aggregate must inevitably depend upon the character of the constituent units. A biological and psychological analysis of the human being was therefore an essential preliminary to the study of man in his social relations. Mr. Spencer took up this problem in its widest aspect in his "Principles of Biology" and his "Principles of Psychology," to each of which he devotes two elaborate volumes. In these comprehensive works the whole series of problems in human nature, which are preliminary to the science of society, is exhaustively treated; so that these works are nothing more nor less than broad systematic contributions to the science of human character.
More than this, the new point of view assumed in all of Spencer's philosophic books had explicit reference to the true understanding of the constitution of human nature. The law of evolution, as postulated and developed in "First Principles," and carried out in the subsequent works, gave a new interpretation of the nature of man. He is there considered in his total character as a product of slow-working natural agencies, internal and external, by which he has been developed and modified so as to become adapted to a progressive social state. This great law was worked out as a key to the right understanding of human character, and in subordination to a development of a true science of human society. Thus, in the logical line of his inquiry, each essential step in the elucidation of the law of evolution, the exposition of the laws of life and the laws of mind, had a definite and positive bearing upon social problems, simply by extending and giving greater method and validity to the science of human character.
But, although Spencer has contributed in this extensive way toward the establishment of the principles of human nature, physical and mental, which form the science of character, yet he is the last man to make any pretense to the discovery of such a science. Only an ignoramus devoured with egotism could put forth the preposterous claim that he had made the discovery of a science which is in reality but the summation of the scientific labors of multitudes of men in many successive ages.
Ideological Etymology; or, a New Method in the Study of Words. By Stephen Pearl Andrews.
Elements of Universology: An Introduction to the Study of Philosophy and the Sciences. With Special Reference to the Science of Music. By Stephen Pearl Andrews. New York: S. P. Lathrop & Co.
The first of these little works was noticed by us when it first came out as a paper read before the American Philological Association at its Newport meeting. It purports to be a demonstration that there is a new and heretofore untried method in glottological study, and that the meanings of all the several hundred root-words of the Indo-European family of languages are reducible to no more than three mother ideas. These views are a part of that extensive system of thought which Mr. Andrews has been engaged for many years in elaborating. He claims to have originated and developed a universal science—a science of the sciences—to which, as is generally known, he gives the name of "Universology." Having taken up this point of view, and arrived, as he maintains, at that which is both universal and fundamental in science, Mr. Andrews then proceeded to make this the basis of a new language, equally scientific and universal, which he names "Alwato." The claim is put forth by the adherents of Mr. Andrews—Universologists and Alwatoists, as they avow themselves—that there is a wonderful originality and an immeasurable importance in this new system; and they hold that its immensity alone has repelled investigation and hindered the progress of the new ideas and discoveries. But they insist that, in the claims which have been made, no exaggeration has occurred, and that we have really in these works of Mr. Andrews noth-
