LABOR COPARTNERSHIP.2 THIS modest title covers an interesting little book, by far the most intelligent and satisfactory account yet published of a great experiment in the reorganization of industry. The British schools of economists have taken the lead in defining rigidly the distinct provinces of management, capital, and labor in the social tasks of production and distribution, so as to make it appear impossible that workingmen could ever, as a class, take part in the control of important enterprises or share in their profits. Yet it is in Great Britain that the doctrines of these schools have been practically refuted by associations of working-men organizing and directing vast manufactures, warehouses, and markets on the basis of a partnership, finding among their own number every type of ability and every grade of skill needed. The movement began in a small way more than fifty years ago; but it was for a long time limited by many difficulties. Capital derived from the savings of wage-earners accumulated with painful slowness; leadership trained in the boldness and breadth of enterprise was still harder to find; the habit of association was but beginning to be formed by laborers. But the gradual removal of each obstacle accelerated the progress of the principle. Already more than one hundred and fifty associations of this class are in operation; their annual product and sales amount to ten millions of dollars; and there is a tendency to regard this form of cooperation as the most efficient means of improving the condition of working-men. Certain it is that the movement, defying the traditions of economical science, and introducing a new and potent element into the social life of productive laborers, deserves careful study by those who wish to understand the present tendencies and hopes of industrial progress.

Mr. Lloyd studies these highest successes of co-operation in Great Britain with some wonder that they are so little understood and not at all rivalled in other countries, especially in our own. He is convinced that with a knowledge of what their British contemporaries have accomplished, and with intelligent leadership, American laborers are capable of association no less effective and beneficent. Recognizing in co-operation, with its varied forms, "the most important social movement of our times outside of politics," and appreciating at their full value its grand achievements in many fields, he holds that "labor copartnership is its most advanced element," likely to take the lead in its future development. All who desire the trne elevation of labor in dignity and in its material conditions will regard the widest possible circulation of this book as a valuable contribution to the harmony of interests among classes.

Labor Copartnership. By HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD. Illustrated. Post 8vo. Cloth, $1 00. Harper and Brothers: New York and London. 1898.

THE PATERNAL STATE IN FRANCE AND GERMANY.3

MR. GAULLIEUR classes together French democracy and German imperialism, so different in form, as each a state—that is, a government corporation — practically unlimited in its control of the lives, fortunes, and destiny of its citizens, and assuming to be wise enough to regulate these in minute detail. He traces the origin and growth of each organization, describes its workings, crushing out individual energy and personal freedom, and depicts the results as a decaying civilization. It would be absurd to accept his sketch as a complete account of society, or even of political life, in each nation. He takes no adequate account of a multitude of ways in which the spirit of liberty is at work, through schools, the press, public and private debates, and the influence of foreign opinion, to counteract the forces making for the enslavement of mind. It is easy, then, to pronounce his sketch of these countries a gross exaggeration; and the conclusions he draws unsound.

er.

But no such short method of refuting Mr. Gaullieur will avail with the thoughtful readHis picture of the paternal state in itself, and in its effects, is true in principle, and would be complete in fact but that the ideal of that state is nowhere realized. There is enough in the political and social effects of meddlesome omnipotence in the two great military nations to support his terrible indictment of the theory that governments should be vested with authority to set right all that is wrong. This theory is not held in the abstract by any influential thinkers. But it has a thousand concrete forms, one and another of which is perpetually finding advocates even in this country. It underlies, as a silent assumption, the political thought of multitudes of voters, and inspires the entire creed of what is called populism. The older superstition which has always been the antithesis of civilization, which formerly upheld the divine right of kings to the obedience of subjects, now strives to confer on the corporation called the state supreme powers, and to expect from it superhuman wisdom in their exercise. This book shows with startling clearness and emphasis why every such expectation is vain, and proves that the future welfare of society depends not on the extension of the functions of government, but on the development of individual character, enterprise, and freedom.

years and its ages in learning is that "things are not what they seem." The world of sense is material to construct the world of thought; and the more thorough the process, the more amazing the transformation. To adopt Mr. Bowne's own illustration, the untaught eye gazing on the visible heavens takes in certain impressions, which may have a value and a meaning, but what are these compared with the new heaven and new earth in the mind of the astronomer? The reader who searches the foundations of his belief under the guidance of this work will experience a change no less radical in his view of the universe. Far more so, indeed, if he accepts its teachings as final; for astronomical science but adjusts, rectifies, and develops the object of contemplation, while metaphysical science destroys it as an object, and creates it anew within the contemplating mind.

