they are therefore desirable to be got, exhaust the knowledge of both. With all our vaunted enlightenment, we have a currency bedeviled by politicians in the interest of selfish greed and rampant speculation, and maintained by a demagoguism as unscrupulous and vicious as the world has ever seen. With so much gross ignorance and stupid superstition among the people in regard to the nature of money, and the laws of its use and influence, that the present state of things is openly defended and its continuance demanded, it becomes in the highest degree desirable that sounder views should be disseminated as rapidly and as widely as possible. We want a knowledge of money as a branch of natural history. We want to know how its use has grown up; what wants it answers to in human societies; what laws it is subject to that spring from the very nature of things; what are its imperfections, and how they may be supplemented; what are its dangers, and what the delusions and impostures of which it is made the means by calculating men and unprincipled governments. Prof. Jevons's work deals with the subject very much from this point of view. He offers us what a clear-sighted, cool-headed, scientific student has to say on the nature, properties, and natural laws of money, without regard to local interests or national bias. His work is popularly written, and every page is replete with solid instruction of. a kind that is just now lamentably needed by multitudes of our people who are victimized by the grossest fallacies.
Religion and Science in their Relation to Philosophy. By Charles W. Shields, D. D. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. Pp. 69. Price, $1.00.
This essay consists of two parts, in the first of which are stated the scientific hypotheses and the religious dogmas that have been offered for the solution of such problems as the origin of the universe, the formation of geological strata, the origin of mar, the nature of mind and of matter. The case for both sides is stated fairly enough. In the second part the author endeavors to show that these problems are neither exclusively scientific nor exclusively religious, but philosophical. "It is not too much to say that they can never be decided by any merely scientific process.... And it is safe to say that by no purely religious method can they ever be settled." The author regards these problems as "partly scientific and partly religious," but "strictly philosophical." Hence philosophy is the umpire when religion and science are in conflict. "Paramount as religion must be in her own sphere with her inspired Bible and her illumined Church," she cannot judge the theories of science; but no more will religious men accept from mere scientists a judgment upon their doctrines. The author thinks that in the "broad plain of philosophy" the religionist should accept scientific truth resting upon "foundations of proof that cannot be shaken;" and that the scientist should no longer ignore "that vast body of truths, doctrines, dogmas, backed by evidences which have been accumulating for eighteen centuries under the most searching criticism." There appears to be no reason why men of science should reject the arbitration of philosophy.
Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; from May, 1874, to May, 1875. Selected from the Records. Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1875.
This is the second octavo volume of "Proceedings" of the "New Series," and the tenth of the "Whole Series" published by the American Academy; Volume I. having been published in 1848. Besides the octavo Proceedings, the Academy has long published quarto volumes of Memoirs which are of the highest value. This volume contains 535 pages, of which 462 are devoted to scientific papers, 13 to brief notes of the several stated meetings, 41 to the Report of the Council (into which are incorporated the obituaries of deceased members or associates), six pages to the list of the members, etc., and the rest of the volume to a very copious index.
We learn that the Academy contains 195 Fellows, 91 Associate Fellows, and 70 Foreign Honorary Members. The losses by death during 1874 have been painfully large, and many of them will not be felt by Massachusetts alone, but by the world at large. Short biographical notices are given of the following deceased members: B. R. Curtis, ex-Judge Supreme Court; George Derby, M. D., Professor, Harvard College; F. C. Lowell;
