Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), January 25, 1845, vol. 1, no. 4, p. ??

[page 52, column 2, continued:]

VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. Wiley & Patnam, 1845. 12mo. pp. 291.

ONE of the chief merits of this book is its freedom from those patronising and approbatory passages with which popular writers on similar subjects intersperse their speculations. Dr. Dick is probably the worst of the whole tribe, and the author of the work before us, the best. But he isnot wholly free from this wearisome fault. The only two qualities really needed in authors of books of this class, are: first, accuracy of information; and second, clearness of style. Every word, beyond what is necessary to convey a fact, is felt to be lumber; and all reflections upon the goodness and greatness of the Creator, are, to speak of them in the mildest terms, insults to the understanding of the reader. It must be taken for granted that any person who will be likely to read a work on Natural History, has already formed an idea that God is both great [page 53:] and good, beyond the capacity of man to comprehend. We do not see the propriety of taxing the undevout astronomer with madness, any more than the undevout husbandman. The man who fails to see God in a buttercup, will hardly discern him by loo!ting at the Georgium Sidus through a telescope. Whoever can contemplate himself, without being impressed with the thought that God is all-wise and all-powerful, will never be awe-struck from a contemplation of the Heavens. The following extract from the first chapter contains a good many of these objectionable passages. What have we to do with the “tear that falls from childhood's cheek,” in a work professedly scientific? The tear that falls from an old man's cheek is of precisely the same quality.

“It is remarkable of physical laws, that we see them operating on every kind of scale as to magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance. The tear that falls from childhood's cheek is globular, through the efficacy of that same law of mutual attraction of particles which made the sun and planets roam’. The rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of Saturn, for the same reason that, when we wheel a ball round by a string and make the string wind up round our fingers, the ball always flies quicker and quicker as the siring is shortened. Two eddies in a stream, as has been stated, fall iuto a mutual revolution at the distance of a couple of inches, through the same cause which makes a pair of suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of millions of miles. There is, we might say, a sublime simplicity in this indifference of the grand regulations to the vastness or minuteness of the field of their operation. Their being uniform, too, throughout space, as far as we can scan it, and their being so unfailing in their tendency to operate, so that only the proper conditions are presented, afford to our minds matter for the gravest consideration. Nor should it escape our careful notice that the regulations on which all the laws of matter operate, are established on a rigidly accurate mathematical basis. Proportions of numbers and geometrical figures, rest at the bottom of the whole. All these considerations, when the mind is thoroughly prepared for them, tend to raise our ideas with respect to the character of physical laws, even though we do not go a single step further in the investigation. But it is impossible for an intelligent mind to stop there. We advance from law to the cause of law, and ask, what is that I Whence have come all these beautiful regulations? Here science leaves us, but only to conclude, from other grounds, that there is a First Cause to which all others are secondary and ministrative, a primitive almighty will, of which these laws are merely the mandates. That great Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place, or what his history? Man pauses breath. less at the contemplation of a subject so much above his finite faculties, and only can wonder and adore!”

A tolerable purity of style seems almost impossible with writers of this class. The/ cannot read the Bible to any good purpose, or they would write better. The author before us has more to recommend him on this score than many others, but he seems to be impressed with an idea that a great subject requires great swelling words. He should, in the outset, fix upon some term by which to express his idea of the Omnipotent, and dismiss the thought that he is called upon, personally, to assert the dignity of his Creator. He seeems [[seems]] to labor under a continual fear that his readers have not a sufficient reverence for their Creator, and he bestows upon Him a great variety of high-sounding expletives. The August Being, the Deity, the Divine Wisdom, the Divine Author, Almighty Perfection, the Great Creator, Providence, Creative Providence, Almighty Conception, Great Father, Almighty Wisdom, &c., &c., occur with variations throughout the book.

The most interesting chapter in the book is that relating to vegetable and animal generation. It is treated here with great delicacy, originality, and power, and will prove interesting even to those who differ from the author in his conclusions; as many will. The theory that man sprang from the first order of organic life, and that he passes, now, through all the conditions of fish, reptile, and bird, is fanciful in the extreme. If it were true, men of premature birth. would more nearly resemble the simia than the human race.

In the chapter on the “Mental Constitution of Animals,” we find some curious statistical facts.

“Even mistakes and oversights are of regular recurrence, for it is found in the post offices of large cities, that the number of letters pot in without addresses is year by year the same. Statistics has made out an equally distinct regularity in a wide range, with regard to many other things concerning the mind, and the doctrine founded upon it has lately produced a scheme which may well strike the ignorant with surprise. It was proposed to establish m London a society for ensuring the integrity of clerks, secretaries, collectors, and all such functionaries as are usually obliged to find security for money passing through their hands in the course of business. A gentleman of the highest character as an actuary spoke of the plan in the following terms: “It's thousand bankers’ clerks were to club together to indemnify their securities, by the payment of one pound a year each, and if each had given security for 500l., it is obvious that two in each year might become defaulters to that amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee fund insolvent. If it be tolerably well ascertained that the instances of dishonesty (yearly) among such persons amount to one in five hundred. this club would continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad year, to an amount which it would be able to discharge in good ones. The only question necessary to be asked previous to the formation of such a club would be, — may it not be feared that the motive to resist dishonesty would be lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means of obtaining situations which they would otherwise have been kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining security among those who know them? Suppose this be sufficiently answered by saying, that none but those who could bring satisfactory testimony to their previous good character should be allowed to join the club; that persons who may now hope that a deficiency on their parts will be made up and hushed up by the relative or friend who is security, will know very well that the club will have no motive to decline a prosecution, or to keep the secret and so on. It then only remains to ask, whether the sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient?” The philosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, seems to be simply this, that, amongst a given (large) number of persons of good character, there will be within a year or considerable space of time, a determinate number of instances in which moral principle and the terror of the consequences of guilt will be overcome by temptations of a determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion a periodical amount of loss which the association must make up.”

It appears, from a foot note, that this proposed association has been formed in London, and is working well. A society of this kind should be immediately formed in Wall street, and in Washington.

The faults that we have discovered in this book are very few, and not of; a character to detract in the least from its popularity. It is admirably calculated for the million, and being sold at a low price, it must, we think, meet with a rapid sale.

But where did the publishers of this valuable work obtain it? Was it produced by their literary dragoman? or did some obliging friend give them the manuscript? It has not the appearance of a spontaneous production; yet we can find in no part of it, any hint of its origin. It cannot have been reprinted from a foreign edition, for the publishers have the reputation of honest men, and they would, of course, have given some intimation of the fact, if such had been the case. A work of similar title has gone through two or three editions in London, but we have no right to think that this is the same. As good books are not published every day, readers have a curiosity to know where one comes from, when they meet with a new one; who produced it, what language it first made its appearance in, how long it has been before the world, and what degree of credit to attach to its statements when they are of a novel character. Publishers would confer a benefit upon the reading world by giving some intimation, when they put forth a new work, of the source whence they derived it. If Wiley & Putnam had printed in the title-page of this work, “Republished from the third London Edition,” it would have been more to their credit, and not in the slightest degree detrimental to their interests. Tradesmen who deal in books, should set an example of honesty to the rest of the trading world.