that in the Brethren' a tendency prevails to cut off from their communion all who differ from them in opinion, even in a very slight degree. This certainly does not gives us a very favourable impression of the brotherliness of Brethrenism; and in the protest which we find raised in this pamphlet against so uncharitable a spirit, we are happy to find ourselves in full sympathy with the writer. Drinking to the Glory of God. Is the Moderate Drinking of Alcoholic Liquors Consistent with the Command to Do all to the Glory of God? By Helen F. H. Johnston. London: Job Caudwell, 335, Strand. A VARIETY of considerations from various sources are adduced, showing that drinking alcohol and drinking to the glory of God are incompatible. The whole forms a useful little tract. A Few Thoughts Concerning Infanticide. By Mrs. M. A. Baines. (From Dr. Lankester's Journal of Social Science.) London: Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly. THE suggestions Mrs. Baines makes, for the abatement of infanticide, include the offering of a reward for the detection of the murderer in every case where now an open verdict of Found Dead' is returned; more uniformity in the sentencing of persons convicted of the crime; more sincerity on the part of medical witnesses; medical coroners; no substitution of secondary penalt es for sentence of death; repression of burial club abuses; registration of still births, with requirement of medical certificate; more stringent regulations in the Burial Act with reference to the interment of still-born children; licensing of all persons acting as midwives; registration of all wet and day nurses who nurse for pay in their own homes; verdicts of manslaughter in all cases of death by culpable negligence; establishment by the State of institutions wherein illegitimate infants and their mothers shall be received together. Some of these suggestions, the last especially, we cannot approve of. Others, and particularly those connected with the registration and burial of still births, might be usefully adopted. But infanticide will not be abated so long as the deplorable fashion of dress introduced by the Empress of the French still continues in force. The increase of infanticide A PLEA for social equality of women with men, addressed especially to the latter. For Man has been the aggressor in having driven woman from her high estate, and he must invite and welcome her back before a just relation can be re-established between them, and social order restored.' All which invitation and welcoming has our hearty good will; remembering always, however, that woman and man, though perfectly equal in dignity, have fundamental differences of attributes which cannot be overlooked without engendering confusion dire. Cholera: Its Symptoms and Treatment. By Alfred Orlando Jones, M.D. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 27, Paternoster Row. THE writer strongly recommends a trituration of opium (one grain of opium with forty grains of white sugar or carbonate of lime), and a tincture of camphor (equal parts of camphor and spirits of wine, the latter 60 over-proof), as excellent remedies in Asiatic cholera. These he would give alternately, five drops of the tincture, and five to ten grains of the trituration, in water, every ten or fifteen, or thirty minutes, according to the severity of the symptoms. Thirst should be gratified with cold rice-water and arrowroot, or beef-tea; the body, recumbent, should be covered with blankets; a hot bottle put to the feet; tincture of camphor thrown on the bed, and carbolic acid on the floor. The opium relieves the pain and diarrhoea, the camphor is for the coldness, faintness, and other symptoms of collapse. Other symptons may necessitate the use of other remedies, such as arsenicum, cuprum, &c. Dr. Jones is perfectly confident in the efficiency and safety of this treatment, having proved it effectual in desperate cases where other remedies had failed. Hades; Hades; or, The Invisible World. By the Author of the Destiny of the Human Race.' London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., Stationers' Hall Court. THIS is No. 2 of a series of Tracts for Thoughtful Christians.' The writer holds that there is an intermediate state, where believers, clothed probably in some appropriate and ethereal vehicle, wait for the final triumph of the Redeemer; that entrance into this state succeeds to death instantaneously, and is probably simultaneous with decease;' that the condition of the soul there, while peaceful, is not one of perfect happiness. On the other hand, there is, he thinks, 'an opposite department of Hades,' possibly disciplinary and educational to multitudes, even if it be to others simply punitive, and only preparatory to final and endless condemnation; to total destruction both of body and soul in Gehenna.' We do not coincide with all his conclusions by any means; but the tract adds to the proof that the primitive Christian