best men." Such an ideal adjustment can not become speedily prevalent; but a few successful efforts "might be the germs of a spreading organization. Admission to them would be the goal of working-class ambition. They would tend continually to absorb the superior, leaving outside the inferior to work as wage-earners; and the first would slowly grow at the expense of the last. Obviously, too, the growth would become increasingly rapid; since the master-and-workman type could not withstand competition with-this co-operative type, so much more productive and costing so much less in superintendence."
For the present, Mr. Spencer sees the rhythmic principle exemplified in all evolutionary processes carrying us inevitably toward a régime of socialistic experimentation. Militantism is reviving in Europe and America. Equality is the ideal of the modern statesman, economist, and politician, rather than liberty. "There is small objection to coercion if all are equally coerced." This process can only be arrested by a great spread of co-operative production, which is not probable. Nations may perish, civilizations may decay, under this downward tendency. How long it will last and what will ultimately check it we can not now foresee. The processes of evolution will go on, however, gradually ultimating in that complete adaptation of human nature to the social state which is its ideal end and aim. This end will be proximated and preceded by a federation of nations whereby wars will be prevented and "the rebarbarization which is continually undoing civilization" will come to an end. Peace is the essential condition to that equilibrium between inner faculties and outer requirements, between man and society, which will constitute the final stage of human evolution. By a faith in eternal principles as constant and exalted as that of the religious saint, Mr. Spencer sees beyond the reversion implied in present downward tendencies the vision of man finally triumphant over false theories and the delusions of ignorance, at last completely fulfilling the demands of his higher nature in the organization of a society which may well be likened to the kingdom of heaven foretold by the founder of Christianity. May we not hope that the treaty of arbitration between Great Britain and the United States will constitute an initial step in the direction of this better day?
We have received a couple of attractively got up books, one on Angling and one on Hunting,[1] which are apparently the first two of a new series, to be called the "Out-of-door Library." The books are made up of short papers by different writers, all of which have appeared in Scribner's Magazine. The stories are for the most part accounts of trips to special regions famed for some particular game. The first chapter in Angling is a discourse on fly fishing. The Land of the Winanische is the account of a fishing trip to Lake St. John and its surroundings, where, it seems, the winanische or ouinaniche is localized. Nepigon River fishing, striped and black sea bass, and tarpon fishing in Florida are accounts of similar excursions. A chapter on American game fishes, and finally one on Izaak Walton, which describes his home and fishing grounds in Dovedale, complete the volume on angling. Hunting contains eight chapters. The first one, entitled Hunting American Big Game, is an account of the game conditions in Wyoming some fifteen or twenty years ago. Camping and Hunting in the Shoshone gives a general description of the Rocky Mountain scenery in this district, and describes exciting incidents from a number of hunting trips which the
- ↑ The Out-of-door Library. Angling, pp. 305, $1.50. Hunting, pp. 337, $1.50. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
