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of civilization; and the data are given by which to forecast the stupendous future of the English race, not only on this continent, but throughout the world.

Although written with sobriety, to be submitted to the critical judgment of a cultivated audience, yet these lectures are a good deal stirring and stimulating in their effect upon the reader's mind. This is due both to the charm of the presentation and to the magnitude of the elements of the author's imposing theme. "The stand-point of universal history" affords an exciting outlook, and Mr. Fiske gives his readers a clear command of the position. The author of "Cosmic Philosophy," with whom the conception of universal evolution has become part of his mental constitution, is well prepared to handle historical questions in the fullest breadth of their bearings, and the interest of the present book is chiefly derived from this preparation of its author. It may, in fact, be commended as a specially instructive study in political evolution. This is well explained by Mr. Fiske in the following prefatory passage:

In the three lectures now published I have endeavored to illustrate some of the fundamental ideas of American politics, by setting forth their relations to the general history of mankind. It is impossible thoroughly to grasp the meaning of any group of facts in any department of study until we have duly compared them with allied groups of facts; and the political history of the American people can be rightly understood only when it is studied in connection with that general process of political evolution which has been going on from the earliest times, and of which it is itself one of the most important and remarkable phases. The government of the United States is not the result of special creation, but of evolution. As the town meetings of New England are lineally descended from the village assemblies of the early Aryans; as our huge Federal Union was long ago foreshadowed in the little leagues of Greek cities and Swiss cantons—so the great political problem which we are (thus far successfully) solving is the very same problem upon which all civilized peoples have been working ever since civilization began. How to insure peaceful concerted action throughout the whole, without infringing upon local and individual freedom in the parts, this has ever been the chief aim of civilization viewed on its political side; and we rate the failure or success of nations 'politically according to their failure or success in attaining this supreme end. When thus considered in the light of the comparative method, our American history acquires added dignity and interest, and a broad and rational basis is secured for the detailed treatment of political questions.

The Nature and Reality of Religion. A Controversy between Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer. With an Introduction, Notes, and an Appendix on the Religious Value of the Unknowable, by Count D'Alviella. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1885. Pp. 218. Price, cloth, $1; paper, 50 cents.

That there is a "chaos of discordant opinion" in the religious world is a common remark, and, superficially regarded, the remark is true enough. There are divers great religious systems accepted by vast multitudes which exemplify profound diversities of belief; and these systems are broken up into sects innumerable, all marked by divergences of religious opinion. Yet this state of thought is by no means a "chaos"; there are order and law in it. Religious phenomena exhibit their predictable sequences of cause and effect. It may be counted on that people generally will stick to the faith into which they were born, and to the sect in which they were brought up, regardless of any question of the rationality of the creed they hold. Indeed, the tenacity with which, generation after generation, they cling to the accidental tenets they inherit, is an element of order which gives to religious organizations their stability and permanence.

Yet the condition of the religious world is by no means one of absolute immobility and stagnation. To the degree in which the human mind is active, religion shares the result. While many are quiescent, a few are ever inquiring, and, with increasing enlightenment and growing knowledge, the superstitious element in religion gradually diminishes and disappears. This, too, is an orderly change, and goes on in the religious world by the established laws of progress.

Such controversies as those of Spencer and Harrison are, hence, quite in the course of things. With whatever considerations of personality they may be mixed up, they are products of religious advancement, and still further contributions to it. The present discussion, however, is of more than usual significance, as it is not occupied with incidental but with fundamental religious questions. The conception of progress in religion is unquestionably revolutionizing and destructive, and no problem is more profound or momentous than that which