Fan. 13, 1870] 
NATURE 289 
not in a condition to make use of it. Good architecture, for in- 
stance, is a very good thing, and one we are much in want of ; 
but it will hardly be maintained that architects should be taught 
their profession at the public expense. The history of old china, 
of old clothes, or of postage stamps, are each of great interest to 
more or less extensive sections of the community, and much 
may be said in each case to prove the value of the study; but 
surely no honest representative of the nation could vote, say, the 
moderate sum of a million sterling for three museums to exhibit 
these objects, with a full staff of beadles, curators, and pro- 
fessors at an equally moderate expenditure of £10,000 annually, 
and a like sum for the purchase of specimens. But if we once 
admit the right of the Government to support institutions for the 
benefit of any class of students or amateurs however large and 
respectable, we adopt a principle which will enable us to offer 
but a feeble resistance to the claims of less and less extensive 
interests whenever they happen to become the fashion. 
If it be asked (as it will be) what we are to do with existing 
institutions supported by Government, I am at once ready with 
an answer. Taking the typical examples of the National Gallery 
and the British Museum, I maintain that these institutions should 
be reorganised, so as to make them in the highest degree enter- 
taining and instructive to the mass of the people ;—that no 
public money should be spent on the purchase of specimens, but 
what they already contain should be so thoroughly cared for and 
utilised as to make these establishments the safest, the best, and 
the most worthy receptacles for the treasures accumulated by 
wealthy amateurs and students, who would then be ready to 
bestow them on the nation to a much greater extent than they do 
at present. From the duplicates which would thus accumulate 
in these institutions, the other great centres of population in the 
kingdom should be proportionately supplied, and from the 
Metropolitan centres trained officers should be sent to organise 
and superintend local institutions, such a proportion of their 
salaries being paid by Government as fairly to equalise the 
expenditure of public money over the whole kingdom, and thus 
not infringe that great principle of equality and justice which I 
maintain should be our guide in all such cases. 
This communication will doubtless call forth much opposition, 
but I trust it will also elicit the support of some of those eminent 
scientific men, who I know hold similar general views, and who 
are so much better able than I am to explain and support them. 
ALFRED R. WALLACE 
Kant’s View of Space 
In the very remarkable contribution by Professor Sylvester, 
(Nature, No. 9) this sentence occurs ; ‘‘ It is very common, not 
to say universal, with English writers, even such authorised ones 
as Whewell, Lewes, or Herbert Spencer, to refer to Kant’s 
doctrine as affirming space to be a ‘form of thought’ ‘or of 
the understanding.’ This is putting into Kant’s mouth (as pointed 
out tome by Dr. C. M. Ingleby) words which he would have 
been the first to disclaim.” 
It is not on personal grounds that I wish to rectify the miscon- 
ception into which Dr. Ingleby has betrayed Professor Sylvester. 
When objections are made to what I have written, it is my habit 
either silently to correct my error, or silently to disregard the 
criticism. In the present case I might be perfectly contented to 
disregard a criticism which any one who even glanced at my 
exposition of Kant would see to be altogether inexact ; but as 
misapprehensions of Kant are painfully abundant, readers of 
Kant being few, and those who take his name in vain being 
many, it may be worth while to stop ¢/zs error from getting 
into circulation through the channel of NATURE. [Kant assuredly 
did teach, as Professor Sylvester says, and as I have repeatedly 
stated, that space is a form of intuition. But there is no dis- 
crepancy at all in also saying that he taught space to be a ‘‘form of 
thought,”’ since every student of Kant knows that intuition with- 
out thought is mere sensuous zyfression. Kant considered the 
mind under three aspects, Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. 
The @ priori forms of Sensibility, which rendered Experience 
possible, were Space and Time: these were forms of thought, 
conditions of cognition. It was by such forms of thought that 
he reoccupied the position taken by Leibnitz in defending and 
amending the doctrine of innate ideas, namely, that knowledge 
has another source besides sensible experience, —the z7ztel/ectus ipse. 
While, therefore, any one who spoke of space as a “ form of 
the understanding ” would certainly use language which Kant 
would have disclaimed, Kant himself would have been surprised 
to hear that space was not held by him as a “‘form of thought.” 
