Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/139

 Rh evolutionary ethics. In its full scope, the moral system to be set forth unites sternness with kindness; but thus far attention has been drawn almost wholly to the sternness. Extreme misapprehensions and gross misstatements have hence resulted."

is a clear and graceful rendering into English of Dr. Flügel study of Carlyle. If we are not able to follow Mr. Froude in his estimation of the sage of Chelsea as indisputably the greatest man, excepting Goethe, that has appeared in Europe for centuries, we can easily subscribe to the German philosopher's opinion that he is "a moral force of great significance." Worship and work were the watchwords of Carlyle. History, science, philosophy, poetry, and art were worthless to him when divorced from ethical significance. Records and events were barren unless the historian sought in them the meaning of human life. The translator has omitted Part I, the appendix, and notes, which appear in the original; these pertain chiefly to the life of Carlyle, and are given fully elsewhere by his biographers. In the portrait attached, the philosopher looks forth dejectedly at a flippant generation.

, one of the most active and efficient of the explorers of the Ohio mounds, who has already given in his Fort Ancient the fruit of a most thorough and exhaustive investigation, believes that exaggerated notions prevail of the civilization of the mound-builders. These exaggerated ideas are fed by the works of superficial lookers at the mounds, who in their writings do not lose sight of sensational effect, and by writers who try to uphold theories previously formed. It is the purpose of this book to do away with certain of these illusions. The author is, in fact, a little impatient that they should exist, for he says: "Why there should be so much speculation and uncertainty concerning the aborigines is inexplicable to us. No question of equal importance could have been more easily determined had the early writers given as much care and patience to mound exploration as are given at the present time." The book presents the results of four seasons of exploration, during which one hundred and seven mounds, graves, and cemeteries were opened. In every excavation careful field-notes were made on the spot, and each night the result of the day's work was fully written out. Earthworks are not included in the descriptions. The author has been assisted by Mr. Gerard Fowke, who contributed the chapter on Flint Ridge; Dr. H. T. Cresson; Mr. Jack Bennett for illustrations, sectional drawings, and ground plans, and for observations on osteological collections and palæolithic man; and Mr. W. H. Davis for a chapter on the Muskingum Valley. The descriptions relate to mounds in Licking County (Newark), the Muskingum Valley, the Madisonville Cemetery, the east fork of the Little Miami River, Fort Ancient, Clinton County, and Chillicothe and Ross County. From the results reached in the explorations, the author draws the conclusions that the tribes did not occupy the northern part of the State for any considerable length of time, but were settled chiefly in the large river valleys; that both the brachycephalic and the dolichocephalic races intermingled largely in all the valleys save the Muskingum; and that nothing more than the upper status of savagery was attained by any race or tribe living in the present State of Ohio. "If we go by field testimony alone, we can assign primitive man high attainments in but few things, and these indicate neither civilization nor an approach to it. First, he excelled in building fortifications and in the interment of his dead; second, he made surprisingly long journeys for mica, copper, lead, shells, and other foreign substances, to be used as tools and ornaments; third, he was an adept in the chase and in war; fourth, he chipped flint and made carvings on bone, stone, and slate exceedingly well, when we consider the primitive tools he employed; fifth, a few of the more skillful men of his tribe made fairly good representations of animals, birds, and human figures in stone. . . . On the other hand, he failed to grasp the idea of communication by written characters, the use of metal (except in the cold state), the cutting of stone, or the making of brick for building