Dec. 24, 1885] 



NA TURE 



175 



volume of nearly 500 pages has been beautifully printed 

 at the Cambridge University Press, and is one that will be 

 a most handy work of reference to all students. In a 

 short preface the author apologises in advance for 

 possible deficiencies. It would be impossible to have a 

 work of this sort free from omissions ; but we have gone 

 over very carefully the portion of the bibliography with 

 which we were most familiar, and have been very much 

 struck with its extreme accuracy. It is proposed to 

 publish in the course of 18S6 a supplement, to contain all 

 detected omissions, and the author will gratefully receive 

 any additional titles that may be sent to him. We would 

 suggest that it might not add too much to the labour of 

 preparing this, and that it would certainly add to the 

 value of the supplement if omissions in Carus's volumes 

 were also taken notice of, so that the bibliography of the 

 groups now catalogued by Mr. D'Arcy Thompson should 

 be fairly complete. This has been, we notice, already 

 done in some instances in the volume before us. An 

 index of authors' names would also be of use. 



On the Ethics nf Naturalism. (Shaw Fellowship Lectures, 

 18S4). ByW. R, Sorley, M.A. (\V. Blackwood and Sons, 

 18S5.) 

 The theory of evolution has established its claim to 

 having given the most satisfactory account of all forms of 

 natural life, and Mr. Sorley endeavours here to show how 

 it yields, by advancing it a step further, a complete ex- 

 planation of human nature, mental as well as physical. 



Whence, then, do human rules of action and aspira- 

 tions for future right conduct come, and what sustains 

 them ? Mr. Sorley points out that happiness cannot 

 explain the definite end of human action ; it is only 

 another name for it. Education and legislation combine 

 to make the greatest happiness of the greatest number 

 the desirable thing for each man's actions to tend towards, 

 but there is little difficulty in pointing out the weakness of 

 the theories of earlier writers who have tried, without the 

 help ,of Darwin, Spencer, Galton, and others, to explain 

 the feeling of duty ; the feeling that we ought to do one 

 thing rather than another when the former does not at 

 the time seem so agreeable. We may quote Hobbes, for 

 instance, who is unable to explain why any man feels 

 any duty to his neighbour, and invents the fiction of the 

 'social contract" ; and Prof Bain, who has to account, 

 by the associations of a few years, for the harmony of 

 feeling between the individual and the whole. Evolu- 

 tion, of course, explains that although in the earlier days 

 of the human race, each beneficial action sprang from 

 egoistic motives, yet that the good result to the society 

 has led to an inherited sympathy with such actions and 

 such actors. There is the difficulty that since present 

 ideas, according to the doctrine of evolution, are the 

 latest outcome of all past experience, and what we are is 

 the last result of all past influences, we seem to arrive at 

 the very unprogressive conclusion that whatever is is 

 right. And if, indeed, each man found that he had 

 arrived at perfect harmony with all his surroundings, this 

 would be the ideal state. This, however, is the case with 

 none of us. Few of us but find the well-known 

 utterances of the former and the " Video meliora, pro- 

 boque, deteriora sequor " of the latter the counterpart 

 of our own experiences, and still more easy is it to see 

 how far from the present accepted ideals are all our 

 neighbours. But as among all the slightly differing 

 variations of a species there is a tendency to return to 

 one type, so among all the contending inclinations and 

 dispositions of the members of a race there abides an 

 inherited code of morality, now become instinctive ; one, 

 as nearly fixed in each individual as the form of any 

 species, but, like that, varying and developing in different 

 individuals, families, and nations, and adapting itself to 

 changed surroundings. These surroundings have always 

 in human history been so different that the inborn or 



ideal code has not at any time become a general, still less 

 a universal, one, and the struggles after holiness of the 

 Hebrew, after beauty of the Greek, and after justice of 

 the Roman, are still being continued in various propor- 

 tions as modern times and conditions of existence have 

 altered. 



To some a morality never to be fixed will not appear a 

 very steady one ; a morality that is calculated to vary at 

 different epochs and in different climates. Yet, surround- 

 ings always changing, man has to adapt himself to the 

 change ; always, therefore, will he be labouring towards a 

 changed goal. Neither is it a cheerful prospect for the 

 race. There will always be the " necessity for strong 

 egoistic feelings and conduct in the struggle for exist- 

 ence, where the better-equipped organism asserts and 

 maintains its supremacy only by vanquishing the organ- 

 isms which are not so supplied." This struggle will con- 

 tinue on the highest levels of progress to which our race 

 will reach ; for " the multiplication of desires and of 

 desiring individuals keeps so well in advance of the 

 means of satisfying desires, that it is doubtful whether 

 the course of evolution is fitted to bring about complete 

 harmony between different individuals. It would almost 

 seem that the ' moving equilibrium ' in human conduct in 

 which there is no clash of diverse interests cannot be ex- 

 pected to be brought about much before the time when 

 the physical factors of the universe have reached the 

 stage in which evolution ends." 



Clark's Transit Tables for 1 886. (London : E. and F. N. 



Spon, 1885.) 

 Mr. Latimer Cl.^rk is still faithful to his self-imposed 

 duty of enabling any one to obtain accurate time in any 

 part of the world by means of the transit instrument, 

 without any calculation. As in former years, Mr. 

 Latimer Clark has now computed from the Nautical 

 Almanac all the data necessary to enable this to be done 

 for 1886. The author is doing a good work, for which 

 every student of astronomy should thank him, for we 

 have litde doubt that most of those who procure a little 

 transit instrument, and work it under Mr. Clark's able 

 direction, will not end there. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[ The Editor does not hold himself respofisiliUf or opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond loith the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken 0/ anonymous communications. 



\The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 

 as short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great 

 that it is impossible otherwise to insure the appearance even 

 of communications containtnginteresting and novel facts.\ 



The Late Total Eclipse 

 Allow me to call the attention of such of your readers as are 

 not already aware of the fact that the phenomena I mentioned 

 in rny notes of the late eclipse— the " pulsation " of the sun's 

 light just before totality and the simultaneous ' ' wave-shadows " — 

 are recorded by Grant (" Hist, of Phys. Astronomy," p. 404) as 

 having been witnessed in France during the total eclipse of 1842. 

 He mentions several probable causes or contributing causes ; 

 among them the unsteadiness of the air, which certainly existed 

 here. I have not been able to find these phenomena (or pheno- 

 menon with a double aspect) mentioned in any other work acces- 

 sible to me, and should be obliged to you for a statement of the 

 expLanation now received. To an outsider the (apparent) rarity 

 and local character of the phenomenon seem to cause this diffi- 

 culty . If it is owing to any cosmical cause, or one common to 



any large part of our atmosphere, it would seem that the pheno- 

 menon should be more widely seen ; if, on the other hand, it is 

 owing to the unsteadiness of the observer's atmosphere, should it 

 not occiu- oftener ? 



Allow me to add that in suggesting in my notes that the small 

 prominences I saw were " Baily's Beads " I was writing igno- 

 ranily, having been long under the impression that Baily's 



