Hannibal: Soldier, Statesman and
Patriot.*

It is of the essence of Roman genius that before really great men appear the nation has already passed its meridian. A sketch, however, of the Carthaginian hero furnishes an opportunity to portray the brief hour of Rome's truest greatness-while even now the seeds of future decay have been sown-and to analyze the secret springs of that marvelous national vigor destined to leave ineffaceable traces in the history of humanity.

Mr. Morris uses this opportunity with skill and real insight, and his book possesses a special interest from its evident grasp of military principles. The general student of history who wishes once and for all to work over in detail, atlas in hand, the Hannibalic war-the second crisis in the eternal struggle between East and West-will not find a more entertaining or faithful guide. The author's command of illustrations from the military history of modern Europe is admirable; nor has he neglected the fertile field of historical study opened up by Captain Mahan. It must not be supposed, however, that we have here military history simply. Mr. Morris is fully conscious that against a nation with the unique character and political instinct of early Rome even "the gates of Hell shall not prevail."

The eighth chapter-"Rome in a death-struggle with Hannibal"-is worthy of all praise. The introductory survey of Roman history is little short of a feat. But one could wish, in the interests of the ordinary readers, that at least a passing mention had been made of the economic questions which the legislation of 367 failed to solve. For the conception is still too prevalent that the last two centuries of the Republic are the history of world-conquest by a military people drunk with success.

The writer's style is not faultless. Lapses in English occur, as, e. g., on p. 166, "not a single ally of Rome had said God bless him, and sent a man to the Phoenician standards." Other examples of slipshod style, and of occasionally enigmatical English, are to be found on pp. 168, 180, 187, 214, 249, 297. "Geronium" occurs several times. And, whatever may be the meaning of the exclamation that Livy gives to Hannibal in bk. xxii, c. 49, it is certainly not, "I would like to have them prisoners." The use of "province," again, on pp. 196 and 258, is very misleading.

Pains have been spent upon the illustrations, but the maps are not satisfactory. The Ticinus, e. g., is not marked on the map facing p. 118.

And finally, excellent as are the descriptions

*Hannibal: Soldier, Statesman, Patriot.' By William O'Connor Morris. 'Heroes of the Nations' Series. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

of Hannibal's great battles, particularly Zama, Mr. Morris cannot be congratulated on the reasoning which leads him to differ from Arnold and Strachan-Davidson upon the site of the battle of Cannæ. Surely the omission to mention a second crossing of the Aufidus cannot be considered for a moment against the explicit statements that the Roman right was on the river and that they faced south. When one reflects upon the length of the opposing lines and the extraordinary bend in the river required to meet these two conditions, there is something grotesque in all maps ever constructed to place the battle on the north bank. The book is, however, so honest and valuable a piece of work that it deserves these criticisms.

W. S. MILNER.

Martha Washington.*

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The publishers of 'Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times' have been fortunate in their selection of a biographer for that woman, of all women of the period covered by their series, about whom public interest centres. Miss Wharton is one of a corps of writers upon the subject of American history, called forth under the influence of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and of its equaled collections of original material. The great merit and achievement of her previous works, "Through Colonial Doorways' and 'Colonial Days and Dames,' gave promise that her study of the life of the wife of the Father and First President of his country would be thorough and exhaustive, and would be presented with all the graces of literary skill. This promise has been entirely fulfilled. Nevertheless, it is a task of serious difficulty to present in anything like vivid and distinct colors the character and career of a woman of the last century, wife to a man of such conspicuous importance, for the reason that her individuality was necessarily largely lost in the importance of her husband. Where he went she followed, and what he suggested she approved. The flood of reflected light tends rather to obscure than to aid the vision. In truth Martha Washington offers a simple picture of a plain, sweet, and affectionate woman, fond of her distinguished spouse and proud of his success, anxious to escape from scenes of pomp and display, devoted to domestic concerns in which she was well fitted to be happy, sitting in a check apron knitting stockings, sending to a child "two little handkerchiefs to wipe her nose"- -a woman whose knowledge of orthography and the rules of composition was so limited that letters of consequence or to other than her immediate

