In the conduct of our schools and of our scientific organisations, we have a corresponding exhibition of mediocrity or worse, with a few noble and distinguished exceptions. A mere interest in education and research does not confer competency to direct and sustain them; yet an interest in such matters is generally the only qualification demanded of the directors of such institutions, provided they understand how to buy, sell, and invest money. It is to be hoped that this state of affairs will some day pass away, and that men who are influential in such matters will some time know enough themselves to distinguish between the false and the true, and between men of ability and adventurers who are after the money and position with which our institutions of learning and our scientific enterprises can endow them. This reform will progress exactly in proportion as it is understood how much human happiness depends on true research and on correct thinking, and how little on revelation and on ancient dogma. It is not, I repeat, sufficiently understood, how much human conduct depends on correct thinking. How much financial dishonesty would be averted by a rational thought as to the inevitable consequences? How much social irregularity would be prevented by a similar treatment of the subject? How much hatred and wasteful antagonism would the world lack, if the ordinary conditions of living were understood and acted on! So the cultivation of the rational mind is of incalculable importance, and if we wish to prosper as a nation we must bend our energies to the pleasant task this problem presents to us. Neglect of our mental powers means degeneracy and decay; while their cultivation means power and happiness. Wealth, except as a means of attaining this end, after physical necessities are supplied, is simply useless. E. D. COPE. MENTAL MUMMIES. If we should name the most important factor in the changes which have gradually widened the contrast between modern science and the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, we might define it as a “progressive recognition of hereditary influences.” There was a time when each individual of the human race was considered a separate accident, called into existence by an act of unlimited, arbitrary power, and apt to be as suddenly changed, even unto a complete inversion of his former moral being, by a merciful, or revengeful, caprice of the same power. Biology has since taught us to apply the doctrine of evolution to the problems of our own moral and physical nature, to trace the tendencies of bygone times to their effects in the present age, to consider individuals the outcome of a long series of precedent influences, and to recognise the truth that the length of those influences is proportioned to the persistence of the result.