212 



* KNOWLEDGE 



[July 2, 1888. 



basis a training in design, and even if Mr. Leland's 

 pupils never get beyond admiring artistic eflests, and 

 striving to imitate and originate them, it would be 

 a great thing. But he claims that they have been 

 eminently successful ; and while we do not quite like 

 the occasional reference (as if it proved the writer's case 

 up to the hilt) to the fact that " such a pupil could 

 easily earn two dollars a da}'," his plans are, we think, very 

 good. The Sloyd or Sliijd system of manual instruction to 

 which Mr. Leland alludes in his preface, and of which, we 

 think, he should have known earlier, hardly competes with 

 his method. It might even be dovetailed in with it, as an 

 elementary branch. In giving its pupils a model to follow 

 strictly, and leaving no room for imagination or design, it is 

 decidedly inferior to the plans pursued by our author. In 

 the chapters on memory Mr. Leland has dealt with the 

 decay of this power under the influence of printed books. 

 But we think that here he unduly estimates the powers of 

 the ancients ; probably an educated man nowadays, know- 

 ing some one thing well, the elements of numerous sub- 

 jects, and where to look for details, reiiieinhers a great deal 

 more than the average educated man of centuries back. 

 The marvellous stories told by Mr. Leland as to feats of 

 memory we are bold enough to doubt. The liook is, how- 

 ever, readable and well worth reading. 



Electrical Instriuw.nt Jfakiny for Amateurs. By S. E. 

 BoTTONE. (London : Whittaker & Co. 1888.)— We may 

 fairly say that JMr. Bottone has produced the very model of 

 wliat a practical handbock should be. On the value and 

 advantage to the amateur of being able to construct his own 

 apparatus it is needless hero to insist, and the pupil who 

 places himself in our author's hands must be incredibly idle 

 •and inattentive or abnormally stupid should he fail to 

 produce .satisfactoi-y results after a study of the little book 

 before us. The descriptive language is of the plainest, and 

 an abundance of woodcuts suffices to make everything 

 needing illustration clear and intelligible. Every student of 

 electrical science should purchase Mr. Bottone's small work 

 straightway. 



The Pattern-maker's Jlanchihook. By P.\ul "NT. Hasluck, 

 A.I.M.E. (Loudon : Crosby Lockwood & Son. 1887.)— 

 Castings in iron, bi'ass, and other fusible metals are made, 

 as many who will read these lines know, from wooden 

 patterns which are imbedded in what is called moulding 

 sand, on their withdrawal from which hollow moulds are 

 left into which the molten metal is jiovu-ed. Very great art 

 and nicety indeed are involved in the construction of these 

 patterns, as, to take a single illustration, if the lower part 

 of the model were in the least degree larger than the upper 

 portion, it never coidd be extracted from the sand at all 

 without breaking such sand down. Mr. Hasluck's book, 

 then, goes into the details of construction at once of the 

 simplest as of the most complicated patterns likely to 

 be met with in practice. It forms a most valuable, if not 

 indispensable adjunct to Mr. Graham's " Brassfounder's 

 Manual." 



The Gospel in Nature. By Henry C. McCook, D.D. 

 (London: Hodder it Stoughton. 1888.) — Eloquent in dic- 

 tion, and replete with a wealth of illustration, these sermons 

 of Dr. McCook's seem admirablj' adapted to carry conviction 

 to the minds of — those who believe already 1 For through 

 the entire book runs the most oh\\ox\i petitio princij)ii that 

 every word of the Bible, as we have it, is supernaturally 

 free from error, and that the myths and legends of the earlier 

 books in it are as irrefragable history as a report in 

 " Hansard " is of a deb.ate in the irouse of Commons. Wc 

 need go no further than our author's illustration drawn (on 

 1>. 80) from the battle of Beth-horon, although wo arc 



thankful to say that he stops short at the hail and thunder- 

 storm, and does not inflict the story of the sun and 

 moon standing still on his readers. How much of their 

 history (so called) the Jews derived from the Chald?eans we 

 are only just beginning to apprehend. But the point upon 

 which we would particularly insist is that the very natural 

 phenomena which he adduces in proof of the harmony 

 between science and revelation might be quite as justifiably 

 employed by the Parsee to show the divine origin of the 

 Zend-Avesta, or by the Brahman to prove that the Vedas 

 were inspired. It seems like killing the slain to point out 

 that (on p. 113) he refurbishes Paley's exploded argument, 

 that any one seeing a clock (it was a watch in Paley) must 

 perforce be convinced that that clock had a designer; 

 ignoring the fact that such supposition would only occur to 

 a person who had previously seen a piece of mechanism of 

 some sort in the course of construction. Did Dr. McCook 

 never hear of the Highland soldier, who, having robbed the 

 body of a dead officer of his watch at Prestonpans, and 

 being abso'utely ignorant that it required winding up, glee- 

 fully sold it next day for eighteenpence, as (ho subsequently 

 told" his comrade) " she had died in the night " 1 Millions 

 of men have seen various pieces of machinery made, or aro 

 familiar with tho?e ^\ ho make them ; but we have, so far, 

 never yet met with a man who has witnessed the construc- 

 tion of .an echinus or a giraffe. Be it remarked that we aro 

 neither denj'ing nor asserting that marks of design are visible 

 in nature ; we .are only predicating the utter failure of Dr. 

 McCook's illustration to pi-ove it. People, though, who care 

 for sermons, and who require something above the level of 

 ordinary pulpit platitudes, may do worse than obtain the 

 volume before us. 



The Eeligious Sentiments of the Human Mind. By 

 Daniel Greenleaf Thompson. (London: Longmans, 

 Green, it Co. 1888.) — So comparatively large a proportion 

 of mankind take their religion from their priest or minister, 

 as they do their physic from their doctor, that to speak of a 

 science of religion must appear to them as something akin to 

 blasphemy. Their mental attitude is scarcely caricatured in 

 the more or less veracious narrative of the small child in 

 the Sunday-school, who, when asked what faith was, replied, 

 " Believing what you know isn't true ! " And yet a little 

 dispassionate reflection must suffice to convince any impar- 

 tial thinker that the religious sentiment, like any other 

 mental afleotion or operation, must have its origin in the 

 constitution of the human mind, and must be as amenable 

 to investigation as any other psychical condition, whether 

 perceptive, intellectual, volitional, or emotional. In the 

 very able and thoughtful work before us, then, Mr. Thomp- 

 son traces the genesis of the idea of the supernatural, and 

 exhibits, in more or less detail, the forms in which it has 

 subsequently been developed : the ultimate conclusion at 

 which he arrives being that while we really know, and can 

 know, nothing of the matter in any legitimate sen.se, yet 

 that the balance of probability inclines tow.ards the existence 

 of the supernatural, and of, in some form, a future life. He 

 then discusses our religious sentiments in relation to feeling 

 and conduct ; incidentally treating of the various conditions 

 of existence in another world which have been imagined by 

 divers .schools of thinkers. In the concluding poi-tion of his 

 remarkable volume ho deals with the application of the 

 principles he has enunciated to popular education, and here 

 makes a suggestion which will assuredly set by the ears 

 the thousand and one sects who figure in every census. It 

 is neither more nor less than this, that no dogmatic theology 

 should form any part whatever of the curriculum of public 

 education, but that if religion is to enter at all into such 

 curriculum, the students should be carefully in.structed in 

 the alignments against as well as those for each and every 



