Thus also is it with man's method of interpreting the external world system. At first unable to fully perceive his own relation to that system, as part of his inability to perceive general cosmic relations, and therefore viewing himself as more or less independent of Nature--as something imposed upon it rather than as something arising out of it--he naturally sought to force it for purposes of explanation into the narrow limits of his knowledge of himself, of his feelings, his thoughts, his institutions. But as he grew in the power to comprehend his place in the system of things--to understand the way in which the objects and forces of the world were related to each other, together with the way in which he, as knowing organism, was related to the universe--he gradually ceased from his vain striving to subject the cosmos to himself, and at last learned not only to subordinate himself to the cosmos, but to trace to it unreservedly the whole method and meaning of his origin as a living, thinking organism. Man in the beginning could be no more than the measure of the universe. That he has come at last, wielding the objective method, to be its measurer, is the culmination of a struggle between false and true ways of interpreting Nature which has had the whole history of human thought for its arena, and for its final triumph the establishment of the objective or scientific method of investigation upon impregnable foundations. FOOTNOTES: [A] Codrington. The Melanesian Languages. [B] See Henle. Poetische Personification. [C] Contributions to the Ethnology and Philology of the Indian Tribes of the Missouri Valley. Dr. F. V. Hayden, 1862. [D] The Native Calendars of Central America and Mexico. Daniel G. Brinton. [E] Popular Science Monthly, vol. xlv, article Astronomy of the Incas. [F] Les Origines Indo-Européennes. Pictet, p. 568. [G] See a paper by G. K. Schneider in vol. ii of Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie. FROM SERFDOM TO FREEDOM. BY EDWARD BICKNELL. However keen our interest in the problems arising out of the recent Spanish war, and however earnest our study of the policy to be pursued toward our new dependencies, we should not forget that the problems pressing for a solution before the war are still with us. The labor question, which then commanded so much of our thought, is still unsettled, and is by no means dwarfed by the subjects now upon every lip. Rather, as has been shown in an article in a recent number of this magazine, this question really forms one of the most important elements of the present situation, and should not be lost sight of in shaping public policy. We are entering upon an untilled field as far as our institutions are concerned, and we have the opportunity to start on a higher level in treating the relations of capital and labor in our new possessions, if we have the wisdom to know how, and the courage to do as well as we know.