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during which language itself can do little more than express the necessities of animal existence." What is this but to assert that there is no such thing as revelation, at least regarding the origin of mankind? It is evidently set aside, as not worthy of consideration. Dr Page is confident as to "the unavoidable course of human progress,-its earliest stages utterly lost in the forgetfulness of barbarism, the middle stages distorted and clouded by myths and fables, and only the latest assuming the orderly sequence and reliability of history." "It is vain," he says, " to look for any chronology before man learned to record; hopeless to expect anything like certainty from the tales and undated memories of tradition." It does not seem even to occur to him that there may be such a thing as revelation.

Looking to written history, he finds all over southern Asia and southern Europe "different phases of civilisation, different languages, different styles of architecture, and different forms of religious worship, all of which must have taken thousands of years for their elaboration," and he thinks that a little reflection on this is all that is necessary to expose the absurdity of a chronology that would limit the existence of man to the lapse of a few thousand years." It is not necessary that we should be particular about a few thousand years more or less; let us leave the chronology unsettled, but what shall we say about the growth of nationalities, languages, and religions? As Dr Page puts his argument, the diversities of religion. occupy a chief place. What, then, is the fact regarding these? Did Christianity come into existence by a slow evolution from something antecedent? Did Mahomedanism spring up slowly, as a plant grows from the earth? Did Buddhism thus evolve itself from previously existing systems? And, within our own day, what shall we say of the rapid and monstrous growth of Mormonism? It is manifest that changes of religion cannot afford evidence of great periods of time. Man, according to Dr Page, is "an inventor of intellectual tools-of social, political, and religious schemes, by which he secures his safety and progress," and hence he infers the long duration of the race. It is to be observed that the invention of religious schemes is ascribed to man himself, and no exception is made. The idea of a religious scheme given by God is not for a moment admitted.

In the chapter on Man's Geological Relations, we find little that demands notice. Dr Page here exhibits the caution of a man of science, as far as geology is concerned; and whatever may be thought of his argument, he rests it on nothing but facts well substantiated. He tells us of the "sculptured monoliths, sepulchral barrows, and lake-dwellings," which give evidence of the use of iron and bronze, and of the more early "shell-mounds (savage-feasting relics), cave-dwellings, lake

silts, and river-drifts, in which all the implements are of the rudest description." From all this he infers the great antiquity of man in western Europe. But this does not satisfy him. For, "high as may be the antiquity of man in Europe, it cannot be set down as the limit of his existence in Asia and other regions." Thus we are referred from a region of conjecture, somewhat limited, to a region of conjecture utterly unlimited, and to a time when, "while the men of western Europe were fashioning flint implements, and combating the difficulties of their situation, earlier races may have been enjoying the amenities of a comparatively advanced civilisation in southern Asia." It is mere conjecture on which a theory is here based; and what better is it when we are told, that "we must carry the argument of ascensive development still further, and believe that, as the men of Europe were descended from those of Asia, so the Indo-European variety of our race was preceded by the inferior varieties,-Mongolian or Negritian,-in the order of their physical and intellectual advancement." But why must we believe it? As formerly, no reason is assigned. It is a theory unsupported by evidence. Dr Page has here departed from geology, and ventured upon other ground, on which he treads rashly, making assertions which have only the development hypothesis to support them, and which are made to assume the appearance of facts meant to support it.

The chapter on Man's Genetic Relations begins with a notice of the cosmogonies of different nations, the last mentioned being the Hebrew cosmogony, of which we are told that, "according to the second version of the Hebrew Genesis, Adam, the man (by some commentators said to signify 'red earth'), is formed out of the dust of the ground, and Eve, the woman, is fashioned from a rib taken out of the side of Adam; while, according to the first version, man is simply said to have been created on the sixth day,-male and female, and in the image of his Maker." We need not stay to inquire into the alleged discrepancy of what Dr Page calls the two versions of the Hebrew Genesis. No one, not anxious to find the discrepancy, would have found it; and, although Dr Page is not the first, but has merely accepted it as indicated by others, this is of no consequence. We need hardly allude to the place assigned to the Hebrew cosmogony, as the last of a list which begins with that of the African negro. The conclusion is of more importance. "But however curious the fable, or mysterious the myth," the narrative or narratives of the book of Genesis being here again put upon a level with all the heathen fables," none of them is of the least avail in science, and reason is driven, in the long run. either to abide by the belief

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in a direct creative act, or to seek for the solution of the problem in the theory of derivative descent." The theory of derivative descent, it must be remarked, implies either a direct creative act at its commencement, or an evolution of organic from inorganic nature. Of this Dr Page takes no notice, but he urges that "a gradual ascent in time from lower to higher forms of life has been clearly established," and that," as science has no evidence of other than the operation of secondary forces in nature, so it seeks to ascribe this ascent to this kind of causation." Science seeks to exhibit truth, or to discover truth. Dr Page makes it to seek the confirmation of a theory.

