using the whole of one's power; it is, therefore, to be most alive. What can any man want more and better than this? Is not this the religion for the twentieth century?" The Modern Reader's Bible. A Series of Works from the Sacred Scriptures Presented in Modern Literary Form. [In Twenty-two Volumes.] By RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (Camb.), Ph.D. (Penn.), Professor of Literature in English in the University of Chicago. Small 18mo. New York: The Macmillan Co. Price, cloth, 50 cents each; flexible leather, 60 cents each. In this age of indifference to the Scriptures on the part of many all volumes are to be welcomed which tend to foster an increased reverence for the word and a disposition to read with frequency its sacred pages. Measured by this standard the present series of Bible handbooks compels attention and is deserving of unqualified commendation. It must be regarded as a fortunate circumstance that Professor Moulton was led to its preparation. The impairment of interest arising from the artificial division of the Scripture text into verses seems to have been an impelling motive in his authorship, as in his Introduction to Genesis he writes: "To read is easy; but to read with full appreciation is made difficult by certain differences in the form in which books are presented to the eye in ancient and in modern literatures. The differences, it is true, involve no great mystery; they are such as an intelligent reader can correct for himself. But it is also true that such mental checking hampers the faculty of appreciation; books under such circumstances will be read, but not read with a zest. The constant necessity of mentally allowing for difference of literary form makes such reading resemble the use of a microscope with an imperfectly adjusted focus. By thinking, it is possible to make out what the blurred picture should be; but the observer's attention wearies, and all the while a turn or two of a wheel would give clear vision. To assist such mental adjustment to the form of biblical literature is the aim of the Modern Reader's Bible." The method in which Dr. Moulton has sought this desirable result is by the elimination of the verse divisions found in the King James Version and the arrangement into sections, with appropriate headings, of the different topics of the Scripture text. The throwing into poetical form of those portions of the Bible which call for versification is moreover a feature which must be delightful to every reader. To each of the numbers of the series the editor has added an Introduction, Notes, and Indexall of these departments contributing to the completeness of each book and making each in some sense a substitute for the formal commentary. Of the author's classification of the books of Scripture into various groups there is no particular necessity to speak. The twenty-second volume is entitled "Bible Stories," and is announced to be a "Children's Number." In text the professor has followed the Revised Version, "with marginal alternatives often adopted;" and in easy print and smallness of volume he has sought the convenience of the user. Altogether he has given a new charm to the pages of the Scripture. We know of one Christian home whose members are reading with new zeal the message of God in this modern dress. The number of such readers should be greatly multiplied. PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, AND GENERAL LITERATURE. Metaphysics. By BORDEN P. BOWNE, LL.D., Professor of Philosophy in Boston University. Revised Edition from new plates. 8vo, pp. 429. New York and London: Harper & Brothers. Price, cloth, $1.60. This is the book, in noticing the first edition of which Dr. Daniel Curry wrote, "Professor Bowne is the greatest metaphysician of this age, perhaps of any age-the greatest because the clearest." Not often does the average man find metaphysics enticing and exhilarating, but the keenness and brilliance of this book make it fascinating. For omnipresent and sustained intellectual mastery, for piercing criticism, for flawless continuity of reasoning, for unerring precision of thought, for translucence of expression, for simplification, intelligibility, illumination, and convincingness, this volume is unmatched in the literature of metaphysics. It will enable the common man to feel at home, and will give him a sense of getting on in regions where, because of mists or his own lack of vision, he has seen no pathway. The author keeps so steadily in touch with familiar realities and makes the way so clear and solid from them to others unfamiliar and recondite that the reader never feels lost or far from home, but is apt to say to himself that a new kind of metaphysician has found him and taken him by the hand. This impression will be made on most readers at the outset by the Preface to this revised edition. The first statement is: "The most marked feature of the revision is the greater emphasis laid on the idealistic element. This has been made more prominent and more consistently developed. . . . It is shown that on the traditional realistic view both thought and being are impossible. . . . I have sought to save idealism from the misunderstandings which are the great source of popular objections to it, and also