July 17, 1879] 



NATURE 



265 



the world resolves ever so firmly to walk to a place a mile 

 off, that initial resolution -will never get him there unless 

 he further resolves at every moment of his walk to take 

 the next step, and takes it." 



" . . . . Atheistic philosophers are always insisting on 

 the fact that whatever powers have made the world, have 

 made it and kept it going and improving by means of 

 invariable laws or modes of action. Then if uniformity 

 of action of the proper kind can do the business so well, 

 why should it be varied ? This argument against a cre- 

 ative will in other words asserts that there can be no 

 such will because the plan and rules by which it uni- 

 formly acts are so good that they have never to be varied 

 in order to repair a single defect or produce a single im- 

 provement; i.e. 'there is no creator and maintainer of 

 the world because the design was so perfect. If we had 

 seen the universal machine working by fits and starts we 

 should certainly have admitted that every one of them 

 involved a fresh application of power ; but we deny any 

 because it works so smoothly that it seems to go of itself, 

 though it is always turning out products of infinite variety, 

 and in some respects continually improving.' Such an 

 argument as that only needs stating nakedly to answer 

 itself. .... A machine that will go on for ever pro- 

 ducing ever-varying and ever-improving results is mani- 

 festly and infinitely superior to one that needs continual 

 interference, and implies infinitely greater wisdom in the 

 maker of it." 



" . . . . the leaders of the materialistic school give us 

 such dogmatic statements as that ' materialism is the best 

 working hypothesis,' and that 'it is a fundamental law of 

 psychology that all beliefs as to the past and the present 

 must rest on experience.' But they neither pretend to 

 prove that ' fundamental law,' nor to tell us who made it, 

 except themselves, nor why a hypothesis is the best 

 working one which explains nothing, but merely asserts, 

 when turned into plain English, that things are because 

 they are ; and that mind is only the result of certain 

 motions of matter, without professing to explain how a 

 single particle of matter came to be able to move itself 

 .... all this language of the materialists or atheists, or 

 sceptics, or whatever else they call themselves, is not 

 demonstration but mere assertion, which could just as 

 well be made the other way." 



When the purposely vague statements of the mate- 

 rialists and agnostics are thus stripped of the tinsel of 

 high-flown and unintelligible language, the eyes of the 

 thoughtless who have accepted them on authority (!) are 

 at last opened, and they are ready to exclaim with 

 Titania 



Methinks " I was enamour'd of an ass." 



As the touch of Ithuriel's spear at once happily revealed 

 the Deceiver, these frank and clear exposures of the 

 pretensions of pseudo-science cannot fail of producing 

 great ultimate good. P. G. Tait 



T/i£ Home of the Eddas. By Charles G. Warnford Lock. 

 With a Chapter on the Sprengisandr by Dr. C. Le Neve 

 Foster. (London : Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 

 1879.) 

 Another volume of Icelandic travel has been added to 

 the lengthy series which already loads the book-shelves of 

 those who are interested in that wonderful country of 

 frost, and flood, and fire. More than fifty such works 

 have been published during this century; some discussing 

 the geology, others the natural history of the country ; 

 others the characteristics of the people, and of their 

 literature ; many are simply records of travel, some are 

 mere clumsily-constructed diaries. We fear we must 

 class the volume before us among the latter. It is a mere 

 diary, and in good sooth the most intolerably dull diary 

 we ever read. We have searched in vain for any new 

 facts, any new views concerning old facts, any local and 

 individual colouring. The author has travelled over old 



ground, by the old methods, permeated by the ideas of his 

 predecessors. Let us, however, give him his due. He is 

 a brave man, and a contented man. Never were dangers 

 more pluckily faced ; never did a man grumble less imder 

 the most trying circumstances. Many men with less per- 

 severance, less hardihood, less indomitable spirit, have 

 made considerable discoveries, achieved great results. 

 He travels twelve or twenty hours at a stretch in mid- 

 winter ; he fords foaming torrents ; traverses treacherous 

 bogs; crawls all-fours over ice-slopes; puts up with the 

 most miserable accommodation and food, and yet is 

 always cheerful, and always makes the best of things. 

 Often he gets soaked to the skin in a glacier river, 

 and has to sleep in his wet clothes in a pestilential 

 ba&tofa. Often after a weary day's march he has 

 to go supperless to bed. That all his labour should 

 have resulted in so little — we fear we must say, in 

 no — gain to art, literature, or science, is quite deplorable. 

 But the fact is, records of Icelandic travel are worn 

 threadbare. More than fifty years ago the works of 

 Mackenzie and Henderson appeared ; less than four years 

 ago the two-volumed " Ultima Thule " of Capt. Burton 

 gave us the most recent experiences of an accomplished 

 traveller. For a general description of the country we 

 still prefer Henderson ; Baring-Gould's " Scenes and 

 Sagas" furnishes a pleasant, chatty volume of travel, full 

 of north-world lore ; while Prof. Bryce's " Impressions of 

 Iceland," in the Cornhill Magazine for May, 1874, is the 

 very type of a well-written general article on the subject ; 

 full of condensed observation, wide in limit, admirable in 

 style, masterly in treatment. One thing could have par- 

 tially redeemed " The Home of the Eddas" from its dull 

 monotony : had it been well illustrated with views not 

 commonly met with in Icelandic works of travel, it would 

 have been a redeeming point. But, alas, there is not a 

 single illustration. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[The Editor does net hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he -undertake to return, or 

 to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. No 

 ftotice is taken »f anonymous communications. 



[7 hi Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters as 

 short as possible. 'J he pressure on his space is so great that it 

 is impossible otherwise it ensure the appearance even of com- 

 munications containins; ititeresting and novel facts. ^ 



Swift's Comet 



The following position of the comet was obtained from three 

 comparisons with the star Dm + 84°, No. 60. From a single 

 comparison of the star with Carrington 447, the declination of 

 the Dm appears to require the correction - 8", but I have not 

 applied it to the comet's place. The declination of the ephemeris 

 of the comet, in Nature, vol. xx. p. 248, requires a correction 

 of only + o''6. 



1S79. G.M.T. App. R.A. App. decl. 



h. m. s. h. m. s. o / « 



July 10 ... n 14 12 ... 2 57 37 ... +84 54 o 



I, Vanbrugh Park, Blackheath, S.E. G. L. Tupman 



Hissarlik 



I SEE in Nature, vol. xx. p. 255, a statement, which has also 

 appeared in the Times, that Prof. Virchow has written to my 

 friend, Dr. Schliemann, stating that there is a concurrence of 

 geological opinion in Berlin that all the building stones, frag- 

 ments of which the professor brought home from Hissarlik, are 

 of fresh-water formation. This conclusion it is said is thought 

 to be decisive against those who affirm the impossibility of iden- 

 tifying Hissarlik with the Homeric Troy on the ground that at 

 the time of the great epic, the site must have been covered by 

 the sea. I am, however, unaware that it has ever been argued 

 that the actual site of Hissarlik was covered by the sea, 

 but only that His.'^arlik was probably on the sea-shoie, a 

 position which would be quite inconsistent with the statements of 

 Homer. I have never committed myself to this opinion, but I 



