IMAGO MUNDI 11 



in graceful account by Williams, more technically by Bailly and 

 Delambre, by Montucla and Libri ; various phases of it by count- 

 less others. The volumes of Bailly comprise an exquisitely con- 

 ceived work of high philosophic interest ; but it stops short even 

 of Herschel and Laplace. There are some inspiring pages in 

 Buckle, some instructive chapters in Lecky. But the work of 

 Lecky begins in the Middle Ages, while the spirit of rationalism 

 and inquiry, whose history he designed to trace, had flourished 

 throughout Greater Greece through a longer period than in our 

 modern world. The two volumes of Buckle are but a fragment, 

 and in any event his work would have been a history of civilisa- 

 tion in England only in the older and more restricted sense of 

 the word ; it would have had nothing to do with the growth 

 of English culture from its aboriginal elements. Draper treats 

 of the intellectual development of Europe more as if it were 

 the history of philosophies and religions and their political 

 influence among one people and another. 



The history of materialism that is to say, the endeavour 

 to describe the world in terms of matter and force has been 

 very brilliantly set forth by Lange, from whom Tyndall drew 

 the inspiration for his ever memorable Belfast Address. But 

 the pages of Lange deal less with the acquisitions of positive 

 knowledge than with the endless " systems " or poetical concepts 

 of the philosophers. A valuable attempt to forefigure both 

 the solid results and the speculative inferences of the last 

 century is now in course of publication by Merz. Interesting 

 memoirs and sketches of the more important protagonists of 

 the great drama have been offered by various pens to note 

 but a few, of Aristotle by Lewes, of Newton by Brewster and 

 Rosenberger, of the Alexandrian school by Matter, of the later 

 conquests of astronomy by Bertrand, Lodge, and Clerke. The 

 development of mechanics has been admirably portrayed by 

 Mach, among others ; of physical theories by Duhem ; of 

 cosmical theory by Wolf. The original contributions of von 

 Helmholtz, Kelvin, and others, are to be found in their own 

 works. There is a wealth of excellent monographs, dealing, 

 either in detail or in a clear and popular way, with especial 

 questions, from Sir Robert Ball, Simon Newcomb, Whetham, 

 not to speak of many other volumes informing and valuable. 1 



The ramifications of the inquiry have to-day become so 

 1 A bibliographical note will be found at the end of the volume. 



