LITERARY NOTICES. 



707 



Russia, and an account of the preliminary 

 work on the railway. The writers of all 

 parts of these volumes have a special acquaint- 

 ance with then- respective subjects through 

 a connection with technical institutions or 

 the Government service. Tables of statis- 

 tics and many colored maps add to the value 

 of the work. 



Elementary Meteorology. By William 

 Morris Davis. Boston : Ginn & Com- 

 pany. Pp. 365. Price, $2.10. 



This treatise, which is the outcome of 

 fifteen years of teaching and study in Har- 

 vard College may be used either as a text- 

 book or for general reading. It opens with 

 a consideration of the origin and uses of the 

 atmosphere, with its extent and arrange- 

 ment around the earth. As the winds arise 

 from differences of temperature, the control 

 of the temperature of the atmosphere by 

 the sun is then discussed. The motions of 

 the atmosphere and its varying quantities of 

 moisture are next studied. After this we 

 are led to the discussion of those more or 

 less frequent disturbances which we place 

 together under the name of storms. The 

 closing chapters deal with the ordinary suc- 

 cession of atmospheric phenomena on which 

 our local variations of weather depend, and 

 the average conditions which, repeated year 

 after year, we call climate. Some account is 

 also g'ven of the methods employed in pre- 

 dicting the weather. The text is illustrated 

 with maps, diagrams, and cuts of apparatus. 



Appearance and Reality : A Metaphys- 

 ical Essay. By F. H. Bradley, M. A., 

 LL. D., Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. 

 London : Swan, Sonuenschein & Co. New 

 York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. xxiv -1-568. 

 Price, $1.76. 



A decidedly ingenious volume, and, to 

 employ a schoolboy term, brimful of " cris- 

 cross " reasonings. Though few names are 

 mentioned, nearly all the great thinkers come 

 under the author's knife. In fact, as the au- 

 thor intimates, to read the work intelligently, 

 one must have read and widely. It is rather 

 favorable than otherwise to allege, of almost 

 every page within the covers, that the i-eader 

 will doubtless, here and there, discover him- 

 self uttering two ejaculations, viz.. How does 

 the author know '? and. Well reasoned for so 

 ingenious a query ! Indeed, at every step 



we encounter a forest of questions in a field 

 of doubt. At the very opening, the critic is 

 not only disarmed, but Prof. Bradley comes 

 to his own rescue with his own sword, for he 

 " would rather keep " his " natural place as a 

 learner among learners." Hence, " if any- 

 thing in these pages suggests a more dog- 

 matic frame of mind " he " would ask the 

 reader not hastily to adopt that suggestion. 

 I offer him," he says, " a set of opinions and 

 ideas in part certainly wrong, but where and 

 how much I am unable to tell him. That is 

 for him to find out if he cares to, and if he 

 can." The chief aim of the book is to sup- 

 ply " a skeptical study of First Principles." 

 So, the student, with this in mind, proceeds 

 to ask how can there be, as alleged (preface), 

 any " positive function of the universe," 

 when " outside of spirit there is not and 

 there can not be any reality " (closing lines, 

 page 562); yet withal, " spiiit " is nowhere 

 in the book defined, while things around us 

 that are generally accepted as real are (page 

 12*7) no "more than mere appearance." 

 These passages detached from the text 

 might constitute a partial injustice were 

 they not the main makes-up of the author's 

 labors. While paradoxes in philosophy are 

 in the aggregate not desirable, they some- 

 times serve a useful end, and, on the like 

 plane, perplexities in logic may have a place 

 for those who care to pursue the narrow and 

 thorfiy path to their hiding. One thing, 

 though not stated, is clearly enough per- 

 ceptible in a perusal of Appearance and 

 Reality : the universe is to each one accord- 

 ing to his faculties, and even the earthworm 

 has its world. Instead of taking to the 

 ocean to reach the author's distant shore, he 

 might have landed us in a nutshell across 

 some surer though narrower channel. The 

 work contains twenty-seven chapters, is di- 

 vided into two books, and constitutes one in 

 Sei'ies No. 3 of the Library of Philosophy. 



In a lecture on The Status of the Mind 

 Problem^ Mr. Lester F. Ward, of Washing- 

 ton, predicates the dependence of mind and 

 body while carefully avoiding the predi- 

 cation of their identity. Concerning the 

 " mystery of mind," he offers the simple ex- 

 planation that " the phenomena of mind 

 stand in the same relation to the brain and 

 nervous system that all other phenomena 



