Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/729

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LITERARY NOTICES.
711

eral Courts; with reviews of the relations of the Supreme Court with Congress, the State Legislatures and Judiciaries, and the Executive; the Supreme Court and politics; the present condition and needs of the Supreme Court; and the conclusion, resulting in the assertion that it should be a matter of special congratulation that "of all our great institutions the Supreme Court is most distinctly the product of American genius, and that its success is a direct testimony to the high political ability of our American people."

Bulletin No. 6 of the Eleventh Census is a preliminary statement of the Financial Condition of Counties. It has been prepared by Special Agent T. C. Copeland, and shows the bonded, floating, gross, and net debt, sinking fund, available resources, and annual interest charge of each county in the United States. The Bulletin contains also a series of maps illustrating the geographical distribution of county debt and resources. Bulletin No. 19 gives partial results of an inquiry into the Vital Statistics of the Jews in the United Stales, conducted by Dr. John S. Billings. A discussion of the tables by Dr. Billings brings out the apparent fact that the birth-rate is decreasing and the death-rate increasing among the Jews with prolonged residence in this country.

Economic subjects are being written upon to-day by thoughtful men in every calling. A recent addition to the volume of literature thus produced is The Distribution of Wealth, by Rufus Cope (Lippincott, $2). It embodies the author's opinions on the production of wealth, its division between labor and capital, savings, interest, taxation, protection and free trade, monopolies, and allied topics, closing with a chapter on education of the people, secular and religious. It also contains full and free comments on certain recent books and magazine articles, and in some cases the writers are criticised as well as their published views. On the question at present most prominent—the tariff—the author takes the position of an apologist for protection. Throughout the volume his statistics are for the most part those of the census of 1880, although his table of tariff revenues is only three years old. From education, he hopes that the working classes will gain much in the way of bettering their condition.

A quarterly magazine called The Monist has been established, with the stated object of continuing a portion of the work hitherto done by The Open Court (The Open Court Publishing Company, $2 a year), or of developing "a unitary conception of the world, free from contradictions and based upon the facts of life." A result which is expected to flow from the. accomplishment of this task is a purification of our religious ideals. The opening article of the first number is a reply by G. J. Romanes to certain statements of A. R. Wallace on Physiological Selection. The line of this reply is that Mr. Wallace has professed hostility to the views of Mr. Romanes and Mr. Gulick, and afterward reproduced them as original. Prof. Cope contributes an analysis of The Material Relations of Sex in Human Society, from which he draws the conclusion that, while woman is under some social disadvantages in respect to man, these are based on facts of nature which can not be changed, and that she has a full equivalent in advantages which are also derived from the natural order of things. Other articles in the number are The Immortality of Infusoria, by Alfred Binet; The Analysis of the Sensations—Anti-metaphysical, by Prof. Ernst Mach; The Origin of Mind, by Dr. Paul Carus; The Magic Mirror, by Max Dessoir; and Höffding on the Relation of the Mind to the Body, by W. M. Salter. There is also an installment of Literary Correspondence from France, by Lucien Arreat, a department of book reviews, a conspectus of the instruction in philosophy given at leading American colleges, and a list of psychological and philosophical articles in other periodicals.

Inquirendo Island, by Hudor Genone (Twentieth Century Publishing Company, $1), is a satirical story dealing with theological matters. Extracts from reviews on the slip sent out by the publishers show the religious press to be divided as to whether the book is religious or irreligious.

The Standard Dictionary of the English Language, to be published by Funk & Wagnalls, is intended to be such a dictionary as the people will find most useful for daily consultation. While the wants of scholars will not be overlooked in its preparation,