majority of our readers will be unable to accept; but, whatever may be their opinion of the conclusions to which he has been led, few will deny tte candour and temper of his controversial method, and all will admit that he is a foeman worthy of their steel. The aim of the book is best indicated by from the passages which we proceed to quote from the " Inroduction." " In former works," says the author, " I have attempted to give some popular view of what modern science has actually accomplished in the domains of Space, Time, Matter, Energy, Life, Humour, Origins, and other cognate subjects. In this I will endeavour to point out some of the 'Problems of the Future,' which have been raised but not solved, and are pressing for solution. In both cases I address myself to what may be called the semi-scientific reader. The advanced student of science will find little which he does not already know. Those who are ignorant of the first elements of science, and, like Galleo, care for none ot these things, will scarcely understand or feel an interest in the questions treated of But there is a large, and, I believe, rapidly increasing class, who have already acquired some elementary ideas about science and who desire to know more." " The questions discussed in the present volume," he goes on to say, " are partly scientific, partly religious, social, and political questions, which are looming on the horizon and engaging the attention of thinkiag mpn." The first six chapters are devoted to unsolved problems of a strictly scientific character, such as the duration of solar heat, the composition of the universe, the uniformity of climate until comparatively recent times, the date and duration of the Glacial period, the existence of Tertiary man, and the discovery of the missing link; and in every instance the present state of our knowledge is briefly but clearly summarised. In illustration of this portion of Mr Laing's volume, we extract his conclusions in respect to the existence of TERTIARY MAN. To sum up the evidence, there aro at loasfc 10 instances of the ollepred discovery of human remains in Tertiary etratff^ of cuch of which if; may be eaff ly Raid that if the remains bad been those of any other Mammalian species, no doubt would have been entertained of their Tertiary origin by any geologist. Four of these are in Frnucn, theme rf St Prosfc and of Puy-Oourny in the Pliocene, and of Tnenay and Ponancf) in tho Miooene ; thre-> in Italy, in tha Pliocene of Monte Apaito, St Olmo, and Gastelnedolo ; one in Portugal, in tho Mioosne of tho Tnguj ; in North America, the skull of Oalaveraa and othe^ numerous human remans in tho presumably Pliocene auriferous gravels of California ; snd in South America, in th 9 pampßan remains of Bue>nos Ayres. Of I theae, the di"i % <ivfrißa at Puy Oouray, Monte I Aperto, St. Olmo, and CVteldedolo, SBem to be undoubted, both aa regards the human nature of tha remains ami Tertiary charaoter of tho deposits. Those of St Preat and of tho Oalifornian gravels are doubtful only as regards tho question whufchor the deposits may not be of the earliest Glacial or Quaternary period, rather than Tertiary, the evidence from the associated fossil remains being strongly in favour of th^ir Tertiary origin. There remain three oaiß.i of alleged discoveries in tha Mi >oine — via : at Thanay, Ponance, and in Portugal, the evidence for whiob, especially for the two former, is extremly strong and almont conclusive, while the objections to them are obviously based on a reluctance to admit such an extension of human origins, rather than on scientific evidence. In nono of Ihess cas^s, ap further evidence has accumulated, h<*n ib tended to xhake the coaolufious of the firet iiscovorera as to the human character of tho implement cud the Mioc6nr igo of tho formations. On tha contrary, the ?Tsost cautious autbo ities, such as M. Quatrefftgeu. who held their judgment in suspense when the iir.it iai^lementa were produced, have been Cjn.ertrd by subsequent discoveries, and expressed their conviction that doubt is no longer poasiblo. And the Intent congress of French geologifits has expressed dasided opinion that tho existence of Tnrtiary man is fully prov.'d. On the whole, we may say with confider.ee of the problem of Tertiary man that, if not coEopistclv co'vrl, it is very now solution, and that thare. is littlo doubt w)i;*t t ! \- odntion will be. Chapter VII cle:<.ls with the questions of animal magnetism and spiritualism, and contains some curiously interesting details of the experiments recently conducted by

French medical men connected with the hospital of Salpetriere at Paris. The two chapters that follow, on " Agnosticism and Christianity," and " The Historical Element of the Gospels," the first of which appeared last year in pamphlet form, are perhaps the most interesting in the volume, although unquestionably those to which most exception will be taken, and we cannot better exemplify this portion of the work than by citing the opening paragraphs of Chapter VIII, which probably contain the best statements hitherto published of the Agnostic position. AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. Is Agnosticism reconcilable with Christianity, or are they hopeleßsly antagonistic? That <fep9nds on tho definition we give to the two terms. That of Agnostioism ia very simple. It is contained in the aentenca of Professor Huxley's, " That we know nothing of what may be beyond phenomena," and " that a m&n shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no grounds for professing to know or believe." This ia not a positive or aggressive croad, and is reconcilable with any form of moral, intellectual, or religious belief which is not dogmatic — i.c , which does not attempt to impose ou ua & ime bard and fast theory of the universo, based on attempts to define the indefinable and explain the unknowable. The definition of Christianity is by no means so simp'e. Pr&otical Christianity resolves itself very much, and more and more every day, into a sincere love and admiration of the lifo and teaching of Jesus, the son of the oarpenter of Nazareth, as depicted in the narratives which have come down to us respecting them, mainly iv the Synoptic Goapeh. This love aud a-Jmiratioa translates itself into a desire tc imitate arf far as possible thia life and to act upon theao precepts ) to be good, pure, loving, ch&ritabt", aud unselfish even to tho death. With this form of Christianity the Agnostic has no quarrel ; on the contrary, if he ia not dwarfed and stuntod in his faculties, if ho has a heart to feel and an imagination to conceive, he recognises as fully as- the