Problems of American Anthropology present themselves to the English Mind"; an essay by Mr. F. A. Seeley on "The Genesis of Inventions"; and a presidential address by J. W. Powell on "From Savagery to Barbarism."
Essays on Educational Reformers. By Robert Hebert Quick. Syracuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 330. Price, 1.50.
The author takes for the motto of his essays the words of Dr. Arnold: "It is clear that, in whatever it is our duty to act, those matters also it is our duty to study." Being a teacher, he considers it his duty to study what has been done to advance the art of teaching, and this he does by studying the lives of those who have introduced new features into the work of teaching and examining their work. In the list are included the schools of the Jesuits, Roger Ascham, Montaigne, Ratich, Milton, Comenius, Locke, Rousseau, Basedow, Pestalozzi, Jacolot, and Herbert Spencer. While the author differs from Mr. Spencer in some of his conclusions, he agrees with him "that we are bound to inquire into the relative value of knowledges, and if we take, as I should willingly do, Mr. Spencer's test, and ask how does this or that knowledge influence action (including in our inquiry its influence on mind and character, through which it bears upon action), I think we should banish from our schools much that has hitherto been taught in them." In a chapter of "Thoughts and Suggestions" a consideration of the ordinary methods of school-teaching leads to the conclusion that in subjects other than classics and mathematics they are very commonly a failure, and a failure the teaching "must remain until boys can be got to work with a will—in other words, to feel an interest in the subjects taught." To this end, and to make the instruction serve its purpose, the effort should be made to teach things rather than words, and of things, not the dry details of the outside, but those points which concern their essence.
The Late Mrs. Null. By Frank R. Stockton. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 437. Price, $1.50.
Mr. Stockton is the author of "Rudder Grange," a short story, or episode, of domestic life, which has been commended in the "Monthly" as full of harmless though somewhat extravagant fun; and he is well known as the successful author of other sketches which furnish enjoyable—though idle—reading. In "The Late Mrs. Null" he attempts a more elaborate story, or "his first novel."
Hobbes. By George Croom Robertson. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons. Pp. 240, with Portrait.
This is the tenth in the series of "Philosophical Classics for English Readers," by various authors, edited by Dr. William Knight, and has been preceded by volumes on Descartes, Butler, Berkeley, Fichte, Kant, Hamilton, Hegel, Leibnitz, and Vico. Whatever may be the merits of Hobbes's work, he has, as the author observes, left a broad mark in the history of the English mind. It is sought in this book to bring together all the previously known or now discoverable facts of his life, and to give some kind of fairly balanced representation of the whole range of his thought, instead of dwelling only upon those humanistic portions of it by which he has commonly been judged. The account of his "System" has been imbedded in the "Life," because, "more than of any other philosopher, it can be said of Hobbes that the key to a right understanding of his thought "is to be found in his personal circumstances and the events of his time." If a man's influence, the author observes in the concluding chapter of the book, and after having related the controversies he provoked, "is to be measured not least by the opposition that he arouses, we have already had proof that few thinkers have left a deeper trace upon their time than Hobbes." It was not only at home that he exerted influence or called forth strenuous hostility, but abroad as well. In England, so far as he has exerted an influence in philosophy proper, "it has been of the indirect kind wrought through psychological science. As psychology has a voice in the determination of ultimate philosophical notions that belongs to no other positive science, Hobbes has done more for philosophy by promoting the positive investigation of mental functions than by the abstract definitions of his own 'First Philosophy,' acutely conceived as these al-
