THE STEPS OF LIFE

BY CARL HILTY

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1907.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

The welcome offered to the translation ofProfessor Hilty’s “Happiness” amply justifiesthe translation of a second series of hisessays. The same notes of tranquil reflectionand keen observation, which have drawn tothe earlier volumes many readers both in Europeand America, are here struck again.Professor Hilty is not a preacher, and hisessays are not sermons. He is a professor ofConstitutional Law, and the studies of lifewhich these volumes represent are productsof his leisure hours, wrought out of his meditationand experience. Sin and sorrow, cultureand courage, a just judgment of others,a rational optimism, and a simple Christianfaith—these are the “Steps of Life” upwhich this wise teacher mounts, and whichhe invites thoughtful readers to climb. LaurenceOliphant is reported to have said thatwhat England in the nineteenth century mostneeded was “a spiritually minded man of theworld”—a man, that is to say, who couldlive in the world without being subdued tothat he worked in, a man who could surveyand judge his world with the sanity and insightof the spiritual mind. Professor Hiltyin a very exceptional degree meets this test.[vi]His vocation is among the institutions of thepolitical world. His last professional treatisedealt with the history of the Referendum inmediæval Switzerland. When in these Essayshe approaches the problems of otherprofessions, such as those of theology orBiblical criticism, it is as an amateur, whosatisfies himself with conclusions which mustappear to many minds untenable. It is, however,precisely this unprofessional characterof his reflections which gives them their impor