shows it to have been made not far from 2800 B. C. The fragments. about twenty in number, were discovered at different times, and fitted together until finally the general design became evident. It represents a double prowed boat which is being paddled along the water, and beneath it the waves are crudely represented. Upon the front of the starboard side is a dedicatory inscription. Within, upon the same side, sits a man holding an oar with which he is propelling the boat. Upon the other side, opposite the projection which forms the vase proper, is a woman holding her hands to her face in the customary attitude of worship. Although the vase is nearly two thousand years later than those described above, it shows less, rather than greater skill in its execution. It was never of practical use; the holes which pierce its ends show that it was suspended in the temple to which it was dedicated.

E

TWO SIDES OF A MARBLE BOAT VASE.

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The stones from which the Bismya vases were worked are of a very great variety, and the sources from which they were obtained were far distant, either in the hills of Armenia far to the north, or in the mountains which rise from the plateau of Central Arabia. Certainly they speak of long journeys to distant lands. Sargon of 3800 B. C. speaks of an expedition across the desert to the Mediterranean sea coast; the earlier Sumerians must have undertaken equally great expeditions.

It may seem surprising that the people of 6000 years ago were able to shape the hardest of stones into beautiful, perfectly symmetrical vases, and decorate their exteriors with complicated designs, and the question, how they did it, naturally rises. The only instruments which they are known to have possessed were of bronze

and of stone, and with these their work was done. They were acquainted with the lathe, and with it they turned the beautiful seal cylinders from stones as hard as jasper, lapis-lazuli and serpentine, and most of the vases from the temple dump also bear its marks. Just what the cutting instrument was, or how the lathe was constructed, is uncertain. In Bagdad at the present time, the workers of wood, brass and iron use a primitive lathe turned by a bow held in the hands, while the chisel is held and pressed with

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the toes against the object to be cut. This instrument seems primitive enough to have survived unchanged during all of the sixty centuries or more since the beautiful vases from the ancient Bismya temple dump were made. These vases, perhaps more than any of the other antiquities which the ruins of Babylonia have yielded, speak of a high development in art and culture, and therefore of a general civilization which a decade ago would have been thought impossible at so remote an antiquity.

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE GOD-MAKER, MAN.

BY DON MARQUIS.

I.

Fallen mute are the lyres of Apollo
And the lips of the Memnons are mute,
Nor ever Pan's shepherds may follow
The moods of his reed-fashioned flute;
And the worship of Egypt's Osiris
Was fated to wither and fade

Ere even the fragile papyrus

Which called him eternal, decayed; Sink to silence the psalms and the peans, The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the eons

Are tenanted only by wraiths;

Swoon to silence the sackbuts and psalters,

The worships grow senseless and strange, And the mockers ask: "Where be thy altars?" Crying: "Nothing is changeless-but Change!"

II.

Yea, nothing but change seems eternal,

And yet, through the creed-wrecking years,
That old word of some city supernal,
Insistent, persistent, appears.
Multiform are the tale's variations,

Time and clime ever tinting the dreams,
Yet the motive, through endless mutations,
The essence, immutable gleams.

III.

Though one may bow down 'neath the Crescent, And one twirl the prayer-wheel of Buddh,

And one vow the Nazarene present

When the wine is transmuted to blood;-Though their trust be a part of it terror,

Though between them exist little ruth,

Though all of them grovel in error,

Yet each of them glimpses a truth.

Though the priests that made merry are mirthless
And their temples are trampled by time,

And the names of their gods are grown worthless
But to round out the ring of a rhyme;-
Though we mark in the limitless Heavens
How the flames of the Avatars
But illumine their limited evens

To evanish like vanishing stars;-
Though we see that all altars and icons
Must at last lack for incense and wine,
And the liberal, cynical lichens

Veil the ruin that once was a shrine;-
Though nothing but change seems eternal,

Yet all have cried out for Death's death:
The desire for something supernal

Was drawn in with man's earliest breath.

