Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/143

Rh consequence, unconsciously assisted in perpetuating certain offenses against good taste." The feeling that prefers articles and designs at first hands can hardly be called an unreasonable prejudice. Whatever it is, originality, with equality of merit, will go far to counteract it. It will be worth trying as a substitute for a McKinley tariff. Mr. Barber believes that "America, within the next few decades, is destined to lead the world in her ceramic manufactures." The work is sumptuously presented by the publishers in the best style of bookmaking.

this report are incorporated, as leading heads or parts thereof, the reports of progress made in the various lines of investigation of the several departments of the works of the survey, as follows: Surface Geology; Cretaceous and Tertiary Formations (preliminary report); Water-supply and Water-power; Artesian Wells in Southem New Jersey; and the Sea Dikes of the Netherlands and the Reclamation of Lowlands and Tidemarsh Lands. These reports are to some extent separate and independent of one another, although all have for their object the elucidation of the facts of the geological structure and physical geology of the State, and as an ultimate end the information of the people in order to the highest development of the natural resources of the State. The administrative report, introductory to the reports of the several divisions, besides remarks on the topics already mentioned, has discussions of drainage; natural parks and forest reservations; the work of the United States Geological Survey in New Jersey; and the geological survey exhibit for the Columbian Exposition.

The maps represent the whole State, with reference to its water-supply sheds, and the special geology of parts of Monmouth and Middlesex Counties. The treatment of all the subjects is full, satisfactory, and adapted to practical ends; and the report is, as a whole, one of the most interesting the survey has issued.

author seeks to present his subject in the plainest and simplest manner he can. His point of view is not susceptible, he says, of being classified among any of the various schools of recent current thought, but represents rather a critical reconciliation of rival philosophers of the type of Kantian apriorism and John Stuart Mill's empiricism. The names of positivism and monism are taken as expressing the philosophical principles which dominate modern thought. Either is complementary to the.other. Positivism represents the principle that all knowledge—scientific, philosophical, and religious—is a description of facts; monism is a unitary conception of the world, presenting it as an inseparable and indivisible entirety. It stands upon the principle that all the different truths are but so many different aspects of one and the same truth. Monistic positivism or positive monism "is, and always has been, the principle of all sound science. The positive and monistic maxims of philosophy were perhaps not sufficiently appreciated in former ages, but they are growing to be clearly understood now, and will in time lead to the abandonment of all transcendental, metaphysical, supernatural, and agnostic speculations. Positive monism will change philosophy into a systematization of positive knowledge."

secondary schools the study of mathematics demands a large share of the pupil's attention, and little effort has been made thus far to rescue the hours passed in solving arithmetical puzzles or algebraic enigmas. Even in grammar schools it is excellence in arithmetic rather than in the conconstruction of language which forms the standard of scholarship. The author of this manual believes that much of the time spent in mastering arithmetical processes could be also utilized in Nature study. If the pupil obtains material, makes his own observations and comparisons, the mechanism of the subject will be incidental, and instead of meaningless results or unintelligible values