January 3 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 
Transcendent Space 
As my name has been mentioned by Prof. Sylvester, at p. 238 
of NATURE, in connection with this subject, I must ask you to 
allow me to make a brief remark thereupon. With the late 
Prof. Donkin I have not the least doubt as to this notion being 
“only a disguised form of algebraical formulisation.”” I observe 
that Prof. Sylvester, while Ayfothetically mentioning his own 
blindness, backs up his belief by the names of seven great 
mathematicians, who are Ayfothetically assumed to have “an 
inner assurance of the reality” of space of four dimensions. A 
roll-call of great names is no evidence of a strong position, and 
in the present case the citation is somewhat unfortunate. My 
old friend Dr. Salmon, who is one of the seven mathematicians 
cited, would, I am sure, disclaim any such ‘‘inner assurance.” 
Without any breach of confidence I may quote his own reply to 
a question which I put to him long before the delivery of Prof. 
Sylvester’s address. It was in these words: ‘‘I do not profess 
to be able to conceive affairs of four dimensions. . . . I advise 
you to believe whatever Sylvester tells you, for he has the power 
of seeing things invisible to ordinary mortals.” 
It would be more satisfactory to unbelievers like myself if the 
gifted author of the address were to assure the world that he had 
an insight into, or clear conception of, this transcendent space, 
According to my own view, space cannot have more or less thant 
three dimensions ; but if a form of extension having four dimen- 
sions were once revealed to us, tridimensional space (in which 
we now ‘‘live and move and have our being,”’ and which is for 
us one of two only universal forms of sense), together with all 
that it contains, would become zero, and thenceforward we 
should only be able to conceive tridimensional space as a limit 
to the finite contents of quadridimensional space. Nay, more, 
the new space would be inevitably fatal to the law of gravitation, 
which is a transcendental deduction from the three only dimen- 
sions of space. Of course I see plainly enough that the Hamil- 
tonian theory of ‘‘quinaries” (which is at present concretely 
interpretable only in time, ¢.e. as applied to sets of five points in 
time) might be developed into a rectorial system of Quinions, 
where the four symbols of operation would express the rotation 
of a straight line about four symmetrical axes ; but the form of ex- 
tension required for the interpretation of such a system is not only 
inconceivable, but is seemingly opposed to the very intellect itself. 
Ilford, January 8 C. M. INGLEBY 
The Cyclone 
IN answer to the request of your correspondent, F.R.A.S., of 
Plymouth, in No. 8 of Nature, I venture to send the following 
observations of the storm of Dec. 16, in West Suffolk. The 
barometer is reduced to sea level and 32° Fahr. 
Dec. 16—2 p.m. : bar. 29°598, having fallen about ‘15 since 
the moming: air temp. 44° max. of day hours; wind fresh, S., 
sky overcast. 
5 p.m. : bar. 29°334, air temp. 42°; wind S.S.E. high, with 
heayy rain, which had begun about 4. 
Io p.m.: bar. 28°821, a fall of *5 in 5 hours ; wind S. W. gale ; 
rain stopped. The rainfall amounted to °53 in. During this gale 
the temp. rose to 54°. The wind veered, at times blowing with 
great violence, attaining its maximum a little before 11 p.m. 
Direction nearly W. After 11 the force began to abate. 
12 mid. : bar. 29°031, a rise of *2 ; wind high from W.N.W. 
Dec. 17.—Bar. 29°625, wind still very fresh from W.N.W. 
The movement of the barometer from 2 to 10 p.m. of 16th, 
was 0°78 in., and on morning of 17th the pressure returned to 
the same point as on 2 p.m. of 16th. The maximum of the wind 
force occurred a little after the minimum of air pressure, when 
barometer was rising (compare Capt. Toynbee’s ‘‘Isobaric Curves” 
pp- 6, 7). The veering of the wind shows that the track of 
the centre of the storm passed to the N. of this latitude 
(52° N.) M.A. 
Haverhill, Suffolk, Dec. 28 
I ONLY noticed this morning a request of one of your corre- 
spondents, who wishes some one in the north or east of England 
to give an account of the storm which occurred on the 17th 
instant, as he considers it a remarkable instance of a cyclone. 
T enclose the hourly readings of the barograph and anemo- 
graph at Stonyhurst during the storm that occurred on the 17th 
and r9th, but I doubt whether they will be found very confirma- 
tory of the supposed nature of the storm. The fall and rise of 
the barometer agree remarkably with the complete circuit through 
which the wind veered from W.S.W. through S. and N. back 
to W.S.W., but the storm, as is usually the case, began about 
