Dr. Coit indeed aspires to make of ethical culture a religion for the people. He speaks on this subject in his last lecture. He opposes the Churches for mixing their ethics with theology, and he speaks with great enthusiasm about the poetry of ethics, which is much more powerful than the prose of ethics. He does not seem to see that the influence of the churches is mainly due to their poetry of ethics. Would it not be advisable to point out the prosaic truth in this poetry for the purpose of freeing the human mind of the obnoxious elements of a misunderstood poetry? Would it not be advisable to investigate the poetry of the basic idea in ethics, viz., of the God-idea, so as to let the ethical movement develop itself historically from the past. Dr. Coit's method of dealing with the God-idea is far from satisfactory. He is neither a theist nor an atheist. Sometimes he appears to appreciate the moral importance of the God-idea in its purified shape, and then again he seems to consider it as an ethically indifferent idea. Should not this problem be settled by every one who undertakes to preach ethics. It appears almost as if all the leaders of the ethical culture societies underrated the ethical importance and indispensableness of thought in general and of science and philosophy in particular. The contradictions which appear in Dr. Coit's lectures show that he is still developing. The book is full of promise and we have every reason to hope that its author will overcome the unclearness that is still lurking in his mind, and that he will grow with the work he is doing. κρς. FREMDES UND EIGENES AUS DEM GEISTIGEN LEBEN DER GEGENWART. By Prof. Dr. _Ludwig Büchner_. Leipsic: Max Spohr. Opinions admittedly are still divided with respect to the laudable efforts of a large class of scientists and writers whose main object is that of presenting the results of scientific research in an intelligible, popular form. Every department of the natural sciences, geology, astronomy, even psychology and comparative philology, each and all, are now represented by able and ardent popular interpreters, who at the same time by their aggressive style and by their polemical methods not unfrequently seem to impart a kind of militant and apostolic attitude to the cause of science. It must further be admitted, that many of these writers, by the unanimous verdict of the present age, are among the most instructive, readable, and actually the most widely read authors of contemporaneous German, French, and Anglo-American literature. At first glance, it accordingly may seem rather strange, that these same popular authors should also be subjected, not unfrequently, to their commensurate share of unfair, and even offensive, popular criticism; and yet it could hardly be otherwise.