416 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



intelligent and congenial performance. 

 The adequate education of woman for 

 the home sphere we have never had, and 

 it is now resisted with all the power of 

 traditional habit and all the influence of 

 the old educational ideals and the or- 

 ganized systems of study. Men are edu- 

 cated by the newer colleges for their 

 special work in life ; women never ! 

 The prejudice against studying things 

 domestic, although the problems opened 

 are many and of the deepest intellectual 

 interest, abides with a strange inveter- 

 acy. Dr. Blackwell recognizes no amel- 

 ioration of the home through intelligent 

 preparation for it. Though education is 

 now the standard solvent of all the diffi- 

 culties in our civilization, she concedes 

 to it no potency in renovating and de- 

 veloping home-life. She asserts, indeed, 

 that women must have technical train- 

 ing for the sphere of outside competi- 

 tion, but nothing is said of its need as 

 a preparation for domestic activities. 

 As long as the home endures, it is to 

 continue the stronghold of servility and 

 degradation. Progress is to do won- 

 ders, but the home must remain the as- 

 phyxiating Black-IIole of menial igno- 

 rance and stupidity as lasting as may 

 be the vestige of the institution. There 

 are perhaps not many who will go to 

 this visionary extreme, but in so far as 

 the " woman's movement " exemplifies 

 the feeling it merits unsparing condem- 

 nation. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Conflict in Nature and Life: A Study 

 of Antagonism in the Constitution of 

 Things. For the Elucidation of the 

 Problem of Good and Evil, and the 

 Reconciliation of Optimism and Pes- 

 simism. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 

 Pp. 488. Price, $2. 



This anonymous work is in the most 

 comprehensive sense an ethical essay upon 

 human life in connection with the order of 

 nature. It is a philosophical inquiry into 

 the constitution of natural things, as it 

 ln'ars on the fundamental problems of good 

 and evil, which, as the writer thinks, have 



been prematurely resolved in the theological 

 stages of thought, before science had fur- 

 nished the conditioning data for dealing 

 with the morality of nature and the ethical 

 possibilities of mankind. With legendary 

 ideals of golden ages and paradisiacal states, 

 at the opening of man's career, and the 

 hopes and prophecies of millennial felicity 

 to be finally attained, and with numerous 

 intervening revelations, evolutions, and 

 reforms, as means of regaining the lost 

 paradise and reaching a condition of ulti- 

 mate perfection and supreme happiness 

 as exemplified by all this, the author thinks 

 that we have been dominated by a chaotic 

 and groundless philosophy, only to be es- 

 caped through a better understanding of 

 the existing order of things, and the way it 

 must operate until replaced with quite an- 

 other order. Is the optimist justified in 

 blessing the world ? is the pessimist justi- 

 fied in cursing it ? or is it a mixed affair, 

 that must be systematically comprehended 

 before it can be morally estimated ? 



It appears that, long ago, while the 

 author was hoping for harmony and happi- 

 ness on the basis of an optimistic constitu- 

 tion of nature, he began to perceive that, at 

 every point gained in the direction of free- 

 dom and intelligence to secure greater 

 harmony and perfection in life, some new 

 element of discord and danger would arise 

 to vitiate the result such element be- 

 ing not incidental but necessary, and bound 

 up with the scheme of things. Thus, in 

 order to avoid the evils of ignorance, we 

 must promote education, which increases 

 the sensibilities for keener enjoyment, but 

 which at the same time whets them equally 

 for intenser suffering. Civilized people 

 enjoy more than savages, but they also 

 suffer more ; and, while the higher classes 

 enjoy more exquisitely than the lower, they 

 have their own characteristic troubles to 

 deal with. Further, personal sorereignty 

 has a p;ood side, but also an evil side ; and 

 there is no such thing as absolute or per- 

 fect freedom. Freedom is self-limiting, and 

 hedged about by barriers which are neces- 

 sarily impassable, except at the expense of 

 freedom itself. Again, political centraliza- 

 tion has advantages whieh no great people 

 can afford to dispense with, but it must be 

 carefully guarded or it will result in despot- 