How completely he assumes the development hypothesis, will appear from the following sentence :-"If, then, the principle of adaptive modification be admitted, no matter how infinitesmal the variations may be within a given time, it must, in the long run, be capable of producing the most extensive results, and what are now regarded as varieties may pass into species, and species in process of time assume the rank of generic distinctions." Here we have the mere show of argument, and not the reality. To say nothing of the uncertainty regarding varieties, species, and genera, any change of opinion concerning which would in no way affect the case, why should we admit an unlimited adaptive modification? That there is an adaptive modification, no one doubts; but the question of its extent is quite distinct from that of its reality. We know that the Brassica oleracea of our shores has been developed into kale, cabbage, cauliflower, and many other forms; but these all tend to return to the original form; and there is as yet no proof of its development into a turnip, a wall-flower, or a stock-forms so cognate that we name them rather than roses, honeysuckle, and other common plants of our gardens. Species seem to have limits, and the possibility of unlimited development, by natural selection or otherwise, is as far from being proved as it was when the development hypothesis was first heard of. Dr Page himself admits that it is not established by proof. He tells us, indeed, that its advocates "seek to establish it as the only comprehensible process by which the Creator has chosen to people this earth, at the several stages of its existence, with newer, higher, and ever-varying life-forms." We reject as utterly worthless all arguments about a comprehensible process of creation. But we listen with respect to Dr Page when he frankly declares, as a geologist, that "geology has not yet discovered the connecting links, as it were, between man and the lower animals, no form or forms that can be said to stand intermediate between the lower grades of humanity and the highest known forms of quadrumana. It may be

argued," he proceeds, "as is sometimes done, that the difference between the lowest men and the highest quadrumana is not so wide as that between the highest civilised man and the lowest savage. Still narrow as the gulf may be, science has yet no indication of any intermediate form to bridge it over, no trace of a higher quadrumane, none of a lower man than stonefashioning, cave-dwelling savages."-(Pp. 150, 151.) It is melancholy after this to find him pleading for the expectation that the gulf may yet be bridged over, by further geological research in Asia and Africa, the regions of the anthropoid quadrumana, and endeavouring to persuade himself and his readers that "the development theory, as applicable to the human race, is not necessarily degrading." His argument on this point is very remarkable. Whatever man's origin, he says, man springs from inorganic elements, and partakes of the same animal nature with other creatures. "All that ennobles him above other creatures belongs truly to the soul and intellect." He finds a specialty in man, in the power of indefinite improvement which he possesses. But whence is this specialty derived? Does not the origination of it imply an exercise of creative power, as much as the formation of the body itself? Or if a descent of man from some of the quadrumana is to be maintained, how is the great change to be accounted for, from a nature incapable of improvement to one capable of improvement which has no assignable limits? There can be nothing more monstrous than the idea of an ape-mother holding in her arms the first possessor of this glorious capacity, the first of mankind. Dr Page objects to "the jibing and jeering at the idea of an 'ape-ancestry,' so often resorted to," he says, "by the ignorant," but which, he assures us, "has in reality no significance to the mind of the philosophic naturalist."-(Pp. 155, 156.) We leave the members of the Anthropological Society to enjoy the idea of their ape-ancestry, and of their descent from a more remote ancestry of snails or worms. To us it seems to be an idea which it is a degradation of the human mind to entertain, a vile abuse of man's noblest powers to advocate.

Having now followed Dr Page through his chapters on Man's Where and Whence, we do not care to go further, and to bestow equal attention on what he says on Man's Whither. It is the future of the race, we must observe, and not at all the future of the individual, that is the subject of the chapter on the progressive relations of man. Improvement still more and more rapid is held forth in prospect for the human race. We are told of an upward and onward development, of which "art and science, literature and philosophy, ethics and religion, have all alike partaken ;" and Dr Page asks, “Shall

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we cease to have faith in their future ascension?" We too believe in a future improvement and glorious progress of mankind, but it is not based on a theory for which the proof is still confessedly to be sought, and which assigns to us a genetic connection with brutes. With our expectations concerning the future of the human race upon earth are also associated hopes concerning ourselves personally, on which subject anthropologists in general are strangely silent.

We have only a few concluding remarks to make, and they concern the relation of the Development Hypothesis with our religious beliefs. Is that hypothesis, we must ask, consistent with Christianity? If Christianity itself is a mere product of the human mind, how is its truth to be maintained, and in particular the truth of the most essential parts of the whole system? Again, if we assume an ascensive development, by which man has sprung from a lowly origin, what becomes of the doctrine of the fall, and what then of the scheme of redemption? And how, in connection with belief in a genetic descent of man from quadrumana and other inferior animals, can we maintain the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God? There is something very shocking in the juxtaposition of the two ideas; but they must be contemplated together. We are told that science has again and again triumphed already over opposition made to it on the ground of a supposed antagonism to religion; but it was only a supposed antagonism that existed, and Christianity has lost nothing by the progress of astronomy and geology. The fancies of anthropologists, unsupported as they are by evidence, are not to be classed with the discoveries of science; and it is fair to ask of those who urge them upon our attention, how they propose to reconcile them-if they do propose to reconcile them at all-with that great gospel scheme, which rests on evidence as sure as any truth of science whatever, and on which depends all our hope of a glorious immortality. The question, be it remarked, is not one about dates and numbers, nor about the interpretation of particular words or texts, but about the great essentials of Christianity.

X. GENERAL LITERATURE.

The Huguenots, their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland. By SAMUEL SMILES. John Murray.

Our readers must be generally familiar with the sad story of the Huguenots, both as an integral part of European history, and as a