CURRENT LITERATURE.
Organic Evolution Cross-examined. By the Duke of Argyll. (John Murray. 5s.)—The Duke of Argyll here prints as some suggestions on the great secret of biology " the articles he wrote in the course of his Nineteenth Century discussion with Mr. Spencer on the subject of evolution. The discussion was dealt with in the Spectator at the time it took place, and it is unnecessary now to refer at length to the various disputable points in connection with the evolution theory which were raised. Mr. Spencer found in the Duke of Argyll a foeman of no contemptible order : like the good Highlander that he is, the Duke wields his claymore with great skill. When he chooses to use short sentences—sentences almost as short as those which the late Mr. Fronde found so effective—he is seen at his best. Sometimes, too, he can direct Darwin's own artillery against the Darwinians. For example :—" The truth is that the phrase Natural Selection, with the group of ideas which hide under it, is so elastic that there is nothing in heaven or on earth that by a little ingenuity may not be brought under its pretended explanation. Darwin in 1859-60 wondered how variously' his phrase had been misunderstood. The explanation is simple ; it was because of those vague and loose analogies which are so often captivating. It is the same now after thirty-six years of copious argument and exposition. Darwin ridiculed the idea which some entertained that Natural Selection was set up as an active power or deity' ; yet this is the very concep- tion of it which is at this moment set up by some of the most faith- ful worshippers in the Darwinian cult." It should be noted that the Duke, in a passage written after his magazine articles appeared, congratulates Mr. Herbert Spencer on the completion of his " Synthetic Philosophy," although he is careful to give it as his opinion that " a philosophy which is avowedly indifferent on the most fundamental of all questions respecting the foundations of the universe, cannot properly be said to be a philosophy at alL" Altogether, it may be said that the Duke never showed to better advantage as a controversialist than he does in this volume.
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