REVIEWS 133
ronment and the heredity. Certainly the change of comparisons and of ideas is part of the improvement of environment, but it is not all. When large families are compelled by economic conditions and by defective police measures to herd in one-room dwellings, illegitmate births, prostitution and drunkenness are matters of course, even if there were a mission hall in every flat. This volume will* help to hold the balance between the extreme notions which are simply fragments of one truth.
The author seeks to show to those who underestimate the social energy of religion and the power of individual choice that the " social mind" or " consciousness of kind " is emptied of its choicest contents when the divine element is denied and freedom of will is ques- tioned. On the other hand he urges those who depend entirely on temperances pledges and individual acceptance of religious beliefs to revise their notions of the significance of heredity and environment. Thomas Chalmers, early in the century, sought to bring economists and theologians to exchange ideas, so that both might be more amply equipped for social service. Dr. Bradford now asks biologists and religious reformers and evangelists to enrich each other by spiritual commerce.
The book will not be acceptable to those who think of the divine life as nothing or unknowable ; and it will give as great offense to those whose religious beliefs have petrified in verbal formulas. But it will prove helpful and inspiring to that large class of persons who are free to take and use all forces that make for human welfare, and also wish to be freed from traditional misconceptions which have become entangled with the essentials of the higher life. C. R. HENDERSON.
Moral Evolution. By GEORGE HARRIS, Professor in Andover Theological Seminary. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1896. Pp. 446.
IT is not easy, after Aristotle, to add a new principle to ethical discussion, but it is always in order to translate the ancient oracles into current phrase and interpret them in relation to contemporary problems. The preface makes this claim: " The ilistim tiveness of the book, if it has any, is the recovery of self from the mistaken neglect into which it has fallen at the hands of many philosophers, to its proper value." The evolutionary conception of history is made the
