152 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. IV., No. 81. 



works if he would, Mr. Can* next undertakes 

 to show that the Indian is known within his- 

 toric times to have built similar though smaller 

 works. Arraying a mass of testimony from 

 the old and even later writers, sufficient in 

 quality and quantity, he succeeds in doing 

 this. 



There is one natural objection to his con- 

 clusion. While some, or most it may be, of 

 existing mounds should be traced to early gen- 

 erations of the red Indian, or of races on his 

 plane, he does not admit that it is supposable 

 that another race, possibly of higher grade, 

 may have built other of the mounds. 



We suspect that the truth of this last propo- 

 sition is to rest on other investigations than 

 Mr. Carr has yet touched. Manifestly, that 

 the Indian could have built the mounds does 

 not prove that he did ; and, even if it be proved 

 that some of the mounds in question can be 

 directly traced to him, it does not follow that 

 others may not have been built by a different 

 people, since mound-building cannot be con- 

 fined historically to any single people or any 

 single continent. 



Perhaps Mr. Carr has thrown the burden of 

 proof upon the opposers of his theory, since it 

 may be fair to argue that there is no necessity 

 of supposing another race to account for the 

 mounds. Granting that Mr. Carr establishes 

 his point from the external evidences of the 

 mounds, there yet remains a test for his theory 

 in the contents of the mounds. Mr. Carr ac- 

 knowledges this shortcoming of his argument, 

 and promises in due time to examine the ques- 

 tion from the testimony of the skulls and relics 

 of workmanship, as well as from evidences 

 of parallel custom, which can be drawn from 

 the records of the exploration of the mounds. 

 These, it seems to us, are to be the final tests. 

 It is clear that history cannot settle the ques- 

 tion, but archeological investigations ma3 r . 

 We suspect that Mr. Carr wrongly estimates 

 the comparative value of the two methods in 

 a question of this kind. He sa} T s that the in- 

 vestigators who have given rise to the views 

 which he combats have been " practical ex- 

 plorers, who have brought to the investigation 

 a certain number of facts, chiefly cumulative 

 in character, and who have not as a rule been 

 possessed of that measure of historical infor- 

 mation which is necessary to a correct inter- 

 pretation of these facts." It is indisputable 

 that the historical evidence accumulated by 

 Mr. Carr may be helpful ; but the fact still 

 remains, that this evidence must be viewed in 

 the light of the archeological results. It may 

 be safe to grant all that these historical evi- 



dences prove ; but arguments respecting the 

 origin of the mounds, based on them, become 

 inferential, and ma} T or may not accord with the 

 archeological demonstrations. There can be 

 no question which is to be the ultimate tri- 

 bunal. 



SIDGWICK ON FALLACIES. 



Fallacies: a view of logic from the practical side. 

 By Alfred Sidgwick, Berkeley fellow of the 

 Owens college, Manchester. New York, Ap- 

 pleton, 1884. (International scientific series.) 

 16 + 375 p. 16°. 



It does not often fall to the lot of a reviewer 

 to find so little to praise in a book by so clever 

 a writer and clear-headed a logician as the 

 author of the treatise on fallacies, which has 

 appeared in the International scientific series. 

 What most obviously calls for complaint is its 

 want of adaptation to the main purpose for 

 which, by its publication in this series, and by 

 the explicit avowal of the author in his preface, 

 it seems to have been designed ; namely, to be 

 of profit to the general reader. No reader who 

 has not become familiar with the technical lan- 

 guage of logicians, and even with many phases 

 of logical controversy, is at all likely to follow 

 our author with sufficient interest to so much as 

 comprehend what he is talking about, much 

 less to cany away a clear and lasting impression 

 of important truths. Not that much knowledge 

 of logic is presupposed ; but the discussion is 

 so full of abstractions and subtleties, of nice 

 distinctions which we are presently told are 

 no distinctions at all, and identifications of 

 things we, had supposed very unlike and which 

 we are presently told we would better keep 

 apart as of old, that if we add to the intangibil- 

 ity of such questions the difficulty, for novices 

 in logic, of promptly seizing the precise force 

 of the terms which are necessarily employed, 

 we cannot expect any very valuable results 

 from their perusal of the book before us. 



But, in point of fact, it is not to tyros only 

 that the book will be a disappointment. There 

 is much balancing of views on nice points of 

 language, and every now and then a most re- 

 freshing bit of sarcasm, for our author has a 

 keen eye for all sorts of logical weakness ; and 

 there is often plain talk about the practical 

 limitations to which we are subject in the search 

 for truth. But there is an extraordinary absence 

 of decision and concentrated statement, — 

 qualities indispensable to the success of a work 

 of this kind. On almost every point the author 

 comes to the conclusion that little or nothing 

 which is useful can be said about it. With 



