New-York tribune., 1902-01-11

from the Wise of All Ages Edited with an In
Knowledge by j. n. Larned Octave. PIP. viii
49s Houghton. Mifflin & Co
Ptah-Notep seems to have been the first man
to offer counsel to his followers to their con-
duct in iife-at least he the first whose
precepts have come down to us. His successors
have been at it pretty steadily, in one way
another. ever since though the counsellors and
maxim makers of that world-old school which
dates from Ptah- -Notep' Mr.. Larned in his
Introductory essay remarks, Seems now to be
disappearing. Men who mediate on life and
conduct seem longer willing 10 attempt to
pack their thoughts into a little beadstring of
precepts and apothegms. or into the brevity of
a letter of fatherly advice"
The wisdom of past ages has been put into
nnumerable such "beadstrings," the study OF
which, it must be confessed, has something
more of a curious than of practical interest
at least when presented to us in such quantities
as are contained in this book. Ptah-Notep lived
anywhere from 300 to $500 years B. c., and his
book as preserved in papyrus in the National
Library at Paris. is considered TO be the Oldest
in the world His outlines of a standard of right
conduct, as Mr.. Larned aptly remarks, show him
to have been the archetype of all gentlemen"
and they may well cause wonder that such con-
ceptions existed in that dawn of the worlds
history. A long interval of time passes, and
then the code delivered to Moses on
Mount Sinai, with the awful sanctions of divine
command. Hindoo precepts show similarly high
plane of conception of duty and altruism. Con-
fucius seems not to have recognized an abso-
Lutte principle of right, but to have set forth his
rules of life as Suggestions to a practical mind
Of the manner in which human intercourse is
most likely to be made satisfactory"-an
pedent wisdom, the outcome Of common sense
Not till the ttz1e of Plato and Socrates among
the Greeks do we find conscious inquiry into
the nature and sources Of moral obligation; and
with Aristotle came the first attempt at the con-
struction of a theory of ethics. Thence followed
many moral PHILOSOPHERS, stole or epicurean all
In their tendencies. The moral code of Christ, in
Mr.. Larneds view, differs little in its precepts
from the older codes that have come down to
from the East; but it is separated from them by
a great gulf in its breadth of application. In
the answer to the lawyers question, Who IS
my neighbour" by the parable of the Good
Samaritan came the effective awakening of
mankind TO the larger sense of human fellow
ship
Mr.. Larned's discussion of the development of
the ethical consciousness OF humanity in his in
troductory essay We cannot help thinking the
most stimulating and suggestive portion of his
book The body of it contains, to speak, the
documents in the case. There is endless rich
ness of thought and diversity of style in them.
especially in the later quotations that bring us
into more vital and human relations with the
thinker. as well with the thought. There
is much that is quaint and delightful in the
medieval rules for conduct to De found, for in
stance, in the Latin verses called "Stans Puer
ad Mensam," in 1.-The Book of the Knight of La
Tour-Landry," IN Rhodes's "Boke of Nurture"
in Erasmus's "Colloquies," we'll as in the
many English writers Of little later period.
Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord
Bacon. and, of course, Sir Thomas Browne. We
are brought to close with Wordsworth Carlyle,
Emerson and Thoreau. Altogether 1t is a vau-
able anthology, that will be found useful for
many purposes-though doubt if one of these
will often be consecutive reading from cover to
cover.