most devout Christian all that is good and beautiful in the true spirit of Christianity and xtn Author. Nay, more, he will not quarrel with the mass of humble and simple-minded Christians who show their love and admiration by piling up adjectives until they reach the Buprome one of " divine," and wbo, in obedience to tho ineradicable instinct of the human mind to personify abstracted ideas aad emotions, make Jesus of Nazareth their Ormuzd, or incarnation of the good principle, and author of all that m pure, righteous, and lovely in the universe. But thoro is another definition of Christianity of a totally different character — the dogmatic or theological definition, which, commencing with S b >. Paul and St. John, and culminating in the Athanasian Creed, has been accepted from the early age^ of Chrin- \ tisnity, almost until the present day, as the miraculous revelation of the true theory of the universe. It trachea how a personal God created the univoise, how He dsala with it nnd sustains it, how Ho formed man in Hiu own image, aad what relations Ho has with him. It professes to explain mysteries puoa aa the origin of eviJ, rain's fall and redemption, hia life bsyoad tho grave, the condi'ions of bis salvation, and a variety of other matters whioh, to ordinary humiu perception and human reasons, are absolutely and certainly hidden " behind the veil." - With this dofiui ion of Christianity Agnosticism has nothing in common. It cannot be both true that we know certain things and that we do not and cvnnot know about them. Theology assarts that we are quite capable of knowing tho truth respecting these mysteries, and that, in point of fact, wo do know it, either by intuition or by historical evidence. Philosophy traverses the assertion that we know it by intuition ; soience shatters into fragments tbe scheme assumed to be taught historically by a miraculous revelation. Next comes a chapter on " Scepticism and Pessimism," in which the author eloquently contends that there are no indications of the the " advent of a drab-coloured age of prosaic mediocrity," and no reason to believe that " the fresh bracing breeze of modern science and free thought " is " going to do otherwise than sweeten and purify the ntmosphere, and make the blue of heaven more blue, the grass greener, and the earth, on the whole, a better and more genial place for man to live in." In illustrating this contention he speaks, amongst other things, of the many striking personalities of our age — Bismarck, Gladstone, Beaconsfield, and others, including Parnell, of whom he gives the following admirable sketch : — THE TJNGRCWNED KING OF IRELAND What a career it has bsen ! A young man with no special gifts of position or fortune, little likely, as a Protoet^nb and a landlord, to enlist the Fympathios of *-he Irish race, gifted with no showy qunlitine of ora f orv, the very antipodes of the foimor grnat Irish Inador, O'Oonuell — silent, self- restrained, refiorved, I may almost say, unsocial. I rocolleot this young man when I first know him iv the Hoire of Commons— an obscure member oven of bis own Home Rule party ; ono of a little knot of five or six Irish membsro, who thought Isaac Butt's le&darnhip too tamo, and who^io ruling idea wmj to fnrco the attention of the Houppi to Irish grievanonß by organising obstruction. They succeeded, and soon booamo very oonßpicuouß and intensely obnoxious, Step by Btep Parnoll came to tha front, and firet rivalled and then dinplacd Shr.w in the leadership of the li-ish party Mt vacant by the death of Butt. Likn Carnot. he organiaed victory, and even more than Bin marok, forgad his own weapons as the Btrifo went on. For Bismarck had his Rturdy Emperor, hii admirable Prussian army, and his great strategist, Yon Moltke, made to his hand ; Pftrnell had nothing but what he mido himself. His strength of charaoter, praotioal angacity, and faraoaing insight by degrees gave him an asenndoncy whioh aeourod him the support of the great majority of the Irish race at home and abroad, enabled him to wean them from impossible dreams of rebellion and rovongo, to the practical policy of constitutional agitation ; and finally has placed the rfltum of. some 85 out of 105 members for Ireland in the hollow of his hand, and what was apparently more hopeless, bae silenced the c inflicting jealousies and interests which, in forrrer daya, rr>arrrd all Irish movements, and drilled fibo^.e 85 members i"to n compaflt body, acting as oup man, undor the control and advice of their leader. He has thus, almost Bingle-handad, advanced Home Rule from boing a dream as wild ai the restoration of tho Heptarchy, to be the burning qnes tion of practical politico. Hb hac got fourfifths of Ireland, two-thirds of Scntbnd and Wfrla«, rad tha bulk of thp Liberol p&rty in Engl&Bd on bis aido, and few dispassionate OOForvPiM en doubt thai, vchsthf-r ior good or evil, the realisation of the main features of Isia policy has becyma p question of more less, and of sooner or later, rather than of absolute 1 and permanont rejection,

This is a good deal for an underßraduate of Magdalene to have done before he has parsed the meridian of middle life, aad to have done it for a hopelees minority, an unpopular oauße, and a down-trodden race by Bheer foroe of individual character. In the " Creeds of Great Poets," we have a highly interesting subject very skilfully dealt with, and we are finally exhorted to adopt the practical conclusion of Tennyson " to cultivate self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control," and without investigating too closely the origin of conscience to accept it as a fact, And because right is right to follow right. The three last chapters are devoted to the important subjects of "Armed Europe," "Taxation and Finanoe," and "Population and Food," and on all these questions Mr Laing's views are, in the main, sound and moderate. We would observe, however, that, optimist as he is, he takes a much more pessimistic view of the population problem than did that confirmed pessimist the late Mr W. R. Greg, who discussed the same subject in his "Enigmas of Life," under the title of " Malthus Notwithstanding," and who agreed with Mr Herbert Spencer in laying great stress on a point to which Mr Laing makes no distinct reference — viz., " the tendency of cerebral development to lessen fecundity." In bringing our remarks to a close we desire to repeat emphatically that, whether or not we agree with its author's conclusions, " Problems of the Future " is a book which possesses special attractions for all thoughtful readers, and should readily find a large and appreciative audience. — Literary World.