structure with every needful tool; and endowed with the requisite weaving, cell-making, mining, nest-building instincts, independent of all instruction, experience, or accumulated knowledge. On the other hand is man, naked, unarmed, unprovided with tools, naturally the most helpless, defenceless of all animals; but by means of his reason, clothing, arming, housing himself, and assuming the mastery over the whole irrational creation, as well as over inanimate nature. With the aid of fire he can adapt not only the products but the climates of the most widely severed latitudes to his requirements. He cooks, and the ample range of animal and vegetable life in every climate yields him wholesome nutriment. Wood, bone, flint, shells, stone, and at length the native and unwrought metals, arm him, furnish him with tools-with steamships, railroads, telegraphic cables. He is lord of all this nether world.”

ture; but that the very degradation which makes him a savage, removes him far from the normal, natural man on the one hand, and still further from the brute on the other hand. On the contrary, the savage “exhibits just such an abnormal deterioration from his true condition as is consistent with the perverted free-will of the rational free agent that he is. He is controlled by motives and impulses radically diverse from any brute instinct. This very capacity for moraldegradation is one of the distinctions which separate man by a no less impassable barrier than his latent aptitude for highest intellectual development, from all other living creatures."

Developing his argument still further, the author points out that, in constructing their hypothetical ladder between man and the higher mammals, the disciples of Darwin have to face the almost insuperable difficulty, that their imaginary semi-human transition form would necessarily have a worse chance of surviving in "the struggle for existence " than either the fully developed man or the fully developed brute. The transition can only be effected by the medium of some form in which neither the mental powers of the man nor the physical powers of the brute are present to an extent sufficient for the exigences of bare existence. In the supposed process "of exchanging native instincts and weapons, strength of muscle, and natural clothing for the compensating intellect, the transmuted brute must have reached a stage in which it was inferior in intellect to the very lowest existing savages, and in brute force to the lower animals." It has yet to be shown by the advocates of evolution how any imaginable process of "selection" could have preserved a being so helpless.

The enormous difficulty presented by this supposed transition is laid bare by Dr. Wilson, in the most convincing and masterly manner. He points out that "it is not merely that intermediate transitional forms are wanting: the far greater difficulty remains by any legitimate process of induction to realise that evolution which consistently links, by natural gradations, the brute in absolute subjection to the laws of matter, and the rational being ruling over animate and inanimate nature by force of intellect." He points out that "the difficulty is not to conceive of the transitional form, but of the transitional mind;" and he strongly expresses the opinion, which his great ethnological knowledge renders of special value, that the lowest savage can be regarded as nothing less than man, and that "it can with no propriety be said of him that he has only doubtfully attained the rank of manhood." The savage, however degraded, is in no stage of transition; he is not half brute and half man; and "his mental faculties are only dormant, not undevel-acter of the hypothetical being which is supposed to oped." All his mental energies are expended in maintaining a precarious existence, in keeping up a daily fight against the forces of nature and his living enemies. Nevertheless, "the infant, even of the savage, ere it has completed its third year, does daily and hourly, without attracting notice, what surpasses every marvel of the half-reasoning' elephant or dog. In truth, the difference between the Australian savage and a Shakespeare or a Newton is trifling, compared with the unbridged gulf which separates him from the very wisest of dogs or apes.'

Dr. Wilson again lays great stress upon an argument which, to our mind, is extremely weighty, though it has been wholly ignored by the advocates of evolution. He points out, namely, that the savage is not to be regarded as being the nearest approach which we have to man in a state of na

The scientific man has hitherto failed to depict m sufficiently bold outlines, the form and mental char

have formed the intermediate link between the man and the brute. Dr. Wilson, however, points out that the genius of Shakespeare has "dealt with the very conception which now seems so difficult to realize, and, untrammelled alike by Darwinian theories, or anti-Darwinian prejudices, gave the airy nothing a local habitation and a name." Caliban is the "missing link."

