LITERARY NOTICES. 



115 



ter of these compositions it is hardly neces- 

 sary to speak. They are not only written 

 with great clearness, force, and eloquence, 

 but they evince a subtile perception and a 

 strong grasp of the higher problems of 

 modern scientific thought. Beyond doubt 

 the French lead the world in the arts of 

 lucid and attractive scientific exposition ; 

 and Papillon stands eminent among his 

 countrymen in the display of this excellence. 

 Although dealing with the most complex 

 questions, and surveying the great phenom- 

 ena of life on all sides, and especially in 

 its dynamical aspects, yet there are a glow 

 and a fascination in his pages which we do 

 not hesitate to say are unsurpassed in mod- 

 ern scientific literature. Nor has the work 

 lost aught of these impressive character- 

 istics in its English dress. Papillon has 

 passed prematurely away, but Mr. Macdon- 

 ough has done justice to his memory by 

 this brilliant reproduction of the French- 

 man's work, by which a distant and foreign 

 people will be able to appreciate his genius. 

 Papillon's view as a thinker, and the 

 spirit of his scientific studies, are so admi- 

 rably presented in his brief preface, that we 

 quote it in full : 



'' This volume contains a series of essays 

 written and published at difierent times, 

 some of a general character, and others 

 more special, and all relating to the activity 

 of natural forces, especially those of life. 

 The mere bringing together of these frag- 

 ments has presented an opportunity of 

 completing a methodical and uniform whole, 

 combining exactness in details with gener- 

 ality of doctrines, and distinctly tracing the 

 precise aspect of each group of phenomena 

 in the picture of the close and universal re- 

 lations that bind the whole together. An 

 exposition is thus offered under an element- 

 ary form, in language freed from technical 

 dress, of the most essential truths estab- 

 lished of late by physics, chemistry, and 

 biology, regarding the mechanism of natu- 

 ral forces, and the arrangement and combi- 

 nation of the fundamental springs of being 

 in the world, especially in the living world. 

 I indulge the hope that such a work might 

 meet a kindly welcome from minds, ever 

 increasingly numerous, that regard science 

 as the subject neither of idle curiosity nor 

 of passing entertainment, but as the object 

 of earnest sympathy and of serious exami- 

 nation. Such, at least, is the principal pur- 

 pose of this book. 



" It has another, also. The evident dis- 

 position of the present day is to repose in- 

 finite hopes on the natural sciences, and to 

 expect unlimited benefits from them. I 

 certainly shall not view this inclination as 

 an illusion, and this volume sufficiently at- 

 tests the high value I set upon all that can 

 encourage and foster such feelings. But 

 precisely because I am not suspected of en- 

 mity to those sciences, it has seemed to me 

 the more necessary to indicate a fatal mis- 

 take accompanying those commendable sen- 

 timents ; I mean the mistake of those who, 

 after loudly praising the excellence of sci- 

 ence, denounce the weakness and deny the 

 authority of metaphysics. 



" Now, my reader will come upon more 

 than one page manifestly inspired by the 

 conviction that science, properly so called, 

 does not satiate the mind eager to know 

 and to understand, and that therefore meta- 

 physics holds a large and an authorized 

 place in the activity of human thought. 

 While I have retouched every thing in these 

 essays which seemed to me, from an exclu- 

 sively scientific point of view, susceptible 

 of a higher degree of exactness and pre- 

 cision, I have, on the contrary, preserved 

 with jealous care the literal tenor of all the 

 pages expressly written under the influence 

 of that conviction. And I have done so, 

 not because of any peculiar value in those 

 reflections, many of which are nothing 

 more than a very imperfect representation 

 of my way of seeing, but because those re- 

 flections were then made for the first time, 

 with absolute spontaneousness, and without 

 the slightest system or premeditation. The 

 reader will thus be able to see how general 

 ideas naturally emerge from deep and close 

 contemplation of a group of various details, 

 how forcible their unsought impression is ; 

 in other words, hoAV surely thought, follow- 

 ing orderly and regular evolution, without 

 studied intention as without dogmatic aim, 

 arrives at the loftiest philosophic certainties. 



" The thinker who tYeely seeks for 

 truth, continuously changes his position in 

 his aspirations toward mind and the ideal. 

 He deserts the regions of phenomena and 

 concrete things, to rise to those of the abso- 

 lute and eternal. The farther he withdraws 

 from the former, which had at first absorbed 

 all his attention, the more strikingly does 

 the perspective in which he viewed them 

 alter. At last, he discerns nothing else in 

 them but spectres without substance, and 

 delusive phantoms. And in the degree and 

 extent of his drawing near to the eternal 

 and the absolute, reality comes more surely 



