Some publications. (1906)

Book Review from the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Origin of Life, by Joseph McCabe. (Watts & Co.,) 6d.

Professor Oliver Lodge is a gentleman with whose name the churches delight to conjure. He is one of the very few persons of intellectual standing upon whose help the churches, in their strenuous battle against extinction, always rely. He is their stand-by, the straw at which they catch in their efforts to keep their heads above the waters of oblivion which threaten to engulf them. He is a brake to their feet slipping dangerously upon a sharply deflected path. He enables them to dig their toes into the projections (of ignorance) and hang on.

Nevertheless the gospel according to St. Lodge differs from the gospels of that shadowy quartet of New Testament worthies as the proverbial chalk differs from the proverbial cheese. The god in whom his faith finds lodgement (no joke) is as intangible and elusive as the god of the churches is tangible and well defined—to that eye of faith exclusively the property of the church (and chapel) man. The Churches either don't understand this, or do understand—and bury the difference in their quaking hearts. But to our even churchman Professor Lodge is '"agin" the "atheist" (a term embracing everything " agin" the Church'), and is therefore roped in for the defence of the "faith of our fathers." Hence the alacrity with which the Professor's last book, "Life and Matter," is seized upon and hurled in the face of the presumptuous layman in whose sight "miserable and degraded Monism" and the "extravagant, pretensions" and ''rather fly-blown productions" of Professor Haeckel find favour. (It should be mentioned here in fairness to Professor Lodge that the chaste descriptions and the gravely scientific language in quotation marks are his own).

"Life and Matter" purports to be a criticism of the well-known "Riddle of the Universe" by Professor Haeckel, whose name and work have become a haunting horror—a sort of unholy ghost—to those who sit in the darkness of clerical enlightenment. Mr. Joseph McCabe's brochure is a reply to Professor Lodge. Mr. McCabe is the English translator of Haeckel and one of his most doughty champions. His style, while perfectly fair and courteous, is delightfully trenchant, and the manner in which he "goes for" Professor Lodge affords us who are accustomed to, and if the truth must out, rejoice in, the dialectical "rough and tumble," much satisfaction. He finds small difficulty in disposing of Professor Lodge's anti-Haeckel diatribes and effectively establishes the charge he brings against the Lodge method by showing it to be based upon unblushing misquotation. As is moderately well known, Professor Lodge has been repudiated by biologists of established repute, while his dogmatism (the particular failing he alleges with little justification against Haeckel) was recently very roundly censured and his pretensions to biological knowledge crushed by a vigorously worded intervention from Professor Ray Lankester. Mr. McCabe presents the problem which Haeckel has made such valuable contribution to the solution of, very ably and summarises the arguments for the monistic position with considerable skill. We cordially commend his book to the consideration of our readers.