Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/288

276 who are ambitious about the development of philosophy on this side of the Atlantic. The work is, moreover, of an eminently practical sort, and deals with the relations of political and social science in their bearing upon the interests of the community in such a way as to entitle it to the consideration of statesmen and political economists. Besides, as it offers a new synthesis of facts, and aims to co-ordinate into a uniform scheme the accepted truths of all the sciences, it can not fail to awaken the interest of thinking scientific men in all departments. And, as the philosophy of religion is broadly and independently treated, the work is certain to have an interest for all schools of religio-philosophic speculation and inquiry. As Mr. Ward's work is thoroughly up to the times both in substance and spirit, the reader will of course be prepared for a good deal of freedom and boldness in discussion; but the author is no trifler, though, in the courageous expression of his convictions, he goes no further than is justified by the practice of this questioning age.

We may add that the work is written in a style that will commend it to popular readers. Mr. Ward makes himself perfectly understood, and without effort on the part of those who follow him. He is at times diffuse, and we think the work would have borne considerable condensation, but, believing that the views he desires to promulgate are important, the author seems to have been only solicitous for that fullness of statement that shall give completeness to his meaning in the reader's mind. The references to collateral discussion are numerous throughout the text, so as to facilitate the following out of any special argument, and the index to the work is careful and exhaustive. Mr. Ward has been arduously occupied upon his treatise for a long time, and may be congratulated upon the perfection of its form as a product of the bookmaking art.

It has been our purpose in this notice simply to give the best account we could in so brief a space of the general characteristics of the "Dynamic Sociology." Our readers hardly need to be reminded of our decisive dissent from the doctrines of the school of which Mr. Ward will now easily take the place of the ablest leader, but we have refrained from criticism, that our statement might be as far as possible fair and unbiased. There is, at any rate, a great deal in this work that is instructive, and to be cordially commended, and there are parts of it that we could wish to see more widely circulated than they can be in these formidable volumes. Though disagreeing with much that it contains, the book is nevertheless to be welcomed as a timely contribution to contemporaneous inquiry, and it will unquestionably aid in giving a fresh impulse and a fruitful direction to the discussion of large and momentous subjects.

subject of the early history of mankind, in the light of the modern doctrine of the antiquity of man, is not only of growing interest, but in its researches and its expositions it is enlisting much of the leading talent of the age. It is established that we have to go back of all written history for that primitive basis of history which is written only in the book of nature. Here science comes to the aid of the philosophical historian, and reveals those conditions of man and society which are indispensable to the understanding of the subsequent course of humanity. Among the latest and ablest contributions to this subject is that by the eminent French authority, Professor Joly, whose contribution to the International Series is now rendered into English in a very popular form under the title of "Man before Metals." his book is an excellent compend of our present knowledge on the antiquity and early history of man, and the author's French clearness of statement has been well preserved in the translation.

In the first part of the volume, devoted to "The Antiquity of the Human Race," Professor Joly describes the discoveries that have been made in the bone-caves, the kitchen-middens of Denmark, the Sardinian Nuraghi, and on the sites of the Swiss lake-dwellings. A short chapter is devoted to "Prehistoric Man in America," but the