Professor Bowne first published his Metaphysics seventeen years ago. There was nothing revolutionary in its attitude towards its predecessors. Its leading positions had been foreshadowed by a series of philosophers, from Berkeley and Kant onward, and had been formally defended by Lotze. Yet the work was revolutionary, in two ways; first, as it appeared just when a crass materialism in natural science was exulting in having driven from the universe, as needless hypotheses, freedom, spiritual existence, and God. Metaphysical inquiry had become almost a curiosity; the assumption that science is but the natural history of phenomena, and is measured by the progress in their classification, threatened to become the basis of education. At such a time a voice that challenged the whole fabric as built upon a void, and with the anthority of insight and logic compelled a hearing, was startling indeed. In the second place, our author applies to the subject a new method and a new style. Without lowering its dignity, he brings it nearer to the common thought than his predecessors. Where many writers exact a painful attention, he invites and stimulates an eager curiosity. Hence minds accustomed to regard his theme as visionary need but to enter with him on its discussion to be hurried into new worlds of thought.

The original work has now grown into two volumes. In the Theory of Thought and Knowledge the conceptions or necessary assumptions upon which all beliefs are founded were evolved and described. In the Metaphysics each of them is analyzed, and its essential value determined. Sir William Hamilton proclaimed that "in the world there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind." Professor Bowne, with Lotze, goes further, avoiding a self- centred view of the universe, to the more simple and stronger position that in the world there is nothing but mind. His confession of faith is bold, clear, and consistent: "The deepest thing in existence is neither being nor causation, as ab

stract categories, but intellect as the concrete realization and source of both.... The couception of a reality existing by itself, apart from thought, independent of thought, and having separate ontological laws of its own, is a fiction of the first magnitude" (p. 86). "We find thought able to save itself from contradiction and collapse only as all reality is taken up into mind.... A thought world is the only knowable world; and a thought world is the only real world" (p. 294). "The world of things can be defined and understood only as we give up the notion of an extra-mental reality altogether, and make the entire world a thought world; that is, a world that exists only through and in relation to intelligence. Mind is the only ontological reality. Ideas have only conceptional reality. Ideas energized by will have phenomenal reality. Beside these realities there is no other" (pp. 422, 423).

The idealism of which Plato caught glimpses through mist, of which Berkeley heard sugges tions from beyond the veil, became in the mighty hands of Kant a product of steely logic, with which he fashioned the philosophy and theology of Germany for two generations. But no one has ever set it forth with such consistency, such completeness, and in such a fascinating form as our author. His mental vision is often a mighty telescope which resolves the nebulæ of Plato and of Berkeley into well-defined stars. He undermines the structure of Kant's Transcendental Esthetics, and sets its repaired pinnacles upon better foundations. He shuns the paradoxes of Fichte, absorbs the lofty aspiration of Schelling while silently spurning his helpless logic, rejects all sides of Hegel's ambiguity, and not content with translating Lotze, extends his thought into new planes, and fits it to new audiences. In the presence of such an achievement, which does honor to our country and our time, minor criticisms may be left to technical writers. These will doubtless find several passages in which the argument seems to be merely verbal, and the conclusion to turn upon ambiguity in terms. They will even find a few of needless obscurity, surprising the reader in a work whose general tenor is, for its subject, miraculously clear. As a whole, the book must be earnestly commended, not only to the special student of philosophy, but to every mind which feels a weariness of the apparent and longs for the real; which is conscions that the facts of phenomenal science and the dazzling dexterities of the arts lie all on one side of that firmament which is its own dwelling, and feels an inner necessity of looking to the other side. Whether or not such a mind find rest in the philosophic faith here taught, it will gather new strength as well as richer store in the study; and will attain by it, if not the repose of trust, at least much of that sane and reverent scepticism which is the best safeguard against serions error, and for many the highest attainable wisdom. CHARLTON T. LEWIS.