IV.

Yea, deathless, though godheads be dying,
Surviving the creeds that expire,
Illogical, reason-defying,

Lives that passionate, primal desire;
The same through its every mutation,

The same through each creed and no-creed,

The base of each symbolization

That perished when perished its need. 'Tis the challenge of atom and plasm:

"Let the All kill a part-if it can!" Flung forth down time's echoing chasm From the lips of the god-maker, Man.

ARISTOTLE ON HIS PREDECESSORS.*

(Editorial Comments on Professor Taylor's New Translation of the First Book of the Metaphysics.)

This book will be welcome to all teachers of philosophy, for it is a translation made by a competent hand of the most important essay on the history of Greek thought down to Aristotle, written by Aristotle himself. The original served this great master with his unprecedented encyclopedic knowledge as an introduction to his Metaphysics; but it is quite apart from the rest of that work, forming an independent essay in itself, and will remain forever the main source of our information on the predecessors of Aristotle. Considering the importance of the book, it is strange that no translation of it appears to have been made since the publication of that by Bekker in 1831.

The present translation has been made from the latest and most critical Greek text available, the second edition of W. Christ, and pains have been taken not only to reproduce it in readable English, but also to indicate the exact way in which the translator understands every word and clause of the Greek. He has further noted all the important divergencies between the read* Published by The Open Court Publishing Company.

ings of Christ's text and the editions of Zellar and Bonitz, the two chief modern German exponents of Aristotelianism.

Not the least advantage of the present translation is the incorporation of the translator's own work and thought. He has done his best, within the limited space he has allowed himself for explanations, to provide the student with ample means of judging for himself in the light of the most recent researches in Greek philosophical literature, the value of Aristotle's account of previous thought as a piece of historical criticism.

Mr. Bignami, of Lugano, Switzerland, has in mind the accomplishment of an interesting communal project, the object of which he explains in a letter which has been printed in French for circulation among sympathetic spirits. The plan seems to be similar to the historic Brook Farm experiment in its ideals, but we hope it will prove more enduring as there is no doubt that there will always be many people not in sympathy with religious asceticism for whom the serenity of monastic life has great charm.

Mr. Bignami's circular letter translated into English reads as follows: "We wish to draw your attention to a plan which is quite worthy of your interest, for our purpose is to supply an actual need of our civilization.

"He who looks below the surface of things observes that in the midst of the turmoil of the life of to-day a feeling is spreading beyond frontiers and across oceans among the most thoughtful minds, the most meditative souls. and especially those interested in studying the course of their inner life, the intellects tired of the natural uncertainties of science.

"That feeling is the craving for retirement, for isolation, far from the stormy billows of life, far from worldliness, business, the desperate struggle for existence, far from the madding crowd. It is also the need of devoting to something higher than aimless rushing, that brief moment of consciousness which, within space and time, nature affords us between two infinities of unconsciousness.

"Work has destroyed its rational aim, for by absorbing all our time, i. e., all our existence, it makes it impossible for us to enjoy intellectual pastimes as we would wish, or for each to follow his better inclinations, or to develop his intellectual and moral life to its highest possibilities. We can not devote our minds to meditation on the general problems of the universe, nor to the study of mystery in all its forms, which is so attractive to those who, in science, art or literature rise above commonplace observations and matter-of-fact reproduction of paltry facts, realities and ready-made truths. "The best use of our life,' it has been said, 'consists in increasing the conformity of our intelligence to reality."

"The origin, growth and continual spreading of this craving for temporary or permanent isolation and retirement are due to two reasons: First, the necessity of getting away, after long exhaustive work and intense struggle, from the accustomed routine of daily life, of resting in an ideal retreat, of recovering one's own strength in a more serene atmosphere, in a more intellectual sphere, of forgetting the fierceness of struggle and stopping to take breath to enable one to go on with renewed vigor, or to stay there as in a safe harbor, as in an oasis of peace; in the second place, the disagreement