Reluctantly leaving the subtle analysis and brilliant reasoning of the first two chapters of this fascinating work, we are introduced in Chapter III. to "Caliban's Island." The curtain rises, and we see "the ocean tides rise and fall upon the yellow sands of Prospero's Island,” as yet unmarked in any sailor' chart. If space permitted, we would gladly linger a while upon the enchanted isle; we would study Caliban, first as the monster of Shakespeare's drama,

then as the metaphysician and theologian of Brown-
ing's poem.
We will not, however, do Dr. Wilson
the injustice of attempting to give in brief what must
be read in his own graceful and eloquent words to be
properly appreciated. We will only say that no culti-
vated mind can fail to feel the living charm of our
author's analysis of the poetical conceptions of Shake-

speare and Browning; whilst the work will be welcomed by every scientific man who believes in the ultimate victory of the Spiritual as opposed to the Materialistic Philosophy. The world has to thank Dr. Wilson for a work which is in itself both a poem and a valuable contribution to science.

LITERARY NOTES.

One of the subjects connected with colonial affairs which has been long pressing for consideration and settlement in England is the question of Literary Copyright, and the right of Colonies to traffic in foreign reprints of English copyright works.

Without opening the subject of the nature of Copyright, or desiring to question the right claimed for property so intangible-but which, fortunately, is limited by law in its privilege and operation-we, however, cannot refer to this matter without expressing our disapproval of the policy of the publishing trade in its management of that property.

As the trade regard the character of the property, it is a serious injury to the public, and a mistake in their business administration. Antagonistic to the principle of free trade, it is open to objection on that account; and as a monopoly, especially as it concerns education and intelligence, its policy is the more questionable.

The

to his honour to give such remuneration as he might, from the sales in both his own and the Colonial market. Verily, a strange policy! The Act our Parliament passed last session to remove the disabilities under which the native trade lie, and to protect the author, has been disallowed by the Home authori ties, and the situation seems disheartening. obtuseness and perversity of the official mind at Downing Street is proverbial, but it was hardly to have been expected that, after pressing the matter upon the attention of the Colonial Office for years, as has been done, in the interest of the author, and in justice to our native producing trade, so decided a repression of the liberty of self-government should be advised us. The impolicy of this course is the more apparent when it is considered that, while aiding our own industries, as against those of an alien people, we were, by the Act, making due provision for the author's remuneration, which has been disre

Particularly, however, in regard to Colonial Copy-garded hitherto. We understand that at last the right the action of British publishers, together with the Imperial Authorities, has been most impolitic and injurious to all interests. In the absence of an universal Copyright Act, and especially while with the United States Government no international treaty existed, how short-sighted has been the conduct of the Mother Country in forcing, by its legislation, the conventionalities and conservative restrictions of a huge monopoly on the Colonial book trade, which is legally free, at the same time, to buy the untaxed reprint of American producers.

The position of Canada in regard to this subject, as our readers well know, has been most anomalous; and the fetters which have been placed upon the publishing trade of the country has been a serious check to the intellectual advancement of the community.

That this has been the case, while neither the British author or publisher has profited by the legal restrictions imposed upon the trade, shows the absurdity of the present state of things. We have had all the license to trade in cheap reprints of British copyrights, but we have not had the license to do that justice to the copyright owner which our native publishers would have willingly rendered, had they had the privilege extended to them of producing for their own market, even in competition with the American reprinter. Compensate the author, has always been the cry. But an embargo has always lain upon the native publisher to do justice, under legal penalties, while the American has had it left

subject has been referred by the Imperial authorities to the London Board of Trade, and we trust that the practical minds at the head of that Bureau will see the advantage and policy of adapting legislation to meet the exceptional circumstances of the case. Very modified opinions are now held by the British publishers in regard to the question, and we believe that, while conceding local publication of English copyrights in the Colonies-to compete with the American unauthorized reprints, which enter the Colonies under impracticable restrictions,—all that the British publisher now insists upon is to have the privilege, for a short period after publication of a copyright, of placing a popular English edition on the market so as to conserve the Colonial fields to himself. This privilege, we need not say, will be readily granted in the Colonies; and surely there should be no difficulty now in framing such legislation as will continue to the Colonial markets the boon of popular editions-of English or native manufacture, rather than American, and which compensate the author in proportion to the extended fields secured to him.

The author, we dare say, will find it to his advantage to exchange in England the system of limited high-priced editions for extensive cheap ones; and thus remove the occasion for the charge that the English reader is taxed for himself and the Colonist, while literature would be made a more incalculable blessing to all than has hitherto been dreamt of.

By the time the present number reaches our read