Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 35:138 (Apr 1878)
Article: Mr. Joseph Cook’s Lectures On Biology And Transcendentalism
Author: Anonymous

BSac 35:138 (April 1878) p. 381

Mr. Joseph Cook’s Lectures On Biology And Transcendentalism

[The following notice of the work on Biology was prepared by a scientific especially interested in the subject of the work; and the notice of the volume on Transcendentalism was prepared by a scholar who, having listened to Mr. Cook’s words as spoken, is so much the better qualified to speak of them as written.]

1. Biology; with Preludes on Current Events. By Joseph Cook. With three colored Plates, after Beale and Frey. Fifteenth Edition. 12mo. pp. 325. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co. 1878.

The scientific portion of this work is embraced under two heads: the facts of recent biology, and the endeavor to prove therefrom, by the scientific method of reasoning, the existence of a soul in man.

In order to form an estimate of these lectures that shall be at once clear and just, it is needful to keep before the mind these general considerations:

1. The novelty of their scope and method. The literature of apologetics would make a library of vast proportions; but through it all, one would vainly look for a work like this. An attempt to hold large popular audiences, by the discussion of the relations of modern science to theology, on the avowed basis of the scientific method, has never before been made; indeed, from the nature pi the subject, could not, until these latter days, have been made; and even now the number of those who combine sufficient knowledge of the various sciences, of theology, of metaphysics, and of logic, with the power of popularizing such knowledge in public discourse, before the learned and the unlearned alike, to even essay such a task, must be very limited. On every man of genius, who has a new thought, or a new method of expressing thought, to give to the world, these three burdens are laid: he must prepare for his work, he must do it, and, what is hardest and most wearying of all, he must educate his audience, develop the standard by which he is to be measured, preside over the school in which his critics are to be trained, charge the jury who are to pass upon his claims. Upon this latter task, in the accomplishment of which time, together with the infinite and interacting forces of society, must co-operate, Mr. Cook, by the publication of this volume, now enters. There is no other work on biology, there is no other work on theology with which this volume of lectures can well be compared; it is a book that

BSac 35:138 (April 1878) p. 382

no biologist, whether an originator or a mere middle man in science, would ever have written. Traversing a very wide field, cutting right across the territories of rival specialists, it contains not one important scientific misstatement, either of fact or theory; n...