May 15, 1885.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



421 



words ■■ fiifmisi ami urugi;i[--t "' over his door, ftiid of sellings I 

 scheduled poisous. It is competent for any person, no matter how \ 

 iUitemte, to open a shop resembling a chemist's in the most minute | 

 particulars, and carry on a trade in drugs, providing he does not 

 infringe the two above regulations. Grocers and otliers also sell 

 drugs of whose composition they are usually supremely ignorant. 



Now all this is deceiving the people. I contozid that the public 

 generally should not be allowed to buy impure Epsom salts any 

 more than impure morphia. The reason for this is, as has bo«n 

 well said, that whereas the public can form a rough estimate of the 

 parity of its fo<^id by taste, smell, and appearance, it is absolutely 

 powerless in the matter of its drugs. It would buy, unconsciously, 

 quinine mixed with, say, morphia, and the coroner's verdict of 

 "death by misadventure" would be no satisfaction to the bereaved 

 relatives of the deceased. You certainly run the double risk of 

 getting poisoned, or of getting inert medicines, unless you confine 

 the sale of drugs to competent men who have scientifically 

 examined them before offering them for sale. 



I fancy that by bringing to your notice the above facts I am, 

 while apparently fighting for a class, really dealing a blow for the 

 general good. — Yours obediently, T. Faw.s.<ktt. 



[Are we to understand that, when drugs become effete and in- 

 operative from age, druggists (wliolesale and retail) throw them 

 away .' Mr. Fawssett's letter contains the germ of what seems to 

 me an excellent idea : I mean that of making the sale of medicines 

 And poisons a practical monopoly, and greatly increasing the per- 

 sonal responsibility of those to whom it is granted. This principle 

 is already in operation with regard to intoxicating liquors. Free 

 trade in active and powerful medicines does seem a terrible 

 mistake. — Ed.] 



MANUFACTURE OF CRYSTAL SODA. 



[1706] — In reply to E. Jackson's question in your last issue as 

 to how crystal soda is made, I may say that it is made by one of 

 two processes, both of which are carried out on a very large scale, 

 and both of which commence with the same raw material, viz., 

 common salt — sodium chloride. 



1. The Leblanc Process : — The salt is heated on a furnace bed 

 with sulphnric acid. Sodium sulphate (salt-cake) is formed, and 

 hydrochloric acid, used for making bleaching powder, is evolved. 



2KaCl -I- H.SOj = Na.,S04 -I- 2UCI. 

 The salt-cake is then heated in large revolving furnaces with 

 small coal and limestone. The fused mass is poured into iron 

 harrows and allowed to cool. This product, or "black ash," con- 

 sists of a mixture of sodium carbonate and calcium sulphide, 

 besides many imparities. The following equation explains its 

 formation. 



Na:S04 -I- Calez -i- 4C = Na..C03 -I- CaS + 4C0. 

 The sodium carbonate is then extracted by treatment with warm 

 water, in which it is very soluble, the calcium sulphide remaining 

 behind as a mad at the bottom of the vats. The solution is drawn 

 off, settled, and evaporated nearly to dryness, the solid matter 

 drained and then calcined. It is then known as soda-ash. This is 

 dissolved in hot water, allowed to settle, and then run into crystal- 

 Uzing cones. Here the " Soda crvstals " 

 Na^COs + lOHjO 

 separate out, and after draining are sent into the market. 



2. Solway's Ammonia. Soda process. — In this process the brine, 

 i.e., solution of salt, is saturated with ammonia, obtained from gas 

 liquor by boiling with lime, and the solution thus formed treated 

 i n high towers with carbonic-acid gas. The slightly soluble bicarbo- 

 nate of soda is precipitated, allowed to drain, and ignited, thus 

 yielding a very pure soda-ash, which is then treated as above. The 

 formation of the bicarbonate of soda is shown by the following 

 equation 



NHj + XaCl -I- CO2 + H.;0 = XaHCOj + XH4CI 

 Then on ignition 



2 XaHC03=Na2C03-HH20-t-C0j 

 The ammonia used can be, to a great extent, recovered. 



CnEMI.ST. 



IDIO— XOT HETERO— CENTRICISM ; THE SCIENTIFIC 



RATIONALE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



" The proper study of Mankind is man." — Pope. 



[1707] — Though, hitherto, I cannot certainly plume myself on 

 success in rendering intelligible to the editor, or readers of Know- 

 ledge, the data of Hylo-Idealism, perhaps no objection will be 

 raised by the former to the insertion of one more attempt at this 

 scientific and crucial synthesis — naive and self-evident as any other 

 truism, seen, when fairly grasped, to be incontestable. The whole 

 crux rests on the idiotism — the plain, commonplace matter of fact 

 that the world, as we see, or think, or know it, or in other words, 



thought and its objects, can bo notliing else than a plunmrn'Mon or 

 idea of our own sense and thought mcchanisni, and henco a closed 

 autopsy or auto-niiirphosi.s. .So tluit, in " reality," or "ideality," — 

 style it as we will — no sucli entity as thing or object e.vists for 

 cognition at all ; each object receiving asselfment ere amalgamated 

 with our personal consciousness or egoity ; outside which is not 

 even the " reign of chaos and eternal night," but of blank nullity 

 itself. We thus never reach knowledge of Ihing.s in tlieniselvos, i.e., 

 their own nature, but only states of our own conaciousnosH, fabri- 

 cated out of "substance" Locke already terms "I know not 

 what,"by ourownsensifacietit and nientifacient organic machinery. 

