448 



NATURE 



[June io, 1920 



hending them. Once more, one would be prepared 

 to question whether " sense-objects " are primary 

 as compared with "perceptual objects " — primary, 

 that is, in the sense that the recognition of them 

 is precedent to the recognition of the latter. But 

 the last two of these criticisms turn upon matters 

 of detail, and the first amounts to a large order. 

 When all this is said, the fact remains that in the 

 volume before us we have a really great effort of 

 constructive thinking. Prof. Whitehead modestly 

 observes that his book " raises more difficulties 

 than it professes to settle." He adds, however, 

 with true insight, that " to' settle the right sort 

 of difficulties and to raise the right sort of ulterior 

 questions " is to accomplish one step further into 

 Nature's background of mystery. 



G. Dawes Hicks« 



Life and Letters of Silvanus P. Thompson, 



Silvanus Phillips Thompson, D.Sc, LL.D., 

 F.R.S. His Life and Letters. By J. S. and 

 H. G. Thompson. Pp. ix + 372. (London: 

 T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., 1920.) Price il. is. net. 



IF this biography of the late Silvanus P. 

 Thompson, written by his wife and daughter, 

 is perhaps a little wanting in the detached 

 criticism that could have come only from someone 

 outside the family circle, it gives, from an inside 

 and intimate point of view, a good idea of the 

 extent to which its subject appreciated the gospel 

 of work, and how he applied himself, with all 

 his might, to the many varied and interesting 

 things that he found for his hand to do. 



The book commences with some account of 

 Thompson's Quaker ancestry and his early train- 

 ing at Bootham School, York, and at the Quaker 

 Training College at Pontefract. Later, Thompson 

 returned to Bootham School as a junior master, 

 and it was during this time that he made the first 

 of many visits to the. .Continent, which he 

 evidently greatly enjoyed, and which did so much 

 both to widen his outlook and to increase the large 

 number of his foreign scientific friends. His 

 appointment as lecturer on physics at Bristol was 

 the first step in his scientific career, and at Bristol 

 he remained, lecturing to his students and 

 also, farther afield, to various popular scientific 

 societies, attending meetings of the British Asso- 

 ciation, and making many contributions to elec- 

 trical science, until his appointment as principal 

 of the Technical College at Finsbury, which was 

 the chief scene of his labours for the remaining 

 thirty-one years of his life. 



Essentially fitted by Nature to be a teacher and 

 an exponent, and endowed with habits of industry 

 NO. 2641, VOL. 105] 



to a rare degree, Thompson touched little that he 

 did not to some extent adorn, and while in an age 

 of specialism, by reason, no doubt, of a certain 

 diffuseness of his interests, he never concentrated 

 sufficiently upon any one branch of scientific re- 

 search for his name to bp associated with any 

 first-class discovery, there can be no doubt as ta 

 the considerable extent that, by his books, his 

 lectures, and his teaching, he forwarded the pro- 

 gress of science, and especially of its applications, 

 during many years of activity. We learn that 

 with remarkable industry he was the author of no- 

 fewer than seventeen published books, besides 

 eleven others that were privately printed, while his 

 addresses and communications to societies during- 

 the forty years from 1876 down to the date of his 

 death number 177. Electricity, magnetism, optics, 

 and acoustics were his principal subjects, but he 

 also wrote on educational, religious, and other 

 questions, while not least amongst his writings 

 will be considered his biographies of Kelvin and of 

 Faraday, and his notes on the lives of Peter 

 Peregrinus, the soldier of fortune who penned his 

 treatise on the magnet as early as the thirteenth 

 century ; Gilbert, the Elizabethan physician, who 

 also wrote on the magnet ; Sturgeon, the inventor 

 of the electro-magnet ; and Phillip Reis, whose 

 apparatus, if it was not sufficiently developed to 

 become of practical utility, was, at any rate, the 

 forerunner of that wonderful instrument of sublime 

 simplicity, the speaking telephone of Alexander 

 Graham Bell. 



Thompson, too, at an early stage in his career,, 

 tried his hand at practical telephonic invention, 

 but his ingenious valve telephone was held by the 

 courts to be an infringement of the Bell-Edison 

 patents, and its sale was prohibited. Only on one 

 other occasion do we find him coming out as an 

 inventor, this time in connection with submarine 

 cables for telephonic and high-speed telegraphic 

 purposes. Here, though his particular arrange- 

 ment of inductive leaks never came into practical 

 use, it led the way to the Pupin loading coil, with 

 which much has been accomplished. 



It is recorded that, as a young man, Thompson 

 cared little for games ; but that this did not mean 

 any lack of appreciation of the lighter aspects of 

 life is evidenced by the vein of humour in many 

 of his letters, and by the prominent part he took 

 in connection with the " Red Lion " dinners of the 

 British Association, and with such clubs as the 

 Gilbert Club and the Sette of Odd Volumes, in 

 which latter he bore the appellation of Brother 

 Magnetizer. He also had many hobbies, some of 

 which were not scientific, as, for instance, music,^ 

 poetry, and painting, while as an artist himself 

 he held no mean place, and occasionally exhibited 