*Martha Washington,' by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897.

friends were written for her, and withal with so much of courage and instinctive patriotism that without complaint she could see both husband and only son venture out into the uncertainties of a desperate war. Miss Wharton tells in an entertaining way the few details that have escaped the maw of time concerning her life as a child and her early marriage to Daniel Parke Custis. He was the son of John Custis, who, like more of the founders of conspicuous American families than we are generally willing to admit, came from Holland, and who fought out the contest with his quarrelsome wife to the end by having inscribed on his tombstone:

"Beneath this marble tomb lies the body of the Honorable John Custis, Esq..... Aged 71 years and yet lived but seven years, which was the space of time he kept a Bachelor's house at Arlington," etc. It appears from the recently published description of the Washington collection of the Boston Athenæum, p. 555, that a gentleman in Philadelphia owns the little volume, 'A Serious Proposal to the Ladies,' which John Custis bought for the benefit of this willful wife, containing her MS. notes, as well as another volume given by him to Daniel Parke Custis with a MS. account by the latter of the marriage of his sister, Fanny Parke Custis. A lurid narrative of the remarkable career of Colonel Daniel Parke could have been found in Bryan Edwards's 'History of the West Indies.'

The brief and energetic wooing of the valiant young Virginia Colonel, the manner of life in the mansion upon the shores of the Potomac, the journey to the camp at Boston, where the wife followed her husband after he had been appointed to the command of the army, her experiences in the winter quarters at Norristown and Valley Forge, and the even more trying demands of social requirements in the cities of Philadelphia and New York, after he had been elected president, are adroitly and deftly woven by Miss Wharton into an agreeable and interesting narrative deserving of very high commendation and entirely worthy of the subject. Dr. Enos Hitchcock, in dedicating to Martha Washington one of the earliest of American novels, the 'Memoirs of the Bloomgrove Family in a Series of Letters to a Respectable Citizen of Philadelphia,' said in 1790:

"Permit me, madam, to felicitate you on your elevation to the high rank which you hold in the rising empire, and to assure you that, with your illustrious consort, you bear an unrivaled sway in the hearts of a grateful country."

This probably expressed the prevailing sentiments of affection and esteem then entertained for her among the people generally.

SAMUEL W. PENNYPACKER.

An Introduction to Philosophy.*

Professor Külpe's aim in this little work has been to give "An elementary but complete guide to philosophy past and present," and at the same time "to further, or at least to stimulate, scientific work in the philosophical field." He claims to have treated "the divergent schools of philosophic thought and the achievements of individual philosophers with uniform interest and impartiality;" but, as he modestly says, he is "fully aware that a limited knowledge of the subject-matter, and a certain inevitable subjectivism in interpretation and selection" have prevented him from completely realizing the ideal which he "had proposed to himself at the outset of the undertaking."

It will be readily understood that a reviewer who rejects the fundamental principle upon which Professor Külpe's conception of philosophy rests must find a great deal in his book which he is compelled to reject. The truth is that the author is a representative, not of philosophy in the high sense in which it was understood by the masters of speculation, but in the comparatively low sense now prevalent among the majority of teachers of philosophy in Germany. He has no faith in the possibility of a metaphysic which shall formulate the ultimate principles of reality, and therefore he falls back upon what he calls the "special philosophical disciplines." His own creed is dualistic, and he even denies that there is any need for a single principle. "The result of our criticism of the different metaphysical schools so far has rather been to show that, as things are, dualism can lay claim to possess the greatest probability, since it accords best of all the metaphysical theories with the special sciences, and can also best meet the requirements of epistemology and logic. Esthetical or ethical disinclination to a multiplicity of principles cannot under any circumstances furnish a theoretical argument against it (144)." Holding this view, the author is unable to have any real sympathy with the aim of all the great philosophers of the past, and, though he does his best to present their doctrines in a sympathetic way, his success is not very great. Nor is he always accurate even in what lies almost on the surface. Aristotle, he tells us (p. 56), "defines mind as the entelechy of the body. . . The lowest mental faculty is the nutritive function; this belongs only to plants, the lowest organisms. Now an author who attributes the nutritive function to mind is evidently of

