Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/871

Rh facts, and become unable to take a view of human life as a totality. The whole range of evidence must be traversed if we are to secure an harmonious representation of the constitution of human nature." The book has not been produced in the pure spirit of science, but under a bias, and to sustain a foregone conclusion; yet the work is done with ability, and will be useful.

is a truly valuable book of travel. The author is a keen observer of man and of nature; and, moreover, he is a skilled literary artist. He sees with his own eyes, and not through the eyes of a guidebook writer, and he carefully eschews the commonplace. He writes of the railroads, commerce, agriculture, mining, scenery, and populations of the great States and Territories visited on the "Round Trip."

author offers in his preface an apology for adding to the already over-large number of "Histories of England." Having to deliver lectures to men and women (working people, presumably) on English history, he found, on beginning to prepare his lessons, "no one book which was not either too learned, too copious, too trivial, or too condensed." Plainly, then, there was still room for one history more. Special indebtedness is acknowledged to Green's "History of the English People."

the preface to this book it is said that "at present English grammar is in the same condition in which Copernicus found astronomy." The author appears to be pretty confident that his work has established the "reign of law" in this chaos, and that henceforth grammar is to rank as a "science" in the strictest sense of that term.

"Free Religious Association" is one of the extreme reactions against the restrictive spirit of ecclesiasticism which is still dominant in modern society. That spirit has unquestionably declined in power with the rise and advance of scientific thought. Protestantism was a revolt against the tyranny of the older religious organizations. The liberal Christianity of our own century was, again, a revolt against the spiritual repressions of Protestantism. And now "free religion" carries on the liberating work still further by rebelling against the restrictions of liberal Christian theology. Something is gained to freedom of religious thought at each step, and the advance movement is ever engaged upon a whole some and necessary work. The "Free Religious Association" announces its objects to be, to promote the practical interests of pure religion, to increase fellowship in the spirit, and to encourage the scientific study of man's religious nature and history. It avows no creed, but leaves each individual member responsible for his own opinions alone, and declares that nothing in its constitution shall ever be construed as limiting membership by any test of speculative opinion or belief, or as interfering in any other way with that absolute freedom of thought and expression which is the natural right of every rational being.

It would seem to be impossible to go further in the declaration of religious freedom. Nothing remains to be gained on that score. Yet the Association does not at all admit that it is therefore out of business. It has important ethical objects to secure, and therefore plenty to do. In fact, free religion itself is held to be a means of attaining exalted moral ideals, and from this point of view it has before it endless occupation and a positive basis of union. Beliefs, views, doctrines now come in order, and there seems to be the necessity of something resembling a creed or declaration of convictions. The need of some groundwork, or platform, or avowal of doctrine that can furnish a common basis and give