708 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as fast as settled social arrangements make 

 accumulation possible ; and, that there may 

 arise such settled arrangements, fear of the 

 seen ruler, of the unseen ruler, and of pub- 

 lic opinion, must come into play. Only after 

 political, religious, and social restraints have 

 produced a stable community, can there be 

 sufficient experience of the pains, positive 

 and negative, sensational and emotional,' 

 which crimes of aggression cause, as to gen- 

 erate that moral aversion to them consti- 

 tuted by consciousness of their intrinsically 

 evil results. And more manifest still is it 

 that such a moral sentiment as that of ab- 

 stract equity, which is offended not only by 

 material injuries done to men, but also by 

 political arrangements that place them at a 

 disadvantage, can evolve only after the so- 

 cial stage reached gives familiar experience 

 both of the pains flowing directly from in- 

 justices and also of those flowing indirectly 

 from the class-privileges which make injus- 

 tices easy." 



We are here brought to another exem- 

 plification of the method of scientific moral- 

 ity, as influenced by the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion. If the higher control of conduct is 

 derived from a knowledge of its conse- 

 quences, then the supreme problem of mor- 

 als is the study of causation in human ac- 

 tions. Everything here turns on the relation 

 of cause and effect ; and Mr. Spencer shows 

 conclusively that the development of the 

 idea of causation is one of the latest re- 

 sults of man's intellectual progress. The 

 conception of causation as necessary and 

 universal has even yet been reached only 

 by a small circle of strict scientific thinkers. 

 This is the radical defect of the earlier and 

 current moral systems. In his chapter on 

 " The Ways of judging Conduct," Mr. Spen- 

 cer proves that the religious, the intuitional, 

 the political, and the utilitarian schools are 

 here alike deficient : " They do not erect 

 into a method tbe ascertaining of necessary 

 relations between causes and effects, and 

 deducing rules of conduct from formulated 

 statements of them." Evolution, on the 

 other hand, implying the persistence of 

 forces and the continuity of effects, when 

 applied to ethics must give us a new method 

 of " scientific morality." 



We have here touched only upon inci- 

 dental points in Spencer's work ; the funda- 

 mental principle of his system could have 



no justice done to it in such a notice. This 

 idea is that pleasure and pain, in some form 

 immediate or remote, are at the bottom of 

 all good and bad, all right and wrong. The 

 doctrine is involved in the statement that 

 " there exists a primordial connection be- 

 tween pleasure-giving acts and continuance 

 or increase of life, and, by implication, be- 

 tween pain-giving acts and decrease or loss 

 of life " ; or that it is " no more possible to 

 frame ethical conceptions from which the 

 consciousness of pleasure, of some kind, at 

 some time, to some being, is absent, than it 

 is possible to frame the conception of an 

 object from which the consciousness of 

 space is absent. And now we see that this 

 necessity of thought originates in the very 

 nature of sentient existence. Sentient ex- 

 istence can evolve only on condition that 

 pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts." 

 We think that the verdict on this book 

 of all candid readers will be that it accom- 

 plishes what it professes to accomplish it 

 finds for the principles of right and wrong 

 in conduct a scientific basis ; and, if this be 

 true, it is needless to say that its effect will 

 be to give a new impulse and a new direc- 

 tion to ethical studies. 



The Sportsman's Gazetteer and General 

 Guide. The Game Animals, Birds, and 

 Fishes of North America ; their Habits 

 and Various Methods of Capture. Copi- 

 ous Instructions in Shooting, Fishing, 

 Taxidermy, Woodcraft, etc. Together 

 with a Glossary, and a Directory to the 

 Principal Game Resorts of the Country. 

 Illustrated with Maps. By Charles Hal- 

 lock, Editor of "Forest and Stream," 

 etc. Fifth edition. New York : Forest 

 and Stream Publishing Co. 1819. Pp. 

 920. Price, $3. 



The scope and purpose of this volume 

 are so fully set forth in the title that there 

 is no need of further particularizing its con- 

 tents. The " Gazetteer " is an indispensa- 

 ble part of the outfit of hunters and fishers 

 throughout the United States and the Cana- 

 das. In this fifth edition nothing appears 

 to have been omitted which should properly 

 have a place in such a manual. The Glos- 

 sary is one of the new features introduced 

 in this edition, and it adds greatly to the 

 value of the work. Here are to be found 

 definitions of common words in local use 

 throughout North America. Strangers are 



