LITERARY NOTICES. 



271 



one ; nor could such a thing be as an 

 ever-fruitless pursuit of truth ; nor yet 

 such a thing as a system of truth grasped 

 by the human mind independently of all 

 previous attempts toward its construc- 

 tion. The very sense that truth is truth 

 comes from a perception of harmony 

 between an attained result and a set of 

 circumstances or phenomena of which 

 it aiFords a desired explanation. Had 

 the explanation never been desired and 

 sought after, no interest or value could 

 possibly attach to it. While, however, 

 the situation that Lessing's words sug- 

 gest is an impossible one, our attention 

 is none the less roused by it to the fact 

 that, not by outward results alone is the 

 value of human effort to be gauged, but 

 also, and perhaps mainly, by the inward 

 growth of mind and character which is 

 its accompaniment. We learn, also, 

 that to be loyal to the truth is of more 

 account than to be merely successful in 

 formulating it : in a word, that the in- 

 terests of the human spirit, or, perhaps 

 more correctly, of the intellectual and 

 moral consciousness, are supreme, and 

 that the great flow of significance, so 

 to speak, is from within the human con- 

 sciousness to the outward conditions, 

 and not from without inward. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Elements of Political Economy, with 

 SOME Applications to Questions of the 

 Day. By J. Laurence Laughlin. New 

 York: D. Appleton & Co. 1887. Price, 

 $1.40. 



If the mimerous school-books that ap- 

 pear in our time were all they ought to be, 

 the education of the young, so far as books 

 can aid it, would be amply provided for, but 

 unfortunately such is not the case. In the 

 mathematical and physical sciences, indeed, 

 and in classical literature, there are many 

 good text-books ; but in the sciences that 

 treat of mind and society the works of real 

 merit are comparatively few. The reason 

 of this scarcity is twofold : in the first place, 

 these sciences are not so well developed as 

 physics and mathematics and classical phi- 

 lology, and there is less agreement about 



the method of studying them — the mutual 

 opposition of the philosophical and historic- 

 al schools being specially conspicuous ; and, 

 secondly, the close connection of the mental 

 and social sciences with the great disputed 

 questions of politics and religion render the 

 pure scientific treatment of them difficult. 

 Hence we have at present but few satis- 

 factory treatises on political, economical, or 

 ethical subjects. 



This work by Professor Laughlin, how- 

 ever, is distinctly superior to most of the 

 current writings on economical themes, and 

 seems to be well adapted to educational use. 

 It makes no pretension to originality in doc- 

 trine or theory ; but undertakes to give the 

 student, in as simple a form as possible, the 

 leading thoughts and conclusions of the 

 great economic writers. The author re- 

 marks in his preface that " the public 

 questions of our day in the United States 

 are deeply affected by economic consider- 

 ations, and yet the training of mind ade- 

 quate for an intelligent decision upon eco- 

 nomic problems has been very slight." Yet 

 he thinks that "public questions and the 

 economic principles which underlie them 

 can, if properly presented, bo understood by 

 the average American youth whose educa- 

 tion is restricted to the high-school or the 

 academy." For such students, then, and 

 with such an aim. Professor Laughlin has 

 written, and with much success. His ar- 

 rangement is good, his style clear, and his 

 views, in the main, such as are best estab- 

 lished. He has avoided controversy, so far 

 as possible, evidently thinking it unsuitable 

 to an elementary work. If we were to offer 

 a criticism on the author's method, we 

 should say that be had confined himself a 

 little too strictly to the deductive or philo- 

 sophical method of the English writers, 

 with too httle attention to the historical 

 and comparative method ; for, though we 

 have no faith in the historical method as a 

 substitute for the other, it nevertheless has 

 its uses. 



Professor Laughlin's book is divided into 

 two parts : the first, treating of the principles 

 of the science ; the second, of their applica- 

 tion to some of the political and industrial 

 problems of the day. In an introductory 

 chapter he distinguishes the subject of the 

 science from those of ethics, politics, and 