to make a place for inductive science." The Preface proceeds: "The method pursued in the discussion depends on pedagogical reasons. A direct abstract discussion would be shorter and, for the practiced reader, more satisfactory. But it would be intelligible to only a few, and they would not need it. For the sake of being understood, to say nothing of producing conviction, it is necessary to start from the standpoint of popular thought and to return to it at each new start. In this way it becomes possible to show the thinker on the sense plane the dialectic which is implicit in his own position, and which compels him to move on if thought is to reach anything sure and steadfast. Unless this method is borne in mind it would be easy to find the discussion in constant contradiction with itself. A great deal of the argument is carried on on the basis of the popular realism, but only for the sake of showing the popular speculator the impossibility of reaching anything final on hat basis, and thus preparing him to appreciate the more excellent way. ... This method involves much repetition, but it is pedagogically necessary in the present stage of speculative development." In cosmology there is need of a searching criticism of fundamental notions in order that we may emerge out of speculative chaos, but the necessity for such criticism is most marked in psychology. Of this Professor Bowne says: "Current psychology, especially of the 'synthetic' sort, has erred and strayed from the way beyond anything possible to lost sheep, because of the unclear and inadmissible metaphysical notions with which it operates. We have, first, an attempt to construe the mental life in terms of mechanism or of the lower categories. This has led to the most extraordinary mythology, in which mental states are hypostasized, impossible dynamic relations feigned, logical identities mistaken for objective temporal identities, and then the entire fiction, which exists only in and through thought, is mistaken for the generator of thought. Here again nothing but criticism can aid us. We must inquire what our 'synthesis' is to mean, and what the factors are which are to be 'synthesized,' and what are the logical conditions of such a synthesis. This inquiry cannot be dispensed with by issuing cards of questions to nurses and young mothers, or by rediscovering world-old items of knowledge by the easy process of constructing new names for them. The dictionary may be enriched in this way, and charming stories gathered concerning the age at which 'our little one began to take notice,' but this journalistic method is more likely to contribute to the 'gayety of nations' than to psychological insight. Neither can we long dispense with the inquiry by the severities of quotation marks, or by assuming a superior manner and claiming for the new psychology everything in sight." The Preface goes on in its practical way: "The mechanical psychology of sensebound thought has overflowed, with no small damage, into the field of popular education. In many cases sheer fictions and illusions are taught for truth, or are made the basis of educational procedure. . . . Much of the information given seems to be on a level with that which M. Jourdain received from his teacher in philosophy. He learned that there are two kinds of letters, vowels and consonants, and two kinds of composition, prose and poetry, and that he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, and that when he pronounced the vowel O he pursed his lips into a circular form, and elongated them when pronouncing A. He also learned how to tell by the almanac when the moon is shining. M. Jourdain was so enchanted with this information that he thought hardly of his parents for neglecting his instruction in his youth, and also gave himself great airs on the strength of the new education, when he met Madame Jourdain and Nicole the domestic. of popular pedagogics is of this barren and inflating sort. still puffeth up. And sometimes the matter is even worse. having become the fad, the intellectually defenseless among teachers and those who would be thought wise are intimidated into accepting it. Hans Christian Andersen's story a little modified illustrates the situa Not a little tion. Two knaves set up a loom in the market place and gave out that they were weaving fabrics of wondrous beauty and value. To be sure, nothing could be seen; but they set forth that whoever failed to see the goods was thereby shown to be unfit for his place. Accordingly everybody, from the king down, saw the things and praised them, and nobody dared to let on for fear of being thought unfit for his place. And they bought the goods, to the knaves' great profit, and arrayed themselves, and marched in procession in their imaginary attire. And still nobody dared to let on, until a small boy of unsophisticated vision called out: 'Why, they haven't got their clothes on!' This broke the spell. Intimidations of this sort are all too common in the pedagogical world at present. And they will remain until an era of criticism sets in. Then we may hope to be freed from the mythologies of the mechanical and synthetical psychology and from the misleading or sterile formulas of popular pedagogics. For this desirable pedagogical reform it is necessary that we distinguish more carefully between theoretical and practical psychology. Most theoretical psychology is practically barren. If necessary as a sufficient reason for the facts, it nevertheless often leads to nothing. Power over the facts, whether in education or in society, is not gained by studying psychological theories, but by observation and practice, and by experience of life and men." The habitually and severely practical purpose of this metaphysician are partially manifested in the above quotations. We regret lack of space to give further samples of it from the body of the book. The Bibliotaph and Other People. By LEON H. VINCENT. 