SUPERSTITION AND FORCE.
Essays on The Wager of Law, The Wager of Battle, The Ordeal, and Torture.
Third revised and enlarged edition. In one handsome royal 12mo. volume of 552 pages. Cloth $2.50.
This valuable work is in reality a history of civilization as interpreted by the progress of jurisprudence. In “Superstition and Force” we have a philosophic survey of the long period intervening between primitive barbarity and civilized enlightenment. There is not a chapter in the work that should not be most carefully studied; and, however well versed the reader may be in the science of jurisprudence, he will find much in Mr. Lea’s volume of which he was previously ignorant. The book is a valuable addition to the literature of social science.—Westminster Review, Jan. 1880.
This is a book of extraordinary research. Mr. Lea has entered into his subject con amore, and a more striking record of the cruel superstitions of our Middle Ages could not possibly have been compiled. As a work of curious enquiry into certain outlying points of obsolete law, “Superstition and Force” is one of the most remarkable works we have met with.—London Athenæum, November 3, 1866.
The appearance of a third edition of Mr. Henry C. Lea’s “Superstition and Force” is a sign that our highest scholarship is not without honor in its native country.—N. Y. Nation, August 1, 1878.
Mr. Lea’s curious historical monographs, of which one of the most important is here reproduced in an enlarged form, have given him an unique position among English and American scholars. He is distinguished for his recondite and affluent learning, his power of exhaustive historical analysis, the breadth and accuracy of his researches among the rarer sources of knowledge, the gravity and temperance of his statements, combined with singular earnestness of conviction, and his warm attachment to the cause of freedom and intellectual progress.—N. Y. Tribune, August 9, 1878.
HENRY C. LEA’S SON & CO., PHILADELPHIA.