MAXWELL REVIEWS "PARADOXICAL PHILOSOPHY" 241 



of a dialogue, the purpose of it being to convert Dr Hermann Stoffkraft, a 

 German materialist, to a belief in the doctrines of The Unseen Universe. 

 The deed is done ; but of course, as in the orthodox novel, the end is obvious 

 from the beginning. A delicately humorous and yet scientifically critical 

 review was written for Nature (Dec. 19, 1878) by Clerk Maxwell. Certain 

 paragraphs from that review hit off with such remarkable clearness the whole 

 bearing of the two books that no apology is needed for their reproduction 

 here. 



" We cannot accuse the authors of leading us through the mazy paths of science 

 only to entrap us into some peculiar form of theological belief. On the contrary, they 

 avail themselves of the general interest in theological dogma to imbue their readers 

 unawares with the newest doctrines of energy. There must be many who would never 

 have heard of Carnot's reversible engine, if they had not been led through its cycle of 

 operations while endeavouring to explore the Unseen Universe. No book containing 

 so much thoroughly scientific matter would have passed through seven editions in so 

 short a time without the allurement of some more human interest 



" The words on the title-page : ' In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in aeternum ' 

 may recall to an ordinary reader the aspiration of the Hebrew Psalmist, the closing 

 prayer of the ' Te Deum ' or the dying words of Francis Xavier ; and men of science, 

 as such, are not to be supposed incapable either of the nobler hopes or of the nobler 

 fears to which their fellow men have attained. Here, however, we find these venerable 

 words employed to express a conviction of the perpetual validity of the ' Principle of 

 Continuity,' enforced by the tremendous sanction, that if at any place or at any time 

 a single exception to that principle were to occur, a general collapse of every intellect 

 in the universe would be the inevitable result. 



" There are other well known words in which St Paul contrasts things seen with 

 things unseen. These also are put in a prominent place by the authors of The Unseen 

 Universe. What, then, is the Unseen to which they raise their thoughts ? 



" In the first place the luminiferous aether, the tremors of which are the dynamical 

 equivalent of all the energy which has been lost by radiation from the various systems of 

 grosser matter which it surrounds. In the second place a still more subtle medium, 

 imagined by Sir William Thomson as possibly capable of furnishing an explanation of 

 the properties of sensible bodies ; on the hypothesis that they are built up of ring 

 vortices set in motion by some supernatural power in a frictionless liquid : beyond which 

 we are to suppose an indefinite succession of media, not hitherto imagined by anyone, 

 each manifoldly more subtle than any of those preceding it. To exercise the mind in 

 speculations on such media may be a most delightful employment for those who are 

 intellectually fitted to indulge in it, though we cannot see why they should on that 

 account appropriate the words of St Paul." 



After a playful discussion of some of the theories of the origin of 

 consciousness and of the meaning of personality, Clerk Maxwell summed 

 up thus : 



T. 31 



