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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ous tribal groups of primitive men, those 

 will provail in the struggle for existence in 

 which the lawless tendencies of individuals 

 are most thoroughly subordinated by the 

 yoke of tyrannical custom the only yoke 

 which uncivilized men can be made to wear. 

 These communities will grow at the ex- 

 pense of less law-abiding tribes, until the 

 result is a strong nation ruled by immovable 

 custom, as in the case of Egypt, or China, or 

 India. The problem now is how to get be- 

 yond this stage, and to relax the despotism 

 of custom without entailing a retrogression 

 toward primeval lawlessness. This prob- 

 lem has never been successfully solved ex- 

 cept where a race, rendered organically law- 

 abiding through some discipline of the fore- 

 going kind, has been thrown into emulative 

 conflict with other races similarly disci- 

 plined. And this condition has been com- 

 pletely fulfilled only in the case of the mi- 

 grating Aryans who settled Europe. 



" This is but one of Mr. Bagehot'smany 

 bright thoughts. "We have barely room to 

 hint at another. It was formerly assumed 

 that, instead of mankind having arisen out 

 of primeval savagery, modern savages have 

 fallen from a primeval civilization, having 

 lost the arts, the morals, and the intelligence 

 which they originally possessed ; and in our 

 time some such thesis as this has been overt- 

 ly maintained by the Duke of Argyll. Mr. 

 Bagehot shows that in every way such a 

 falling off is incompatible with the principle 

 of natural selection. Take, for example, 

 the ability to anticipate future contingencies 

 to abstain to-day that we may enjoy to- 

 morrow. This is the most fundamental of 

 the differences between civilization and sav- 

 agery. Now, obviously, the ability to post- 

 pone present to future enjoyment is, in a 

 mere material, economic, or military aspect, 

 such an important acquisition to any race or 

 group of men, that when once acquired it 

 could never be lost. The race possessing 

 this capacity could by no possibility yield 

 ground to the races lacking it. Or take the 

 ready belief in omens by which the life of 

 the savage is so terribly hampered. Could 

 a single tribe in old Australia have sur- 

 mounted the necessity of searching for 

 omens before undertaking any serious busi- 

 ness, it would inevitably have subjugated 

 all the other tribes on the continent. So, 

 because the men who possess the attributes 

 of civilization must necessarily prevail over 

 the men who lack these attributes (and this 

 is always true in the long-run, though now 

 and then a great multitude of barbarians 

 may temporarily overthrow a handful of civ- 



ilized men), because this is so, it follows 

 that there cannot have been, in prehistoric 

 times, a general loss of the attributes of civ- 

 ilization. 



" To do justice to Mr. Bagehot's fertile 

 book would require a long article. With 

 the best of intentions, we are conscious of 

 having given but a sorry account of it in 

 these brief paragraphs. But we hope we 

 have said enough to recommend it to the at- 

 tention of the thoughtful reader. We are 

 glad to see that the young science of soci- 

 ology has received such an early and satis- 

 factory treatment in Dr. Youmans's series of 

 popular books. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 



The Ten Laws of Health. 

 Black, M. D. "Philadelphia: 

 1872. 



By J. R. 



Lippincott, 



The American Chemist. A Monthly 

 Journal of Theoretical, Analytical, and 

 Technical Chemistry. Edited by Charles F. 

 Chandler, Ph. D., F. C. S. Vols. I. and II. 



Annals of the Dudley Observatory. Al- 

 bany, 18*71. 



The Le Boulenge Chronograph. By 

 Brevet-Captain 0. E. Michaelis. New York : 

 Van Nostrand, 1872. 



Theoretical Navigation and Nautical As- 

 tronomy. By Lewis Clark, Lieutenant- 

 Commander U. S. N. New York : Van 

 Nostrand, 1872. 



Primeval Man. An Examination of some 

 Recent Speculations. By the Duke of 

 Argyll. New York : De Witt C. Lent & 



Co., 1872. 



A Century of Medicine and Chemistry. 

 A Lecture Introductory to the Course of 

 Lectures to the Medical Class at Yale Col- 

 lege. By Prof. B. Silliman, M. D. New 

 Haven, 1871. 



A School siei generis. An Essay read 

 before the New York State Teachers' Asso- 

 ciation at Syracuse. By C. H. Anthony, 

 A. M. Albany : Weed, Parsons & Co., 

 1872. 



The Commonwealth Reconstructed. By 

 C. C. P. Clark. Oswego, 1872. 



Introductory Lecture to the Course on 

 Pathological Anatomy at the University of 



