of the scope and purpose of Dr. Royce's work. Of its value as a contribution to speculative thought we are not qualified to speak. Cut, turning to Chapter I, in which the author puts the grave question, "What, then, is religion?" we do not find the answer so clear and satisfactory as seems required in stating the fundamental idea of a religio-philosophical system. Religion, according to our author, is something important, vaguely associated with ethics. He says: "So much, at all events, seems sure about religion. It has to do with action. It is impossible without some appearance of moral purpose." Again: "A religion adds something to the moral code, and what it adds is, first, enthusiasm." And again: "But in fact religion always adds another element. Not only does religion teach devotion to a moral code, but the means that it uses to this end include a more or less complex theory of things. Religion says not merely, do and feel, but also believe. . . . These three elements then go to constitute any religion." On this basis, which is at any rate sufficiently comprehensive, and by the help of the great lights of German philosophy—Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Lotze, and others—Dr. Royce builds his system, and in the opinion of able critics he has built to excellent purpose.
The French Revolution. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine. Translated by John Durand. Vol. III. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 509. Price, $2.50.
The present volume gives the history of the revolutionary government, including the Reign of Terror. The author expresses himself in his preface as regarding the leaders in the movements of the time in the same light as he would the crocodiles of the ancient Egyptian temples—dangerous animals, brutes rolling about on a purple carpet, but worshiped in their day. Of his own kinds of "crocodiles" he has studied the details of the structure, the play of the organs, their habits, their modes of living, their faculties, and their appetites. Of the thousands of specimens he had at hand, he has selected a few for special treatment, of which the three largest seem, of their kind, truly remarkable, and those in which the divinity of the day might well incarnate himself. The bills of butchers, as well as housekeeping accounts, authentic and regularly kept, throw sufficient light on the cost of this cult. We can estimate how much the sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years, we know their bills of fare daily, their favorite morsels. Naturally, the god selected the fattest victims, but his voracity was so great that he likewise bolted down, and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater number than the fattest. Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an unfailing effect of the situation, he ate his equals once or twice a year, except when they succeeded in eating him. This cult certainly is instructive, at least to historians and men of pure science." We are told also that "this volume, like the others that have gone before it, is written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of the understanding, for seekers of texts and of proofs—for these and not for the public, whose mind is made up, and which has its own opinion on the Revolution."
The Morals of Christ. By Austin Bierbower. Chicago; Colegrove Book Company. Pp. 200. Price, 50 cents.
"In announcing his morality," says the author, "Christ took three departures from other systems—one from the Mosaic, one from the Pharisaic, and one from the Græco-Roman. . . . In departing from the Mosaic morality, he sought to develop morality from its primitive rudeness and simplicity; in departing from the Pharisaic morality, he sought to recall it from a ritualistic divergence to the proper subjects of morality; and, in departing from the Græco-Roman morality, he sought to substitute the tender for the heroic virtues." The author's purpose in this essay is declared to be to set forth the morality of Christ as a departure from these three representative types, "it being this triple departure, more than anything absolute, on which he put his chief emphasis, and which, more than anything original, characterized his system."
The History of the Present Tariff. 1860-1883. By F. W. Taussig. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, Pp. 111. Price, 75 cents.
This volume is intended to give a narrative of the growth of the protective sys-
