But the lecture gives us, I think, an extraordinary insight into ourselves, a power of self-criticism almost disconcerting as we realize not only the persistence of ethical ideals in the past, but also the possible career of new ethical systems as they may permeate the books written to-day.

To what standard will the reader of our contemporary literature be unconsciously moulded?
What account will be given of literature a thousand years from now, when a later critic informs himself of our ethics in order to understand more vitally the pages in which he has been brought up?
Partly to inform his Japanese students still further as to our ethical tendencies in literature, and partly I think to indulge his own speculation as to the morality that will be found in the literature of the future, Hearn gave his remarkable lectures on the ant-world, following Fabre and other European investigators, and his lecture on "The New Ethics." When he spoke, over twenty years ago, the socialistic ideal had not gripped us so effectually as it has done in the last decade, but he had no difficulty in observing the tendency.

Civilization in some later cycle may wonder at our ambition to abandon individual liberty and responsibility and to subside into the social instincts of the ant; and even as it wonders, that far-off civilization may detect in itself ant-like reactions which we cultivated for it.

With this description of the ant-world it is illuminating to read the two brilliant chapters on English and French poems about insects.

Against this whole background of ethical theory, I have ventured to set Hearn's singularly objective account of the Bible.
In the remaining four chapters Hearn speaks of the "Kalevala," of the mediaeval romance "Amis and Amile," of William Cory's "Ionica," and of Theocritus.