LITERARY NOTICES. 



845 



cipline in the search for truth, the ob- 

 servation of objects, and the study of 

 principles, there has been no genuine 

 education. For it is with facts at last 

 that we have concern in experience, 

 and the education of him who has not 

 learned to study them is futile. The 

 dictum of Clerk - Maxwell and Lord 

 Eayleigh that there is an " almost uni- 

 versal tendency of uninstructed minds 

 to elevate phrases above things " has 

 all the effect of a new definition of ig- 

 norance. This idea has been long fore- 

 shadowed in a vague recognition of the 

 ignorance of mere book-worms, and in 

 all the exigencies of a practical life the 

 worthlessness of simple book-knowl- 

 edge is proverbial. The antithesis of 

 ignorance is not learning but knowl- 

 edge. Thinkers undoubtedly get help 

 from books, when they know how to 

 use and subordinate them so as not to 

 become their victims. One of the pro- 

 foundest English thinkers, Hobbes, who 

 has impressed himself powerfully upon 

 the thought of the last two centuries, 

 read but few books, and Aubrey re- 

 marks that " he was wont to say that 

 if he had read as much as other men he 

 should have continued still as ignorant 

 as other men." Mere reading is not 

 mental discipline, but rather mental 

 dissipation, and one of the worst feat- 

 ures of our popular education is the su- 

 perstitious supremacy it gives to naked 

 book acquisitions. The radical work of 

 scientific education must be done here : 

 " The almost universal tendency of un- 

 instructed minds to elevate phrases 

 above things " must give place to the 

 more rational and enlightened tendency 

 to elevate things above phrases. It was 

 inevitable that the verbal should be in 

 the ascendant in ancient times, and in 

 the medisBval ages, when but little was 

 accurately and profoundly known of the 

 relations of things ; but science has 

 given us a new dispensation of knowl- 

 edge, and this has created a new edu- 

 cation in which knowledge is no longer 

 a matter of phrases, but a familiariza- 



tion of the mind with the verities of 

 nature and of truth. In this new ed- 

 ucation, language, conceded to be of 

 great importance, is not an end in it- 

 self, but is to be made tributary to the 

 higher end of understanding the nature, 

 order, and constitution of things. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The New Chemistry. By Josiah Parsons 

 Cooke, LL. D. Revised edition, remod- 

 eled and enlarged. New York : D. Ap- 

 pleton & Co. Pp. 400. Price, $2. 



All who are interested in the progress 

 of chemistry will be glad to learn that Pro- 

 fessor Cooke has thoroughly revised his in- 

 teresting volume in the " International Sci- 

 entific Series," entitled " The New Chemis- 

 try." It took a position in all the languages 

 in which it appeared, both as a model of 

 admirable exposition and a standard work 

 on the present condition of chemical theory. 

 But, excellent as it was when first published, 

 the author has not been content to let it go 

 unrevised when there has been further im- 

 portant progress, both of the science and of 

 his own views of the subject. He has ac- 

 cordingly revised and amplified it so that it 

 may now be accepted as an authoritative 

 statement of the present condition of chemi- 

 cal philosophy. We reproduce the author's 

 preface to the new edition, that our readers 

 may know exactly the import of the changes 

 that have been made in the book : 



The progress in chemistry during the ten years 

 which have elapsed since this worlc was iirst pub- 

 lished and stereotyped has been accompanied by no 

 such revolution in its philosophy as the previous 

 transition from the dualistlc system of Berzelius to 

 the unitary system of structural organic chemistry 

 had involved. Nevertheless, there has been a con- 

 stant advance, during which we have gained clearer 

 conceptions and more comprehensive views of the 

 fundamental principles of the science ; and many of 

 the accidental features which marked the transition 

 period have disappeared. Meanwhile the distinc- 

 tion between elementary substances and materials 

 consisting of isolated elementary atoms has become 

 clear, and, in m.aking these last, iilone, the elements 

 of chemistry, we have pushed our science, if not to 

 its extreme limits, still one step further back : and 

 in taking this step we have left behind many of the 

 anomalies which previously encumbered our phi- 

 losophy. Except in a very limited sense, the so- 

 called elementary substances are now seen to be as 

 truly compounded as any other substances, and it 

 is manifest that their qualities must depend on 



