LITERARY NOTICES. 



703 



on economical subjects that we have ever 

 read, but some may think that is not saying 

 much, after all ; and so we will add that it is 

 ,1 work hard to lay down when once begun. 



The author is a man of marked intellec- 

 tual power, of independent convictions, and 

 of strong human sympathies. He lives in San 

 Francisco, where he has been for thirty 

 years, watching the growth of society in a 

 forming State. lie has observed the work- 

 ing of the forces by which a modern com- 

 munity has grown up from a rough and 

 formless to a settled, organized, and ad- 

 vanced condition. 



The outcome of all this immediate ob- 

 servation and of the extensive study of the 

 conditions of other communities is the con- 

 viction that the imminent problem of the 

 age is the intimate association of progress 

 and poverty. The persistence of poverty 

 amid rapidly advancing wealth is a widely 

 recognized and deplorable fact, which has 

 impressed itself more and more strongly 

 upon thoughtful people. This century has 

 been characterized by an enormous increase 

 of productive power and au immense mul- 

 tiplication of riches. But this increasing 

 wealth has neither been equalized through- 

 out the population, nor has there been any 

 tendency to equalization. The gulf between 

 rich and poor has been widening, and nei- 

 ther the rapid strides of invention nor the 

 enormous development of the labor-saving 

 and the wealth-creating arts has been able 

 to arrest this widening. 



Mr. George says: "The association of 

 poverty with progress is the great enigma 

 of our times. It is the central fact from 

 which spring industrial, social, and political 

 difficulties that perplex the world, and with 

 which statesmanship and philanthropy and 

 education grapple in vain. From it come 

 the clouds that overhang the future of the 

 most progressive and self-reliant nations. 

 It is the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate 

 puts to our civilization, and which not to 

 answer is to be destroyed. So long as all 

 the increased wealth which modern progress 

 brings goes but to build up great fortunes, 

 to increase luxury, and make sharper the 

 contrast between the House of Have and 

 the House of Want, progress is not real and 

 can not be permanent. The reaction must 

 come." 



Again he says: "I propose in the fol- 

 lowing pages to attempt to solve by the 

 methods of political economy the great 

 problem I have outlined. I propose to seek 

 the law which associates poverty with prog- 

 ress, and increasing want with advancing 

 wealth ; and I believe that in the explana- 

 tion of this paradox we shall find the ex- 

 planation of those recurring seasons of in- 

 dustrial and commercial paralysis which, 

 viewed independently of their relations to 

 more general phenomena, seem so inexpli- 

 cable. Properly commenced and carefully 

 pursued, such an investigation must yield a 

 conclusion that will stand every test, and, 

 as truth, will correlate with all other truth. 

 For in the sequence of phenomena there is 

 no accident. Every effect has a cause, and 

 every fact implies a preceding fact." 



Now, in a brief notice like this we can 

 neither give, nor attempt to give, Mr. 

 George's solution of his problem. But we 

 may say he finds it in the land question, and 

 its remedy in a very radical and thorough 

 reforming of our land policy. We do not 

 here endorse Mr. George's work, but we very 

 strongly recommend it to those who take 

 interest in the living questions of the time. 

 We hope soon to give a sketch of his argu- 

 ment, but no outline can do it justice. We 

 may add that, aside from his special discus- 

 sion, the book abounds in information on 

 economical principles and facts admirably 

 put, and which will well repay perusal. 



Lectures and Essays. By the late Wil- 

 liam KiNGDON Clifford, F. II. S. Edit- 

 ed by Leslie Stephen and Frederick 

 Pollock. With an Introduction by F. 

 Pollock. In Two Volumes. With Two 

 Portraits. New York : Macmillan & Co. 

 Pp. 661. Price, $7.50. 



Clifford has been so thoroughly sifted, 

 and his position as a thinker is so well 

 known, that little needs here to be said upon 

 this point in introducing his essays to the 

 reader's attention. But the massing to- 

 gether of his intellectual work will heighten 

 his fame. For only when his brilliant and 

 powerful disquisitions are brought together, 

 so that we can compare them and discern 

 their variety and scope, is it possible to do 

 justice to his genius. That he was a trans- 

 cendent mathematician most readers can 

 only recognize by what others say, but the 



