11:11. FORTNIGHTLY CLUB.*

Some of the great problems that perplex the thoughtful in every age are discussed in a simple and attractive fashion in Mr. Horace Hutchinson's new book. The professional philosopher may regret that such grave matters are handled so lightly, in the form of War-time debates at an imaginary club where a cross-grained chemist states his views and replies to opponents with no excess of courtesy. For our part, we vire glad to find

an author who will take the trouble to present the elements of the philosophy of religion, as modified by the teaching of natural science, in a book which is easier to read than many modern novels and far more interesting. The debater begins by assailing the old-fashioned theory of Evolution, which would trace animate life from the inanimate and the human mind from the mind of the animals.

There came a real break, a now departure, when the human mind came to take its place and do its work in the world, and one of the very strongest arguments, as it strikes me, for this human mind being a new thing on the earth, and not a thing which was only an outgrowth from something older, has generally escaped notice because it is purely negative. If, as has been asserted, anything like human reason exists or has existed in the lower animals, how is it that it has not shown itself in one single indubitable instance ?

This pronouncement, of course, leads up to some lively and inconclusive interchanges on instinct and reason, in which the protagonist, while giving due credit to Professor Hobhouse's

experiments—'detailed in his Mind in Evolution—stoutly denies that animals have more than that inherited habit which we call

instinct. The human reason was, like life before it, a new ingredient thrown into " that little affair of world cookery which we call evolution."

Mr. Hutohinson's chemist makes great play with a remarkable

pronouncement by Professor Soddy, formerly of Aberdeen and now of Oxford. Speaking of Creation, he said:—

"I do not expect to escape or shirk the question : Who, then,

• The Fortnishitu Clsb. B7 Horses 0. Hutchinson. Landon: Mousy. DM. nett) created 8.11 this wonderful and intricate -machinery t Science answers that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. The universe is eternaL The very idea of creation and destruc- tion is drawn, not from the inanimate universe, but from the phenomena of life. These ideas cannot be considered apart from life, whereas the inanimate universe can. Just as the man of science is unable to push his mechanical conceptions to explain life and the Deity, so the theist must not push his conceptions of the Deity and life into the inanimate universe."

And again :— " In man wo get hopelessly beyond the range of physical science. . . . The mechanical and even the vital aspects have been thrust into the background by a developed personality that consistently acts and tries to act—and therefore in the lan- guage of science, already explained, is--a distinct being, resident in the body as a man may live in a house and, if real, then by the canons of human thought immortal."

It is, we may remark, one great merit of this book that it contains many such fascinating quotations from authors of repute of whom the ordinary reader knows nothing. The debate goes on to touch on the problem of pain. Pain, urges the chemist, is seldom felt by animals. " Death so mercifully swift as to be accompanied by scarcely a sensation is Nature's constant rule." In man, he contends, pain is the necessary complement of conscious pleasure ; it is, moreover, proof positive " that terrestrial happiness is not the end and object of it all." We pass on to the discussion of the herd instinct and its potency in the formation of conscience, and then the man of science boldly avows his belief that " every truly altruistic sentiment, as dis- tinguished from those which can be ascribed to an extended egoism, which a man finds within him, comes to him . . . directly from the Spirit of God." There follows a remarkable chapter, built up of many quotations from Boutroux, Aliotta, Eucken, Dean Inge and others, to emphasize the alliance between modern science and religion and the primary importance of active mysticism in the religious life.

In the concluding chapters we have a new setting of the argu- ment from design, enlivened by an allegorical narrative in which the archangels revisit the earth after the million years that have elapsed since the appearance of Man, and are surprised at the progress which he has made. The chemist examines the size of the universe—so far as it is known to astronomers—and points out that the most remote fixed star is 3.000 light-years sway, or, in other words, that a ray of light, travelling from that star at 186,000 miles a second, takes 3,000 years to reach the earth. On this assumption the universe bears to the earth the same proportion as the earth bears to a microscopically invisible fraction of an inch. What then ?

" As we have learnt that for the infinite there is no little, and no great, so, for the infinite creative mind, this little that we are may be far more than equal, in its true import, to the greatest at which we can guess."

The energy in an atom of the radio-active elements is stupend- ously great, as Professor Soddy and others have discovered. The debater goes on to show that, at the present rate of increase, the population of our little earth will fill it up by the year 2100, and that then the peoples may have to fight, literally, for " a place in the sun." Is not, then, man's final destiny to be achieved elsewhere ? The debater thus arrives at his final answer to the riddle of the universe :—

" By way of evolution, which is the way of pain and the way of moral evil, God made man in order that by the creature's strivings the creature might become worthy of spiritual com- munion with the Creator, a communion at first feeble and stammering, but surely to be strengthened and made clear, far beyond all present imaginings, even in this life, and to find its fulfilment only when the terrestrial body has been put off in exchange for that which' St. Paul speaks of as celestial."

Mr. Hutchinson has managed the argument with much skill and vivacity. We trust that this brief summary will send readers to his most suggestive and helpful book.