i88 5 .] 
Analyses of Books. 
689 
The Kansas City Review. New Series. Vol. IX., No. 1. 
August, 1885. 
This issue contains a very large proportion of interesting and 
useful matter. 
The first article discusses the “ Relations of Archaeology to 
History,” and makes the startling, though perfectly justifiable, 
assertion, that “ The tremendous physical forces which a single 
man now summons to his aid may threaten us with a speedy 
return to barbarism, for certainly the morals of a railroad corpo- 
ration are no improvement on those of Confucius.” Meditating 
somewhat discursively on this paragraph, we might ask whether 
ancient civilisations, of which no account has reached us, may 
not have been overthrown in the manner here hinted ? We have 
seen it somewhere stated that the man whose culture is greatly 
superior to his wealth is a nuisance to himself, and, on the con- 
trary, he whose wealth exceeds his culture is a nuisance to others. 
Might it not be said that the nation whose physical and intel- 
lectual development exceeds its moral progress is a peril to its 
neighbours, whilst the one whose moral culture outstrips its 
physical and intellectual culture is a peril to itself? 
May we not also— with a writer in a very heterodox, but 
thoughtful, contemporary — ask whether the rule of combined 
capitalists may not prove more grinding than that of any con- 
queror, feudal baron, or priest of antiquity and the Middle Ages ? 
We find it further truly said : — “ There is no law of limitation 
with man, except his capacity to take. . . . There is every reason 
to suppose that the highest development of man is capable of 
exhausting all the means which the Earth can offer for his 
support.” 
A Memoir on the “ Industrial Achievements of the Ancients,” 
though revealing no faCt absolutely novel to the learned, may aCt 
as a wholesome cooling-draught to us moderns, suffering from 
the fever of self-worship. It is already certain that in our popu- 
lar speeches and writings we vastly underrate both the abstract 
knowledge and the industrial skill of the remotest antiquity. 
But what a light would dawn upon us could we reproduce the 
books burnt, not by the Caliph Omar, but by the monks of 
Alexandria ? 
In a Paper on “ Moral Microbes ” we find the term used in a 
novel sense, — applied, that is, to evil impressions implanted in 
the individual. We have incidentally applied the kindred term 
“ Schizomycetes ” to individuals who disorganise the communi- 
ties among which they live by setting on foot “movements,” such 
as Bestiarianism. 
In the “ Round of Life ” we meet with the remark that “ The 
grand and most obvious distinction [between plants and animals] 
