A P P L E TONS' SPRING BULLETIN 



finance, and no sound finance without a sound system of taxation. In tact, taxa- 

 tion is to our body politic what blood is to the body physical : if healthy, infusing 

 life and warmth ; hut if unhealthy, the agent for producing discontent, decrepi- 

 tude, and paralysis, 



" The absence or existence of limitations on the power of a government to 

 make compulsory levies on the property or persons of its people for its use or 

 support, constitutes the dividing line between a despotism and a free government 

 — a fact most pertinent to legal, economic, and societary studies which has 

 attracted little attention. 



"The methods and scope of what is called taxation regulate more than all 

 other agencies the distribution of wealth, which is really the great question of the 

 future to all nations." 



N. S. SHALER. 



The lucidity and suggestiveness of Prof. N. S. 

 Shaler's writings, whether they are expositions of sci- 

 entific themes or discussions which touch upon socio- 

 logical topics, will induce readers to await with especial 

 interest his forthcoming book. The Individual: A 

 Study of Life and Death, which is a striking and 

 noble presentation of the subject of death from a fresh 

 point of view. Professor Shaler's book is one of deep 

 and permanent interest. He points out that while the 

 problems ot natural selection and evolution have called 

 attention to the results which come from the temporary 

 quality of the individual, they have not heretofore led to any extended interest 

 in the relation of the ephemeral nature of the individual to the other individu- 

 alities of the universe and to the method of its organization. In his preface he 

 writes as follows : *' In the following chapters I propose to approach the question 

 of death from a point of view of its natural history, noting; in the first place, how 

 the higher organic individuals are related to those of the lower inorganic realm of 

 the universe. Then, taking up the organic series, I shall trace the progressive 

 steps in the perfection of death by a determination as to the length of the 

 individual life and its division into its several stages from the time when the body 

 of the individual is separated from the general body of the ancestral life to that 

 when it returns to the common store of the earth. Upon the basis of the knowl- 

 edge we may thus obtain, I shall endeavor to see what qualifications of the 

 accepted view of the great accident we mav make — how, in a word, we may 

 hope to work toward a reconciliation of our death with the order in which we 

 find ourselves placed. ... In effect this book is a plea for an education as 

 regards the place of the individual life in the whole of Nature which shall be 

 consistent with what we know of the universe. It is a plea for an understanding 

 of the relations of the person with the realm which is, in the fullest sense, his own ; 

 with his fellow-beings of all degrees which are his kinsmen ; with the past and 



