412 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ity, and all sorts of knowledge were culti- 

 vated under the tuition of the Sophists. 

 Then came Socrates, who largely counter- 

 acted the charlatanry into which the Sophis- 

 tic teaching had degenerated. Our author 

 next discusses the attempt in Plato's Repub- 

 lic to plan a state with a basis in philo- 

 sophic principles, and that of Aristotle, 

 whose basis was inductive reasoning. Both 

 of these he sets down as failures. He then 

 shows how Greek culture was influenced by 

 contact with the two great religions of the 

 Eastern world, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, 

 and with the statesmanship of Rome. In 

 conclusion the author affirms that the Greeks, 

 through their scheme of culture, "not only 

 lifted the world out of barbarism, but it re- 

 quires their influence even to this day to pre- 

 vent it from falling back into the same." 

 What he regards as the error that was fatal 

 to the Greek civilization was placing philos- 

 ophy on the throne that should have been 

 given to religion. This book is designed as 

 a guide in teaching, but if it were itself put 

 into the hands of students it would give 

 more insight into Greek thought than digging 

 out many pages telling what number of par- 

 assangs the army marched day by day or 

 what was done by " wily Odysseus," aided by 

 " ox-eyed Athente." 



The Writings of Thomas Paine. Collected 

 and edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. 

 Volumes II and III. New York : G. P. 

 Putnam's Sons. Price, $2.50 a volume. 



Political and sociological essays make 

 up these two volumes ; Volume II covering 

 the period from 1779 to 1792, and Volume 

 III extending from 1791 to 1803. The most 

 extended of these writings is the Rights of 

 Man, which occupies half of Volume II. 

 The two parts of which it is composed were 

 written in a controversy with Edmund Burke 

 d propos of the French Revolution and em- 

 body a full and careful statement of repub- 

 lican principles. The same volume contains 

 Paine's pamphlet published in 1782 under 

 the title, Letter to the Abbe Raynal, on the 

 affairs of North America : in which the Mis- 

 takes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolu- 

 tion of America are Corrected and Cleared 

 up. Paine was in England or France for 

 fifteen years of the period covered by these 

 volumes, having gone abroad in 1787 to in- 



troduce a form of bridge that he had in- 

 vented. He was active in establishing the 

 French Republic, though opposed to its ex- 

 treme measures, hence many of the essays 

 in both volumes relate to French affairs 

 Among the American questions treated are : 

 The United States Bank, paper money, the 

 Newfoundland fisheries, and the purchase of 

 Louisiana. Paine's religious writings, his 

 poems, and some letters and scientific frag- 

 ments are reserved for the fourth volume. 



Proceedings of the Society for Psychical 

 Research. Part XXVI. Dr. Richard 

 Hodgson, 5 Boylston Place, Boston, Mass., 

 American Secretary. Pp. 466. 



This number of the society's Proceedings 

 is mainly occupied by the Report of the Cen- 

 sus of Hallucinations taken by a committee 

 of which Prof. Henry Sidgwick was chair- 

 man. Seventeen thousand answers were ob- 

 tained to the question, " Have you ever, when 

 believing yourself to be completely awake, 

 had a vivid impression of seeing or being 

 touched by a living being or inanimate ob- 

 ject, or of hearing a voice ; which impres- 

 sion, so far as you could discover, was not 

 due to any external physical cause ? " About 

 ten persons in a hundred were found to have 

 had such experiences. Accounts of a large 

 number of these occurrences, for the most 

 part written by the percipients, are included 

 in the report. The differences between hal- 

 lucinations and other phenomena with which 

 they are liable to be confounded are pointed 

 out by the committee and illustrated by 

 cases. Passing from merely subjective hal- 

 lucinations, the committee discusses those of 

 a veridical character i. e., such as " can only 

 be accounted for on the hypothesis that im- 

 pressions or impulses have reached the per- 

 cipient's mind otherwise than through the 

 recognized channels of sense." A large 

 number of these, and by far the most im- 

 pressive class, occur at, or within a few 

 hours of, the death of the person whose fig- 

 ure seems to be seen or voice seems to be 

 heard. Another impressive class of cases is 

 those in which the hallucination is experi- 

 enced at the same moment by two or more 

 persons. The evidence gathered through 

 the census has been carefully sifted, and 

 after rigid requirements have been satisfied 

 there remain enough facts to satisfy the com- 



