On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (4)
-
138 ©ft* 3Lt&tte t* [Saturday,
-
" 7 J* ' wSVtlftTVPiVi Til /^rfptiTP jlH U£J v*-«UI III QyllXrlHl*
-
DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND MR. H. MILLER'S B...
-
ANTIQUE NAILS. In walking through the Br...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
The Drama. Drtjby Lane.—The An Tigone Wa...
weakness . ** Lady Macbeth " has troubled dreams ¦ which break her agonized heart ; " Antigone " dies despairing . But we have no space to speak worthily of this magnificent work . The reproduction of it at Drurylane will afford our readers an opportunity of seeing it in action , and they will be struck with the freshness and eternal youth of this antique poem . Miss Vandenhoff has carefully studied the part , and throws herself into some picturesque attitudes ; at times she reminded us of the figures on the ancient vases ; but from that
her conception is so different our own we forbear criticism . It was not a performance that greatly impressed us . Mr . Vandenhoff performed his part with solid dignity and picturesque effect . « ' Creon " Sophocles is not a tyrant , but " every inch a king . " The choruses by Mendelssohn are well known to the musical world , and have been long enough before us to enable us to say , without the suspicion of one day reversing the judgment when familiarity has opened their beauties to us , that they are the mediocrities of a man of genius ; all their science cannot cover their commonplace and want of
melodic invention . On Monday Mr . Anderson played " Hamlet " for the first time in London ; we were not able to be present , but should he repeat it we will take an opportunity of " sitting in judgment" thereon . Fbench Plays . —On Wednesday Scribe ' s charming comedy , La Camaraderie , introduced Regnier and Nathalie to the St . James ' s public , and were heartily appreciated . Space does not permit criticism this week .
138 ©Ft* 3lt&Tte T* [Saturday,
138 © ft * 3 Lt & tte t * [ Saturday ,
" 7 J* ' Wsvtlfttvpivi Til /^Rfptitp Jlh U£J V*-«Ui Iii Qyllxrlhl*
fcgttM nf §> mnu .
Development Theory And Mr. H. Miller's B...
DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND MR . H . MILLER ' S BOOK . There are few writers more fitted for enjoying nature , and imparting that enjoyment to the reader than Hugh Miller . We walk with delight in his company , whether over the modern civilized ground or over the ancient surface of the world . With him there is the same honest love of truth , the same openness to receive all that is beautiful in science , and to connect it with all that is lofty in speculation . A thorough believer in science , and a man of a religious and devout mind , he has moulded into a consistency satisfactory to himself what he believes by faith , and what he believes by experience . No one gives more latitude than he does to the time during which the geologic ages have endured , when he says : " But who among men shall reckon the years or centuries during which these races have existed , and this muddy ocean of the remote past spread out to unknown and nameless shores before them . " It would seem as if a period equal to that in which all human history is comprised might be cut out of a corner of the period represented by the Lower Old Red Sandstone , and scarce be missed when away .
Mr . Miller has been much troubled in mind on account of the theory of development which some geologists and naturalists support . The theory is simply that for the formation of the world as it at present stands , there has been a gradual evolution of life ; that the lowest animals have begun , and higher animals have succeeded , until man was produced ; and that this has been done by a great natural law . Mr . Miller believes that " there is
geologic evidence that in the course of creation the higher orders succeeded the lower . " " It is of itself an extraordinary fact , without reference to other consiflcrationa , that the order adopted by Cuvier in his animal kingdom , as that in which the four great classes of vertebrate animals , when marshalled according to their rank and standing , naturally range , should be also that in which they occur in order of time . The brain which bears an
average proportion to the spinal cord , if not more than two to one , came first—it is the brain of the fish ; that which bears to the spinal cord an average proportion of two and a half to one , succeeded it , —it is the brain of the reptile : then came the brain averaging as three to one—it is that of the bird ; next in succession came the brain that averages as four to one—it is that of the mammal ; and last of all there appeared a brain that averages twenty-three to one—reasoning , calculating man had come upon the scene . "
So far there is no disagreement , and the succession of the animals is the same with both parties ; but the true point of dispute is , whether the lower brains were developed into the higher , whether one animal was developed into the other . Another writer , far more limited than Mr . Miller in his explanations of geologic facts , sees no reason at all why many species should not have been
proportant particulars , but also differing slightly their outward coverings , as might be expected from the different circumstances in which each variety was placed . " It is true that in coming to Mr . Miller we deal with more scientific reasoning , but it does strike us as extraordinary to _ find both sides quoted , in . order to confirmation in the belief of revealed religion .
