SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



849 



velopment of arguments in support of these 

 views from verbal analogies the most delu- 

 sive of all bases for the foundation of a 

 theory. What the author claims to derive 

 from the study of Maya documents is enti- 

 tled to more serious consideration. This is 

 the story of the ancient Maya queen Moo, 

 whose brother and husband, Prince Coh, 

 was treacherously murdered by his brother 

 Aac. Queen Moo built a magnificent mau- 

 soleum to her consort at Chichen, the ruins 

 of which still exist and have been explored 

 and studied by Dr. Le Plongeon, who has re- 

 covered and possesses the charred heart of 

 the prince, and the stone spear heads with 

 which he was killed. Queen Moo, having 

 refused to marry her husband's murderer, 

 was obliged to flee from her country, and 

 sought refuge on one of the islands of the 

 sunken Atlantis. Here the Maya record 

 stop3 ; but Dr. Le Plongeon infers, from his 

 Egyptian studies, that not finding the refuge 

 she sought, she went on to Egypt, where she 

 was warmly welcomed by Maya colonists and 

 became influential. Her name, the author 

 affirms, is preserved in that of the Egyptian 

 Queen Mau ; her story, with that of her mur- 

 dered husband, became the myth of Isis and 

 Osiris ; and she caused the Sphinx to be 

 carved as a memorial to her husband. Dr. Le 

 Plongeon finds the story of Atlantis fully 

 recorded on a stone which is preserved in 

 Chichen, " as intact to-day as when it came 

 from the hands of the sculptor," and also in 

 the manuscript Troano and the Codex Cor- 

 tesianus ; and he further affirms that it was 

 embodied by a Maya living in Greece in the 

 Greek alphabet, the names of the letters of 

 which, as recited by students, each represent 

 one of the lines of the poem. Dr. Le Plon- 

 geon's theories are utterly at variance with 

 those of the recognized Americanists ; but if 

 he errs, it is not from ignorance, for if he can 

 read ancient Maya, he knows more than all 

 of them, and his other reading has been 

 amazingly wide. There is, however, the 

 possibility that he has been carried away by 

 an unbounded enthusiasm. 



In his work on Wages and Capital* 

 Prof. Taussig inverts the usual order of pro- 



* Wages and Capital: An Examination of the 

 Wages-Fund Doctrine. By F. W. Taussig. New 

 York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 825. Price, $1.50. 

 VOL. xlix. 65 



ceedings by presenting his own views first, 

 in five chapters, and reviewing the history of 

 the wages-fund discussion from its begin- 

 ning to the present, in the chapters that fol- 

 low. This he does because criticism and 

 comment proceed inevitably from the think- 

 er's own point of view, and the proper esti- 

 mation of their value depends largely on the 

 reader's knowing what that is. In the first 

 five chapters (author's view) it appears that 

 all wages are paid from the products of past 

 labor, and that the supply of products of 

 past labor exists mainly in the form of real 

 capital ; that the class of hired laborers de- 

 rive their wages from capital in this sense, 

 and are dependent for their share of the real 

 income, into which capital steadily ripens, on 

 the funds which the employing class find it 

 advantageous to turn over to them. The 

 inquiry is then made whether the capital 

 from which wages come is rigid or elas- 

 tic, with a conclusion against rigidity. The 

 inquiry results in the conclusion that the old 

 doctrine of the wages fund had a solid basis 

 in its conception, incomplete yet in essen- 

 tials just, of the payment of present labor 

 from past product. The theory thus ar- 

 rived at shows the steps by which the wage3 

 get into the laborer's hands, describes the 

 machinery of production and distribution, 

 and so points to the nearest and most obvi- 

 ous causes which affect them ; but it does 

 not tell the whole story. In the critical re- 

 view forming the latter part of the book, 

 which begins with the writers before Adam 

 Smith and includes contemporary discussion, 

 the vogue of Mr. George's Progress and 

 Poverty is declared not due to any solid or 

 consistent reasoning, or to any novelty in 

 principle, and to have excited no great in- 

 fluence on trained students. The author re- 

 views Prof. Francis A. Walker's contribu- 

 tions to the discussion at considerable 

 length, and maintains that they have never 

 touched the essentials of the matter. Final- 

 ly, while the controversy over the wages 

 fund is acknowledged to be a barren one 

 so far as it is an effort to define the 

 causes which finally distribute wages and 

 settle distribution at large, the author 

 holds that something may still be gained 

 from it as a mode of describing the meth- 

 ods and sequence of production and related 

 points. 



