Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/870

848 papers upon physical and manual training, the moral problem, Froebel's theories, the school curriculum, elementary science, character and school education, citizenship, and industrial reform. More speculative are those upon the education of the soul, our divine relationships, and woman as an educator. From the latter we learn that "woman is provided with sensitive, man with muscular tissue," and also that "woman looks into the mystical unseen." Possibly this does not include clairvoyance or spirit-rapping, but is only a poetical phrase for some indefinable power contingent upon the finer feminine structure.

author pleads in this book that the primary conditions of health should be recognized as of first importance to the community; and he regards it as a blot on modern civilization, setting it in an unfavorable light as compared with such civilizations as the Roman and Moorish, that they are so neglected, as the chief element of rottenness in it. "We postpone," he says, "laying the foundations of our social structure in order to elaborate its pinnacles. We are acquainted with all possible openings for commerce through the world; we have explored the psychological ramifications of sentiment; and we do not know the course of the main sewers in our city, and we pollute the sources of the water we drink. We have not yet learned that a great civilization is all built upon the bodies of men and women enfeebled and distorted by overwork, filth, and disease." The present is regarded as a peculiarly favorable time for taking in hand seriously the organization and socialization of the elementary conditions of health, on account of the public and official attention that has been given to the matter in recent years. We also possess to-day, the author affirms, a closer grip of the conditions of health than has ever been possible before, and are better able to unravel their complexity and to show clearly what a man should do who would live a healthy life. "The key-word of our modern methods is not cure but prevention, and while this task is more complex it is also far easier. It is to a gigantic system of healthy living by a perpetual avoidance of the very beginnings of evil that our medical science is now leading us." The present condition of the new movement for the prevention of disease, here referred to, is sketched; then the present position of the more ancient system of the treatment of disease—by the medium of friendly societies, in private practice, in hospitals, and infirmaries, with respect to special classes of disease; the registration of disease; and industries as related to health are discussed; the evils of the laissez-faire system are exposed, as illustrated now in Russia; and the conclusion is reached that the maintenance of the conditions of health is not a merely national question, but calls for international co-operation and action. The recognition of this fact is already seen in the holding of International Congresses of Hygiene, which have done much to consolidate, unify, and stimulate the various movements connected with public health.

may always be trusted to present the broadest comprehension and ablest exposition of the Roman Catholic view of controverted questions. The present work, which is composed chiefly of articles already published in leading English reviews, where they have been read widely and appreciated, is an inquiry, supposed by the author to be from the point of view of a class of readers "practically outside the Christian pale," into the tenableness of the religion "which for more than a thousand years has supplied the foremost nations of the world with an answer to the great enigma of human existence." It presents, in aid of the solution of that question, certain considerations which have been helpful to Mr. Lilly, with special reference to the religious difficulties peculiar to these times. "Possibly they may be of use to some who find themselves unable to employ the old theological symbols." In the first article, or chapter, which is entitled The Twilight of the Gods, the present conditions of religious doubt are described; it is assumed, for the purpose of the argument, that the solution of the enigma presented by