December i, 1921] 



NATURE 



441 



fertilisers in England and Germany, but as the 

 economic conditions in the two countries were, 

 and still are, wholly abnormal and scarcely com- 



irable, it is not easy to determine their actual 



ijnificance or to forecast their eventual import- 



nce. 



In conclusion, reference is made to the attempts 

 to develop nitrogen fixation in this country by 

 Messrs. Brunner, Mond, and Co., who have taken 



over the projected Government factory at Billing- 

 ham, and by Cumberland Coal Power and 

 Chemicals, Ltd., who are to work the Claude pro- 

 cess of synthetic ammonia. 



The entire Report constitutes one of the most 

 valuable lessons of the war, and deser\'es the most 

 serious study. The subject of nitrogen fixation 

 has not yet received the attention in this country 

 which its great importance merits. 



Obituary. 



Emile Boutrolx. 



nr*HE death of Emile Boutroux at the age 

 -•- of seventy-six is the loss not only of one 

 who has been for a generation a central figure in 

 the circle of French philosophy, known even, where 

 in Europe and America, but also of one who by the 

 charm of his personality seemed to embodv all 

 that is most attractive in the French genius. It 

 will necessarily cast a gloom on the meeting of 

 the Society Francaise de Philosophic which is to 

 be held in Paris between Christmas and the New 

 Year and to which English, American, and Italian 

 philosophical societies are sending delegates, for 

 he was to have been its president d'honneur. To 

 those who have known him at former international 

 philosophical congresses his loss will mean much 

 more than his vacant chair. 



The last years of Boutroux 's life had been sad- 

 dened bv the loss of friends. He felt deeply the 

 death of his brother-in-law, Henri Poincare, in 

 1913 at the age of fifty-eight, cut off, as it seemed, 

 in his full intellectual strength. In a conversation 

 with the present writer a few years ago he re- 

 marked that his one dearest wish was to be able 

 to show the fruitfulness of Poincare's ideas in 

 philosophy. In igiq he lost his wife, who had 

 been for many years his inseparable companion 

 at home and in all his lecture tours in foreign 

 countries. Vet with all the weight of sorrow and 

 the increasing infirmities of old age (he suffered 

 much from deafness and eye trouble) he retained 

 to the end his extraordinary- vivacit\- and 

 charm of conversation and his power of sym- 

 pathetic control when addressing a meeting. 



Emile Boutroux represents a distinct and ven. 

 important position in the historv- of contemporar\- 

 philosophy, especially in relation to the modern 

 scientific revolution. From his student days he 

 devoted his attention to that conception of a uni- 

 versal determinism which, from the time of 

 Descartes down to the great scientific develop- 

 ment in the nineteenth centun>-, had seemed to be 

 the absolute and necessan,- basis of phvsical 

 science. In 1874 he presented a thesis to the 

 Sorbonne for his doctorate. It was entitled "De 

 la Contingence des Lois de la Nature." For 

 twenty years this book attracted little attention 

 outside the circle of his students and philosophical 

 colleagues. He was fully engaged in lecturing 

 and teaching, and some of his lecture courses : 



NO. 2718,^ VOL. 108] 



were published as studies in the history of philo- 

 sophy. In 1895, however, at the urgent request 

 of his friends, he republished his thesis in its 

 original form, and since then it has gone through 

 innumerable editions and has been translated into 

 all the principal languages. 



The main idea of the thesis Boutroux probably 

 owed to his older contemporan.-, Lachelier, but 

 the work itself is of striking originalitj'. The 

 argument is that nowhere, not even in the logical 

 syllogism, do we get the type of necessity which 

 is represented by the proposition of identity, 

 A is A, and yet this and nothing short of 

 this will satisfy the ideal of universal science. 

 He went on to prove that the more we advance 

 from the abstract to the concrete, from mathe- 

 matics to physics, from physics to biology, from 

 biology to psychology, the more we see the range 

 of necessity being restricted and that of contin- 

 gency growing larger. The suggestiveness of 

 his theory rather than the systematic expres- 

 sion which he was able to give to it marks 

 its importance. It places him in the direct line 

 of that philosophical speculation which, starting 

 with Maine de Biran in the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth centun.-, may be traced through Ravaisson, 

 Lachelier, and Boutroux himself to the present 

 philosophers, Bergson, Le Roy, Blondel, and 

 Laberthonifere, all of whom were at one time his 

 pupils. H. W. C. 



Prof. Peter Thompson. 



Prof. Peter Thompson, whose untimely 

 and deeplv lamented death occurred at Pen- 

 maenmawr on November 16, early showed an un- 

 usual aptitude for human anatomy. He obtained 

 a special mark of distinction in the subject when 

 a student, and it gained him the gold medal on 

 taking the M.D. (Victoria) from Chven's College, 

 Manchester. He soon won a reputation as a bril- 

 liant and enthusiastic teacher after he was ap- 

 j)ointed senior demonstrator of anatomy at Owen's 

 College. This reputation he fully maintained when 

 he came to London, first as lecturer at the Middle- 

 sex Hospital, and later as professor of anatomy at 

 King's College. In 1912 he was elected professor 

 of anatomy and dean of the medical faculty of the 

 University of Birmingham. 



Prof. Thompson's contributions to the literature 



