568 



NA TURE 



[October 13, 1898 



the will to live. If the systems afford us no certitude, 

 and we cannot accept the anodyne of faith, what shall a 

 spirit which doubts all that it may, and finds its chief 

 probabilities in the indifference of nature and the relativity 

 of knowledge, maintain as to the problems of that life 

 which still goes on ? Is it possible, upon the positive 

 basis of facts which we cannot doubt, to found " a small 

 house at the foot of the Tower of Babel," leaving the 

 latter to rear itself to heaven, if it can, and not knowing 

 whether in the end the new structure may not need its 

 shelter ? 



As the conception of duty crumbles before analysis, its 

 equivalents are to be found in the impulse to maintain 

 and expand life in its productive fecundity, and in life the 

 unconscious forces are as little negligible as the con- 

 scious. I can, therefore I must, overflow creatively into 

 and upon other life, and in the spending is my gain. 

 The ideas of expanding action are in themselves forces 

 tending to realisation. Such expansion is necessarily 

 social and even self-sacrificing. The struggle for 

 existence, if it takes a purely egoistic direction, as in the 

 case of violence, results in outward limitation and inner 

 loss of equilibrium ; while, supposing it to take the risk 

 and, what the plain man means by, the responsibility of 

 speculation or action, it realises the actual ideal of the 

 moment, the hope which has not despaired of the com- 

 monweal. Thus morality without obligation is the out- 

 come of naturalism. The so-called sanctions of morality 

 are in part illusory, and are never wholly sanctions. The 

 physical and physiological have no regard to intention. 

 Remorse is not necessarily in the direction of morality. 

 Punishment is justified only from the point of view of 

 social defence, defence being the reaction upon attack 

 which alone of our instincts does not lose force under the 

 solvent of conscious analysis. We cannot substitute 

 sanctions for obligation. The practical conclusion is a 

 gospel of work and social fecundity : the theoretical 

 that we stand, as it were, on the deck of some great ship 

 lost between sky and water, and left to make what port 

 it can ; rudder there never was. But here the practical 

 intervenes again. We will risk our all on our hopes. 

 The rudder is still to make. " This is a great task ; and 

 it is our task." H. W. B. 



Th. Thoroddsen, Geschichte der Isldndischen Geographic. 



Vorstellungen von Island und seines Naiur^ und Unter- 



suchimgen dariiberin alter und neuer Zeit. Autorisierte 



Uebersetzung von August Gebhardt. Vol. I., 1897 ; 



vol. II., 1898. Pp. xvi -[-238, and xvi -f- 384. (Leipzig : 



B. G. Teubner.) 

 These volumes deal with the. intellectual and social 

 history of Iceland from the earliest times to the middle of 

 the eighteenth century, and are by no means restricted 

 to the geographical conditions of the island. Dr. 

 Thoroddsen wrote in Icelandic and designed his book 

 for his own countrymen, who remain in many ways one 

 of the most cultured, at any rate of the most reading, 

 peoples of Europe. He has spent most of his life in the 

 detailed study of the geology of Iceland, on which he 

 has written many monographs of great value, and now he 

 is publishing the results of researches in a different 

 direction, which have involved much searching of the 

 archives of Iceland and Copenhagen ; a great part of the 

 text being derived from MSS. which have never before 

 been printed. 



The translator appears to have done his work with 

 care and discrimination, but it must have been an un- 

 usually arduous task, as the old documents cited were in 

 archaic Icelandic very difficult to render into modern 

 German ; and Dr. Gebhardt has endeavoured to preserve 

 their flavour by imitating the contemporary German style 

 and spelling when translating them. 



The work is arranged chronologically, beginning with a 



NOr 151 I, VOL. 58] 



discussion of the first reference to Iceland in classical 

 writings, and proceeding to the first colonisation by Irish 

 monks, the second by Norse exiles, the Golden Age of 

 Icelandic discovery which followed, and the subsequent 

 development of the most learned literary society in 

 Europe. The mediaeval accounts of Iceland are then dis- 

 cussed ; but here the foreign reader is at a disadvantage, 

 as he does not occupy the standpoint of the Icelander for 

 whom the book was written, and loses much of the 

 humour of the various misrepresentations of fact. The 

 story of the narrow escape which Iceland made from 

 becorning an English colony in the fifteenth century, 

 when it was the great fishing ground for Bristol and 

 Scarborough smacks, and the manner in which German 

 commercial interests triumphed, has special interest for 

 English readers. An account of the renaissance in Ice- 

 landic literature after the Reformation completes the first 

 volume. The second volume deals largely with super- 

 1 stitions and witchcra:ft in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries ; and gives details of the first native descrip- 

 tions of the country and the first surveys of Iceland, as 

 well as recounting the services of Icelanders to science in 

 general. These were, however, of no very great moment, 

 and by no means so interesting to read of as the highly 

 developed system of magic and witchcraft for which 

 Iceland was famous in the preceding century. 



An island of any sort is a fascinating thing to explore 

 and to describe. It presents possibilities of completeness 

 denied to countries which form part of a continent, and 

 Dr. Thoroddsen has given his countrymen a book to 

 study and to think over. For the sake of the foreign 

 reader we hope that on the completion of the work he 

 will himself retell the story in one handy volume, written 

 with the object of making outsiders acquainted with 

 Iceland and its people. H. R. M. 



The Telephone. Outlines of the Development of Trans- 

 mitters and Receivers. By Prof William J. Hopkins. 

 Pp. ix -H 83. (New York and London : Longmans, 

 Green, and Co., 1898.) 



A CLEAR and connected explanation of the principles 

 underlying the action and the design of telephone trans- 

 mitters and receivers is given by Prof Hopkins in this 

 volume. The work is by no means exhaustive ; indeed, 

 men engaged in practical telephone construction may 

 object that it is not full enough to be of real service. But 

 as a general survey, for the instruction of students of 

 telephony, the book contains a distinct view of the sub- 

 ject, into which details can be worked later on. The book 

 "begins with a chapter on the analysis of vibrations of 

 sounding bodies. Following this is a short account of 

 Reis's and Bell's telephones ; and then come chapters on 

 the development of transmitters, early successful types of 

 transmitter, the results of systematic investigations upon 

 transmitters of various types, granular transmitters, 

 magneto instruments, and the design of receivers. This 

 outline is sufficient to show that the volume provides 

 students of practical electricity with a good view of tele- 

 phone construction. The text is elementary enough to 

 be read with interest by the general public. 



Mathematical Examination Papers for Use in Navy 

 Classes in Schools. By the Rev. J. L. Robinson, M.A. 

 Pp. vii + 143. (London : Rivingtons, 1898.) 



This collection of examination questions in arithmetic, 

 algebra, geometry, mixed mathematics (including ele- 

 mentary trigonometry), and mechanics, and geometrical 

 riders, will be found of real service by teachers preparing 

 candidates for admission to naval cadetships of the 

 Royal Navy. The student who works through the 

 questions will be able to sit for the examination with an 

 easy mind. 



