and the subjects just referred to as presented in the tables are now entered upon. Chapter III. is devoted to the "Original External Factors of Social Evolution," and the extracts we now publish are a small part of this exposition. The same questions are touched upon here that Mr. Buckle took up in the early part of his introduction to the "History of Civilization," although it is hardly necessary to say that they are very differently treated.
It may be proper to call attention to one feature of the forthcoming work which will be of general interest. In the preceding volumes on "Biology" and "Psychology," Mr. Spencer has undoubtedly lost some reputation as a popular writer. Those who had read with interest and enthusiasm his brilliant essays, toiled hard over the Biological and Psychological discussions, and got the impression that Mr. Spencer had degenerated in his power of lucid and felicitous exposition. The difficulty, however, was not in the writer, but in the subjects, the facts with which he chiefly dealt being more or less scientific, technical, and foreign to general readers. Dealing with principles and relations, his statements were necessarily abstract, but the trouble was that the terms of the relations and the facts from which the principles were derived were unfamiliar to the common mind. But, in treating of Sociology, or the phenomena of society, Mr. Spencer again enters a sphere of thought the elements of which are no longer foreign to ordinary thought. The "Principles of Sociology" will discuss questions that are quite within the range of popular apprehension, and the difficulty, of which much complaint has formerly been made, will disappear. That Mr. Spencer is very far from having lost or impaired his power of familiar and telling statement we have lately had abundant proof in his series of articles on the "Study of Sociology," a work which is being now widely read and enjoyed by many who were at first under the impression that they would be unable to follow and understand him.
The "Principles of Sociology" will be published in quarterly parts, with regularity if Mr. Spencer's health allows. They will be sold at sixty cents a number, or furnished to regular subscribers at two dollars a year. That the information to be contained in this work will be of the highest value and importance we need scarcely say, and it may be strongly commended on this ground alone; but we appeal to our readers to patronize it, and to induce their friends also to do so, on the further ground that Mr. Spencer is engaged upon a great original and constructive enterprise, and ought to be so amply sustained that he shall suffer no impediment or annoyance of a pecuniary nature in prosecuting his work.
WAR AND EDUCATION.
One of the most striking results of the sudden rise of a military feeling throughout the country, during the civil war, was the influence it exerted upon education. One might have reasoned that if our educational system be, from top to bottom, that perfection of wisdom which many claim for it, it is the one thing that would have remained unaffected by the accidental circumstances of a war into which we drifted. But our system of education is as far as possible from being strongly knit and firmly organized, and as, on the other hand, it is loose and unsettled, it was very naturally affected by the prevalence of the military feeling. This was seen by the adoption of military exercises in a great number of schools, under the idea that they were to become part of the regular and permanent policy of instruction. And where these were not adopted there was still a new impulse in the way of marching, marshaling, and manœuvring the classes
