"Ethical considerations modify in various ways the action and reaction of profit and loss, which is the chief force in economic phenomena taken in the concrete" (p. 29). "Applied economics must rank as subsidiary and inferior to ethics, because the attainment of no purely economical advantage can justify a violation of ethical principles. Wealth is only a means to the end of preserving man and bringing him to ethical perfection. Accordingly, in any partial conflict between ethical and economic motives the former must prevail. For instance, the employment of child-labor in factories would be regulated by State interference on ethical grounds, even if there were no other reason or justification whatever for interference" (p. 30).
This is a very different classicism from what we were accustomed to hear expounded in the school-room a generation ago. Yet, with all its modifications, it re-affirms the fundamental premises of the classical school, and these, Cossa believes, cannot be seriously shaken. Ethical considerations modify in various ways,—"but Dargun cannot be right in asking anyone to build up a new economics based upon sympathy or on love for one's neighbor" (p. 29). Indeed, this idea of substituting the Golden Rule for the economic motive of self-interest is to Cossa unthinkable.
"Grant to the socialists their delusive dream, wipe out of existence wealth as a social system, humor them and allow that injustice is inherent in the exercise of liberty, which brings inevitable pauperism and constantly recurring crises wherever it goes, what will socialism thus humored to the full of its bent do for you? It will create a system of economic policy tending wholly to eliminate or at least partially to paralyze private property and competition. What experience have we of any system of economic order which does not hinge upon these two cardinal institutions in the established order of to-day?" (p. 516).
Alas! alas! And yet there are those among us foolish enough to contemplate such a possibility without a shudder, and to dream, in spite of Cossa's fantastic anathema (p. 515), of that time when the Kingdom of Heaven shall really come on the earth!
This notice should not close without acknowledging our debt to the translator for the admirable rendering into English, and to the publisher for the excellence of typography and paper.
Life with Trans-siberian Savages.[1]
In Mr. Douglas Howard's little book, "Life with Trans-Siberian Savages," we have a sketchy—all too sketchy—account of experiences among that most interesting people, the Ainu of Saghalien. Our author claims to have lived with them, to have tilted in medical contest with their Shaman, to have been inducted into a chieftaincy. These are unusual advantages, and we are justified in expecting much new matter from his pen. He himself realizes this, and trusts that his book will be "found both interesting and instructive to the general as well as to the scientific reader." Unfortunately, however, he adds little to our actual knowledge of the Ainu.
Mr. Howard shows himself unacquainted with the history of exploration among the Ainu. It is scarcely true that no one has written about the Saghalien Ainu for nearly three hundred years. Batchelor's book appears to have suggested Howard's name for the people of whom he writes. Most authors speak of Aïno or Aino, of Aïnos or Ainos: Batchelor insists that we should say Ainu, and uses the same form in singular and plural. Howard, however, uses Ainus for a plural—a rather unwarranted proceeding.
There is much yet to learn of the physical characteristics of the Ainu, and Mr. Howard might have made observations, a report of which would have great value and interest. But he does not add anything to our knowledge in these respects. The description of the first Ainu he saw will show how little exact science may gain from him. He says:
"The flesh-tint of this human phenomenon was that of pale Turkish tobacco; the frame massive; face large, stupid, blank, expressionless; forehead low, and almost concealed by a mass of hair as black and shiny as a highly polished boot. This was parted, with much evident care, exactly in the middle, and hung loosely over the shoulders after the fashion of Eve by the old masters."
There is another page full of similar description. Here and there, in his narrative of incidents of travel, not unpleasantly told, we gather bits of interesting ethnographic matter. A village is described; food and cookery, dress, fishing, hunting, the use of inaos, treatment of disease, care of the dead, are matters referred to more or less fully. No one, so far as we know, gives so good a description of friction-made fire among Ainu:
- ↑ Life with trans-siberian Savages. By B. Douglas Howard. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.
