Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/282

270 there is a chapter on the durability of stone and the causes of its decay. One reason given for the rapid decay of sandstone in recent years is, that lately much of the stone has been set on edge. A folded map of the State on which the towns where there are quarries are marked accompanies the volume.

collection of essays, better than any other, shows in strong light the peculiar logic of the Russian novelist. The subjects discussed are Church and State; Money; Man and Woman, and the Mother.

A remarkable dissertation on the origin and use of money takes up the greater part of the book, and is worth reading only as an abnormal subject is valuable for dissection. At the outset it is unequivocally declared that money is the cause of slavery, but this proposition is so obscured in the conclusion that many paragraphs are devoted to proving that slavery results from the compulsion of the unarmed by the armed! These are some of his inimitable ideas: "To say to-day that money does not produce slavery is as correct as it was correct fifty years since to say that serfdom did not produce slavery. . . . To plain people it appears beyond doubt that the immediate cause of the enslavement of some men by others is money. But science, denying this, says that money is only a medium of exchange, which has no connection with the enslavement of men. . . . Doubtless money has those harmless properties which science enumerates; but it has them in reality only. . . in an ideal society, but in such a society money would not exist at all . . . its main function is not the serving as a medium of exchange, but the serving as a means of compulsion." The proof of this assertion Tolstoï proceeds to find in the history of the Fiji Islands. The Fijians were unacquainted with any means of exchange other than barter until American colonists came among them. Some of the American intruders were injured by Fijians, and the United States Government demanded forty-five thousand dollars indemnity for the outrages. The Fijians appealed to England for protection, borrowed money, and finally became enslaved—ergo, money is the cause of slavery!

The scientific method of investigation is somewhat slower than this electric Russian would have it, so he compares it to "a lazy, restive horse," and states at length: "Science has a definite purpose, which it accomplishes. The purpose is, to maintain the superstitions and delusions of the people, and thereby hinder humanity in its advance toward truth and welfare" It is hardly worth while to pursue such folly much further, yet Tolstoï carries this agility of conclusion into his examination of all social questions. In another essay he enunciates the following theorem: 'The service of mankind resolves itself into two parts: 1. The improvement of living men and women. 2. The perpetuation of mankind itself. To the former men are chiefly called, since the possibility of the latter service is denied them. To the second women are called, as they are exclusively capacitated therefor." At one time he would make the world a vast nursery where the ideal woman rears the greatest possible number of children; at another he declares, "The continuation of the human race will no longer be necessary for those who are living a true life."

The celebrity of this author makes any utterance from him noticeable; but, however highly his imaginative power may rank him as a novelist, there is no continuity or sequence to his arguments, and as a thinker he is wholly out of joint.

rarely see a book that hits its aim so pat as this one does. It covers an important subject with a serviceable degree of completeness, it contains nothing that is superfluous or unavailable to those for whom it is written, and it is everywhere clear, forcible, and direct. The author's statement of what she has attempted is no less apt than the body of the book. "This little volume," she says, "has been compiled with the hope that the housekeeper of to-day may find in its pages a few definite and simple suggestions regarding sanitary house-building and housekeeping which will aid her to maintain in her own domain that high degree of intelligent hygiene in whose enforcement lies the physical promise of family life."