Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/383

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LITERARY NOTICES.
369

says, are of an explanatory and supplementary nature. The improvements are here manifest, and we cordially testify that the second edition is much less intricate and obscure in statement than the first. It will be remembered, by those who happen to have read it, that the book is rather critical in character, and is devoted to an examination of the grounds and sufficiency of existing ethical methods, rather than to the propounding of any new system. From this circumstance, together with the infelicity of statement which so marked the first edition, there was often much perplexity to know what Sidgwick himself believed, and what he was driving at. In the preface to the second edition, the author refers to the character of his new matter, and indicates various points in which his views have been modified under the influence of the critical attention his volume has received. One thing is somewhat significant: Mr. Sidgwick is a man given to highly-abstract studies, and he therefore occupies a province that has been thus far least affected by the progress of physical and biological science. He heard a great din in an adjacent field about evolution, but as it did not seem to affect him, he paid little attention to it. When, however, the claim was made that ethics, like almost everything else in this world, must be influenced by evolutionary doctrine, he put in a mild but decisive protest; and in an article in Mind maintained, virtually, that it makes no difference as to the present exposition of ethical science how its phenomena came about. In the new edition, however, this judgment is modified. In the preface he says, "I have further been led, through study of the theory of evolution and its application to practice, to attach somewhat more importance to this theory than I had previously done;" to which we may add that, in his still further study of that theory, he will attach still more importance to it. Possibly, indeed, his views may become so much more evolved that he will wonder how he could at first have treated the subject with so little reference to that doctrine. If ethics refers to the obligations of conduct, and if the American eagle and the American citizen are not required to conform to the same standard—if organization comes into the question, and man himself, in his organic and racial modifications, illustrates the same principle—then may it become a prime question in ethics as to the right and wrong of conduct in different stages of social unfolding. Should it in fact turn out that the factor which Mr. Sidgwick at first excluded from ethical inquiry, becomes, at length, its dominant factor, it will be but another illustration of that inversion of values of which we have already so many examples in the history of progressive thought.

Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. By H. P. Blavatsky. New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877. Two volumes. Pp. 1365. Price, $7.50.

After a patient examination of these massive volumes, we confess our inability to find what it is that is "unveiled." The dominant aim of the work seems to be to establish the identity between ancient magic and modern spiritualism, and to show that here alone is the ground of a possible compromise in the contest between religion and science. It is but fair to say that the author declines to be considered an ordinary spiritualist, which is certainly creditable to her, but we must refer those who are curious to know in what manner she differs from them to the book itself, with the hope that they will be more successful than we have been. The first volume professes to be devoted to science, and the second to theology; and, in dealing with science, much space is given to the refutation of the idea that it is infallible. When that assumption is set up, this part of the author's effort will become pertinent, and will be, no doubt, appreciated. Scientific men are scolded by her, in a copious variety of diction, because they will not "investigate" the spiritualistic hypothesis. This is quite in the vein of the ordinary spiritualist, and is far from new. When the so-called spiritualist's hypothesis is offered for investigation on the same terms and conditions as the other problems of Nature, there will be no difficulty in getting it investigated. Two or three things are essential to a legitimate scientific hypothesis: It must be expressed in intelligible terms; it must present a definite subject-matter for solution or determination; and it must be one by which predictions can