DISCOVERY 



115 



neglects the unsuitable completely. Is this a sentient 

 choice ? Professor W. M. Bayliss [Principles of General 

 Physiology) writes as follows : " If a tine piece of glass 

 rod be pushed against a drop of chloroform under 

 water, it cannot be made to enter the drop ; on re- 

 leasing the pressure it is immediately rejected. If, 

 on the contrary, the rod be first coated with shellac, 

 it is at once sucked in. As soon as the shellac is 

 dissolved by the chloroform, the rod is thrown out 

 again." The analogy is certainly striking. Take the 

 other extreme view, as presented by W. H. Husdon 

 in A Hind in Richmond Park : "A life-long intimacy 

 with animals has got me out of the common notion 

 that they are automata with a slight infusion of 

 intelligence in their composition. The mind in beast 

 and bird, as in man, is the main thing. Man has pro- 

 gressed mentally so far that, looking back at the other 

 creatures, they appear practically mindless to him. 

 . . . One might compare the animal in that state in 

 which I watched her, resting after feeding, chewing 

 the cud, and at the same time agreeably occupied in 

 listening to the little woodland sounds, to the man 

 who, after dining well, smokes his cigar in his easy- 

 chair, and amuses his mind at the same time with a 

 book — a fascinating story, let us say, of old unhappy 

 things and battles long ago." 



***** 



The death of Sir James Dewar has removed from the 

 world of science one of those rare giants of intellect 

 and achievement of whom each age produces but 

 a very few. Although all of us have employed a 

 development of his discovery, the " vacuum flask," 

 to meet our picnic needs, few realise what marvellous 

 feats of engineering skill and scientific resource were 

 associated with that domestic device in his hands. 

 The liquefaction of gases w^hich had resisted the efforts 

 of others, and innumerable experiments on their 

 physical properties in that state, was only a small 

 part of his full measure of success in research ; his 

 " vacuum flask " was devised to prevent these strange 

 liquids boiling. His life-work marked a step in the 

 ladder of the progress of the world's knowledge, and 

 to few has it been granted to leave so permanent a 

 mark on the history of their time and of all time. 

 ***** 



The suggestion that a charge should be made to the 

 general public, though not to students, for the privilege 

 of entering the British Museum has, we are glad to 

 note, not been put into effect. It is our boast that 

 the most priceless possessions of the nation are enjoyed 

 without cost ; and the discrimination between student 

 and dilettante savours of snobbery. Our sympathies 

 are all with the dilettante, for few can enter that 

 great monument to learning to whom all the contents 



are an open book, and none to whom some spot has 

 not the charm of intimacy and personal appeal. It 

 is against all the traditions of the British Museum 

 that it should compete with the cinema as a source 

 of income and profit. The excellent publications 

 which it produces for the information of visitors to its 

 various rooms are supplied at a cost which is certainly 

 disproportionate to their value and the expense of 

 production. Many will have found, for example, 

 that the guide to the Egyptian collection, modest 

 though its price is, was invaluable as a source of know- 

 ledge and perspective concerning the times and 

 activities of the old kings of Egjrpt, during their recent 

 resurrection to world-wide attention. We are glad 

 that the almost universal protest against any action 

 which might serve to limit the freest access possible 

 to the treasures of the past has had its effect. The 

 British Museum consists in great part of exhibits, 

 priceless in themselves, yet presented without recom- 

 pense, and surely it was the intention of such donors 

 that their public-spiritedness might be enjoyed without 



charge. 



***** 



What is the psychology of the modern psycho- 

 logical novel ? If the stage-coach driver and the inn- 

 keeper were material adequate for Dickens, why have 

 we not our masterpieces with taxi-cab drivers and 

 public-house landlords for heroes ? It may be that 

 the novel, like the poem, must always have something 

 of the archaic about it to strike a note of literary 

 charm ; even though we have not a novel of the 

 Scotch express, perhaps we may soon have one with 

 Stephenson's first creation as motif. The world, like 

 port and cheese, must mature before it is material 

 for the epicure. Meanwhile, the novelist has flown 

 to analysis ; instead of portraying character with the 

 infinitely subtle skill of a Jane Austen, and exposing 

 a soul by the flicker of a handkerchief, he grinds out 

 a monstrous picture of a mind distracted by multi- 

 tudinous conflicting but neatly labelled motives and 

 instincts. But how inferior an art it is, how unfair 

 an evasion of the novelist's first duty ! It is for him 

 to select from the mass of human action and speech 

 those flashes which iUuminate the whole of a life for 

 us. The psychology is for our inward comment ; we 

 may not care to know why lago hated Othello ; we 

 shudderingly realise that he emphatically did. The 

 psychological novelist is like the chUd who draws a 

 nameless and unthinkable creature on a slate and 

 writes as legend "This is a Kow." But even the 

 child realises that he has somehow cheated ; there 

 should have been an irradiating bovinity somewhere. 

 The novelist is cheating too ; psychology may be a 

 romance in the hands, say, of William James ; romance 

 can never be psychology. 



