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A considerable merit of Livingstone's book is the immense amount of detail he has unearthed about a multiplicity of minor figures, and the thoroughness with which he welds his data into a coherent thesis. He has not, of course, established the simplistic position that all evangelicals embraced Darwinism (which is just as absurd as the view that they all repudiated it). Indeed the counter-examples he cites falsify such an argument immediately. Nor, taking the English-speaking world as a whole, can he be said to have proved that most evangelicals were able to accept Darwin. That would require a prosopographical study of immense size and sophistication. What he has done, however, is to show that on the strength of a considerable number of avowedly influential figures, there was a current of thought running far more strongly in Darwin's favour than against him.

Finally it must be observed that he also offers a convincing explanation of the fact that some evangelical Christians today think their creationist beliefs have a long and respectable ancestry. The origins of modern "creationism" Livingstone locates, not in the Victorian era, but in the new "fundamentalism" emerging in the social turmoils following the first World War. What has often been overlooked is that this movement represents a major theological discontinuity with the evangelicalism of the nineteenth century.

With this wealth of original material Livingstone has shown how scholarly historical writing can illuminate not only the distant past but also the controversies of the present. For historians of science and of religion the book is indispensible reading. It is no disrespect to suggest that it will be equally valuable for any lay-person concerned with the cosmic issues of religion and science.

The Open University COLIN A. RUSSELL

DONALD E. BROWN, Hierarchy, History and Human Nature." The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988. Pp. ix+384. $35.00)

Here is a book that I can strongly recommend for a variety of reasons. It is well written, it is scholarly, but its greatest appeal lies in the posing of an important question and in the offering of a satisfying (to this reviewer, at least) answer. The question is: why do some literate societies have a well-developed sense of history and others not? Historical consciousness is manifest as a real concern for the personalities and events of the past and an attempt to see pattern or order in them. It implies an interest in individuals- their careers and fate, and a desire to understand the present social order in terms of its antecedents. A keen sense of history is part of a more general thirst to know. This thirst to know has a practical end. Historians in different traditions ahnost always justify what they do by drawing attention to use. But history cannot really be useful unless it is also geography and social science. So, societies that are rich in historical knowledge tend to be also rich in geographical and ethnographic knowledge.

A clear question is posed. What is the answer? Brown says it lies in the nature of the social hierarchy. He divides literate societies into those dominated by hereditary social orders and those whose social orders are much more open. India is an example of the former and China an example of the latter. Indian civilization is rich in legends and myths but poor in factual narrative or a sense of history; with China, it is the reverse. India is a caste-ridden society; China, by contrast, is well known for the fluid boundaries of its social structure. India's high caste members are endowed with supernatural characteristics which set them rigorously apart from ordinary human beings. The supernatural or divine character of the ruling elite is supported by fabulous genealogy and stories. A Brahman's status lies in his birth, not in personal merit and a career of achievement: his own personal traits and biography are overshadowed by the all important fact of birth. In contrast, the status of a high Chinese official rests on his merit

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and virtue, attained through proper education in the Confucian classics. Indeed, even the semi-mystical aura that surrounds the person of the emperor depends, ultimately, on his vir tue--his manda te - - ra the r than on the simple fact of royal descent. For these reasons, the Chinese have shown sustained interest in the rise and fall of individuals, families and dynasties. They feel they have to know; otherwise, how can the orderly processes of society and their own position in it be maintained?

Rather than rest content with a comparison of the Indian and Chinese case, Brown takes the reader on an ambitious tour of civilizations, which include the ancient Near East, Greek and Roman antiquity, Byzantium, Sassanid Persia, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. In almost every instant, wherever sufficient historical materials exist, Brown's thesis appears to be upheld. Brown argues for a logical connection between hereditary hierarchical society and a lack of interest in a realistic portrayal of the past: the one entails the other. I should add that Brown makes no value judgement. He does not say that one form of society is to be preferred over another. After all, f rom the viewpoint of human creativity, :fabulous stories have as much merit as stories that have been constructed closer to the facts. Moreover, "open" does not mean democratic; an open society can be democratic, but it can also be despot ic- - that is, ruled by a despot with the support of a vast bureaucracy run by men of talent whose careers can rise or fall.

Donald Brown is an anthropologist trained in archival research. In striking contrast to a fashionable school of anthropological thought, which sees cultures and histories as unique and therefore incommensurable, Brown demonstrates how cultures and types of human consciousness can be compared so as to yield new knowledge--new insight--into not only the individual cultures themselves but also into human nature. Brown shows that one can talk about human nature without descending to fatuous generalities. It is a bold new generalization to say that open societies, whether despotic or democratic, favor historical scholarship and realistic story-telling, for both are necessarily concerned with social mobi l i ty- - tha t is, with the curves of success and failure in human lives and institutions. It is also a bold new generalization to say that in all stratified societies, whether hereditary or open, people show a decided inclination to boast about their genealogy, even though in an open society genealogical pride conflicts with pride in success that is the result of an individual's own effort and good fortune.

University of Wisconsin-Madison YI-Fu TUAN

GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB, The New History and the Old (London: Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp. + 209. s

Most o f the essays in this collection have a whiff of breakfast coffee about them. They are the kind that remain to be read in the Times Literary Supplement or the New York Review of Books after the more important items have been dealt with, the ones one always intends to read later, but somehow seldom does. There is a chance to catch up, though for the most part it is hardly worth the time or effort.

Although some of the essays deal with British and European subjects, they have for the most part appeared in journals written for a non-specialist United States public. There are uncomfortable moments for British readers, especially in an essay entitled "The Englishness of England" which discusses an England which is sometimes England, sometimes Great Britain and sometimes "Britain (with the exception of Ireland)" (p. 135). There are also puzzling moments, as when Professor Himmelfarb points out that "knights are excluded from the House of Lords"; had they not been, there would perhaps have been no need for a House of Commons? But most of the book is concerned with questions which bridge national boundaries and the Atlantic Ocean.

The book 's title, the introductory essay and several later essays posit a division, indeed a conflict, between two kinds of history, the new and the old. Neither is clearly defined,