LITERARY NOTICES. 



557 



this process. The self-unfolding of God cul- 

 mi""*-3s in man. For man is the son of 

 God." 



Though the author's argument shows wide 

 reading and much acute thinking, he can not 

 be said to have a happy mode of expression, 

 or the power of putting clearly the thought 

 in mind. The reader soon finds himself lost 

 in a maze of contradictions and wandering 

 in a wilderness of words which convey few 

 or no definite ideas. Very little intellectual 

 good would seem to come from discussions of 

 this nature. You begin and end nowhere, 

 with nothing proved or provable. This is 

 not to say that it is not desirable and impor- 

 tant to have clearness and definiteness in our 

 fundamental notions of things, but this is 

 hardly to be attained by spinning a logical 

 web out of our inner consciousness, and try- 

 ing to find its justification in an assumed 

 harmony between the laws of thought and 

 things. 



Money, Silver, and Finance. By J. How- 

 ard Cowperthwait. New York : G. P. 

 Putnam's Sons. Pp. 242. 



The author claims to have tried to answer 

 the silver question by arguments based both 

 upon the truths of financial science and upon 

 the principles which underlie the operation 

 of business. He hopes that in this volume 

 the busy man of affairs may find some sci- 

 entific points which may hitherto have es- 

 caped his attention ; the student in finance a 

 portrayal of business ways ; and other read- 

 ers may find their chain of evidence against 

 silver fallacies more firmly made up. He 

 thinks that besides " treating free coinage," 

 sound finance demands a repeal of the pres- 

 ent silver law, and nothing less. " Whether 

 it be possible or not to frame a banking and 

 currency act which shall be acceptable where 

 money is scarce and not too objectionable else- 

 where, the war against silver theories must 

 be continued until there shall be effectively 

 presented to the strong common sense of the 

 American people the ludicrous spectacle of 

 thousands of men devoting their time and 

 labor to taking silver out of the mines, where 

 it could do no harm, for the purpose of 

 placing it in the Treasury's vaults, whence its 

 monstrous bulk menaces the industries and 

 the general prosperity of the country." In 

 his succeeding chapters the author discusses 



the evolution of money, trades, and finance ; 

 the movements of prices ; India and her sil- 

 ver rupee; prices, wages, and labor-saving 

 machinery ; the debtor class and foreign ex- 

 change ; foreign exchange under normal and 

 under abnormal conditions ; the views of 

 representative advocates of silver; ultimate 

 redemption ; the old volume-of-money theory ; 

 the present silver and currency law ; inter- 

 national conferences, and bimetallism. 



An Introduction to Chemical Theory. By 

 Alexander Scott. New York: Mac- 

 millan & Co. Pp. 274. Price, $1.25. 



This is a text-book designed to supple- 

 ment laboratory work, and such books as are 

 mainly confined to the enumeration of facts, 

 by supplying that knowledge of principles 

 and laws which is needed to bind chemical 

 facts together in the mind of the student. 

 The author assumes that users of this book 

 will have a fair knowledge of the chemical 

 properties of substances, and have access to 

 a teacher. " For this reason," it is stated 

 in the preface, " references have frequently 

 been made to matters somewhat outside the 

 subject under discussion, for the purpose of 

 stimulating the more inquiring student, with- 

 out, at the same time, perplexing those less 

 so. . . . As far as possible, all very debat- 

 able matter has been omitted, and it is for 

 this reason, for example, that the account of 

 the theories of solution has been made very 

 short." 



The Microscope in Theory and Practice. 

 By Carl Naegeli and S. Schwendener. 

 New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 394. 

 Price, $2.60. 



One of the most thorough and scientific 

 of treatises on microscopy is here presented 

 in an English dress. The translation com- 

 prises the authors' work, Das Mikroskop, ex- 

 cept Parts VIII, IX, and X, all copies of 

 which, together with the woodcuts illustrat- 

 ing them, were lost by a fire soon after the 

 sheets were printed. The volume opens with 

 an explanation of the theory of the construc- 

 tion Of the several parts of the microscope, 

 embracing calculations of the paths of rays 

 passing .through the lenses, determinations 

 of the positions of images, of the optical 

 power of instruments, and various other prob- 

 lems. The division of the work on testing 



