CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 387 



greedily attacked by a grub and by microscopic enemies. The paste, 

 too, is apt to spoil by heating. Hence it is found to be most economical 

 to make the oil where the nuts grow. The nuts, when broken up with 

 their coverings, yield about thirty-six per cent, of oil ; cleared of their 

 coverings, the kernels give sixty per cent. When cold-pressed, the oil 

 is clear and amber-colored. When left to stand, it gives a solid de- 

 posit of a crystalline appearance. It makes a soap of excellent quality, 

 and having a certain degree of hardness a property which makes it 

 valuable to mix with other oils that give too soft soaps. When refined, 

 it makes an excellent lubricating oil, and gives a light that leaves no- 

 thing to be desired. The catalogue of the Permanent Exposition of the 

 French Colonies names some fifteen other species of plants the fruits of 

 which yield oils. One of the most valuable of them is the Omphalea 

 cUandra (D'Aublet), a large vine of the Spurge family, which bears seeds 

 with very hard and black, horny shells. The shells are used for mak- 

 ing beads. The kernel contains a very limpid, amber-colored oil, which 

 is excellent for illumination, for making soap, and for lubricating pur- 

 poses, and of which the yield is 64 '58 per cent. 



CRITICISMS COREECTED. 



By HEKBEET SPENCER. 

 III. GUTHEIE AND BIRKS. 



CRITICISM would be greatly diminished in bulk if there were ex- 

 cluded from it all that part devoted to disproving statements 

 which have not been made ; and were this course pursued, the work 

 "On Mr. Spencer's Formula of Evolution," by Malcolm Guthrie, would 

 disappear bodily. It is little else than a misstatement of certain fun- 

 damental views of mine, and then an elaborate refutation of the views 

 as misstated. 



Let me first show by brief extracts from " First Principles " what 

 these views are. In a chapter on " Ultimate Scientific Ideas," after 

 showing how the hypothesis that matter consists of solid atoms com- 

 mits us to alternative impossibities of thought, I have shown how 

 the hypothesis of Boscovich, that matter consists of centers of force 

 without extension, is unthinkable. In the course of the argument I 

 have pointed out that though Boscovich's hypothesis can not be real- 

 ized in thought, yet, on the other hand, the hypothesis of extended 

 atoms itself implies an imaginary separableness of each atom into parts, 

 and again of these into parts, and so on without limit until unextended 

 centers of force are reached : the consciousness of force being that 

 which alone perpetually emerges. And I have ended by saying that 