doctrine of Hades, rejected by the men of the Reformation because of its Romanist purgatorial perversion, is in a fair way of being restored to Protestant Christendom. Scripture Names, and their Assyrian, Babylonian, and Phoenician Synonyms. By W. G. Hird, Author of an 'Etymological Dictionary of Scripture Names,' &c. Re-printed from the 'Bradford St. James's Parish Magazine.' Dewsbury: J. Ward, Caxton Square. Bradford: John Dale and Co., Market-street. The Life-Boat, or Journal of the National Life-Boat Institution. (Issued Quarterly.) Published at the office of the Institution, 14, John-street, Adelphi, London. The Class and the Desk; a Manual for Teachers, being Notes of Preparation for the Sunday School. By the Rev. G. C. Gray, of Halifax. THIS work, of which several numbers are before us, is to include a consecutive series of 120 carefully prepared lessons on subjects selected from the New Testament, with nearly fifty outlines of Sunday school addresses. Each lesson, seen complete at one opening of the book, gives a condensed commentary on the passage selected, and a practical analysis of the subject of the passage. The work is to contain a compact account of all places, persons, and customs of interest referred to in the Gospels and the Acts, and many Scripture references, 'thus obviating the use of expensive encyclopædias and concordances.' Frequent references are to be made throughout to authorities on difficult passages, such as Alford, Trench, Ellicott, Kitto, Robinson, and others, for the use of those who may have access to their works. Indices of texts and subjects will be appended at the close of the work. The author thinks that, though primarily intended for Sunday school teachers, the work will be found very useful also by ministers, local preachers, and the heads of families. The sample before us authorises expectations of a serviceable work. We note that the author is unsound, indeed somewhat stupidly so, in dealing with the wine question. The Gardener's Magazine; for Amateur Cultivators and Exhibitors of Plants, Flowers, and Fruits; for Gentlemen's Gardeners, Florists, Nurserymen, and Seedsmen; for Naturalists, Botanists, Bee-keepers, and Lovers of the Country. Conducted by Shirley Hibberd, Esq., F.R.H.S. London: E. W. Allen, 11, Ave Maria Lane, and 11, Stationers' Hall Court, E. C. Sunday Morning in Leather Lane: Some Account of its Sunday Fair. London, Oxford, and Cambridge: Rivingtons. The Church of England Temperance Magazine. A Monthly Journal of Intelligence. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 54, Fleet-street; and S, W. Partridge, 9, Paternoster Row. Meliora. ART. I.-PROBABILITY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 1. The Logic of Chance. An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, with especial Reference to its Application to Moral and Social Science. By John Venn, M.A., Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1866. 2. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, &c. By J. S. Mill. 2 Vols. Fifth Edition. London: Parker, Son, and Brown. 3. The Conduct of Life. TE 1862. By R. W. Emerson. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1860. THE tendency of modern speculations in moral and social science is not only curious but alarming. We have chained the high-born Pegasus to a wheelbarrow. We play with scientific terms with as much zest, bravado, and grim curiosity, as children do with fire and razors. Chance, luck, and caprice, we are secretly assured, are terms fast becoming obsolete. If cause and effect be, as they have been well called, the chancellors of God, then chance and caprice are the chancellors of Satan. Everywhere, in our days, we are content to see law, and play with the term like a tennis-ball. Now, it means simply a uniformity in the sequence of facts, now a fixed bias in things, and anon an average tendency, a numerical relation, or a composite see-saw of contending forces, facts, and wills. It is a term that enables us to make admirable pyrotechnic displays; and, if we are clever at mathematics, to elaborate some fine specimens of jugglery that beat anything the metaphysicians and mystics have ever done or attempted, for imposing flourishes, pretended proofs, and astounding results. What parlour magic is at home, this law-finding is in the lecture-room, the essay, and the review. Mechanical comparisons are held to explain, instead of illustrate, the laws of Vol. 9.