SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE, 



703 



with, its rules. Do we employ luna- 

 tics as architects, as engineers, as 

 analysts ? Do we ask them to plead 

 cases in court, to write books of sci- 

 ence, to manage business affairs ? 

 Or, passing over lunatics, do we seek 

 out persons of confessedly mean in- 

 telligence for these purposes ? Is 

 not all work good precisely in pro- 

 portion to the amount of correct and 

 rational thought that is embodied in 

 it ? If a bridge breaks down, or a 

 house collapses, or a ship is lost at 

 sea, or a railway disaster happens, or 

 a fire sweeps through a town, or an 

 epidemic gains headway, do we ever 

 say that an excess of reason was 

 chargeable with the calamity ? Or 

 do we, as we investigate the causes, 

 say that here or here there was some 

 defect of knowledge, thought, atten- 

 tion, vigilance, common sense some 

 defect of reason, in short ? The 

 question does not call for an answer, 

 seeing that every one knows that 

 what we need to get into human af- 

 fairs is more and more reason, more 

 and more intelligence, more and 

 more of the spirit of science. But if, 

 M. Tery says, we are in spite of 

 everything to trust to the irrational 

 or Mr. Kidd's supra-rational, who is 



to interpret it for us ? There are 

 many brands of the irrational, and 

 doubtless just as many of the supra- 

 rational. Who is to pick out the 

 particular one that suits our circum- 

 stances and needs ? Surely, reason 

 is not to be called upon to decide in 

 what direction we are to forsake its 

 guidance and what precise species 

 of unreason we are to surrender our- 

 selves to. We should be able to look 

 to the gentlemen who tell us how 

 unsafe a guide reason is; but there 

 is nothing they so pointedly decline 

 to do as to give us any practical help 

 whatever. The conclusion of the 

 matter seems to be that of all the 

 fads of the present day the weakest 

 and silliest is that which prompts 

 men otherwise intelligent to dispar- 

 age reason and its realized outcome, 

 science. A fitting punishment, were 

 it possible, would be to confine such 

 persons for a certain period to an ex- 

 clusive diet of the irrational and the 

 supra-rational. If their wits sur- 

 vived the ordeal, they would return 

 to ordinary conditions with a de- 

 vouter thankfulness for the gift of 

 reason, and for all the works of rea- 

 son, than they probably ever experi- 

 enced in their lives before. 



^titxxXiiit %i\txKinxt. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



The completion of Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy * is the most 

 noteworthy recent event in the field of scientific literature. More than 

 forty years have elapsed since Mr. Spencer enunciated the doctrine of evo- 

 lution in the first edition of the Principles of Psychology, preceding by 

 several years the great work of Darwin on the Origin of Species. Nearly 

 thirty-seven years have gone by since the plan of the Synthetic Philosophy 

 was definitely formulated, soon followed by the publication of First Prin- 

 ciples. The accomplishment of the Herculean task then outlined is hardly 

 less marvelous than was its projection at a time when, as Mr. Spencer ex- 



*The Principles of Sociology, vol. iii. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 

 1897. Pp. 645. 



