d development--the first
as the law of inorganic, the latter of organic matter. By the last,
however, no new principle is revealed, only a new phrase devised, by the
amplified application of which the author's entire system may be said to
be _begged_ rather than proved; since development is used in a sense
implying an indefinite power of animate and inanimate creation; so that
at last we make no new discovery, only grasp a new nomenclature.

But the author is always interesting, either by the novel display of
facts or the ingenious concatenation of plausibilities. Consistently
with his fundamental notion of animal transmutation, he tries to prove a
family likeness or affinity from the humblest to the highest species. In
this way he seeks to explain the marvel with respect to the huge bulk of
many of the tertiary mammalia--the mammoth, mastadon, and megatherium;
they were in immediate descent from the cetacea, or whale and dolphin
tribe. (p. 267.) Again, human reason is considered no exclusive gift; it
exists subordinately in the instinct of brutes, and is alleged to be
nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar to the faculties in a
humble state of endowment, or early stage of development. CUVIER and
NEWTON are only intellectual expansions of a clown; and this notion is
extended to moral obliquities, the wicked man being characterised as one
"whose highest moral feelings are rudimental." (p. 358.) From a like
principle the writer concurs with Dr. PRICHARD, that mankind may have
had a common origin; that there exists no diversities of colour or
osseous structure not referable to climatable or other plastic agencies
influencing the development of the different races, commencing with the
lowest, or Negro tribe, and ascending upward through the intermediate
aboriginal American, Mongolian, and Malay, to the last and most perfect
stage of the Caucasian type.

Into the verity of these conclusions we are not called upon to enter;
they have been long in controversy, involve a great array of facts and
inductive inferences, and we have only referred to them as corollaries
or collaterals of the author's hypothetical fabric.

RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TENDENCIES.

We have no charge of impiety to bring against the _Vestiges_. Final
causes, or to express ourselves more intelligibly, a _purpose_ in
creation, is nowhere impugned. The Deity is not degraded by
impersonification in the form and frailties of mortality, but everywhere
th