*Introduction to Philosophy. A Handbook for Students of Psychology, Logic, Ethics, Esthetics, and General Philosophy.' By Oswald Külpe, Professor of Philosophy and Esthetics in the University of Würzburg. Translated by W. B. Pillsbury and E. B. Titchener. New York: The Macmillan Company.

the opinion that mind and vital principle are one and the same." But Aristotle does not say that "mind" is the "entelechy of the body." What he says is that "soul" is "the entelechy of the body." The author surely never read either the Metaphysic' of Aristotle, in which the charge is made against the earlier thinkers that they confused "mind" (vovs) and soul (x), or his 'Psychology,' in which the distinction is expressed in the clearest way. For Aristotle "soul" is the principle of life (not of "mind" in the modern sense), and any one may at once see that our author's objection to the plant being said to possess "soul" (uzy )is entirely beside the mark. Equally inadequate is his characterization of the modern idealists. "Fichte, Schelling and Hegel," he says (p. 24), "desired primarily merely to systematize the Kantian philosophy." The aim of these thinkers was something very different. They found that Kant had created an opposition between the world of our knowledge and the real world, and their aim was to show that such an opposition is self-contradictory. If the real world does not fall within the circle of knowledge, how can we be said to have knowledge at all? This led to a totally different point of view, and though they found in Kant the most helpful suggestions to a more adequate theory, they entirely reconstructed his philosophy. Our author, however, does not believe in any such reconstruction, and as an inevitable consequence his remarks about these thinkers never hit the mark. Accepting the dualism of knowledge and reality, he naturally distinguishes between Epistemology and Metaphysics. This is the current, but untenable, distinction which the majority of German and some English thinkers adopt. Mr. Bradley has shown with convincing clearness that there is no such science as Epistemology. A science of knowledge that is not also a science of metaphysics is an absurdity; for knowledge is either of the real or it is not knowledge.

I do not think, then, that the student will get any adequate conception of the real development of philosophy from Professor Külpe's book. The author is under the influence of the uncritical assumptions of his countrymen and time. I doubt very much the value of a book which attempts to deal with philosophical problems after the manner of an encyclopedia. The value of philosophy as an educational discipline lies in its power to make the student think for himself, and I believe that as a means to this end the first-hand study of any of the great masters is worth cart-loads of books of this kind. Still I do not deny that Professor Külpe's book has its value. The intelligent reader will gain from it a clear idea of the present state of philosophy in Germany, and he will

be so far freed from dogmatism, that he will discover the divergent views held by different thinkers on every question that can be called philosophy. To students of psychology, in particular, the work will be found of considerable value. Professor Külpe's criticism of inadequate theories is also in most cases acute and convincing. What has been here said in the way of adverse criticism is not due to a desire to find fault with a piece of honest work, but mainly to warn readers of THE CITIZEN that philosophy cannot be acquired from reading a compendium, and that there is a whole world of philosophical speculation in which the author is not at home. The student who desires to make a real acquaintance with philosophy would do better to read such works as Green's 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' where he will find a genuine discussion of the problems of knowledge and morality which will help to lift him into the region of philosophy proper.

I will add that the translation is admirably done. JOHN WATSON.

The Chances of Death.*

The title of this volume sounds like a play upon "The Dance of Death.' It is certain that the two themes occupied the author's mind at the same period, for the whole treatment of The Chances of Death' is referred by the writer to the well known series of drawings by Hans Holbein, the younger but most famous of the artists of that name. Holbein himself was not the first to portray the sudden summons of death. In a wood-cut of 'Death Choking a Warrior Hans Burckmaier had given a view of the sudden and irresistible power of mortality such as Germany of the sixteenth century at once appreciated. The impression created by this engraving in the mind of a lad of thirteen, about the age at which Holbein probably saw this print at Augsburg, must have been ineffaceable. However, this chance aspect of death was a mask used by medieval religion to frighten people into some sort of moral sensibility. The literature and art of the sixteenth century were pervaded with the thought that "Death has no calendar" and this sentiment seems to have been dominant from as early a period as the middle of the fifteenth century. Not only was this subject represented in books but in public places, on the walls of churches and monasteries and even on walls by the wayside, as if death had gone into the business of bill-posting as the advance agent of a circus in which all men might expect to play a

*The Chances of Death.' Vol I. By Karl Pearson. London and New York: Edward Arnold.

part, after having enjoyed for a time the privilege of looking on.

