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specialist. I said above that Professor Whitehead might have made his mark as an historian. I must perforce amend that statement, and admit that as a literary critic he would have taken very high rank. These, however, are the might-have-beens, the stray facets on the diamond; Professor Whitehead in fact only quotes the poets as he quotes the theologians, to illustrate some point in his survey of European thought.

The first three-quarters of the book is superb; indeed, it would be difficult to suggest anything of the kind that attempts to rival it. The last pages are frankly less satisfactory. It is true that the treatment imposed by the limitations of the lecture is necessarily too concise and summary to have been in any event quite satisfactory in dealing with so large a theme, but that particular fault could easily have been amended by expansion in book form, and the real trouble goes a good deal deeper. There seems in fact to be a real inconsistency in Professor Whitehead's philosophy, as though he had not worked out his thought to its ultimate conclusion.

In the earlier part of this work he speaks of a real conflict of ideas as to ultimate ends as involving an inconsistency which operated to enfeeble the character of European thought, but the attentive reader of his last three lectures on religion will be by no means sure that the Professor has himself escaped a precisely similar contradiction. It is true that he defines religion in a noble phrase as an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.' But religion is concerned both immediately and ultimately with God, and here Dr. Whitehead's researches and thought have yielded him less than in almost any other section of his work. The God he adopts after some natural hesitation is practically the God formulated in Professor Alexander's

well-known lectures on Space, Time and Deity- the conception of deity that has been more or less endorsed by Bergson, Professor Lloyd Morgan, and other writers. This is in fact a necessary consequence of vitalist thought- an 'Emergent Deity' struggling with intractable matter in a universe in which it is imprisoned; in a pessimistic mood the idea may lead to something not very different from Manichæism, while in an optimistic mood it is neither more nor less than Tennyson's familiar through the ages one increasing purpose runs.' This gradually improving and enlarging deity, faintly reminiscent of a struggling limited company that can hope some day to pay a small dividend at least to its human shareholders who own the bulk of the preference shares, may or may not be accepted as adequate and credible by vitalists. But Professor Whitehead is a mechanist and derides the vitalist position, which is indeed becoming almost untenable. Yet he too, having rejected and scorned the foundation of the vitalist church, is inclined to admire and indeed to annex its steeple.

The truth is that it is precisely at this point that the author's critical faculty deserts him; he has thought out his position so far but no farther, and henceforth he is no longer a leader but a disciple of Professor Alexander. In other words, this is the God he would like to have, and therefore this is the God for him. But if he desires to fit this vitalist deity into the plan of his concept of nature, I at least shall be curious to see by what process of ratiocination he succeeds in harmonizing the antilogy between the mechanist scheme and a vitalist deity. Perhaps Professor Whitehead will devote a new series of his stimulating lectures to elucidating this apparent contradiction.

OUR OWN BOOKSHELF

Delight, by Mazo de la Roche. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926. $2.00.

MANY modern novelists seem to take a strange pleasure in giving their characters fantastic names. But few have christened any character in such a remarkable way as has Mazo de la Roche. Delight is the heroine's name in this new book by the author of Possession. Delight Mainprize is the illegitimate child of an Englishwoman and a Russian clog-dancer. She goes to Canada, and there succeeds in making all the men of a small town fall desperately in love with her. She is one of those rare girls who can kiss any man in the same spirit as she would her brother. Needless to say, all the former belles are enraged by her success. Finally they gather forces and attack her. Just at the right moment, however, Delight is rescued by the faithful, and everything is 'hotsy-totsy.' Among the many defects in this book the chief is the absurd exaggeration that is supposed to furnish the comic relief. The greatest virtue is the fact that the author never seems to take the book very seriously. It obviously has no ideal before it urging it up the incline to greatness, and for this reason perhaps one can excuse its failings.

A Poetry Recital, by James Stephens. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926. $1.75. "THIS book,' says Mr. Stephens, 'is not to be taken as a final selection from my work in verse, but as containing the poems which I consider to be best adapted for public utterance.' The volume, indeed, is made up of the poems that Mr. Stephens read to his audiences on his tour in this country, and readers who enjoyed his own interpretation of them will be glad to have them in this form. Carpers may complain that adaptation to public utterance is too arbitrary a basis for the selection and grouping of poems, and it is true that these poems are somewhat insistently open-voweled, resonant, and onomatopoic. It is true also that Mr. Stephens's vein will seem to many readers insubstantial and even flimsy. But others will be grateful for the purity of his lyrical tones and

for a streak of quite personal humor that is not inconsistent with it.

Last Essays, by Joseph Conrad. Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1926. $2.00. THE essay was not an entirely happy mode of expression for Conrad, and his ventures into the field have always about them that air of constraint which overcasts even his work in fiction, except at its best, and which seems to have been the penalty for his failure to achieve integration and composure as a writer. Yet even the least partisan reader of Conrad will concede that his mind had an inalienable distinction, and will recognize that it lends a kind of formal impressiveness to such pieces of prose as the long essay on 'Geography and Some Explorers' in this volume. And it is not only Conradians who will be glad to have his delicately worded accounts of Stephen Crane in accessible form. Along with Notes on Life and Letters, Last Essays contains what is most worth preserving in Conrad's miscellaneous writing.

