Abstract
THIS is a vade mecum of evolutionism, a sequel to a previous volume in which the author sought to show that feeling and energy are alternate states of matter everywhere. Feeling is given out as energy, and energy is experienced as feeling. Both are spiritual or non-substantial, sister properties or manifestations capable of inhering and co-inhering in one universal substance, the ether. The progress of investigation has enabled the author to make his monism even more definite. Matter is being refined away into a mode of motion in the ether. This ether is “the fountain of all being,” “the hitherto unknown God.” Prof. Larmor and others are theologians in spite of themselves. Helped by abundant quotations, Mr. Duncan gives a sketch of recent investigations as to the nature of matter, and he points out that he anticipated some of them. In 1893, for instance, he contended that an ordinary ray is a succession of such motions of the ether as beget waves with longitudinal as well as transverse elements of vibration, and it was only last year that Prof. J. H. Poynting showed that rays of light do exert energy in the direction of propagation. In the present volume he develops some original speculations, e.g. a theory of radiation and gravitation.
The Evolution of Matter, Life, and Mind.
By W. Stewart Duncan. Pp. 250. (Philadelphia: Index Publishing Company, 1907.)
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The Evolution of Matter, Life, and Mind . Nature 77, 30 (1907). https://doi.org/10.1038/077030a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/077030a0