312 



♦ KNOWLEDGE * 



[May 25, 1883. 



pressed down and running over " — that is tlie secret of 

 success in life. Give more than you are strictly bound to 

 give— the extra work is all gain to you, and the profit to 

 tiie employer is no loss to you. There is sound sense in 

 the old proverb, " Cast your bread on the waters, and you 

 will find it after many day.s " — though it docs suggest 

 rather odd ideas among the people of old times as to the 

 way they liked their bread. 



Here and there our author does not quite correctly 

 choose his words. A " deferential " bearing is recom- 

 mended when we fancy the author means a polite and 

 attentive bearing ; for he is speaking not of those who, 

 because of age and experience, expect deference, but of 

 those who may have no such special claims. In like 

 manner he says : " We are all responsible to our parents 

 for the training they have given us," where he means that 

 we are responsible to them in such and such ways because 

 of that training. But these are trifling faults ; the intrin- 

 sic merits of this most useful and suggestive little book are 

 in no way affected by slight flaws such as these. 



THE NATURAL IN THE SPIRITUAL.* 



Mr. Drummoxd notes that no class of work is received 

 with more suspicion, almost derision, than those which 

 deal with science and religion, and he shows cause why. 

 But he expresses a hope that though no initial protest 

 will probably save his book from the unhappy reputation 

 of its class, the thoughtful mind will perceive that the fact 

 of its subject matter being law — a property peculiar neither 

 to science nor to religion — at once places it on a somewhat 

 <lifferent footing. That this hope is justified we hardly 

 think. Mr. Drummond, after a very long and rather 

 dreary introduction, dealing with the application of law in 

 the spiritual world, considers : — First, biogenesis in science, 

 and shows, or seeks to show, that biogenesis — the theory 

 omne vivum ex ovo — is true in the spiritual world ; secondly, 

 the law of degeneration in nature, which he finds in 

 spiritual matters also ; thirdly, the law of growth as illus- 

 trated by the lilies of the field and the growth of grace ; 

 the law of death shows spiritually in this that "to be 

 carnally minded is death " ; then, natural mortification, 

 eternal life in nature, environment, conformity to type, 

 parasitism, and so forth, of all which he finds the analogues 

 in the spiritual life also. He does all this cleverly and 

 earnestly, and liy those who like such things the book will 

 lie found interesting enough. We cannot say that it will 

 appeal very effectively to those who entertain the prejudice 

 mentioned above. 



PARADOXICAL PHILOSOPHY, t 



It is a melancholy task to deal with such works as this. 

 Here is a volume of some 500 pages, well bound, and well 

 illustrated, presenting the wrong ideas of one who firmly 

 believes Newton to have been little better than a blunderer. 

 It is all hopelessly wrong, of course. But what is one to 

 do 1 It is painful to tell a man that for nearly a score of 

 years he has been blundering about matters far beyond his 

 powers. Yet it is the sad truth. 



Mr. Jordan's fundamental error, on which — as usual 

 with paradoxists — a whole superstructure of erroneous 

 theorising is established, liesjin his fancy that Vis inerlia; 

 can undergo diminution through the action of forces which 

 in no way affect it— as, for Lnstance, that the horizontal 



• " Natarnl Law in the Spiritual World." By Henry Druiumond, 

 F.R.S.E., F.G.S. (London : Uodder A- StonRliton). 



t " Tlie New Principles of Natural Philosophy." By William 

 Lcighton Jordan, F.U.G.S. (London : David Bogiie. lSb3.) 



velocity of moving matter is diminished by the vertical 

 action of gravity. He imagines Messrs. Huxley, Carpenter, 

 Spottiswoode, and others, to be opponents of his view, or to 

 be adopting them without acknowledgment, according as 

 he misunderstands them in one way or in another. If any 

 one says that when water leaves a tap horizontally, the 

 horizontal velocity of the water would be unchanged 

 were the air removed, he shows " pronounced hostility to 

 the new discoveries " (these blunders are always " dis- 

 coveries ") ; but should the same writer say " if air and 

 gravitation were alike abolished the water would travel 

 liorizontally for ever," he is adopting Mr. Jordan's dis- 

 coveries without acknowledgment. 



Mr. Jordan's book reveals no new principles of philo- 

 sophy, but shows only how its author has misapprehended 

 the established ones. It is a more collection of blunders, 

 itself a bigger blunder than them all. 



THE FACE OF THE SKY. 



Feom Mat 25 to Jcxe 8. 

 By P.R.A.S. 



THE sun will be daily examined as usual. The aspect of the night 

 sky will be found delineated in Map TI. of " The Stars in their 

 Seasons." Venus ia a morning star, but very badly placed, and 

 Mercury is approaching too close to the sun to be visible. The 

 rest of the planets are invisible too ; in fact, it rarely happens that; 

 so barren a sky, in this sense, falls to the observer's lot. The Moon 

 is 18'6 days old at noon to-day (the 25th), and 3'2 days old on 

 June S. She will be new at 12'5 minutes past 6 a.m., on June 5. It 

 will be hence seen that she will be but poorly placed for the observer 

 during the greater part of the period of which we are treating. 

 One occultation of a star will occur at a convenient honr during oar 

 prescribed interval. It is that of the 5i magnitude one, 68 Gemi- 

 norum, which will disappear at the moon's dark limb at 9h. ISm. 

 p.m., on June 7, at an angle of 102° from her vertex, and re-appear 

 at her bi'ight limb at 10 h. 7 m. — at which time, however, she will 

 have set. The moon is in Sagittarius to-day and to-morrow (26th), and 

 crosses Capricornus, during the morning of the 27th, into Aquarius. 

 In this constellation she remains during the 2Sth and part of the 

 29th, when she travels into Pisces. She continues in Pisces during 

 the 30th, 31st, and part of June 1, when she passes into Aries. 

 There she remains during the whole of the 2nd, and on the 3r<:l 

 reaches Taurus. She continues in Taurus during the 4th, and 

 during the 5th too, crossing, however, the northern part of Orion 

 on that day. She is in Gemini on June 6, and travels into Cancer 

 on the 7th, where we leave her on the Sth. 



From the Scientific A nierican (New York, April 28) it 

 appears that great results are expected from the develop- 

 ment of the Deer Creek Coalfields, in ..\rizona. Although 

 discovered in 1881, active operations only commenced last 

 March, Fifty seams have been opened, seven shafts have 

 been sunk in different places, showing seams varying from 

 6 ft. to 25 ft. 



The Radiation of Silver in SoLiDirTiNr.. — At the 

 International Congress of Electricians in 1881, M. J. 

 Violle proposed, and M. Dumas, the famous chemist, se- 

 conded, the use of an absolute unit of light consisting of 

 the radiation emitted by a square centimetre of platinum 

 in melting. At the instance of !M. Cochery, tlie French 

 ilinister of Posts and Telegraphs, an investigation of the 

 subject has been begun by M. Violle, and his first experi- 

 ments have led him to some observations on the radiation 

 of silver in solidifying. A bath of pure melted silver was 

 placed under a thermo-electric pile connected with a mirror 

 galvanometer. The radiation from the bath fell normally 

 on the battery through an aperture in a double-walled 

 screen kept cool liy circulating water. As the bath cooled, 

 the pile showed that the radiation slowly decreased until 

 the instant just before solidifying, when there was a slight 

 increase, preceding the final decrease after solidification. 