-No. 36. U life, life, and the chemistries of salts are accepted as the analogues and prototypes of the minds of our men of genius and the characters of our statesmen. This tendency to find order and harmony everywhere is a grand one, but we have had a little too much of its eccentricities and penal developments. Where we have before seen chance, irregularity, and abrupt transition, it is natural enough to believe there may be, and there is, order, and highest law; but we should settle what we mean by that term before we sweep down from planets and winds to minuter and even more variable things. În making a sequence in physical facts into In a law, we have to observe certain stringent and necessary rules, which some writers and thinkers are only too willing to cast off as burdensome and unnecessary the moment they begin to deal with more readily cognisable things, as human thoughts and actions. Physically, they resort to a rigorous induction, and check their calculations in many ways; but humanly they run wild in probability long before they have clearly settled the foundations of their science. In nature, they regard will as something known by a sequence only, if known at all; and hence, in passing forward to humanity, any strongly established sequence is presumed to destroy, override, or occur in spite of it. Humanity is regarded as a sort of volume of German memoirs, of the kind described by Carlyle, and all it wants, or what it most wants, is an index. In statistics, such an index is ordinarily presumed to be found for the time being, and very frequently for a time as yet not in being. Here you can lay your finger on tendencies, facts, and results. Here you behold the rhythm of any given series, and the troublesome gnat of will, to borrow St. Theresa's description of memory, is effectually got rid of. A little mathematical display, a few illustrations from games of chance, and a fixed law is presumed to have been discovered. An elaborate calculation is presumed to be proof, and a plain man, unversed in algebraical formula, and having neither leisure nor inclination to toss up varying numbers of halfpence for days at a time, may be silenced, even bewildered, but certainly not convinced. Put a school-boy to read Plato's 'Parmenides,' and a shrewd mechanic to con over a treatise on 'Probability,' and the effect would be pretty nearly the same. Neither person would believe all he read; both would stoutly resist very much of it, and regard many portions as mere verbal and figure dexterities; but both would settle down to the conclusion, in spite of everything, that there was something in it.' Many ordinary students of humanity, who, fortunately or unfortunately, are ungifted with the faculty of mathematical attenuation, attenuation, have just reached this state of conviction with regard to probability. It is a sort of halfway-house, and as far removed from the wholesale conversion which is never weary with its calculating finesse, and can even find averages. and means in the size and order of paving stones, as it is from the point where the scoffers stand who fling hard words, unjust charges, and theological denunciations. A very large body of thinkers and earnest souls occupy this middle position. They are not afraid to recognise a law, if so be you can but bring evidence for it which is plain and open, and does not require the assumption of half the fact to be proved, or cheat you into a belief that it has been proved by an elaborate and dazzling demonstration. They are willing to believe that there may be some kind of a science of human actions, and are as deeply concerned as anybody can be in all the thousand revelations made by statistical study. But they object, and rightly too, to the proud and infallible airs of men like Quetelet and Buckle. Mathematical theories may help to solve many intricate questions, where variations are independent of such potent and unfixed factors as will and belief, but they do not regard them as always competent to determine either a law of human nature generally, or prophetically, one depending upon composite social forces. They recognise no vital force, if the term may here be allowed, in an average, solely because it is an average, whether it deal with the less variable facts that constitute human nature, or the more variable ones which are its circumstantialities and accidents. We may, if we please, puzzle ourselves with nice little problems in proportions, and run up the whole gamut of probability in a mineral, vegetal, animal, and human series, but we should beware of slipping a false basis into our calculations, or of presuming to have discovered law wherever we simply find relative proportion. They conscientiously object to any inculcation of practical fatalism, such as often creeps into these curious speculations unawares, and fling away from them with noble disdain any doctrine that embodies the notion that because human actions can be calculated, or strictly arranged, they are, therefore, not free, and cease to be strictly individual. It is a pretty idea, they admit, that, as Holmes, the American, puts it, in his clever Table-Talks,' the human will, or the self-determining principle, as compared with its prearranged and impassable restrictions, is correctly imaged by 'a drop of water imprisoned in a crystal-one little fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid universe!'* But * Autocrat of the Brean fast Table,' p. 80. Strahan and Co. 1859. it |