cent are condemned. Indeed, as Goldfield remarks, "earthly justice must let fall her sword if she could condemn only in cases of absolute certainty, for witnesses may lie, documents be false, confessions untrue, circumstances misleading."
At the close of this article the editor reiterates his belief that the death-penalty is unjust, antiquated, and dangerous to public weal.
Land and Landscape in the North American Popular Spirit.—While it is impossible to adequately analyze the soul of a people, the task may be simplified by showing the unquestionable influence of the natural surroundings on the mind. The vast political and economical schemes of the American people were suggested to them by the wide area which opened free lands before the immigrant colonists. The imperialistic idea is not of recent origin, but has been working in the people from the begining. It was released from fetters by the War of Independence and was given a new sense of power by the successful struggle for national unity.
Out of the huge enterprises of a continental opportunity has arisen the maker of commercial combinations. To the American "business is art and science, and he devotes himself to it as we do to a scientific work, and he finds therein the poetry of discovery and of solutions of puzzles." The huge in finance is adored, and out of the "golden calf" has grown the mastodon calf.
Individualism is trusted to the extreme limit, even where many weak ones are crushed. In Emerson the doctrine of self-reliance becomes a philosophy of life. Under all the rough and crude aspects of life a real scientific spirit is growing, and in Cooper, Whittier, and Emerson a delicate and spiritual appreciation of landscape which lends luster to the hard struggle of life in the New World. In the sense of humor also lies an evidence and a source of power. In all ways this young people has " grown up with the country " and come to be conscious of its lofty destiny. Professor Friedrich Ratzel (Leipzig University), in Deutsche Monatschrift, July, 1902.
The Value of Human Life.—In the Popular Science Monthly for June, Marshall O. Leighton concludes that courts of law have given such careful scrutiny to the value of the individual to his family, measured by economic productiveness, as to yield trustworthy results; that these results are corroborated by common observation and statistical reasoning; and that the pecuniary value of a life is subject to the same economic laws that apply to the more vulgar commodities. According to these principles the average life rises from an economic value of $1,000 soon after birth to a maximum of nearly $8,000 soon after the age of twenty-five, and thence declines to half the latter amount at the age of sixty. Such results have a curious interest, based as they are upon the decision of courts.
