— Wov. 9, 1882] 
\ 
‘or love of gain, for the steadfast pursuing of a path 
remote from the ways of ordinary men, the life of 
Maxwell stands in our mind associated with the lives of 
Gauss and Faraday. Nevertheless, without seeking to 
- compare him with either of these great men in respect of 
intensity of genius, we may safely assert that he was 
superior to both in universality and many-sidedness. The 
mere objective circumstances of the career of such a man 
count for little, and the biographer tells his tale so far as 
these are concerned, with an artless grace that befits the 
subject. It is needless to dwell upon them here, for our 
readers have already been furnished with a summary of 
the outward events of Maxwell’s life (NATURE, vol. xxi. 
p- 317). The interest and freshness of Prof. Campbell’s 
story lie in the light it throws on the subjective influences 
that moulded the character of the gentle physicist, a cha- 
racter which was the most extraordinary combination, 
that this generation has seen, of practical wisdom, child- 
like faith, goodness of heart, metaphysical subtlety, and 
discursive oddity, with wonderful critical sagacity and 
penetrating scientific genius. 
Intellectual power, and to some extent also eccentricity, 
appear to have been hereditary with Maxwell, as will be 
_ seen from the racy notes at the end of the first chapter 
| on the Clerks of Penicuik and the Maxwells of Middlebie. 
After the early loss of his mother, he became the constant 
companion and confidant of his father, who initiated him 
into all his economic mysteries, interested him in applied 
sciences of every kind, encouraged his boyish essays in 
physical experimenting, and anxiously patronised his 
earliest memoir, on Cartesian Ovals and kindred curves, 
read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Forbes when 
its author was a boy of fourteen. This sympathy between 
father and son continued unbroken to the end, and 
| had undoubtedly the happiest effect on Maxwell’s 
| destiny. 
| The chapters on the student life at Edinburgh and 
Cambridge are deeply interesting, and we earnestly com- 
‘mend them to the young men of our time who wish not 
' to seem, but to be indeed, men of science. 
_ With his appointment to the chair in the Marischal 
College, Aberdeen, begins his career as a recognised 
authority in scientific matters. Henceforth the biography 
is mainly an account of Maxwell’s contributions to the 
advancement of physical science; the purely personal 
interest revives in the sad chapter that recounts his last 
illness and death. 
' Glimpses into his mental history during the later period 
| of his life are afforded us by means of extracts from his 
intimate correspondence, and from essays, some read at 
Cambridge to a select circle of friends, others, not in- 
tended for publication even to that limited extent, but 
merely written as records of the author’s communion 
with his own soul. We thus learn how the great physi- 
| cist dealt with the grand problem of man’s relation to 
that which went before, and that which shall be here- 
after. It cannot but be profoundly interesting to read 
what was thought on such a subject by one of the 
greatest scientific minds of our day. We are left in no 
doubt as to the solution in which Maxwell ultimately 
|reposed, and it is instructive to note how in this re- 
| spect, as in so many others, he was akin to Faraday. 
| Some will doubtless think that needless emphasis is 
NATURE 
27 
laid upon the exact form of the final solution, and upon 
the precise methods by which it was reached. It must 
be remembered that the difficulties of the man of action 
and of the scientific man or professed thinker, are widely 
different. The former rests naturally in the arms of pre- 
cept and dogma; he is distracted merely by the choice 
of preceptor and authority. The thinker by profession 
must examine for himself ; it is a necessity of his nature 
so to do; and his difficulties arise from having to deal 
with matters in which the best of his scientific methods 
fail. Thus it happens that the example of a scientific 
mind is little likely to profit the unscientific ; and that 
one scientific mind is scarcely in such matters to be led 
by the experience of another. The solutions of the great 
problem by different minds of the highest order have, as 
we know, differed, in outward appearance at least, very 
widely. But is it well to dwell on these differences? seeing 
that no man of finite intellect can tell how little or how 
great after all the distances may be that separate the 
resting places in the infinite of good men and true. 
With regard to the selections from the correspondence 
it might have been better perhaps, in the interest of 
science, to have given more of the scientific correspond- 
ence. It must be known to many of our readers from 
pleasant experience that Maxwell was indefatigable in 
writing and answering letters on scientific subjects. His 
letters rarely failed to contain some sagacious criticism, 
some ingenious thought, or some valuable suggestion. 
Most possessors of such letters would we imagine be glad 
to put them at the disposal of a competent editor for 
publication, or at all events to take some steps to prevent 
the ultimate loss of matter so full of interest for all scien- 
tificmen. Those that have read the volumes containing 
the correspondence of Gauss with Bessel and Schumacher 
will understand how instructive such collections can be. 
Not the least interesting parts of the biography are the 
chapters containing extracts from the occasional essays 
already referred to. Maxwell when a student at Edin- 
burgh had attended the lectures of Hamilton, and had 
been greatly impressed by that distinguished philosopher 
and accomplished enemy of the exact sciences. Accord- 
ingly, we find that among the studies of his earlier years 
mental and moral science had no small share. He 
resolves, for instance, at one period to read Kant and to 
make him agree with Hamilton, and, at the same time, he 
criticises in a somewhat unflattering strain the flaccid 
morality embodied in the lectures of Christopher North. 
It is not surprising, therefore, that the subjects of these 
occasional essays are mainly metaphysical or psychologi- 
cal, They are mostly very discursive, and their graver 
meaning is often veiled in a cloud of that humorous irony 
which figured so much in his familiar conversation. The 
general tendency is, however, sufficiently plain: in the 
essay on Psychophysik, for example, he thus delivers his 
opinion on the theory of “ Plastidule Souls,” which played 
sO prominent a part lately in the classic duel between 
Virchow and Haeckel, and in sundry ultra-physical dis- 
cussions nearer home :— 
“To attribute life, sensation, and thought to objects in 
which these attributes are not established by sufficient 
evidence, is nothing more than the good old figure of 
personification.” 
At the end of the same essay he thus sums up the 
