Saturn's Kingdom ; or, Fable and Fact. By C. Moore
Jessop. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.) – The title of Mr. Jessop's book sounds aggressive, but he writes very moderately in tone, confines himself to facts and arguments about them, and seldom attacks fables. It is the outcome, he says, of leisure evenings in a tropical climate, and its object is to show the effect of time and climate on man's condition. He is much addicted to making calculations from such data as pre-historic remains, caves, cranial capacity, and, indeed, there is nothing more interesting and more plausible than this mode of reckoning,—nor more unreliable, we might add. Yet there are many striking facts in it, and some remarkable con- clusions drawn from them, the value of which is enhanced by the crisp, logical style of the writer. The "Ape and Man" question is treated with lucidity, a quality noticeable in the book, and is extremely productive of reflection. Mr. Jessop speaks of gaps in biological history, and this chapter, well reasoned as it is, " inferen- tially " hints at one between apes and talking men. It is when he rises to a philosophical plane, that we miss that dignity and grasp of the subject so necessary to impress readers. "The Soul," he says, "is an immaterial product not quite capable of proof, but an entity inferentially calculated from probability." This, as it shows condescension, we may allow to pass. Again, he says. "the soul I conceive to be a chastened form of instinct, emotional in its origin, begotten of gentleness and persuasion from one animal body towards another, and reciprocated." We perceive, or perhaps it is only fancy, a faintly humorous tolerance in this somewhat narrow conception of his subject.
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