in duced from one , changing according to mere circumstance , developed , in fact , in a very short space of time . And whilst he does not believe in the geologic ages , Dean Cockburn believes that , " As to the Scaphites , Baculites , Belemnites , and all the other ites which learned ingenuity has so named , you find them in various strata the same in all
im-Mr . Miller , however , goes farther , and feels that he is fighting the battle of faith , so far as whether there be a God or not , and if there be a future life or not . He believes that this earth was furnished with animals as it became read y for them , that this is the cause of the gradual rise in the order of animals from the earliest ages , and that it was not merely by a law of nature that one gradually moved over to a higher species . Otherwise where were the creative powers , and if man were the product of such a development , where were the infusion of the immortal soul ? This is a grave question , and if men do take walks into the fields and by the
seashore , anfl bring back to the astonished towns new ideas of religion , upsetting our old faith , or giving us a new ; every cracking of the earth ' s crust in times past disclosing fossils to our view , becomes , in a reasoning age , converted actually into a medial earthquake ; what was done in matter is now done in mind , and every earthquake of a lower class has itself repeated in our age in a higher form . Mr . Miller has taken a walk and found an
asterolapis where no asterolapis should be , according to the development theory , and he believes that he has brought an argument to bear on the truth of revealed religion , on the Being of God , and on the immortality of the soul . He holds that the battle of the evidences is to be fought on the ground of the physical sciences , and he shows himself
sufficiently sensitive to all the arguments deduced from them . It is a pity that he should put himself in such a predicament , liable to be overturned at any moment ; but he feels it t # be serious , and with him it is no light matter . We can look at creation in the development-point of view with as much faith in the greatness of man as we can according to the non-development on the creative hypothesis .
We see a race of men proud and powerful , with high aspirations and renowned for great actions , poets , philosophers , and martyrs , men to whom war was a thing accursed , and devotees b y whom the senses were viewed only as inlets of sin , —we see these men sprung from another set , from what is called the same race , but so thoroughly different that they lived in the hopes of fighting daily for ever , of drinking daily for ever , and of feeding daily on an everlasting and daily-butchered pig . The former sprang from the latter by the law of
growth , a law which is exactly the law of development as explained by many writers . But without cavilling at the word , the real fact is far more striking that the highest order of minds have risen out of minds which , whatever were their instincts and capabilities , were low and thoroughly degraded . We see constantly monsters and idiots brought into the world by the law of growth , and we see a family low in intellect , rise and bring out of them a great genius . It is to the mind after all that we must look , and not to the mere development of organic forms . How is it that genius is breathed
into one man , and was dormant in his obscure father and mother ? Is this by the law of development or by the law of creation ? If it is by the natural law , as most people will allow , does it manage to go by itself and put our belief in God out of the question . We breathe the breath of an independent life according to existing laws , and we rise into a higher life by a process of growth , according to law ; if we do not get well developed by food , and raiment , and training , we do not rise high , and the act of creation of an Adamic great man has never been seen .
We hold , then , that it is as difficult to account for the existence of a man who shall change the face of a country by his greatness , as for the existence of an elephant developed by some means or other out of a mastodon , or even from a whale . In neither is there direct creation ; in both is the process of growth : you cannot tell at what time the inspiration of genius began , no more than you can tell how the habits of a whale could be converted into the habits of an elephant .
But you can tell this , that there was a time when the man was poor and helpless , and when his son was great and wise ; and you know that by the gradual growing of years the higher life has found a home in a race which was before accustomed to a lower life ; that he who would have been content to drink beer and eat bacon to all eternity , has now a higher hope and a soul elevated to the contemp lation of a destiny which he feels to be beyond his means of expression .
