to logic—to science and to law." In the present volume he proposes a new theory of trance, and considers its bearings on human testimony. Trance—whether natural as somnambulism, or self-produced as by so-called "trance-speakers"—results from activity of a portion of the brain-substance while the remainder sleeps: this is the "Involuntary Life." In this state men see visions, receive revelations, and have ecstasies, after the manner of Mohammed, the mediæval saints, and Swedenborg.
Oriental Religions and their Relations to Universal Religion.—China. By Samuel Johnson. Boston: Osgood & Co. Pp. 975. Price, $5.
The author of this work is an Oriental scholar of fine accomplishments, and a philosophical student of theology in a very broad and liberal sense. He is a transcendentalist, and like Emerson and Ripley he formerly preached, but like those worthies he outgrew the function of pulpit teacher, but only to devote himself more assiduously to the pen. Starting with the religious problem of humanity, and treating it with the freedom and boldness of the transcendentalist, Mr. Johnson was soon carried beyond the narrow boundaries of the faith he had inherited, and was powerfully drawn to the consideration of those ancient religions of the East which are celebrated alike for their antiquity, the vast multitudes of their believers, and the philosophical interest of their doctrines and dogmas. This line of inquiry had such fascination for Mr. Johnson, and seemed so full of promise as a source of enlargement and a more catholic spirit to Christian thinkers, that he resolved, twenty years ago, to devote himself to the exposition of the Oriental faiths in connection with the life of the Eastern peoples, for the advantage of English readers.
In 1872 he published the first volume of this research on the "Faiths, Religions, Philosophy, and Life of India," as a contribution to the natural history of religion. His point of view was rational and scientific, and he delineated the characteristics of the Hindoo mind, its traditions and social forms, its piety and morality, and the speculative principles, ethics, and humanities of Buddhism, with a deep sympathy for the human elements involved, but with the same disciplined coolness of temper with which Herschel explored the heavens, and Lyell investigated the crust of the earth. "I have written," he says, "not as the advocate of Christianity or any other distinctive religion, but as attracted on the one hand by the identity of the religious sentiment under all its great historic forms, and on the other by the movement indicated in their diversities and contrasts toward a higher plane of unity on which their exclusive claims shall disappear."
The second volume in the same line of study how appears, and is devoted to China. This is especially opportune, now that we have the Chinese problem upon us in so imminent a form on the Pacific coast. The Californians will deal with it in the light of race-prejudice, and in its passionate and sordid aspects; but the intelligent mind of the country will desire to inform itself regarding the real character of this extraordinary people. To all who are thus inclined Mr. Johnson's volume will be full of grave instruction. It is not a mere superficial delineation of Chinese life, such as a traveler would give us who had been Impressed by its sensuous aspects, but it is an analysis of the Chinese mind, an ethnic study, and the survey of a civilization. Education, government, language, literature, history, and poetry, are taken up systematically in the division of "structures," and an immense amount of most important information is here compactly presented. It is of but little use to talk to Americans about education anywhere else in the world; yet, as we are rapidly sliding into the Chinese system of education by state control, our people might profitably look into the working of that system where it has had prolonged trial and worked out its legitimate consequences.
Mr. Johnson has not failed to point an incidental moral in this direction. He says: "Chu-tsze defines learning as imitation—conformity to a prescribed standard; and in these schools even organization holds an inferior place to the mere act of 'repeating after the teacher, each by himself, in a shrill voice, rocking to and fro.' This perfect image of automatism is not without resemblance to the arrangements into graded