Standing on a bridge in Luzerne during the year 1875, looking at its famous pictures of the Dance of Death, Karl Pearson, a professor of mathematics in University College, London, conceived the idea of reviving the presentation of the subject from a modern point of view. Being a mathematician above all things, the subject appeared to him to require the treatment which is given by life insurance companies to the preparation of their mortality tables in which the expectation of one's life is calculated for any year. The calculations are reduced to a curve which rises and falls at different stages to represent the probability of death, very much after the manner of a gravity railroad. After passing the summer vacation in a manner which laid him open to the undeserved imputation of being a confirmed gamester, devoted solely to tossing pennies, and after a very ingenious investigation of games of chance such as the roulette of Monte Carlo, the author had recourse to tables of statistics, gathered from hospitals and museums as to the influence of physical causes on the death rate, and also on the bodily variations of infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. These data were sifted so as to show variations of physique and of mortality in both sexes among civilized nations. The factors influencing longevity differ for savage and civilized communities, external pressures having less and less appreciable effect as the community is provided with the means of protection against exposure to disadvantageous surroundings. "The survival of the fittest," to use Mr. Spencer's phrase as an improved substitute for Darwin's somewhat ambiguous term "natural selection," among civilized people depends on "reproductive selection" which is merely to say in other words that the transmission of hereditary traits and powers becomes more and more largely the controlling feature of evolution. If any physical variation can be mathematically proved to characterize a community's chances of life that tendency has a prophetic import as to the future development of the community.

The value of the author's work is that it shows the necessity of careful mathematical training as well as biological skill to prepare any student to approach the study of evolution among civilized people. The late Professor Ryder, who was an ardent believer in dynamical evolution, evolution determined by forces from within as well as from without, made the remark that if he had his way he would receive no student in biology without a previous mathematical training.

The author of this volume, which is only the first of two volumes of collected papers treating

various phases of evolution as a factor in social advancement among civilized communities, is most anxious to prove that he is not a materialist but rather an idealist, but he finds his task difficult; more so, in fact, than tossing pennies in hot weather.

Allusion may be made to the frontispiece which the author induced a friendly artist to attempt as an embodiment of the mathematical testimony in regard to the death rate. On a bridge are represented the five stages of infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. Death appears in skeleton shape as a marksman endeavoring to destroy life with varying degrees of success. His comparative skill is represented by the more or less effective weapons which are put in his hands, the least effective the bow and arrow and the most effective the rifle. The curve begins with ante-natal mortality and Death appears threatening the infant's life by hurling at it the bones of its ancestry, the moral being plain and most salutary that responsibility for the survival of life rests largely on those who are trustees for its healthy transmission. Here Mr. Kidd's 'Social Evolution,' which Professor Pearson opposes, is not very different from the most scientific calculation of "The Chances of Death,' for morality and virtue, if not intellect and religion, are most certainly the controlling forces in the survival of the fittest in every civilized community.

It would be impossible to overrate the interest and suggestiveness of this volume as a successful effort to remove vagueness and crudeness from the modern method of biology in studying the dynamical side of evolution. Yet a reservation as to the usefulness of the papers contained in this volume must be made in regard to the author's method of sneering at metaphysicians and theologians. Professor Pearson's thorn in the flesh is Mr. Balfour, and in replying to Mr. Balfour's position there is an element of personal feeling which colors the atmosphere through which Professor Pearson views the entire class who advocate the average philosophical and religious conceptions of the unity of Nature.

WILLIAM F. C. MORSELL.

