422 



NATURE 



\_March 5> 1885 



pumping machinery ; but in the matter of house-fittings there 

 had been great progress, especially in the detection and preven- 

 tion of waste of water. With respect to gas as a distributed 

 illuminant, considerable improvements had lately been made, 

 due to a greater liberality on the part of lighting-authorities, and 

 to the use of multiple burners in street-lanterns, by which a 

 greater amount of light was obtained from the same volume of 

 gas. The regenerative gas-burners, and o her modes, promised 

 largely to increase the candle-power per cubic foot of gas burnt. 

 In conclusion, the President stated that, during his term of 

 office, he would do all that lay in his power, as he had done in 

 the past, to uphold the honour, the dignity, and the usefulness 

 of the Institution ; and in these efforts he felt satisfied that all 

 the members would cheerfully and gladly assist. 



HOW THOUGHT PRESENTS ITSELF AMONG 

 THE PHENOMENA OF NA TURE ' 



T-7 VERY phenomenon which a human being can perceive may 

 be traced by cientific investigation to motions going on in 

 the world around him. This is obvious to every scientific man 

 in regard to such phenomena as those of colour and sound, and 

 these simpler cases were first adduced by the lecturer. He then 

 pointed out that the statement is also true of all other material 

 phenomena, and be specially dwelt on the phenomena investi- 

 gated in the science of mechanics, showing that all the quantities 

 treated of in that science, such as force and mass, prove, when 

 the investigation is pushed far enough, to be expressible in terms 

 of mere motion. He also showed that the prevalent conviction 

 that motion cannot exist unless there is some " thing" to move 

 will not stand examination. It proves to be a fallacious convic- 

 tion traceable to the limited character of the experience of 

 motions which we and our ancestry from the first dawn of 

 organised thought on the earth have had within reach of our 

 senses. This conviction accordingly has no authority with 

 respect to molecular motions and to some others that have been 

 brought to light by scientific study. He also showed that the 

 "thing" which in common experience moves, proves in every 

 case to be nothing else than these underlying molecular motions, 

 the transference of which from place to place is the only kind of 

 motion which common experience can reach, when unassi ted by 

 science. 



The intermediate steps between the world external to our 

 bodies and the brain which take place in our organs of sense 

 and nerves can also be ascertained to be motions. And finally, 

 a change consisting of motions takes place in the brain itself, 

 whereupon we become conscious of thought : i.e. a change 

 occurs within the brain which would be appreciated as motions 

 by a bystander who could search into our brains while we are 

 thinking, and could witness what is going on there, while all the 

 time the change that we experience is thought. It must be 

 borne in mind that our brain is a part of the external world to 

 the bystander whom we have supposed to be observing what is 

 going on in it. It thus appears that every phenomenon of the 

 external world is reducible to moti >ns and their modifications, 

 while all that is within the mind is thought. 



Now this mition to which all other material phenomena are 

 reduced, this motion as it exists in nature, must be distinguished 

 from man's conception of motion, which, after all, is one of his 

 thoughts — a very complex one, no doubt, but not part of the 

 external world. This particular conception in our minds is on: 

 remote effect of the motion as it exists outside us, and what 

 we really know of that external cause is that it is a cause 

 which does unfailingly produce this effect if the intermediate 

 appliances of our senses and nerves are also present. Motion, 

 the cause, must no doubt stand in absolutely rigorous re- 

 lations to its effect, viz. our conception of motion : but it 

 need not be bke its effect, the presumption being quite the 

 other way. The lecturer pointed out that, under these circum- 

 stances, the simplest and so far the most probable, hypothesis 

 that can be advanced is the monistic hypothesis that this un- 

 known cause is itself thought ; and he pointed out that it is no 

 objecti m to this view that we are unconscious of all the thought 

 here supposed, for this is only to say that it is external to that 

 particular group of interlacing and organised thoughts which we 

 call our own mind, just as the thoughts of the many millions of 

 our fellow-men and of all other animals are external to our little 

 group. 



1 Short Abstract of Royal Institution Friday evenine discourse (February 

 «), by G. Johnstone Stoney, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S. 