When we see that every man is after all a collection of crumbs of bread and scraps of meat , developed out of the clods of the field , if his brain has taken the form of that of various animals in its onwards growth , as Mr . Miller willingly agrees to , are we to cavil if it should have happened that , in growing , the stages have been so long an d the struggle to rise from a state of brutishness have been protracted through ages . If that be man ' s history , we can only wonder at what period he became a human soul , as we now wonder at what period the foetus became an individual . We are
aware that we have not taken up the true scientific difficulty : it was not our object . The materials are not collected , and the theory of developme nt is not proved ; but against it there are many materials , a fact which may console some persons . It is our object only to show that the difficulties in known facts as to growth are no more easily explained than difficulties of the development of theory , and that we cannot believe that it needs a higher power to bring the squirrel from the mouse than it does to bring the individual Plato from the grovelling Ichthyophagous or Ophiophagous Troglodytae .
Antique Nails. In Walking Through The Br...
ANTIQUE NAILS . In walking through the British Museum lately , our attention was called to a nail , an Egyptian nail , formed like our nails ; and , as ordinary eyes view these things , which might have been made last year , or perhaps picked up out of some wrecked vessel or Royal George . On louking at the Patents lately , we see a new mode of making nails ; the mode obviates an evil said to occur in making them . The iron is stretched at the point and weakened ; a slight twist prevents the weakening . But , after all , nails have stood three thousand years , and why should they not do so again ? These minutiae in improvements are , however , to be prized . The microscope shows the eye a world entirely unknown to the ordinary eye , content to avoid all that is not very palpable . DIFFUSION OP SILVER , LEAD , ETC . It has often been a matter of surprise to many where the used-up materials of daily life actually go . We have all of us , at some time , wondered what became of the silver worn from the coinage in use , and the gold also , and the copper , not from coinage merely , but from articles of all kinds used . "What becomes of pins , is a long-standing problem—a puzzle which philosophers have not yet answered to satisfaction . The worn-out man goes to the dust , and the clothes go down , through the rag-shops , to manure the fields , if they are not made of a material fitted for making paper ; in which case they begin a new life , and their destiny may be to live for ages , or to be
burnt as useless , according to the matter which is written upon them . But what becomes of the new clothes in their conversion into old ones ? Where does the fine nap go , and the softness and the respectability ? It goes to make up a part of the dust which must daily be swept out of the house , and thrown away among the refuse , also makes its way , in time , to the fields , or it is washed into the sewer , and makes its way into the sea . Into the fields , then , or into the sea , all the refuse goes—the gloss of new coats and hats , th » fine edges of sovereigns and shillings , and lost jewe . lery and broken trinkets whose fragments are not worth preserving . So that , after all , a part of every element must exist everywhere ; every
field must have some mixture of all metals m it , and the sea be a solution of all things used by man which it is capable of dissolving . MM . Malaguti , Durocher , and Sarzland have found lead , copper , and silver in sea-water and sea-weed . They suspected silver , not from the reasons given above , but from causes acting more extensively ; from the extensive diffusion of that metal in the mineral kingdom , and its solubility in common salt . The quantity found is equal to one in a hundred millions ); so that a cubic mile contains 2 $ lbs . of silver . These gentlemen believe that the silver was not brought into the sea by rivers , and was not the result of wear and tear in substances used by man ; because , if all the ocean contains as much as the part from which the specimen of water examined was taken , two
millions tonB would be now in solution in the waters of the globe . Lest this should not be enough , they examined the crystallized salt in mines , and ihnt also was found to contain silver . This would prove that solutions in early times , before the creation of man , also contained silver . Lead and copper were also found ; how much in a cubic mile they have not calculated ; but , when we have received one wonder , we can take up the few succeeding with great ease . And yet it is not a wonder , but the proof of what has been before believed ; and to it we may add that various metals have been found also in landplants—gold and copper have been especially mentioned —showing that these metals exist , not in our seas merely , but in our lands . If found in plants , it then becomes no wonder that they should also be found , as some of them are said to have been , in animals .
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), May 4, 1850, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_04051850/page/18/
-