was very naturally an utter disappointment. With characteristic longing for novelty, the disillusioned student felt that he "had seen enough of Christian civilization for awhile, and that it would be a relief to make an excursion east to Turkey, and look at barbaric civilization." The Turks proved more suggestive than Hegel, and, though painful to look upon, were after all not so disappointing as the Berlin circle, since one knew in advance what to expect of them. The contrast of the two civilizations, Eastern and Western, was seen to turn upon the place of woman in the social order, and Brisbane returned with a mind full of vague but ardent thoughts concerning the social ideal. Henceforth one finds in him essentially the sensitive scrutinizer of society, -a man altogether too unsystematic to work out any one theoretical plan suited to his own ideals, and altogether too critical, meanwhile, to be satisfied permanently with the doctrine of anybody else (even Fourier's system, which he later for awhile adopted, failed in the end wholly to content him). His value as an individual apparently lay, so far as this book presents him, precisely in this his sensitiveness to social conditions, whose variations he loved to watch, whose crises he often, as interested foreign observer, studied at very close quarters, whose every color he examined with all the love of a naturalist, but whose symptoms he never learned, as leader or reformer, practically to control or even deeply to affect. For he plainly lacked the leader's ruthlessness and the reformer's dogged perseverance. It is indeed a pity that so open-eyed an observer, who feared nothing, who was absolutely free from religious and other similar traditional prejudices, who loved the flavor of danger, and knew and was fond of all sorts and conditions of men, did not take fuller contemporary notes of his wanderings and of the great events that he later witnessed. The period of Brisbane's personal relations with Fourier, which are here sketched at some length, closed his first stay abroad. He returned in 1834. The later periods of Brisbane's career are narrated with greater inequality. There are many decidedly attractive moments and episodes, but once for all it is rather the personality than the doctrines which excite the present reviewer's interest in this volume; and one can only wish that Brisbane's personal reminiscences had been even more fully, and certainly more consecutively, recorded. One gets some noteworthy glimpses of the Transcendental movement. Brisbane's own efforts at practical reform in this country do not, however, appear in a very dramatic light. Later visits to Europe show us something of the days of 1848. The closing chapters of the volume are devoted to some of Brisbane's theories, first upon his social ideals, of which the present reviewer has no expert judgment, and then of his speculations upon more or less general and cosmical topics. It is a pity that the notes upon these matters were not submitted, in advance of publication, to some student of the physical sciences, who might have counselled the omission of certain quite unnecessary and elementary errors, without the presence of which Brisbane's more speculative views would have been no less attractive. The work, as a whole, will interest a good many lovers of uncommon types of humane experience. HARVARD UNIVERSITY. JOSIAH ROYCE. EVOLUTION AND RELIGION. By A. J. Dadson. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1893. Pp. 348. The impression left on the mind after reading this book is one of regret that it should have been written, or that, having been written, the title which it bears should have been chosen for it. Its principal fault is perhaps that the author does not possess the range of knowledge necessary to the proper handling of the subject he has undertaken. The writer's acquaintance with biological subjects is not extensive. For his science he has apparently drawn on the Encyclopædia Britannica, a volume or two of the International Scientific Series, Haeckel's "History of Creation," and a few similar books. The facts collected from these sources are set forth in the first part of the book under the title of "Evolution," and they are made the basis of much bitter language in the second part of the book under the head of "Religion." The Christian religion and "the Christian's god" are in particular subjected to a style of criticism which reminds one of the debates at the Hall of Science, Islington, in the early days of the late Mr. Bradlaugh. The time has gone by for the treatment of so large a subject in this narrow partisan spirit. From those who, in dealing with religious systems, profess to approach in a scientific spirit the largest and most imposing class of phenomena connected with our social evolution, we expect something more nowadays. To profess, as the writer does, to see nothing more in these systems than a set of baleful influences constituting "a curse so great that the aggregate of all the evils that have afflicted man is small in comparison," is but to admit that he does not possess essential qualifications for treating his sub ject scientifically. Even though he might lack qualities necessary to the proper treatment of the question from its ethical side, he should at least have known that a first principle of evolutionary science is that no class of phenomena peculiar to life under any of its aspects is without its utilitarian history, or could have been evolved at all if its influence was merely hurtful. BENJAMIN KIDD. THEOSOPHY, OR PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIGION. The Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Glasgow in 1892. By F. Max Müller, K.M. