in the main good. Here the work is least anachronistic. We are glad to see that Dr. McCosh enunciates clearly that sensation and perception go together, there being no sensation without perception. We wish he had also made evident the fact that there can be no perception without representation. There is some useful information in the finer print notes, and the student ought not to overlook it. This last is true of other parts of the book as well.
However much fault we may be disposed to find with this treatise, considered as a scientific account of the cognitive powers, we think no one can deny that it contains much valuable moral didactic. The dangers of novel-reading are vividly portrayed; "some even of our Sabbath-school stories" tend "to dissipate and weaken the mind." Attention is called to the fact that "those who would allure the thoughtless know well how to set off sin and folly by theatrical accompaniments, by the setting of cut flowers which look pretty by night, but which are faded on the morrow"; and warnings are uttered in great profusion against evil habits of all sorts. This is, of course, very excellent. It makes the book a safe one to put in the hands of youth. It also adds to its merit that we can unreservedly say, as the critic whom Leslie Stephen quotes in the preface to his "Science of Ethics" remarked of Dr. Watts's sermons, that there is nothing in President McCosh's work "calculated to call a blush to the cheek of modesty."
Manual Training. By Charles H. Ham. New York: Harper & Brothers. Pp. 403, with Illustrations.
Mr. Ham is evidently an enthusiastic believer in the full efficacy and competency of manual training—habitude in the use of tools and the execution of designs—to work out the solution of social and industrial problems. He regards tools as the great civilizing agency of the world; believes that "it is through the arts alone that all branches of learning find expression, and touch human life"; and accepts as the true definition of education "the development of all the powers of man to the culminating point of action; and this power in the concrete—the power to do some useful thing for man—this must be the last analysis of educational truth." A study of the methods of the manual training department of Washington University at St. Louis brought him to the conclusion that the philosopher's stone in education had been discovered there. He wrote constantly on the subject for three years, and in the mean time the Chicago Manual Training-School was established. The account of this institution and its operations forms the basis of this work, which includes also a kind of general survey of the whole theory and histery of education from the point of view which the author has described himself as occupying. In the book are included descriptions of the various laboratory class processes of the Chicago school during the course of three years; arguments to prove that tool practice is highly promotive of intellectual growth, and in a still higher degree of the upbuilding of character; a sketch of the historical period, in order to show that the decay of civilization and the destruction of social organisms have resulted directly from defects in methods of education; and a brief sketch of the history of manual training as an educational force. The disposition to exalt the "new education," which is one of the most striking characteristics of this book, is deserving of all honor. That education, most men will admit, has been too much neglected in our times, and is unappreciated and discouraged to-day by the very men who ought to be most interested in upholding it—the artisans themselves, as represented by their trades-unions. It is well for it to have an advocate whose heart is full of it. Another disposition, and a still more striking characteristic of the book, is not so commendable: we mean the disposition to decry the old education and its fruits. To say that the value to man of the services of such a statesman as Mr. Gladstone—who is undoubtedly one of the best fruits of the old system of education—is relatively unimportant, while that of Mr. Bessemer's services is "enormous, incalculable," is rank nonsense; and this we may say without underrating the benefit mankind have derived from Mr. Bessemer's invention. The old education, which has given us Mr. Gladstone and the statesmen, and numerous artists and illustrious invent-