The lecturer accordingly recommended the following hypo- 

 thesis : (1) as consistent with everything we know, (2) as the 

 simplest hypothesis, (3) as an hypothesis which dispels all the 

 difficulties that encumber the dualistic supposition that there are 

 two kinds of existence, viz. the hypothesis that if a bystander 

 were armed with adequate appliances to ascertain what is going 

 on in our brain while we are thinking, then 'what we should 

 experience to be thought is itself the remote cause with several 

 intermediate causes of that change within the observer's brain 

 which determines his having that complex thought wdiich he 

 would call perceiving some of the motions in our brain — in short, 

 that whit he appreciates as motion we experience to be thought. 



If this view be correct, it will follow that the thoughts of 

 which we are conscious are but a small part of the thought going 

 on even in our own brain, and which would be seen by a be- 

 holder as motions, the rest being unconscious cerebration and as 

 much outside our consciousness as are the thoughts of other 

 people. We are led also to the conclusion that the thmght 

 which is going on in the brains of all the animals that exist is 

 but the "small dust of the baltnce" compared with what is 

 going on throughout the rest of the mighty universe. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



The American Journal of Science, February. — Obituary notice 

 of Benjamin Silliman, son of Benjamin Silliman, the founder of 

 that Journal, and long one of its editors, who died in his sixty- 

 ninth year at New Haven, Connecticut, on January 14, 1885. — 

 The organisation and plan of the United States Geological Sur- 

 vey, with a map, by J. W. Powell. The organisation, as at 

 present established, comprises : (1) ana tronomic and computing 

 division, the officers of which are engaged in determining the 

 geographic coordinates of certain primary points ; (2) a triangu- 

 lation corps engrged in extending a system of triangulation over 

 various portions of the country from measured base-lines ; (3) a 

 topographic corps, organised into twenty-seven parties scattered 

 over various portions of the United Sates. — Memorial of the 

 late distinguished botanist, George Bentham, by Asa Gray. — 

 Palreontological notes on the material from the St. John group 

 of New Brunswick contained in the Hartt Collection at Cornell 

 University, by Charles D. WaL-ott. — On the rotation of the 

 equipotential lines of an electric current by magnetic action, by 

 E. H. Hall. The results are given of experiments made during 

 the month of August, 1883, and at intervals since in the physi- 

 cal laboratory of Harvard College, the substances examined 

 bei'ig chiefly copper, zinc, certain of their alloys, iron, and 

 steel. — On the use of the term " Esker, or Kam drift," by J. 

 Henry Kinahan. Both terms are traced to a Keltic source, 

 c&m, short (not tame, long, as wrongly pronounced in England 

 and the Lowlands), meaning, in Irish, crooked or winding, as in 

 the river Cam, while Eskir or Eiscir denotes a small but well- 

 defined ridge. — On the cause of mild polar climates, by James 

 Croll. In this third paper the author discusses the climate of 

 the Tertiary period in so far as affected by eccentricity, the evi- 

 dence of climatic alterations and of glaciation during the same 

 period. — Notice of the remarkable marine fauna occupying the 

 outer banks of the southern coast of New England, by A. E. 

 Verrill. — Note on a fossil coal plant found at the graphite 

 deposit in mica >chist at Worcester, Massachusetts, by Joseph 

 H. Perry. — The test-well in the Carboniferous formation at 

 Brownville, Nebraska, by Prof. L. E. Hicks. — Review of Hill's 

 supplement to Delaunay's " Lunar Theory," by John N. 

 Stockwell. 



The Journal of Botany for February contains a plate of 

 several new or rare species of Desmid to illustrate one of a series 

 of papers on these organisms, by Mr. W. Joshua. It contains 

 also the annual list of new flowering plants published in period- 

 icals in Britain in 1SS4. Most of the other articles are 

 descriptive. 



Bulletin de VAcadimie Royale Jc Belgique, December, 1884. 

 — On the microscopic intrusions of sagenite in the titaniferous 

 oolitic hematite of the clay-slates, by A. F. Renard. — On the 

 external branchial apertures of the Ascidians, and on the forma- 

 tion of the intestine in Phallusia s abroides (new species), by 

 Edouard Van Beneden and Charles Julin. — On certain new 

 animal organisms forming a local fauna peculiar to the neigh- 

 bourhood of Thornton Bank, by Ed. Van Beneden.— On the 

 presence of Niphargus puteanus, Sch., in the Liege district, by 

 Ed. Van Beneden. — Action of high pressure on the vitality of 



