;o 4 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



0U9 swamp of humbugs and impostures is 

 bound to be drained and reclaimed to the 

 higher uses of civilization. 



" Physics and Polities " has been writ- 

 ten to show that the noble field of politi- 

 cal thought and activity#is not necessarily 

 the chaos it is generally supposed, but that 

 it involves great natural laws, which it is 

 the destiny of science to trace out and 

 formulate, just as it has done with other 

 branches of knowledge which have been 

 made scientific by modern inquiry. In 

 what does the progress of political com- 

 munities consist, and how has it arisen? 

 What were the first conditions and steps 

 of social advancement ? What are the 

 uses of slavery, war, and other barbari- 

 ties in the early tutelage of races ? And 

 when the rude stages of barbarism and 

 violence are passed, what are the recent 

 agencies which take up the work of ameli- 

 oration and carry it up to still better and 

 finer results ? These are the questions 

 whick Mr. Bagehot answers in his succes- 

 sive disquisitions on " The Preliminary 

 Age," "The Use of Conflict," "Nation- 

 Making," "The Age of Discussion," and 

 " Verifiable Progress Politically consid- 

 ered." In treating these questions, the au- 

 thor brings out the action of those laws of 

 Nature and of human nature that precede 

 the age of legislation, and are a thousand 

 times more potent than the edicts of kings or 

 the enactments of congregated law-makers. 



To the cultivated reader who enjoys 

 literary excellence, fine analysis, fresh and 

 striking views, with many passages of pict- 

 uresque eloquence, and all vivifying and 

 illuminating a current of close and vigor- 

 ous reasoning, this little treatise on 

 " Physics and Politics " will prove a rare 

 treat. We had marked several passages 

 for quotation, but lack of space prevents 

 their insertion. 



Deductive and Inductive Training. An 

 Address before the Chemical Society of 

 the Lehigh University, by B. Silliman, 

 M. A., M. D. Printed by the Society. 



In this discourse, which was given at 

 the first annual celebration of a young 

 chemical society, Prof. Silliman regards the 

 problem of higher education from the mod- 

 ern and American Doint of view not as a 



radical innovator, but as a friend of rational 

 progress and judicious reform. He says : 



" Public opinion, however, has made it- 

 self felt by the outward pressure it has ex- 

 erted, and the demand, which has grown up 

 for men better trained in general science, 

 and in its several departments, has brought 

 about a change, visible on every hand, alike 

 in the modification of the studies, as in the 

 development of new departments with sep- 

 arate Faculties devoted to science-training ; 

 as also occasionally in the establishment of 

 new institutions, on entirely independent 

 foundations, in some of which only special 

 subjects are taught, while in others the ex- 

 periment is on trial of a curriculum, in which 

 the modern languages, either wholly, or in 

 part, replace the ancient, and where the stu- 

 dent is trained during three or four years by a 

 course of studies in which the inductive sci- 

 ences have a prominent part." 



Prof. Silliman admits the former excess 

 of deductive training in our colleges, and 

 recognizes the necessity of so modifying 

 the curriculum as to introduce a larger 

 amount of inductive science to correct the 

 evil, and afford a sounder and more sym- 

 metrical culture. On this point he ob- 

 serves : 



" The defect of an education based on 

 the study of the deductive methods of geom-. 

 etry, the pure mathematics, jurisprudence, 

 and ancient literature, will now be readily 

 understood. Intuitive principles, those 

 which underlie geometrical and mathe- 

 matical studies, or those principles ob- 

 tained by common consent, and of human 

 authority, which are the foundations of 

 jurisprudence ; or again, the study of the 

 historical, poetical, and literary precedents, 

 images, and ideas of ancient writers, and 

 their rendering into English, which is the 

 staple of the ancient classics, leaves com- 

 pletely undeveloped the entire body and 

 soul of ideas connected with the experi- 

 mental and demonstrative sciences, which 

 have to do with natural phenomena, and 

 the entities of natural history in the broad- 

 est sense. In other words, no room is left 

 for the study of the inductive methods, the 

 logic of science, by the aid of which we, in 

 this nineteenth century, find ourselves so 

 immeasurably in advance of * all former 

 times, in our ability to comprehend and 

 control the powers of Nature, and adapt 

 them not only to the service of our human 

 wants, but, what is more, to the interpre- 



