Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/770

750 the author commences the treatment of the subject by devoting the first three chapters to certain preliminary matters relating to the recent history and present condition of the subject, the province and limits of the science of law, and an analysis of the relations of law and morality. In the following chapters we have an account of the growth of law, and this statement is exceedingly interesting. The steps in the evolution are distinctly marked, the manner in which the changes were effected are clearly traced, and the sources whence materials were drawn for the constant process of improvement are pointed out. The latest and best-credited speculations on the origin of law, customs, equity, and methods of legislation, are also carefully presented. The sixth chapter is an analysis of primary legal terms, such as "person," "thing," "right," "duty," "act," "event," "intention," etc., all of which have complex meanings in jurisprudence. Separate chapters are given to such subjects as contracts, ownership, crimes, procedure, international law, and codification; and these are all treated with admirable clearness.

This little book deserves to be widely welcomed by the reading public. The names are few, in the list of great writers belonging either to this country or England, who have made contributions of any weight to legal sicencescience [sic]; Prof. Amos comes forward to do what he may toward supplying this deficiency, and he has proved himself equal to the task. He has produced a work on the science of law which will not only have its interest for the legal profession, but will have a greater interest beyond that profession. It has not been written for the specialist, but for general readers, and conveys in a popular form a kind of knowledge which has never before been reduced to convenient shape for general acquisition. And in this country especially, where everybody is or ought to be more or less concerned in the work of law-making, and where principles are required for guidance in the discharge of this duty, a work which strips the subject of its arbitrary and local features, and develops its universal and scientific aspect, should be widely welcomed and carefully studied.

It is proper to remark in this place that Prof. Amos has undertaken a formidable task in first attempting so great a novelty as to educe the general principles of the science of law, and then to present them in a compendious form adapted to all classes of intelligent readers. It was impossible that a pioneer work of this sort, dealing with subjects which have been habitually regarded from other points of view, should not be very tempting to critics who are ever on the lookout for something to slash; and we note that some of the English periodicals are very free in their strictures upon the professor's book. But, although finding fault with some of its minor points, its main characteristics have not been assailed, and the practical value of the treatise is conceded in all quarters. It supplies an urgent and an undoubted want, and will be a valuable addition to the "International Series" for which it was prepared.J. G. M.

have read this address with much interest, as it comes from a thinker who views the subject from both its sides—that of a thorough mastery of the modern problems of science, and that of the most stringent orthodoxy. He therefore not only recognizes "the fact of a long and lamentable controversy between Christian and scientific modes of thought," but he sees that both parties are at fault in provoking and maintaining it. On the scientific side, the causes of alienation are assumed to be—1. A "disposition to exclude the idea of God, which has appeared so strangely in the writings of scientific and philosophical students," and which he is unable to explain except on the hypothesis "that the whole race is in some way morally perverted and alienated from God and all true excellence;" 2. "Apart from an absolute and intentional advocacy of atheistical ideas, there is, on the part of many scientific men, a carelessness, or even a hostility of expression toward religious truth which awakens deep distrust;" 3. The perversions and misrepresentations of pretenders to science who assume its name to assail religion.