606 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



des Sciences Mathematiques and reflect upon the changes which 

 are now required to bring that portion of this great work into 

 line with the subject of which it treats. 



There is one regret that may perhaps be expressed, I hope, 

 without ungraciousness ; it is that the work has been done 

 like most of our best English mathematical work in the author's 

 study and not in the centre of a living school of mathematics. 

 It is, I believe, a loss to England and to mathematics that 

 Major MacMahon has not directed a great school of research ; 

 the gain to the youthful mathematicians of such a leader is 

 obvious ; they would have received an impetus which the 

 printed page will only give to a few. Is it not possible also that 

 the quality of work done in such circumstances may not, like 

 mercy, be doubly blest ? When one reflects on the past and 

 realises how much Cayley might have given to those hungry 

 students who watched him lecture in the New Museum at 

 Cambridge in the 'eighties, and would willingly have fed on 

 something more satisfying than a distant view of his blue 

 foolscap manuscript, and when one reads MacMahon and thinks 

 that he has never even fed students on the Cayley plan, it 

 is impossible to resist the feeling that there are countries in 

 which mathematical teaching is better organised than it is 

 in England. 



In conclusion a reference may be made to the fact that 

 this is Volume I ; it need not be said that Volume II is eagerly 

 anticipated. In it no doubt a complete index to the two 

 volumes will appear. The book is splendidly printed and is 

 singularly free from errors ; there is, however, one in the state- 

 ment of the Master Theorem on p. 97, where two notations 

 have been used. 



MR. BALFOUR'S ARGUMENT POR THEISM, by Joshua C. 

 Gregory, B.Sc, F.I.C. : on Theism and Humanism, by the Rt. Hon. 

 Arthur James Balfour, F.R.S., LL.D., Hon. Fellow Trinity College, 

 Cambridge. [Pp.274.] (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915. Price 

 10s. 6d. net.) 



Phenomena, or events, present themselves, among their many 

 possible aspects, as results. Some results are obviously 

 intended. A codling seizes the bait on the hook and is lodged 

 in the creel. There was design in the proceeding, for the fisher 