Later Days, by W. H. Davies. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926. $2.00. THESE reminiscences, says the blurb on the jacket, 'are filled with the wisdom of the sage, the poet's love of beauty, the philosopher's wit.' Regard these examples of each: 'war is a cruel thing'; 'it must be remembered that the month was May, and if a bird could not sing it danced, because of the great light that was in the air'; ""How do you spell it [Boar's Hill]?" asked the young foreigner. . . . "B-o-r-e-s," I answered, laughing to myself.' Wisdom, beauty, and wit are no doubt relative matters, and readers who are not too exacting will perhaps find all three in even so foolish and inept a book as this of Mr. Davies's. Others will wonder how a poet of genuine if minor inspiration could have had so much contact with distinguished men — - Hudson, Conrad, Hodgson, Bennett, Sickert, for example and have seen so little worth recording in their personalities. The trivial comes close to apotheosis in Mr. Davies's chatty pages.

BELGIUM

Commercial Fair. Ostend. During the month. International Aviation Rally, International Automobile Rally. Ostend. During the month. Royal Automobile Clubs Prize Race. Spa. July 3-4.

Communal fêtes. Ghent. July 18–25.

Regatta and National Fête. Brussels. July 21-22.

Procession of Penitents. Furnes. July 25. CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Seventh Sokol Congress. Prague. July 7. Agricultural and Industrial Fair. Jaromer. July 3-August 2. DENMARK

Yearly Festival Meeting. Rebild Hills. July 5. International Motor Meet. Fano. July 5-6.

FRANCE

Annual Agricultural and Industrial Fair. Provins. During the month.

Annual Agricultural and Commercial Fair. Tulle. During the month.

Exhibition and Fair. Alais. July 1-15. Fifth Annual Industrial and Commercial Exhibition. Orléans. July 5-14.

Third Annual Sample Fair of the Northern Countries. Dunkirk. July 10-26.

Fifth Annual Fair of Medicinal Herbs. Millyen-Gâtinais. July 11-14.

Tenth Annual International and Colonial Sample Fair. Bordeaux. July 15-30. GERMANY

Third Agricultural Show at Cologne. Horse races at Wiesbaden. Festival of Roses at Mainz. Wiener Schubert Bund at Karlsruhe. Children's Festival at Biberach. During the month. General Meeting of the German Miners' Union. Saarbrücken. July 4.

German Sports Contest. Cologne. July 4-11. Bicycle Race, Riding Sport Festival. Stuttgart. July 11.

Heidelberg Rowing Regatta. Heidelberg. July 18.

St. Jakobi Festival Historical Play. Wildburg. July 25.

Festival Play, Fiddler of Gmünd. Schwäbisch Gmünd. July 25-August 15. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

Eighth Toy and Fancy Goods Fair at London. Henley Regatta at Henley. Society of Chemical Industry Conference at London. Royal Northern Agricultural Show at Aberdeen. Moray Golf Tournament at Lossiemouth. During the month. Conference of Young Women's Christian Associations. Oxford. July 1.

National Rose Society Summer Show. Crystal Palace, London. July 2.

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The

SCIENTIFIC

MONTHLY

An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to the Diffusion of Science

SINGLE NUMBER, 50 CENTS YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00

TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION THREE MONTHS, $1.00

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY is by general consent considered the best journal for presenting science to the more intelligent part of the general public. Thus W. T. Harris, late United States Commissioner of Education wrote of THE MONTHLY:

"It has had few rivals and no equals in the educative service it has done for the American people. A complete set of the volumes thus far published is both a history of science for the period covered and at the same time a pretty complete cyclopedia of natural science. There is nothing to fill its place, and to carry it on is a benefaction to the publ:c."

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STUDY SUGGESTIONS FOR

THE CLASS-ROOM

June 12, 1926

SUN SPOTS ON AMERICA'S PROSPERITY. (1) Compare the distribution of automobiles in this country with that of the world in general. What are the evils of the installment plan economically? In what sense may it be said to be a kind of inflation? (2) What role does protection play in the prosperity of American industry? Summarize this writer's account of the disappearance of the jobber. Discuss his account of the internationalization of investment.

SUDAN AND ABYSSINIA. Explain the reasons for friction in the Upper Nile territory. Tell what you may know of Lord Kitchener, Lord Allenby, Zaghlul Pasha. Summarize the treaty of 1906. How complete is British domination in Africa?

VASSAL AMERICA. Why is the Tacna-Arica question of secondary importance in South American affairs? Discuss the writer's explanation of South America's vassalage. To what does he look for genuine freedom?

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN INDIA. Where were the first seeds of political unrest sown in the Orient? State the im portant aspects of the present problem of autonomy.

MR. SWINBURNE'S NEW POEMS. Tell what you may be able to learn about Swinburne's whole work as a poet. What had he published before Poems and Ballads: First Series? Discuss Morley's judgment of these poems.

ANOTHER JANE. Who was the author of 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star'? Explain the force of the title of this article.

The purpose of these suggestions is not only to assist the teacher in adapting the Living Age to the class-room, they are also intended to show our more casual readers how readily the magazine lends itself to a systematic study of the world we live in.

THE LIVING AGE. Published weekly. Publication office, RUMFORD BUILDING, CONCORD, N. H.

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