ject upon those engaged in education, to show its disciplinary value, and to give important hints and suggestions as to how it may be mo?t successfully pursued. Notwithstanding all the discussion there has been as to whether political economy is a true science or not, or as to the validity or relative superiority of its different methods, the subject is one which engages wide attention and is of foremost interest and importance. It deals with what is going on and must continue to go on in society under good or bad guidance, and where knowledge is certainly better than ignorance. The author has therefore done an excellent and necessary thing in showing students how they can best proceed in informing themselves on political economy, whether they wish merely to get an acquaintance with its rudiments or to master the subject. He gives the list of a teacher's library selected from English, French, and German author?, which can not fail to prove useful.
Philosophic Series. By James McCosh, D. D., LL. D. Nos. I to VIII, 50 to 70 page pamphlets. New York; Charles Scribner's Sons. Price, 50 cents each.
It was a very happy conception of the able President of Princeton College and distinguished metaphysician. Dr. McCosh, to take up the most urgent and interesting philosophical questions of the time, and treat them in the popular way here adopted. There can be no doubt that philosophical speculation has a good deal about it that is progressive. As long as thinkers shut themselves up to such pure metaphysical elaborations as they can carry on in the restricted sphere of consciousness, the resulting movement will be round and round rather than an advance or ascent; but, when they seize the conception of philosophy in its broader aspects, and connect it with those large questions of Nature and life which have come into such prominence in recent times, a distinctively forward movement is the result. When such great new principles as the conservation of energy or the law of development are projected into the philosophical field, and their import is recognized by the speculative mind, onward movements which can be regarded as nothing less than a new departure are the inevitable consequence. Dr. McCosh is not the narrow type of man to blink or to belittle the significance of these mighty ideas which have been forced upon philosophy by modern science; he not only meets them, but he welcomes them as priceless contributions to knowledge, to be perhaps yet further interpreted and qualified, but, neither to be feared nor resisted. Aside from his mastery of general philosophical subjects, and his familiarity as a scholar with the history of speculation, his knowledge of science and his sympathy with it, and his thorough aquaintance with the critical issues which have become prominent in the thought of this generation, especially qualify Dr. McCosh to give instructivenesa to such a series of essays as he has here undertaken.
No formal review of the work is here practicable; we can only indicate his successive topics. No. I considers "Criteria of Diverse Kinds of Truth, as opposed to Agnosticism." No. II, "Energy: Efficient and Final Cause." No. Ill, "Development: What it can do, and what it can not do." No. IV, "Certitude, Providence, and Prayer." No. V, "Locke's Theory of Knowledge, with a Notice of Berkeley." No. VI, "Agnosticism of Hume and Huxley, with a Notice of the Scotch School." No. VII, "A Criticism of the Critical Philosophy." No. VIII, "Herbert Spencer's Philosophy as culminated in his Ethics."
President McCosh is a Doctor of Divinity, and the course of topics in this discussion shows that it has been prepared with reference to its theological bearings. But the controversial element is moderate in tone, and is subordinate to the expository element. We commend the pamphlets for the clearness and instructiveness of their teachings on philosophical questions, without being at all committed to the author's conclusions respecting theology or morality. On these points he seems often to betray the weakness of the thorough-going partisan of a dogmatic system.
Special Report of the State Inspector (Minnesota) of Oils on the Illuminating Quality of Oils. By Henry A. Castle. St. Paul. Pp. 24.
The inspector relates that frequent and numerous complaints came to him during 1884 of the inferior illuminating powers and
