operated by private companies. Mr. Baker does not favor the same procedure in the case of monopolies in trade and manufacturing. But he would legalize them, and then force them to let daylight in upon their operations and agreements, and apply to them the principle of non-discrimination.
Aryan Sun-Myths the Origin of Religions (Nims & Knight) is the title of a book designed to show that the mythology of this great primitive race is the parent of the chief modern religions, just as the race itself is the parent of the peoples who hold these religions. In the Aryan mythology we have the immaculate conception, from which the son of heaven, the sun, is born, at the time of the December solstice. We have the twelve signs of the zodiac as his disciples; his temptation, persecution, and execution. There is a descent of the sun into hades, when he enters the sign Capricornus and appears to remain three days at his lowest point. The Aryans observed baptism, sacrifice, and the eucharist, and the doctrines of original sin and the fallen condition of man were not unknown to them. When we come down to the Hindus, who have written religious records, we find the same features and more. So also among the Persians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Greeks, the Scandinavians, and the ancient Mexicans. Some of the same ideas are found among other ancient nations of the Old World, and among the American Indians. "Ancestral and other systems of worship," says Mr. Charles Morris, in the introduction which he contributes to the volume, "have influenced religious practice and ceremony to a marked extent, but have had much less to do with the growth of dogma than the intricate details of the history of the gods, to which the numerous phenomena of nature gave rise. Over religious belief the sun has exercised a dominant influence, and still faintly yet distinguishably shines through the most opaquely obscure of modern theological dogmas."
In a paper on Teaching School Children to Think (D. Appleton & Co.), Prof. George B. Newcomb discusses first the question, "What is the capacity and exercise of the mind which is indicated by the terms 'thought' and 'thinking'?" He shows that in the reaction from the old mechanical drill we should avoid going to the opposite extreme of taxing the child's mind beyond its powers. The faculty of thinking is a growth, and needs to be dealt with according to the stage of development it has reached. Capacity to form abstract ideas and reason consecutively does not come at once; "yet long before reasoning, strictly so called, is developed, there is rationality, the exercise of intelligence in unifying the scattered particulars of sense; in correlating facts and lighting up one fact by another"; and it is all alive in the child's mind, in the curiosity that asks the reason why. While children dislike remote abstractions, they are capable of general thought and rational connecting, and make crude attempts at rational synthesis. The manifestations of these faculties may be watched for and taken advantage of and directed as they appear, and the child thus be led gradually up to the habit of rational thought on every subject. This precept partly furnishes the answer to the author's second question, "In what sense or within what limits, if any, should the development of thought be a prominent aim in the training of school children?" A third question, involving the consideration of ways and means for developing rational intelligence in the pupil, is too large for treatment in a single paper; and upon it the author aims only to enunciate broad principles or make helpful suggestions without going into details.
In A Rambler's Lease, Mr. Bradford Torrey, one of the most pleasant of our rural essayists, assumes the position of a leasehold tenant of other people's fields and woods to the extent of the æsthetic enjoyment and opportunities for the study of life and nature that they afford. He therefore makes himself at home in them, and keeps company with the trees and flowers and insects and birds; with some of which he has enjoyed privileges of rarely close association. The present volume contains some of the fruits which he has gathered in these possessions; seemly and agreeable fruits in every way, and flavored with occasional choice grains of wit. In it he introduces us to the wild birds which he has become so intimate with as to feed them by
