NATURE AND MAN.* In closing this book we feel that
Dr. Newbigin has done with geography what Professor Thomson has done with biology. From the mass of science accumulated by him and by other specialists he has selected material for a philosophic survey of Europe, the home of Western civilization. He has endeavoured to correlate the growth and the manifestations of that civilization with the geographical phenomena of the various countries in which it has its seat. His success is impressive. His sureness in arranging' his huge mass of material, the gathering of which is alone a noble life's work, has resulted in a picture before which the most frivoloui of mortals would pause. Mountains, valleys, seas move from their stations and play their part in the drama of the universe, in which man, it seems, has but a minor part; Certainly Dr. Newbigin has added another corner-stone to modern philosophy, the philosophy that purposes to show man in true perspective with the rest of life's infinite adoptions of form. It is a noble, a poetic, a religious purpose so to trace the origin of our mortal hopes and ambitions through the long genealogy of necessity that the personal, the painful element, is removed and man can see himself in somewhat the same light as Christ, brooding over Jerusalem, once saw him. For where can anger, where can pride subsist in this nursery of the elements ? Can we see man emerging from the inanity of the last glacial age, slowly to fight his way north after the receding ice, utilizing the fortunate valleys and unknowingly responding to the influence of the mountain streams ; can we see this drama of man in the making, man consciously triumphant, unconsciously quiescent, without being moved to reverence, love and pity ? This is the achievement of Dr. Newbigin, and it is our duty to acknowledge the grandeur of his aim and accomplishment.
It is impossible in a short review to mention a tenth part of the book's profusion of inspiring facts, any one of which stimulates the imagination to rich and joyful speculation.
How eagerly, in turning page after page, have we recognized, from the slight vantage ground of our own small historical knowledge, the truth of Dr. Newbigin's generalizations. How fascinating it has been to see familiar ideas newly demonstrated and amplified by the genius of another science. We may almost say that this book serves history as The Golden Bough serves religion and theology.
Justly to show the qualities of the book we should quote from every chapter, for each marks a phase in the accumulative effort of the author, and in so doing creates its own special beauty of atmosphere. The chapter on trees is filled with the glooms of the forests, and we begin to perceive, dimly, the origin of the folklore of the woodlands. We see the hama- dryad born in the southern glades, and the troll and the demon in the untrodden deeps of the north, broken by occasional clearings where man hugged a timid settlement, half-crazed with the arboreal terror that surrounded him by day and by night. Again, we are shown how, through the artificiality of the industrial age, " we live, as it were, no longer on a definite patch of the earth's surface, by whose characters all our activities aro con- trolled, but in a dreamland, and are served by the dusky djinns of the coal mine."
So far have we lost our sense of relationship with the cir- cumstances of Nature.
"Only within the last few years have geographers discovered that man is, always and everywhere, in some sort a Robinson Orusoe; using as he can what lies within reach of his hand. He and his environment act and interact ; his societies and institutions no less than his material possessions bear the mould of the physical circumstances under which they first arose, and, since human intelligence works everywhere along somewhat similar lines, and human needs are everywhere more or less the same, he accomplishes everywhere approximately similar ends by diverse means, means which reflect the physical con- ditions under which he lives, and from which those conditions can be reconstructed and interpreted."
Then there are the chapters on the flowers of the Alps, on the glaciers, on the plains of France and Italy, each one adding to that wanderlust which must be in the soul of every reader of this book. Some will be able to gratify that hunger. Alas, the riches proffered by Dr. Newbigin will be an exquisite torture to others, chained as they are, like Tantalus, to one spot by fate or fortune.
Prezuented Ways. By Marion I. Newbigin. London: Constable. Plea •
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