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1893. Pp. xxiii., 585. The curious, almost self-contradictory, title given by Professor Max Müller to his concluding course of Gifford Lectures is readily explained when regarded in the light of the three preceding series. It may therefore be advisable to recall the lecturer's general plan. The initial course, which bore the title "Natural Religion," was in the main devoted to an exposition of the author's own standpoint. His aim was to show that the only fruitful method applicable to the elucidation of religious phenomena must necessarily be historical. Proceeding on the lines thus indicated, the investigator is brought face to face with an endless array of facts which, even after some reflection, do not appear to supply any very definite principles. Accordingly, Professor Müller introduced certain deductions of his own, warranted, as he contended, by inspection of the evidence. As the historical sequence unfolds itself, religious effort is observed to have progressed in two marked directions. Human aspiration takes form either in the belief in an absolute power permeating things in the finite world, or in a conviction that man has a soul peculiar to himself and infinite, because destined to deathlessness. Of these tendencies the former was discussed in the second course under the title of "Physical Religion;" the latter in the third series as "Anthropological Religion." Here the infinite in the physical universe and the corresponding spirit in man are abstracted from one another, and are regarded as if they were capable of free treatment in isolation. Two infinites, if such a meaningless phrase be permissible, are thus set over against one another, or, at least, come to be conceived as parallel forces. The object of the final course, now before us, is to exhibit the attempts which have been made to bridge over the chasm that must remain. The inquiry is "theosophical" in the original sense of this term. It deals, as the author himself says, with "The highest knowledge of God within the reach of the human soul." It is "psychological," because it seeks to unify the soul with God, to find out, that is, an inner psychical element common to both. The plan of this series is entirely historical. The varied attempts to account for the relation between the human soul and deity are passed in review, and the gradual growth of conviction on the subject, especially after the advent of Christianity, is traced. The first four lectures are introductory. Then follow seven discourses on immortality, the future state, and kindred topics, as illustrated by the Sacred Books of the East," by Plato, and by Sufiism. The religion of Persia, the philosophical systems of the Hindus, and some characteristics of Greek mythology receive consideration. The twelfth lecture, on the Logos, marks the passage to Christianity; while the three concluding discourses are devoted to an exhibition of Platonic influence,-the source of the Logos,-throughout the progress of Christian doctrine. As is natural, the earlier lectures, although somewhat overweighted by too free quotation, are the more original. Indeed, it is matter for no little regret that Professor Max Müller did not bring his historical method to bear more exhaustively and more seriously upon the evolution of the Logos idea in mediæval theology. For the subject is one of first importance, especially when it is remembered that mystic elements, akin to neo-platonism, played a large part in preparing opinion within the church for the tenets distinctive of the Reformation. Apart from the defect just noted, a single further criticism may be ventured. The impression which the lectures leave upon the mind is that the soul of man and the divine spirit are two disconnected entities which it is necessary to relate by some more or less mechanical process. So far as I am able to understand him, Professor Max Müller has been dominated by a doctrine of this kind from the very beginning. And, as a result, religion, according to his historical interpretation, appears still to be balked of that immanent unity which, on another view of it, is the presupposition of its very possibility. The ultimate defect of our author's entire scheme seems to me to lie in a radical misconception of the connotation of the term infinite. This cannot be built up historically, but must be from the first apprehended speculatively. But, whatever our differences from him on primary philosophical questions, we cannot keep back full tribute of admiration from Professor Max Müller for the enormous mass of pertinent facts garnered in his four volumes, for the brilliant suggestions which frequently flash forth, and for the sweet, tolerant spirit that enriches the whole. Those who have attempted to raise a heresy-hunt after some of his deductions would have been better employed in trying to participate in his learned kindliness. UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. R. M. WENLEY. By Edward Douglas Fawcett. This book is essentially an essay in metaphysical monism. Part I. is a critical and historical survey of the leading modern metaphysical systems. Part II. is a constructive development, although incidentally critical of what the author conceives to be one-sided philosophies, materialism, agnosticism, dialectic philosophy, theology and all ethic subservient to theology, and defective modern mysticism. It is easy to see that the author has -as he admits-been most influenced by Leibnitz, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Renan. There is little ethic in the book, and the metaphysical writing, while facile, is somewhat highly colored, the author treating eloquently all the time of the wrecks of systems, and finding refuge in a universe of persons as the only reality, these persons being subject to the biological phenomenon of palingenesis. The background of the system is the metaconscious from which the deity of persons is evolved. The individual is the only concrete, and should dwarf everything else. The persistence of the individual is said to be the only serious problem for ethics, and the author deprecates the idea of the individual living to too great an extent for others. Still, individuals, he thinks, can help each other in the march to the common goal,-a community of interpenetrative individuals who are all real, and who together constitute the sole reality. Of course, while this evolution of personalities is an evolution for the absolute of something which it at one time had not, in another, a metaphysical sense, it is only an evolution of what the absolute potentially was. His system thus begins as does that of Von Hartmann; and ends, as does that of Leibnitz, in a monadology, with the exception that the individual person is the only real concrete. The author triumphantly exclaims that he is an atheist, a pantheist, a theist, and an agnostic all at once. He might have known that most students of systems |