 Bishop Berkeley certainly was a mystic, and his Absolute IdealiHUi hits 

 really no (ocii-s- standi whatever, as aptly stated in the editorial note 

 to"C. N.'s" reply to the vulgar realism of "J. S." (y«. John 

 Smith ?) [1G81]. l!ut still this impracticable visionary, like others 

 of his kidney, as Kepler, Columbus, Ac, has his legitimate rank in 

 the hierarchy of discovery. He did prove to tho satisfaction of 

 subsequent philosophers like Uunie, Kant,* &c., as well us of 

 common sense, that the eccentric excitant of sensation can im- 

 possibly resetiiblo the centric sensation itself. And this formula, 

 when reduced from the absolute or ontological to the relative or 

 phenomenal sphere, yields all results contended for by hylo- 

 ide.alism. We are thereby landed in tho sure and certain faith that 

 the only universe —abstract or concrete — to which human sense or 

 thought has access is a brain-created one, and Ihoreforo must 

 necessarily be a process from tho self in which tho not-sol I', before 

 aiiperception, must be absorbed. Tho " to ntii'" islhu.s i-ediu-rd tothe 

 ghostly, apparitional, or phenomenal standard of which the cere- 

 bral convolutions, or cnrli:r cerebri, are the real manufactory ; idea, 

 vision, spectrum, ghost, phenomenon, apparition, phantom, &c., 

 are rigid synonyms and correspondences. The only difference 

 between ordinary, work-a-day experience and such night-side forms 

 of Nature as the brain-coinage of tho appju'itions in " Macbeth " 

 and " Hamlet," is that normal sight and sense proceeds from a 

 sound, while abnormal visions are evoked by an unsound 

 sensorium. The metaphysical media between mind and matter 

 (vesiculo-neurine), from which latter, in the guise of "sub- 

 stantial forms" and "intentional (notional) species"- — a terfium 

 qvid invented to salve the supposed passivity of body or 

 matter — even the sensationalism of Locke is not exempt, are 

 clearly only a malconception of the automatic special function, 

 or proprc vie, to use Biehat's idiom, of the grey or cellular structure 

 of the hemispherical ganglia. The moral of this theory is that a 

 healthy body or brain is the essential physical basis both of a 

 healthy mind and of cosmical order, wliich is the mind's creature. 

 Chaos, not cosmos, must be evolved when the ojjicina niundi is out 

 of gear, and hygiene is thus seen to be the complement and tye- 

 beam of the sciences. Kant, who originated, though more as 

 adumbration than entelechy, this auto-centricism, compares the 

 "wheel-about" it executes to that of Copernicus when he sub- 

 stituted Helio-centricism for Geo-centricism in astronomy. 



Robert Lp^wins, M.D. 

 [As Dr. Lewins persists in his idea that his theory has not been 

 properly apprehended, I have yielded to his request to insert this 

 reiterated exposition of it. It must, however, be distinctly under- 

 stood that — for reasons more or less plainly hinted at on previous 

 occasions in these columns — nothing more on this subject can be 

 admitted. — Ei).] 



TASTE. 



[1708] — In reply to letter 168-4, I do not think your correspondent 

 has at all hit the mark with regard to taste; but I do net know if 

 it has ever been satisfactorily defined by any one. With regard to 

 the engravings given, I am not quite sure that the picture-frame, 

 No. 3, is not shown in as good taste with irregular margin, as so 

 stiff a pattern would be with regular margin, say by duplication of 

 the right-hand side, and bottom for the left-hand side and top. 

 Neither is it certain that tho nave (Fig. 4) is in bad taste because 

 it is not symmetrical. With regard to a purely geometrical figure, 

 as the Ionic capital (Fig. 2), the arguments offered would, perhaps, 

 hold good. With regard to the Corinthian capital, this associates 

 itself with a tree or plant, and to see tliis reversed is an anomaly. 

 The face, also (Fig. 1), has a distressed look, as from toothache; 

 these, of course, in an ornamental sense, would be in bad taste. 

 And i have no doubt that natural and pleasurable afsoci.ation has 

 much to do with taste. I entirely disagree that things on the 

 same level should be symmetrical to be in good taste, although 

 symmetrical things may be so. 



This is very evident in the ornamental products of the Japanese, 

 a nation notorious for taste even in the cheapest and commonest 



* Schopenhauer, indeed, asserts that tho leading doctrines of 

 the "Critique of Pure Reason" are merely plagiarisms from the 

 transcendentalism of Berkeley. 



