LITERARY NOTICES. 



421 



and he groups those that he mentions under 

 the heads of education and charity, protec- 

 tion of women and children, public safety 

 and morals, labor and trade, legal proced- 

 ure, development of natural resources, and 

 the machinery of government. Mr. Hitch- 

 cock also glances at the Constitutions of the 

 new Northwestern States, and calls attention 

 to both these and the statutes above men- 

 tioned as reflecting the life and convictions 

 of the respective communities by which they 

 have been made. 



The Ethical Societies welcome to member- 

 ship all who desire to learn and practice right 

 conduct, without requiring them to accept 

 any particular theory. In fact, the societies 

 as organizations do not teach a definite philo- 

 sophical system, and take pains not to com- 

 mit themselves to the views of their own 

 individual lecturers. In the opinion of Dr. 

 Paul Carus, they are too colorless in this 

 respect ; he thinks they should make an act- 

 ive search for a basis of ethics, and he has 

 published, in a volume entitled The Ethical 

 Problem (The Open Court, fifty cents), three 

 lectures embodying his views. He main- 

 tains that a system of ethics suited to the 

 present stage of the world must have a basis 

 in facts and in a logical structure. " The 

 facts to be considered in ethics," he says, 

 "are the many and various relations in 

 which man stands to his surroundings. 

 These relations produce the many different 

 motives that prompt men's actions." The 

 function of ethics is to tell us which motives 

 we shall resist and which we shall allow to 

 produce action. Coming to the theories of 

 ethics, Dr. Carus reviews supernaturalism, 

 intuitionalism, utilitarianism, and hedonism, 

 none of which he deems sufficient ground 

 for a system of morality. His own theory 

 is, that man should live not merely to se- 

 cure happiness for himself, but so as to 

 pass on to posterity a still richer "treas- 

 ure of human soul-life" than he has him- 

 self inherited. But Dr. Carus leaves us 

 still without a criterion for judging what 

 makes human soul-life richer and higher. 



Dr. H. Carrington Bolton has collected 

 a considerable quantity of very curious in- 

 formation in a special field of coin-lore 

 which he has published in the American 

 Journal of Numismatics, under the title 

 Contributions of Alchemy to Numismatics. 



The paper consists of a preliminary sketch 

 of the aims and practices of the alchemists, 

 followed by detailed descriptions of a large 

 number of coins and medals struck in evi- 

 dence of alleged transmutations of base 

 metals into gold or silver. The circum- 

 stances attending the issue of most of these 

 pieces are also given. Three of them are 

 figured in the paper. 



A Digest of English and American Litera- 

 ture, prepared by Mr. Alfred H. West, author 

 of Development of English Literature and 

 Language, and published by S. C. Griggs & 

 Co., Chicago, presents a condensed parallel 

 view of history and literature in England 

 and the United States, from the time of the 

 Roman invasion down to the present. It is 

 intended to assist the student to that ac- 

 quaintance with the characters and lead- 

 ing events among which he wrote which is 

 necessary to the proper comprehension of 

 any of the great writers. That its prepara- 

 tion was suggested by the author's experi- 

 ences as a teacher is sufficient indication 

 that it is intended practically to meet a real 

 want. The pages facing one another are 

 divided into four columns, in which are 

 presented on one side the events and the 

 characteristics of the period during which 

 the writers flourished, and on the other side 

 the writers by which those periods are dis- 

 tinguished, with brief accounts of their 

 principal writings. The whole forms a con- 

 nected outline of the successive periods and 

 their literary features. 



Mr. W. H. Babcock has made an effort, 

 in TJie Two Lost Centuries of Britain (J. B. 

 Lippincott Company), to restore in some 

 shape the history of that country during the 

 transition period of the Saxon conquest. 

 The study is an outgrowth, as he expresses it, 

 of an endeavor to see clearly in his own mind, 

 and for his own purposes, a part of the life 

 of the sixth-century Britain. In executing 

 his purpose, incidents and periods were found 

 linked to one another in such a way that 

 each illustrated and was illustrated by an- 

 other, and called up still others, the light 

 of which was needed ; so that the study 

 grew into a kind of history. The author 

 acknowledges that there may be questions 

 as to whether what he writes is history, be- 

 cause he admits and preserves what is prob- 

 able, but is not provable in a strict sense. 



