.16 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



labors of the old world astronomers, 

 as well as of Copernicus, G alileo, Kep- 

 ler, Newton, and Herscliel. One of 

 the keenest of intellectual and emo- 

 tional, we might perhaps say moral, 

 pleasures is lost to him or her who, 

 in the 



" Rolling heaven, with all his signs revealed," 



sees nothing- but a medley of scintil- 

 lating points, some brighter and some 

 less bright, and knows far less of 

 the movements of the heavenly bod- 



ies than the old Chaldean shepherds. 

 The study of astronomy, we have 

 reason to believe, is generally taken 

 up by girls with much interest when 

 an opportunity of doing so is af- 

 forded them ; and we should like to 

 ask Mrs. Latimer to try if she can 

 not, in addition to the well-chosen 

 sciences she mentions, find room for 

 some really educative work in as- 

 tronomy. With this addition her 

 scheme would have our hearty ap- 

 proval. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



Mr. Evans's Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology* deals in the 

 first place with the origin and early growth of ethical conceptions, but 

 more especially as the treatise goes on, with the physical and mental 

 relations of aiiimals and men, and the rights of animals as flowing out 

 of these. "The intimate connection between evolutional ethics and 

 animal psychology," the author says, " must be apparent to all who 

 carefully consider the influence necessarily exerted by a proper appre- 

 ciation of animal intelligence upon the recognition of man's moral 

 relations and obligations to the creatures with whom he is so closely 

 associated, and who are so largely subject to his dominion"; and "the 

 measure of our duty toward lower organisms is determined by the degree 

 of their mental development. . . . The only foundation of animal ethics 

 is animal psychology." The discussion is opened with a View of the 

 Ethics of Tribal Society, or that stage of the development near the begin- 

 ning when rights were not recognized outside of the narrow circle of the 

 tribe, and all others than those of the tribe were regarded as enemies. The 

 idea was gradually expanded through the symbolism of the brotherhood 

 of blood, the sacred rite, as we might call it, of hospitality, and the suppo- 

 sititious or ceremonial recognition of the kinship of tribal chiefs. Then 

 the bond of community of religious belief came in to be a basis of moral 

 obligation. Psychology and ethics were still, however, anthropocentric, 

 and man was considered as essentially different and inseparably set apart 

 from all other sentient creatures, a superior being, bound to them by no ties 

 of mental affinity or moral obligation. The doctrine of metempsychosis, 

 under which the soul was supi^osed in the next stage of existence to become 

 incarnated in another man or a beast, came in to modify this view, and to 

 prepare a way for the recognition of animal rights. Men came to observe 

 the intelligence of beasts, and to find in them evidences of the possession 

 of something more or less remotely resembling the mental faculties of man. 



* Evohitlonal Ethics and Animal Psychology. 

 Company. Pp. 386. Price, $1.75. 



By E. P. Evans. New York : D. Appleton and 