12mo, pp. 233. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Price, cloth, $1.25. These ten papers are reprinted mostly from the Atlantic Monthly, the Springfield Republican, and Poet Lore. The first eighty pages contain portraiture and history of the bibliotaph, with spicy chat about his queer ways, his friends, his scrapbooks, and his "bins." The various kinds of book-hunters are classified by their peculiarities. "One man buys books to read, another buys them to gloat over, a third that he may fortify them behind glass doors and keep the key in his pocket. Learned words have been devised to express the varieties of motive and taste. These words begin with biblio." Two interesting types of maniac are known as the biblioclast and the bibliotaph. The first of these is one who mutilates books. Such a one was John Bagford, who mutilated ten thousand volumes to form his vast collection of title-pages. He died an unrepentant sinner, lamenting that he could not live long enough to get hold of a genuine Caxton and rip the initial page out of it. The bibliotaph buries books; not literally, but sometimes as effectually as if he had put them underground. One sort hoards and hides them like a miser, not using them himself nor allowing anybody else to use them. Another because he is homeless, a bachelor, a wanderer, gathers books only to store them here, there, and yonder. This particular bibliotaph used the garret of a farmhouse and a village store as storing places for his ever-growing collection. In New York he sometimes frequented the "Diner's Own Home," where scriptural advice and practical suggestions were oddly mingled in placards on the walls. One juxtaposition was this: the first sign read, "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly," and the next one, "Look out for your Hat and Coat." To a gentleman, who would be sixty years of age the following day and who had taken life heartily, he suggested that this message be sent: "You don't look it, but you've lived like it." A certain book-hunter, we are told, found in Montana a Fourth Folio of Shakespeare, with the autograph of William Shakespeare pasted in it, and since then, when he hears some one express a desire for a copy of Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, or any other rare book of Elizabeth's time, he smiles and says, "If I could get away I'd run out to Montana and try to pick up a copy for you." Here is a part description given of this bibliotaph: "He was a kind of gigantic and Olympian schoolboy, loving-hearted, bountiful, wholesome, and sterling to the core." Mr. Vincent describes felicitously certain authors who write books but do not make literature; who are authors by their own will and not by gift or grace of God; and whose labored writing is so manifestly done with sweat of brow that one may say of them, as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of Chester, that they are hornyhanded sons of toil and worthy of their wage. In the essay on Thomas Hardy is this: "Ask a man of average morals and attainments why he doesn't go to church. You won't know any better after he has given you his answer. But ask Nat Chapman (a character in one of Hardy's books), and you will not be troubled with ambiguities. He doesn't like to go because Mr. Torkingham's sermons make him think of soul-saving and other uncomfortable topics. So when the son of Torkingham's predecessor asks Nat how it goes with him, that tiller of the soil promptly answers: "Pa'son Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no holler-day at all to the limbs as it was in yer reverent father's time." This reminds us of an Episcopalian minister in Connecticut of whose faithful prophesying a somewhat bibulous lawyer said, "I like to hear preaching, I enjoy it for its intellectual interest and stimulus. But that man makes things so hot for me that I declare I can't stand it." At the same place and about the same time a colored hack driver, who was a communicant in that church, said one Monday morning to a vestryman whom he drove to the railway station, "How'd ye like de sermon yist'd'y mornin', Mr. De Z. ?" "Yes, sah, yes, sah! Putty plain preachin', sah. De cushins in dat church is putty comfable, but I tell ye, dar was a good many folks dar yist'd'y dat couldn't keep still. Dey kep a squirmin' and a squirmin' and a squirmin'. Yes, sah; dey did." Of the note of melancholy in Hardy's writings our author says: "No man can apprehend life aright and still look upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity in respect to it, but he can never be jaunty |