viii PREFACE. 



Whewell. A Cyclopaedia presents an amount of matter 

 accurate and varied enough to satisfy the casual inquirer, 

 but the facts conveyed being fragmentary, the onus of 

 mentally constructing a continuous account lies on himself. 

 The reader wants to see a palace, with its foundations, 

 vaults, walls, storeys, stairs, halls, corridors, strong-rooms, 

 store-rooms, loft, roof, skylight; he wants also to under- 

 stand the process of construction ; and he only sees scattered 

 heaps of bricks, cut granite and marble blocks, timber, 

 cement, tiles, good material to build, but no building. A 

 Cyclopaedia, besides, is both cumbrous and expensive 

 hence inaccessible to most people. In this busy age of 

 ours, people want small books on large subjects. They 

 read the newspapers, which give them information for 

 business purposes ; the reviews, which sum up the trifling 

 questions or the stirring events of the hour ; novels, which 

 afford them amusement not great works.* These are 

 addressed to men of science, to men of exceptional learning 

 or great intellectual activity. Yet there is no doubt that 

 any subject will interest the public, just as it will the 

 student, if it be presented in a desirable form a form at 

 once concise, clear, cohesive, and attractive. And if this 

 be a desideratum, it should be supplied. Does the public 

 generally care for science ? If it involves labour or mental 

 effort, the question must be answered in the negative ; if 



* In a town of 130,000 people, which enjoys the benefit of a public 

 lending library, the Essays of Herbert Spencer had in six months been 

 issued eighteen times, and of the eighteen readers out of the whole 

 population who had felt desirous of becoming acquainted with the 

 philosopher's views in their simplest form, not one had read the three 

 volumes through, for the writer of the present work found pages uncut 

 in them ! 



