436 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Dec. 1, 1882. 



need to l>e cowards, souglit advancement in his time, ho 

 would not enter upon ; he forsook tlie companionship of 

 men jH rsonally dear to him, he gave up otlices whicli were 

 agretal'le to liim, when right and expetliency pointed ditlVrent 

 ways. He may have Wt'n sometimes mistaken; some even 

 said he was often perverse (perhaps because his conduct 

 shamed them mori- than tliey cared to acknowledge), but 

 what he felt to be right he did, befall wh.it might befall. 

 When "he saw his iluty a dead sure thing, he went for it 

 tliere and then.'' 2Co nobler lesson can be taught than 

 what he taught his whole life through. He never held high 

 orticial position ; he earned no great wealth : but lie loft 

 beliind him the treasure of a worthy name. Superlatives 

 are not needed to gild his fame ; he was emphatically an 

 hviust iiKiu. \i this is a common career, the world is for- 

 tunate ; but we err greatly if the lesson taught by De 

 3Iorgan was not much needed in his lifetime : is it not 

 much needed now J 



As to outward forms De Morgan was not what is called 

 (altsurdly enough) a religious man. AVearied early by the 

 precise and formal religion, on one side, which required such 

 and such observances daily, and on the other side by the 

 gushing religious sentimentalism which urged him to the 

 feet of "dear Mr. Simeon," he retained a belief which he 

 was not eager to confess, because, as he said in liis will, 

 "such confession has always been the way up in the 

 world." 



It was and is the way up in the world to seek prefer- 

 ment and position by flattering those who can give it, by 

 hiding the truth from those who do not like to hear it, by 

 adulation so cleverly veiled that it looks like the applause 

 which springs from true esteem and sympathy. Of this 

 De Morgan was incapable He resigned one ollice, and 

 declined a higher office in the Astronomical Society, because 

 he recognised " wrong-doing in the body politic : " he would 

 not allow himself to be put in nomination for the Royal 

 Society, because, by doing so, he would have seemed to 

 take part in a system of which his logical mind disapproved ; 

 to the end of his life he remained plain Augustus De Morgan, 

 " a man of few letters," B.A- of Cambridge, and a Fellow 

 of the Astronomical Society, and worthier so than he would 

 have lieen with the right (easily oljtained) to add half a 

 page of titles to his name. 



Mrs. De Morgan's biography of her liusband is, therefore, 

 a >KX)k which, apart from its intrinsic interest, would be 

 destrrving of careful study. I'ut it is full of interest. Parts 

 of it yiossess the same kind of interest which was so marked 

 a feature of his " Budget of Paradoxes " — by which, pro- 

 bably he is more widely known than by any other of his 

 works. The account of his connection with the Astrono- 

 mical Society, and of the feelings with which lie regarded the 

 earliest manife.station in that l<ody of the " bias towards 

 initiation ' [query "imitation"] "of political action by 

 which Kngliiihmcn spoil so many of their extra-political 

 aiaociations,' will te read with interest by those who have 

 •<«n that foolish spirit, after dying out again, become 

 yet f nc«r again rife, till the wjciety has become practically 

 valu'li-wt. His difTerences with University College, and final 

 ■eoflihion frrjm a body which ha<J, for the sake of expe- 

 dipney, fornaken its principles, fonn a history well worth 

 studying. He maintained, and, as the event provfKl, rightly, 

 evmi as rtfgards expediency, but with unfjuestioned truth 

 on the ground of justice, that a university should depend 

 on iti( profetuom, not the prof'-wtors on their university. 

 VS'hi-n he found that foolish men l^jre sway, he justly 

 thou^t "the pout of honour was a privaU) station." 



We l.^am from this l(Ook De Morgan's views on school 

 and coll-ge training. Here, an in other things, he hild 

 that " the way up in the world " was not the Ijcst way. 



Success in examination secured by cram, he regarded as a 

 discredit rather than a triumph. The widencss of his own 

 reading had " spoiled his degree ; " but he had read for 

 love of knowledge, not for a degree ; and he sought to 

 instil this love, not mere skUl in writing out answers, into 

 his pupils, 



We do not share his esteem for formal logic. From his 

 own words, we might judge how idle is the study of logic 

 to make men reason rightly ; for he says that if the fol- 

 lowing were presented to a writer on logic without warning, 

 he w ould not sec the fallacy in it ; whereas we hold that 

 no man of sound reasoning powers, unspoiled by logic, can 

 fail at once to see the fallacy : — 



■' To say nothiiiff of those who snccooded by effort, ihero were 

 eoino who owed all to fortune, for they gained the end without any 

 attempt wliatevcr, if, iiuloed, it bo wot more lorrcct to say that 

 the end gained them. But for every one who was successful with 

 or without effort, at least one could be pointed out who began, but 

 abandoned the trial before tho result was declared. And yet, so 

 strangely is desert rewanled in tliis world, there was not one of 

 these faint-hearted men but was as fortunate as any of thoso who 

 used tlieir best endeavours." 



To say that all the faint-hearted succeeded without effort, 

 and that they were at least as numerous as all who suc- 

 ceeded without ellbrt itlns all who succeeded with eflbrt, 

 is obviously absurd ; and if writers on logic to whom the 

 statement was presented, with or without warning, would 

 all fail to see the absurdity at once, then writing on logic 

 must seriously impair the reasoning process.* 



The book is throughout delightfully written. Many 

 letters to some of the most eminent men of the century, 

 and a few letters from them, add greatly to its interest 

 De Morgan, as all who have read his Paradoxes are aware, 

 possesseil a quamt and dry humour, and was full of anti- 

 quarian lore. It is delightful to run through his letters, 

 catching his reference's to all sorts of outof-the-way 

 matters, and noting the strange play of a mind full of 

 scientific and matheuiatical knowledge, around subjects 

 seemingly of but little interest in themselves. 



The tone with which Mrs. Do Morgan writes indicates 

 fullest sympathy with her husband's tone of mind and 

 mode of thinking. Here and there, where mathematical 

 expressions occur, the text reijuires correction. Thus, there 

 was certainly never any contest between .c and d.c, though 

 there was between x and dx. But such points are few and 

 far between. 



ELECTRO-MOTORS, t 



rpiIIS little book being the first on what we may call 

 JL the latest development of electrical scicmce, it behoves 

 us to extend to it a more than usually charitable spirit of 

 criticism. Nevertheless, we cannot forbear giving expres- 

 sion to the disappointment we experienced in perusing its 

 pages. We had hoped to be favoured with an account of 

 the latest experiments and discoveries concerning the con- 

 version of electricity into motion. Much to our regret, 

 however, we can find little but what might have been read 

 in the magazines months since, while many of the more 

 recent proceedings pass unmentioned. It is difficult to 

 conceive a book on motors which makes no reference to 



• Again, Do Morgan snyH, Ihii is really hard : — 



For every Z there is an X, which is not Y. 

 Some Y'a arc Z'b. 

 Inference, some Ji's are not Z'b. 

 Surely it ought to bo perfectly obvious. Wo leave it as 

 for non- logical rcadcra. 



t Eleclrn-Molom : a Treatigo on the Means and Apparatus cm- 

 ployed in tho Transmission of Electrical Knergy, and its Conversion 

 into Mxtiro Power. By J. W. Ubquhaht. (Manchester: W. T. 

 Kmmott ; London : Triibnor & Co.) 



