The Morals of Evolution. By M. J. Savage, author of "The Religion of Evolution." Boston: George H. Ellis. Pp. 191. Price, $1.
We congratulate Mr. Savage, first of all, on his standpoint in the treatment of moral questions. He has at once taken' the advanced and unassailable ground that ethics is properly a branch of science to be investigated like all other kinds of knowledge, and that it forms no anomaly or sacred exception in relation to that common method by which truth of all kinds is sought and established. He is hampered by no restraints of authority in inquiring into the grounds and sanctions of right conduct, but discusses problems in the full freedom of reason and under the profound conviction that only in this way can an authoritative and well-based moral system ever be attained by man. And Mr. Savage uses his freedom with the best effect. He throws much light upon the practical aspects of the subject from the new point of view, and shows the adequacy of the canons of natural morality for guidance in the conduct of life. He makes no claim to work out a rigorous ethical scheme, but contents himself with a popular exposition of the principles of right and wrong action as they are affected by the progress of knowledge and those new views of the nature of man which evolution has forced upon the attention of the world. His style is familiar, his illustrations apposite, and his reasoning clear and forcible. His book will be found helpful and instructive to many minds, and the same thing may be said of the course of liberal sermons which he has delivered from the Unity pulpit in Boston, and which are printed as a series of neat tracts. The contents of the present volume at first took this form of pulpit discourses; and it is encouraging that at least one large congregation has been found sufficiently intelligent and liberal not only to tolerate, but to accept and appreciate them.
Brain and Mind; or, Mental Science considered in accordance with the Principles of Phrenology, and in Relation to Modern Physiology. By Henry S. Drayton, A. M., and James McNeill. New York: S. R. Wells & Co. 1880. Pp. 334. Price, 1.50.
The authors here give a restatement of phrenology, with a great many cuts of heads, and a claim that the phrenological system has been affiliated upon the principles of the later physiology. It is generally considered that the results of the most modern researches into the nervous system contravene phrenological doctrine as formerly expounded. How far they are capable of reconciliation we will not undertake to say, but if anybody is interested, and will get this book, he will be in possession of perhaps the latest attempt at harmonization.
Sea-Sickness. By George M. Beard, A. M., M. D. New York: E. B. Treat & Co. 1880. Pp. 74. Price, 50 cents.
In this little work Dr. Beard has made a careful study of this distressing malady, and advances a theory of its nature, which, he claims, harmonizes with all the facts, and a mode of treatment which is effective. He holds that it is a "functional disease of the central nervous system, mainly of the brain, but in some cases of the spinal cord also." The symptoms, which he says have never been before clearly described, he gives as headache, backache, nausea without vomiting, vomiting, pain in the eyes, constipation and diarrhœa, menstrual suppression, hopelessness and mental depression, temporary abnormal appetite, neuralgic pains, chilliness with flashes of heat, sleeplessness, and nervous exhaustion. These symptoms are all due to the agitation of the nervous system by the motion of the ship. This view of the disease is quite at variance with the popular and even professional one, which has regarded it as an affection of the stomach and digestive apparatus. Among the considerations brought forward by Dr. Beard in support of his view is the fact that the very young and the very old are seldom or never troubled with it. "It is," he says, "the disease of active cerebral life, between fifteen and sixty-five," being in this respect like sick-headache, which we now know to be a nervous affection. In further support of this theory, observation shows the delicate, finely-organized, and nervous to be more liable to sea-sickness than the strong and phlegmatic. The treatment advocated by Dr. Beard is based upon this view of the nervous character of the disease. It consists in giving such remedies before and during the attack as will reduce the sensitiveness of the central nervous system. He
