NATURE 
367 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1913. 
A LESSON FOR ENGLAND. 
Japan’s Inheritance. The Country, Its People, 
and Their Destiny. By E. Bruce Mitford. Pp. 
384+ plates. (London: T, Fisher Unwin, n.d.) 
Price ros. 6d. net. 
HE author of .this account of the country 
‘Q of Japan has not only travelled through 
it with the observing eye of a geographer, but 
he has consulted the best papers which have been 
published by geologists and experts in seismo- 
logy. He gives what seems to be a true account 
_ of the position of Japan among the nations, and 
of her ambitions. Travellers will find the book 
_ a useful addition to the books which give the im- 
pressions of the globe-trotter, but the author can- 
not be said to have made more than a superficial 
_ study of the social phenomena exhibited by Japan 
in the last forty-five years. 
The Mikado was a combination of a roi-faineant 
and a god; the Shogun was the ruler of a feudal 
state; religion was Confucianism or Buddhism, 
permeated by Shintoism, which in a few words 
may be said to be really patriotism and ancestor 
teachers of ancient classics. The structure was 
in many ways beautiful, but it proved to be with- 
out physical strength. Its extreme weakness 
Proved its salvatiomr. Even the teachers of 
‘classics saw that for a poor nation to be strong, 
“scientific method must permeate the thought of 
the whole population. And now, at the end of 
the first chapter in Japan’s modern history we 
find a nation which can not only defend itself, but 
which retains all of its religion that was beautiful. 
Every unit of the population can not only read 
and write, but it is fond of reading, and its educa- 
tion did not cease when it left school. — It is get- 
ting an increased love for natural science, so that 
‘it can reason clearly; it is not carried away by 
‘charlatans; it retains its individuality. One result 
of this is that in time of war Japan has scientific 
armies. Not only are its admirals and generals 
Scientific, but also every officer, every private 
is scientific. The accounts of many of our Euro- 
‘pean wars must seem to a Japanese like a Gilbert 
ind Sullivan opera. The country is naturally 
very poor, and its finance requires twenty times 
the wisdom which has been found sufficient for 
iny European **sancellor of the Exchequer, but 
such wisdom is now obtainable in Japan. Every- 
ing in the whole country is being developed 
ientifically, and we Europeans, hag-ridden by 
t edantry in our schools and universities, refuse 
e learn an easy lesson. 
Japan’s present. aim is quickly to make herself 
NO. 2300, VOL. 92] 
strong in war. She has other aims. The 
Japanese knows that his ancestors were highly 
civilised when our ancestors were savages in the 
Baltic forest, but Japan forgoes her higher aims 
until she is strong enough to be respected. 
feces 
MOLECULAR PHYSICS. 
Die Existens der Molkule. Experimentelle 
Studien. By Prof. The Svedberg. Pp. viii+ 
243+iv plates. (Leipzig: Akademische Ver- 
lagsgesellschaft m.b.H., 1912.) Price 12 marks. 
HE molecule, originally conceived as the 
basis of chemistry, and apparently firmly 
established as the foundation of the kinetic theory, 
was at the end of last century no longer the centre 
of progress. When, therefore, W. Ostwald sug- 
gested that it no longer played an essential part in 
chemical theory, he found many German chemists 
ready to deny its existence. About this time Prof. 
Svedberg began the experimental researches 
which are described in this book. It is therefore 
not surprising that he takes the proof of the 
reality of molecules as the central idea, to which 
all his experimental work is referred. 
The volume serves chiefly as a record of the 
author’s own work, but includes brief references 
to the results obtained by others in the same field, 
and also an enumeration of the various methods by 
which molecules have been made manifest in the 
last few years. It has been divided into two 
sections. The first section deals with phenomena 
which concern molecules in the aggregate. Here 
experiment must usually be interpreted in terms of 
the kinetic theory. The author’s work on the 
diffusion of colloids gives in this way a remarkably 
good estimate of the weight of a molecule, while 
from the diffusion of some true solutions a guess 
may be made at the shape of the molecules con- 
cerned. The absorption of light by colloids pro- 
| vides complicated, but very interesting results of 
which the most important ‘rom the author’s psint 
of view is the fact that the behaviour of the smallest 
| colloid particles approximates to that of a true 
molecular solution. 
In the second section the molecules are dealt 
with singly. The word molecule has here been 
liberally interpreted, for the Brownian movements 
of colloid particles have been included under this 
heading. Prof. Svedberg was the first to prove 
experimentally that these movements agree with 
the calculations made by Einstein and Smolu- 
chowski from the kinetic theory, and half the book 
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is devoted to this subject. | By marshalling his 
own results, and those of others, he shows 
what a fine proof is thus provided of the 
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