ESSAYS 689 



people in the past. This is a matter that is a part of the work of historians 

 of science. What most of us want ultimately to find out is what propositions are 

 true, not what are the names of the people who have thought such-and-such 

 propositions to be true, and when they thought so. To attain this object, one 

 way is to examine the work of others for (1) indications as to the propositions 

 already established and how they do in fact follow from axioms, (2) indications as 

 to those to be examined, and (3) suggestions for the best way of examining them. 

 If, then, literature is not put in a readily comprehensible and accessible form, the 

 work of investigators is made difficult and sometimes even impossible. A de- 

 pression of spirits is produced, in many cases, by a knowledge that there is an 

 enormous mass of literature on almost every subject in, say, mathematics, and that 

 in this mass there may be something that has previously been written that throws 

 light on some point that happens to interest us, but that something is quite hidden. 

 A corresponding rise of spirits is produced by evidence that we need not work 

 through this mass. The resulting attitude of mind is not unlike that which, 

 possibly for different reasons, animated Descartes at the beginning of his career. 

 It appeared to him that he might escape from the burden of learning bequeathed 

 to him by his predecessors, and, under the conviction that nothing which is true 

 can be hidden from a calm and thoughtful inquiring mind, shut himself away from 

 the world in a warm room and constructed the whole universe of thought and 

 things out of his own thoughts. We know that much of what he did is of value 

 for all time, but none the less we find that he often unconsciously made, to the 

 ideas of his despised predecessors, a step backwards from which a knowledge of 

 the history of science might have saved him. Even at the present time we see 

 many physicists, in particular, who have such a contempt for what they call 

 " metaphysics " that they abstain from finding out anything about it, and quite 

 unconsciously fall back into a way of thinking about a homogeneous and con- 

 tinuous aether that is not unlike parts of Descartes' doctrine— or indeed 

 Parmenides' or Aristotle's. 



This aim of lightening the burden of learning for seekers after truth is under- 

 taken by those who busy themselves with complete summaries of researches in 

 science, and also by those who write in encyclopaedias and really up-to-date 

 text-books from modern points of view. Here, again, Germany has been for 

 years past in advance of other nations, but it has been fairly closely followed by 

 France during the last sixteen years. In Italy and America also there have been 

 really serious efforts to produce scientific books that appeal to the more advanced 

 students of science. In Great Britain, with a few notable exceptions, the output 

 of the printing presses which may be classed as "scientific" is devoted to 

 elementary education ; and in such books three parts seem adapted from other 

 books and the remainder seems usually the result of a very inferior type of 

 originality. 



There is one other point in which Great Britain is notably inferior to the chief 

 nations of Europe. It is in the publication of good and needed editions of collected 

 works. France is continually publishing carefully edited and beautifully pro- 

 duced editions of the works of her great men, and, for instance, the last edition 

 of the works of Descartes is a thoroughly competently-done national edition. 

 Italy has given us a very fine national edition of the works of Galileo. In 

 Germany fine editions of collected works are almost as common even as fairly 

 great men. In Great Britain there have been quite a number of editions of the 

 works of modern men of science produced, for the most part, by the University of 

 Cambridge, just as there have been in other countries of Europe on a far more 



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