Review of Reviews,  7 (1893), 589–98.

The Progress of the World

Anon

Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Subjects:

Institutions, Imperialism, Sex, Hygiene, Public Health, Morality, Lecturing, Materialism, Controversy, Religion

People mentioned:

Josephine E Butler

Institutions mentioned:

Army


    Records the opening in South Kensington of the Imperial Institute, the purpose of which is to carry out research into the resources and raw materials of the British empire, but warns that it 'is not likely to be a popular resort, given over as it is almost entirely to what Lord Rosebery described as Blue Book and Biscuit' (589). Relates a discussion with Frederick S Roberts (1st Baron Roberts), who has now returned to England, regarding the article on the military's toleration of prostitution in India in the previous number of the Review of Reviews [RR1/7/5/2], and applauds the exposure of this 'very infamous system flourishing in the heart of the Indian army in full defiance of the will of Parliament' by the American physician and temperance campaigner Kate Bushnell. Also remarks that Thomas H Huxley's Romanes Lecture at Oxford in May was 'One of the most remarkable discourses of recent years [....] It is an admirable rendering into modern scientific dialect of the familiar passages in which the Apostle Paul sets forth the sombre doctrine of the necessary antagonism between the natural man and the spiritual'. Suggests that 'Professor Huxley will have much more useful work in hand for some time to come in defending his exposition of Calvinism up to date against its assailants than in thrashing out the ancient controversy about the Gadarene swine. There may be flaws in his argument, but there is no doubt that he tramples into slush the favourite commonplaces of the laissez faire materialist optimists. Professor Huxley, like Mr. Cecil Rhodes and other really earnest Englishmen, has got a great deal of the Puritan grit in him, even when he uses the strength that it gives to attack the system by which it was generated'. (598)



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