JULV II, 1901] 



NA rURE 



251 



searches of Drs. Chappuis and GuiUaume as to the 

 mass of 1000 cubic centimetres of water at 4°. They 

 find that a cubic decimetre of water weighs 999 936 

 grammes (p. 413) or i kg. -64 mg. Prof. D. MendeleefT 

 has, however, stated the mass of a cubic decimetre of 

 water at 4° as 999'S47 grammes {Proc. Roy. Soc, 1896, 



P- J55)- 



The book contains seven interesting portraits of 

 Talleyrand, Delambre and others ; also an alphabetical 

 list of more than 400 authors and persons who have 

 taken part in the introduction and verification of metric 

 standards, and a useful chronological table of French 

 laws and ordinances (i 557-1896). 



We no longer now regard the metre as the length of 

 I io,ooo,oooth part of the quadrant of the meridian, or the 

 kilogramme as the precise weight of a cubic decimetre of 

 distilled water. Such derivations and definitions have 

 proved a failure, and very much of the information set 

 out by the author with reference thereto, although of 

 historic interest, might well be condensed in the ne.xt 

 edition of the book. 



PROF. MAX MULLER'S LAST ESS A YS. 

 Last Essays. By the Right Hon. Prof. F. Max Miiller. 

 1st series. Pp. vii + 360. (London: Longmans and 

 Co., 1901.) Price ^s. 



THE seventeenth volume of the late Prof. Ma.x 

 MuUer's " Collected Works " contains a series of 

 essays on language, folklore and other subjects which 

 were selected for publication by the venerable scholar 

 about the time that his illness assumed its last acute 

 form ; but, alas 1 he never lived to expand and annotate, 

 according to his wont, such as had already appeared in 

 print before. The greater number of them treat, as we 

 should expect, of the subjects of which he had made a 

 close and lifelong study, and these bear in every para- 

 graph evidences of the clear thought and brilliant e.'c- 

 position which all Prof. Max Miiller's readers were ac- 

 customed to expect from that expert philologist. In two 

 of them, " My Predecessors '' and " How to Work,'' we 

 get a few glimpses of the man as well as of the scholar, 

 and they cannot fail to interest all those who wonder 

 from time to time how one man, with so many varied 

 interests and occupations, could manage to do so much 

 good work in a single lifetime. In "How to Work" 

 we see the leading ideas which he kept ever before him 

 whilst carrying on his labours of copying manuscripts, 

 editing texts and the like, and when we read the advice 

 which he gave to the students of Manchester College 

 in 1896 we are able to note that we are reading the 

 words of a man who practised what he preached. He 

 said, " Put your whole heart, or your whole love, into 

 your work," and " half-hearted work is really worse than 

 no work"; it is a pity that, like the verses from the 

 Koran which are writ large and hung up on the walls of 

 the mosques where ail men may see and read them, these 

 excellent words cannot lie copied in large letters and set 

 before the eyes of our boys and girls in schools and 

 colleges. Of equal value is his counsel to them to make 

 indexes to the books that they read, and he pointed his 

 moral admirably when he told them how he worked with 

 slips when making his inde.xvcrbonim to his great edition 

 NO. 1654, VOL. 64] 



of the "Rig-Veda." But then Prof. Max MuUer be- 

 longed to a school which produced such scholars as 

 Fleischer, Lepsius, Buhler, Rodiger and Hoffmann, and 

 we cannot help doubting if their modern representatives 

 have the inclination or can find the time to make tens 

 of thousands of index slips. The social life of Univer- 

 sities, even in Germany, makes it more and more diffi- 

 cult for a man to devote years, or months, to tasks of 

 this kind, and a professor finds that lectures, committee 

 meetings, .Sic , use up, and alas 1 sometimes waste, a great 

 deal of his time. 



The essay on " Coincidences " will be read by every 

 one who is interested in thestudy of comparative religion 

 with the deepest interest, for in it is demonstrated with 

 considerable clearness and with incontrovertible proofs, 

 if we accept the facts set out by Prof. Ma'c Miiller, ihat 

 Christianity owes much to Buddhism. The Roman 

 Catholic missionaries Hue and Gabet, while travelling in 

 Thibet in 1845, discovered to their horror that the 

 Buddhist priesthood possessed the crosier, the mitre, the 

 dalmatic, the cope, the service with two choirs, the 

 psalmody, exorcism and prayer-beads, and that the 

 celibacy of the priesthood, spiritual retreats, worship of 

 saints, fastings, processions, litanies, holy water, &c., 

 were as much the characteristics of the Buddhist as of 

 the Roman Catholic religion. After thinking the matter 

 over for some time the Christian missionaries made up 

 their minds that these resemblances were the work of the 

 Devil, who'wished to lead astray any missionary who ven- 

 tured to travel in Thibet, and now we know that an 

 actual historical communication existed between Roman 

 Catholic and Buddhist priests. It has recently been 

 proved that the Buddhist Canon was collected at the 

 Council held B.C. 259. at Patnaby Asoka, and that the Pali 

 Canon of Buddhism was written down in the first century 

 before our era, and that the Sanskrit Canon was written 

 down m the first century after. Thus it seems clear that 

 if any borrowing at all took place between the two 

 religions, the Christian borrowed from the Buddhist, and 

 not the Buddhist from the Christian. This need cause 

 no surprise, for, apart from the well-known historical 

 connection which existed between the Buddhists and 

 Nestorians in the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, 

 there was undoubtedly frequent communication between 

 India and Persia and Asia Minor from the time of 

 Alexander the Great. The Buddhist religion ^was, like 

 the Christian, a missionary religion, and in proof of this 

 Prof. Max Miiller has adduced some very interesting 

 facts. 



There are many other essays in the volume to which 

 we should, if space permitted, like to call attention, and 

 among them are those on "The Savage" and " Literature 

 before Letters." The former was first printed in 1885 in 

 the Nineteenth Century, and we cannot help thinking 

 that had its learned author lived to see it reprinted he 

 would have modified se\eral sections of it ; the latter is 

 full of interest, as much for the subject of which it 

 treats as for the indications it gives of Prof. Max 

 Mullei-'s extraordinary power of memory. Finally, O.xford 

 men will read with pleasure the appreciation of the late 

 Dean Liddell which is found on p. 314 ^; and historians of 

 modern Europe will find much information on the famous 

 Schleswig-Holstein Question in the last essay in the 



