302 



sciujsrcu. 



[Vol. IX., No. 216 



ing increase of nervous and mental diseases. 

 Thus it is that the problem of keeping sane be- 

 comes the problem of civilization : civilization is 

 the cause of mental weakness as well as the result 

 of mental strength. 



The two factors that have of late come into 

 greatest prominence in this connection are the use 

 of stimulants and the universal applicability of 

 the laws of heredity. The fact that these come 

 first is a sutficiently suggestive text to which the 

 sermon can readily be added. Dr. Schulz looks 

 forward to the time when these truths will be 

 incorporated into social morality, and imprudent 

 marriages be placed in the same category with 

 criminality. 



It is more true of nervous than of any other 

 diseases, that the ideal to be aimed at is not so 

 much to cure them as to prevent them. In the 

 work of prevention it is the parent and the teacher 

 who can do the most. The ancient phrase that 

 calls the teacher the doctor of the mind is more 

 than a metaphor. The doctor and the educator 

 are at work upon the same problem. What the 

 latter does is taking so much of a load from the 

 shoulders of the former, and in the next genera- 

 tion the debt is repaid. And still more is this 

 true of the parent. Our increased knowledge of 

 nervous and mental diseases enables us to recognize 

 their incipient stages when they can be checked 

 from further development. That no one is per- 

 fectly sane is a commonplace. "What it means is, 

 that each one detects in himself latent tendencies 

 in one direction or another, which, if they remain 

 unchecked and are left to develop freely, would 

 become morbid. A normal, rational life cures 

 these tendencies of itself. They are absorl)ed in the 

 growth of character. Yet it is very necessary to 

 remember that our insane fellow-man is not made 

 of different matei'ial from ourselves ; he has sim- 

 ply elaborated one of the factors of life at the ex- 

 pense of all the others, and has thus lost his men- 

 tal equilibrium : and it is also well for teachers to 

 know as much of the nature of such tendencies as 

 can be acquired from the reading of such a book as 

 this. 



The mental life of children pre.sents problems 

 peculiar to itself. We are beginning to take the 

 step from the empirical to the scientific statement 

 of these problems. We are learnng to see things 

 from the child's point of view ; to appreciate how 

 very intimate is its mental connection with its 

 physical well-being ; to know that education does 

 not mean instruction; and, above all, the awful 

 significance of that period of life when the boy or 

 girl becomes a man or woman is recognized as the 

 key to all higher character-building. Whatever 

 may be said against the materialistic tendencies 



of our day in other directions, in the field of edu- 

 cation it has introduced wonderful reforms. In 

 the school-room it has banished the middle ages 

 and rationalized methods. 



Enough has probably been said to show the point 

 of view from which mental unsoundness is treated 

 in the works of which this is a good type. It is 

 an anthropological study of brain-culture. It de- 

 scribes the morbid tendencies in mental develop- 

 ment, and thus gives additional knowledge of 

 the normal mind ; and. finally, it brings the prob- 

 lems of modern civilization to a focus where they 

 can be studied and practically thought out for the 

 benefit of the races to come. 



ECONOMICS, SCIENTIFIC AND POPULAR. 



The economics of industry. By A. and M. P. Marshall. 

 3(1 ed. New York, Macmillan. 12°. 



The wide-spread interest in the prominent eco- 

 nomical questions of the day has brought forth 

 new editions of two English works which are in 

 different ways most timely and useful. The ' Eco- 

 nomics of industry ' well deserves the honor of a 

 third edition. As professing to sclve the problem 

 of distribution in a scientific manner, it is of 

 course especially interesting in its bearing on the 

 controversy now flagrant between the old aod the 

 new school of economic thought. The authors do 

 not formally array themselves with either of the 

 antagonists, By casting some of the most dis- 

 tinctive doctrines of the new school into a purely 

 scientific form, they refute the charge that the 

 modern theories remove economics from the 

 category of sciences. On the other hand, they 

 are far from rejecting the system and methods 

 adopted by the great expounders of the old school. 

 The purpose of the volume is expressly declared 

 to be a completer development of the theory of 

 value, wages, and profits as piopounded by John 

 Stuart Mill. It is well known that Mill was. of 

 all the older school of economists, the least in- 

 clined to consider its conclusions absolute and final 

 verity. Nothing could be more natural, there- 

 fore, than to use his work as the foundation for a 

 more modern superstructure. Our authors con- 

 tribute much, indeed, to the elucidation of the 

 truth that the new economics, which its younger 

 and more enthusiastic devotees are apt to hail as 

 an inspired creation, is in reality only a growth. 

 It is the flowering and the fruiting of the symmet- 

 rical but in many aspects repulsive stalk which 

 has hitherto been all that the world could see of 

 political economy. 



The influence of the modern tendency manifests 

 itself at the very outset by a broadening in the 

 definition of the fundamental concepts of the sci- 

 ence. Wealth, for example, is made to include 



