190 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 245 



nothing else to do, but they show a very healthy development 

 among- a body of men who can more than hold the balance of 

 moral and social power in the world, if only they have the knowl- 

 edge on the one hand, and the courage on the other, to improve 

 their opportunities. 



Christianity in its inception was a moral and social reform, and 

 not a body of dogmatic and traditional beliefs about either the past 

 •or the future. The foremost of the ministry are beginning to see 

 this, and to return to the original conception of it, by what one 

 author candidly though forcibly admits to be " in one sense a 

 backward movement." Much is to be hoped for in this tendency, 

 and it is worth recording here as a generous welcome to those who 

 can appreciate the force and value of scientific truth, abandon their 

 diatribes against science, and fall into line with the inevitable course 

 of history, which usually has an optimistic outcome, unless nature 

 has to avenge itself for the systematic pursuit of error and wrong. 



The volume under notice consists of the ' Vedder Lectures ' at 

 New Brunswick Theological Seminary ; and the keynote to the dis- 

 cussion is well e.xpressed in the reason assigned for the present 

 revolutionary tendencies, that " the actual inequality of possessions 

 is regarded by the great mass as standing in direct opposition to 

 the generally acknowledged equality of the individual rights of all 

 men." In former times men did not have their equality or their 

 rights admitted, and hence neither arguments nor force could avail 

 to defend them. The author shows from Bockh that three-fourths 

 of the population of Greece were excluded from the benefit and 

 protection of the law ; from Gibbon that one-half the population of 

 Rome consisted of slaves, and that not more than 13.5 per cent of 

 the population of Attica possessed real estate. The concentration 

 of power which such a system required was enormous, and no 

 wonder the liberation of the masses from its abuse is accompanied 

 with alarming symptoms. But it is a pleasure to see the ministry 

 recognizing the scientific methods of studying such facts, and not 

 relying upon their speculations about baptism, inspiration, and the 

 trinity to regenerate society. The author wisely treats socialism, 

 whether legitimate or not, as an effect, a phenomenon to be ac- 

 counted for, something having a cause for its existence, and not to 

 be gotten rid of until its causes were removed. True to his pro- 

 fession, the views of the Old and New Testaments upon property 

 are briefly outlined and candidly handled ; but he frankly admits 

 that " any attempt to construe out of passages of the New Tes- 

 tament a specific Christian idea of property, will always fail." 

 This is not to exclude ethical from all relation with economical 

 questions. It is acknowledged that we must reckon with the self- 

 ish instincts of human nature in all schemes of social government, 

 at least until those instincts are modified. The discussion of the 

 principles of Ricardo and the so-called ' Manchester school ' is fair; 

 and more is sympathetically narrated of Proudhon, Fourier, Karl 

 Marx, Lasalle, Louis Blanc, and the whole history of socialistic 

 movements, than most men of theological propensities have the 

 will to read. But there is no disposition to espouse the vagaries of 

 those men, although their agitation and beliefs receive the ac- 

 knowledgment of being scientific facts which have to be studied. 



The solution of the problem is a verj' good chapter, as admitting 

 the place of ethical considerations along with economical in decid- 

 ing the issue of the question. Here the author has the opportunity 

 for urging the Christian aspects of the case, which is done in a 

 way quite foreign to the usual homiletic method. It is made a 

 purely scientific question of ethics and political economy. We can- 

 not agree with him, however, that the socialism which he condemns 

 has its support in atheism, and must be destroyed by uprooting the 

 latter. It is a re-action against the traditional method of solving 

 social and moral problems. The age of authority is past, and noth- 

 ing but facts with reasoned scientific truth based upon them can 

 meet the exigencies of the case. Atheism has its evils, but it will 

 be harder to overthrow this than the system of socialism. 



-Brief Institutes of General History. By E. Benjamin Andrews. 

 Boston, Silver, Rogers, & Co. 12°. 



We do not remember having seen any book which is of so much 

 service to the advanced student of general history as this. As a 

 guide to semitiar work in history, it would be of the greatest value. 

 It is dedicated to Professor Todl of Breslau, whose ' Geschichte 



der Ethik ' is well known to our students of philosophy ; and there 

 is no lack of congruity between the work itself and its dedication to 

 a philosopher, for it is eminently philosophical, both in scope and in 

 treatment. Professor Andrews calls his book a ' precipitate of gen- 

 eral history,' and this describes it excellently. It is not an outline, 

 and it is not a skeleton, but ' precipitate ' seems to us a very happy 

 designation. 



The body of the work falls into eleven chapters, the first dealing 

 with history and the study of history, and the last with Prussia and 

 the New Empire. Each chapter is subdivided into short sections 

 or paragraphs, and each of the latter is accompanied by biblio- 

 graphical references of great minuteness and accuracy. In this 

 way the student is enabled to hunt down any particular period or 

 episode with great ease, and post himself fully before proceeding. 

 Then each chapter is preceded by an elaborate and more general 

 bibliography, the preparation of which shows wide reading and 

 scholarly research. 



The full value of Professor Andrews's volume cannot be appre- 

 ciated by a cursory examination. We are sure that its excellence 

 of arrangement and treatment will be seen best when it is in use. 

 As a guide to the scientific study of history, or as a skeleton 

 for seminar work, it is not surpassed by any book in the 

 language. 



Nystrom's Pocket-Book of Mechanics and Engineering. Revised 

 by W. D. Marks. Philadelphia, Lippincott. 24°. 



As the author remarked in his first preface, every engineer 

 should make his own pocket-book, as he proceeds in study and 

 practice, to suit his particular business. This work was accumulat- 

 ed in this way during the author's professional career, and was 

 first placed before the public in 1854. The reviser has principally 

 confined himself to corrections in the original text, but has added 

 an elementary article on dynamic electricity, and also one on the 

 expansion of steam ; and in notes the reviser has taken occasion to 

 express some differences of opinion, and has referred to the litera- 

 ture of topics which required more space than can be given to 

 them in a pocket-book. 



Elements of Analytical Mechanics. By PETER S. MiCHIE. New 

 York, Wiley. 8°. 



This volume, as the preface states, is a revised edition of the 

 text taught to the cadets of the United States Military Academy 

 during the session of 1886-87. Together with a brief chapter on 

 hydrodynamics, it is intended to comprise a four-months' course of 

 instruction for students well versed in elementary mathematics. 

 The subjects treated of, after the elementary chapters on matter, 

 force, motion, the physical units, stresses and motive forces, and 

 gravity, are those usually taken up in a treatise on this subject. 

 The book closes with a theory of machines. The arrangement of 

 the subject-matter, and method of treatment adopted, are such as 

 have received the approval of several able scientific officers who 

 have been associated with the author in the instruction of 

 cadets. 



On the Cojiversion of Heat i7ito Work. By William Anderson. 

 New York, Van Nostrand. 12°. 



The Council of the Society of Arts invited the author of this 

 work to deliver a course of lectures upon the conversion of heat into 

 useful work ; and these lectures, which form the basis of the present 

 work, were delivered in the winter of 1884-85. The object of the 

 lectures was to popularize the doctrine that in heat-engines the 

 work given out is due to the conversion of the molecular motion of 

 heat into the visible motion which it was desired to produce, and 

 further to illustrate, by numerous practical examples, the applica- 

 bility of the doctrine of Carnot to defining the limits within which 

 improvement in the economical working of heat-engines was pos- 

 sible. In the hope of making the modern views with respect to the 

 action of heat more real and practical, the author adopted the 

 method of working out his investigations by means of numerical 

 examples, and comparing the results with those obtained in actual 

 practice. All those who are interested in the elementary instruction 