Genesis of the Social Conscience.* Professor H. S. Nash, of the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, has given us in his recent volume on the 'Genesis of the Social Conscience' an extremely interesting book belonging in the border field lying between theology and sociology and yet one which can scarcely be judged fairly from either the theological or sociological point of view

*Genesis of the Social Conscience.' By H. S. Nash. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.

alone. It is in reality an essay in the philosophy of history with which we have to deal. It bears distinctly the stamp of the theologian's attitude toward the phenomena of human society, notwithstanding the fact that the implied theology, which we will not pretend to discuss here, is evidently of a liberal sort and does not harass the reader who cares nothing for theological dogma or theological logic. The book is well written and so compact that it is not easy reading. The author has an epigrammatic way of putting things that holds the attention even where at times it makes the philosophical bearing of certain paragraphs less clear upon first perusal.

The fundamental problem under discussion is the relation between the establishment of Christianity in Europe and the social question. Professor Nash believes in the unity of history and in the reality of evolution, and he regards the social question of to-day as something vastly greater at bottom than that temporary entanglement of certain economic factors in the distribution of wealth which characterizes a period of rapid expansion of industry. He believes that the social question as we know it today has its roots far back in history and is in an acute stage in the process of development of the world ideal of individuality and of personality. He takes two primary maxims, the utilitarian rule, "That each man is to count for one, nobody for more than one," and Kant's rule, "Always treat humanity, whether in yourself or another, as a person, and never as a thing," and combines them in order to get at the basis of the social question which he then tersely states as follows: "Is it possible to individualize the downmost man? to make him really count as one?" The student of individualism and of socialism will be alike interested.

The method pursued in the discussion throughout the volume is "to find the emotional centre of the period" under treatment and to get at the concepts and "the mother ideas that gave birth to opinions" rather than to discuss opinions in the abstract. This is what gives the book its chief interest to the sociologist. A great deal of new ground is broken where altogether too little has been done in the past in working the veins of social logic and in the analysis of the social psychology of different historical epochs.

Professor Nash starts with the definition of the individual man as a soul with a stock of potential rights regarded as universal. This definition, formulated in the Mediterranean world, found in Christianity sufficient power to force its way down through the lowest stratum of society. The monotheistic idea of God unified and co-ordinated the spiritual goods of the race, involved the moral unity of all classes

of men, and entailed a view of the world which put it in the service of God, that is in the service of the highest social ideal. Thus the may-be and the ought-to-be acquire force in the presence of the is. The idea of personality measures the growth of individuality and involves the concept of freedom. The idea of the Kingdom of God prepares the way for the realization of the idea of humanity. With the idea of the Kingdom comes also a clear idea of duty and a new adjustment of human values which in turn give rise to the reformer's conscience. Such in brief is an outline of the theory in the volume before us. Nowhere do we find a clear definition of the term social conscience which is used in the title of the book. The term, however, is evidently intended to stand for what might be called more properly the ethical social ideal. Like most ethical ideals this has its genesis, as our author claims, in the religious ideals of the race, but it has its concrete reality in the economic development of each distinct human society and in each particular period of history. Once visualized in the religious ideals of a given people it becomes ethical in proportion as it is made effective in the conscious balancing of utilities on the part of the individuals who compose any given society, that is in proportion as it enters into the economic logic of a given period. Professor Nash recognizes this distinction at times if one reads between the lines; if he had consciously made it throughout he would have been able to state more clearly his doctrine concerning the generic universal man whom he contrasts with the concrete individual man in order to measure his growth.

Some of the educational corollaries derived from the main argument of the book will be particularly interesting to those identified with University Extension. In conclusion I will quote a few sentences in this connection from the closing pages of the book.

"When the principle of individuality is set up as sovereign, the program of universal education follows at its heels. If the lowest classes possess great but unused powers, society must see to it that those powers come into play.

Nowadays we have outgrown our calf love for universal education, and some of us pick flaws in the theory. To do that is very easy, if we force the theory to bring its corn to market in the green ear, judging it wholly by its present results. But to spend time in such fault-finding is to forget what the enthusiasm for the enlightenment of the people sprang from and what it stands for. It was born of the belief that all the social structures of the past were narrow and incommodious; and that law must broaden down until its rights are at every door. It stands for the conviction that