140 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Afril 2, 1888. 



Biographies of Words and the IIom° of the Ari/as. By 

 r. Max Ml'ller. (Longmans.) — This book is, in the main, 

 a reprint of articles which have nppeared in Good Words, 

 its enlargement into a fairly-sized volume being effected by 

 long lists of common Aryan terms, and by a series of appen- 

 dices on the original home of jade, of the Soma, &c. Despite 

 the universally adver.se judgment of competent critics upon 

 the cardinal argument of the professor's unwieldy book on 

 the " Science of Thought," viz., that thought is impossible 

 without language, we find that argument restated in the 

 very beginning of the introductory chapter to the present 

 work. " Ephraim is joined to his idols ; let him alone." 

 Yet we must again tell the di.slinguished author that he is 

 confounding s3'mbol with substance, and process with pro- 

 duct, that language is not thought, any more than writing 

 is thought, but only the vehicle whereby it is made current. 

 Moreover, cannot the deaf and dumb think 1 How delightful 

 an expositor Professor Max Miiller can be, when we get 

 him away from his obstinate heresies, the following extract 

 shows :^ 



There are historical documents wliicli cannot be falsified, though 

 they may be often difficult to interpret — I mean tlie words ot a 

 language. If we wished to know, for instance, who has taught us 

 the game of chess, the name of chess would tell us better than any- 

 thing else that it cime to the West from Persia. In spite of all 

 that has been written to the contrary, chess was originally the game 

 of kings, the game of shahs. This word shah became in Old 

 French cschac; Italian sraccn, German Schach; while the Old 

 French eschics was further corrupted into chess. The more 

 original form ehec has likewise been preserved, though we little 

 think of it when we draw a cheque, or when we suffer a 

 check, or when we speak of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

 The great object of the chess-player is to protect the king; and 

 when the king is in danger the opponent is obliged to say " check " — 

 i e. shah, the king ! In the book of the Duchesse, C5S, as quoted 

 by Professor Skeat, we read : " Therewith Fortune sej-de, ' chek 

 here ! ' and ' mate' in the myd point of the chehkerc" — i e. There- 

 upon Fortune said, "check here!" and "mate" in the middle of 

 the chessboard. After this the various meanings of check, cheque, 

 or exchequer become easily intelligible, though it is quite true that, 

 if similar changes of meaning, which in our case we can watch by 

 the light of history, had taken place in the dimness of prehistoric 

 ages, it would be difficult to convince the sceptic that cechcqner or 

 scaccaritim, the name of the chessboard, was afterwards used for 

 the checkered cloth on which accounts were calculated by means of 

 counters, and that a checkereil career was a life with many cross 

 lines, which might end with check mate; literally, "the king is 

 dead." 



In the chapters on the home and earliest civilisation of the 

 Aryans Professor Max iliiller restates and groups the argu- 

 ments in support of an Asiatic origin, but this is a subject 

 on which, as Penka and others have shown, both the biologist 

 and the anthropologist will have to be taken into counsel, 

 and upon which, while suspending judgment, we watch the 

 balance incline towards the Northern Europe theory. 



Social History of the Races of Mankind. Second Divi- 

 sion : Oceano-Melanesians. By A. Fe.\therjian. (Triibner 

 & Co.) — Mr. Featherman continues his laborious, and, we 

 fear, as yet slenderly appreciated, task of compiling from 

 all available sources materials for generalisation concerning 

 the social stages which mark the relative place of the 

 races of man. His present volume deals with some promi- 

 nent groups, notably those found in Madagascar and New 

 Zealand, concerning whom the information appears accurate 

 and up to date. Many interesting questions suggest them- 

 selves as we turn over these pages ; for example, what is 

 the past relation of people so widely sundered as Malagasy 

 and Maori to the great Mongoloid stock on the mainland 1 

 Perhaps when Mr. Featherman has finished his gigantic 

 task, he may indicate his general conclusions from the data 



which his toil has gathered. We think that he has again 

 erred in printing prefatory matter which is not only dis- 

 cursive in character, but which has no relation to the body 

 of his work, and we say this not merely because, so far as 

 we are able to understand it, we disagree with his theory of 

 organic evolution, but because a prefivce should have con- 

 nection with that which is to follow it. 



Sunlight. By the Author of " Th3 Interior of the 

 Eirth." (London : Triibner & Co. LS87.)— When an 

 author states in his prefaca thit " wa do not know that 

 the sun is hot," and that by '• light we get our expansion of 

 gases as evaporation ; on this follows the condensation and 

 fall of the liquid gases as they meet the colder air; then 

 follows the rarefaction of our air by cold pressure, getting rid 

 of all earthy pacticles till the ujiper air meets the impalpable 

 cold ether of space without friction " ; when, moreover, this 

 author quotes '• Nature and ths Bible," by a Mr. .las. Davis, 

 as any authority whatever on a scientific subject; ex- 

 plains (?) gravitation by the action of light, and regards 

 meteoritss as " eirthy atoms separate! from the air by cold 

 pressure and by vegetation," we feel that seriously to 

 criticise such hopeless rubbish would bs an insult to our 

 readers' understanding. The writer of this stuff falls foul 

 of Mr. Kinns on p. 144 ; but as we cannot discover that he 

 has yet quanelled with the author of " The Mystery of 

 Gravity " (of which a notice appeared on p. 2. 30 of our last 

 volume), we would suggest that he should seek an introduc- 

 tion to that gentleman. Whether he would get much light 

 from Mr. Eraser's heat, or whether, as seems more probable, 

 his light would develop considerable heat in his rival 

 physicist, remains to be seen. 



An Introductory Text-hook of Zoology. By II. Alleyne 

 Nicholson, M.D., &c. 6th Edition. (Edinburgh and 

 London: William Blackwood & Sons. 1887.) — It may 

 seem almost an act of supererogation to criticise a work 

 which has run into its sixth edition, but for the fact that 

 in the volume now before us Dr. Nicholson has made 

 certain changes in his arrangement of particular groups, and 

 has added notably to the illustrations which appeared in his 

 book in its original form. Whether for the use of schools 

 or for self-instruction, it would not be e.isy to find an 

 elementary work on systematic zoology to surpass the one 

 before us. 



Recollections of Forty Yeaj-s. By Ferdinand de Lesseps. 

 Translated by C. B. PrrJiAN. (London: Chapman and 

 Hall. 1887.) — From its title-page to the colophon this work 

 of M. de Lesseps is essentially of the French, Frenchy. 

 He is perpetually paraphrasing the familiar line in the poem 

 of Jack Horner, in which that hero " said what a good boy 

 am I ; " and poses on almost every page as one of the most 

 daring, indefatigable, and withal, successful men of genius 

 ever produced by the most daring, indefatigable, and success- 

 ful nation that the world has yet known. But despite this 

 exhibition of almost more than womanly conceit, he has 

 produced a work no small portion of which must possess an 

 abiding interest for all Englishmen, telling us as it does the 

 history of the Suez Canal, and of its ultimate triumph over 

 the blind and ignorant opposition of Lord Palmerston and 

 the British Government. Of Lord Palmerston himself M. 

 de Lesseps says, in describing an interview which they had 

 on the subject of the Canal, " I coidd not help asking myself 

 now and again whether I was in the presence of a maniac 

 or a statesman ;" words which acquire peculiar force in view 

 of Lord Beaconsfield's subsequent acqtiisition of so large a 

 share in the enterprise whose feasil)ility his predecessor 

 simply refused even to discuss. But, having said this, we 

 fail to follow the argument of the translator of M. de Lesseps 

 in his preface, where he, in effect, contends that because 



