SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 847 



works of eacli of the greater ancient nations looking toward sometliing it 

 could not quite attain ; taken up and carried on by some other people, 

 which still fell short of the yet higher aim set before it, and so on. " Egyp- 

 tian thought was characterized by crass confusion," analyzed nothing, had 

 no clearness or consistency or power to discriminate and classify. Its 

 ethics consequently remained unsystematized precept, and, " with all the 

 picturesque elaborateness of a future life, no thought of spiritual immor- 

 tality was reached." All its art and literature and religion, as we have 

 them, point to this conclusion. In Babylonia the earliest Sumerian and 

 Accadiau peoples were subdued by the stroiiger but less cultivated Semite?, 

 who acquired their civilization and built upon it one distinguished by the 

 strength and practical intelligence of its toil, which was sustained for 

 twenty centuries. Then came the Assyrians, whose ideal was power and 

 who created nothing. The Chinese had a mighty power of industry, with 

 docility to national government, and the faculty of ethical formulation 

 which produced their classics and their distinctive modes of thought. The 

 Aryans of India possessed qualities of mind and spirit out of the reach of 

 all these peoples, with a turn to philosophic thought, and were able to pro- 

 duce the Vedas, the Brahmanic philosophy, and its reaction. Buddhism. 

 Those of Iran developed the ideas of a dual warfare between good and evil, 

 with the final triumph of the good and of life over death, with the "grand 

 and spiritual " conception of the supreme Lord of Good revealing himself to 

 his prophet. The Greeks sought logical consistency, the highest beauty in 

 things physical and mental, to make the most of life in its manifold aspects, 

 and to get the most out of it. The Romans consolidated and exalted the 

 family and the state, built uj) institutions, systematized the law, and con- 

 structed enduring public works, but originated little. The Hebrews held 

 the conception of God, " one living personal, righteous, immediate in his 

 governance of the world he made ; and the supplementing thought of man 

 created in his image, bound to obey his will and imitate his ways. The 

 development and the greatening of the Hebrew personality was to lie in 

 the enlargement of the thought of God, and in the endeavor to conform 

 human conduct to his will and ways ever more largely kno^vn." Finally 

 came Christianity, including and setting forth the highest and farthest 

 possibilities of life ; affording scope for the inclusion of all qualities and 

 capacities of mankind, and for the development of the whole man in the 

 service of God ; predicating veritable relations between God and man ; and 

 touching and ordering all things in man's daily life. 



All the world admires an adventurous spirit, and no one to-day holds a 

 higher place in the world's esteem on this account than Fridtiof Nan sen. 

 The personality of this young man of thirty-five, who has already accom- 

 plished tbe only crossing of Greenland by a Eui'opean and has at one 

 leap advanced the farthest north point of arctic explorers by nearly three 

 degrees, could not fail to be of deep interest, and the interest increases the 

 more one knows of him. A fittingly picturesque account of his life and 

 labors has been brought out in a handsome volume by the Messrs. Long- 

 mans.* His biographers show us clearly that Nansen has always had 



* Fridtiof Nansen, 1861-1893. By W. C. BrOgger and Nordahl Rolfsen. Translated by William 

 Archer. London, New York, and Bombay : Longmans, Green fc Co. Pp. 402, 8vo. Price, $4. 



