354 



NA TURE 



IFcb. 14, 1884 



Let us see how he heah them. ' E\-ery cloud is primarily 

 definable — 'visible vapour of water, floating at a certain 

 height in the air.' " It is thus distinguished from that 

 "form of watery vapour" which "exists just as widely 

 and generally at the bottom of the air as the clouds do 

 on what for convenience' sake we may call the top of it." 

 Mr. Ruskin hopelessly confuses vapour with water-dust, 

 and this confusion lend^ him into some amusing diffi- 

 culties. He asks whether it is '■ with cloud vapour as with 

 most other things, that are seen when they are there, and 

 not seen when they are not there, or has cloud vapour so 

 much of the ghost in it that it can be visible or invisible 

 as it likes, and might, perhaps, be all unpleasantly and 

 malignantly there just as much when they did not see it 

 as when they did?" To this he answers "comfortably 

 and generally " thit '' on the whole a cloud is where we 

 see it, and not where we do not see it," and that we must 

 not allo.v the scientific people to tell us that rain is every- 

 where, but palpable in one place, impalpable in another. 

 He presently returns to his point. He has defined a 

 floating or sky cloud, and defined the falling or earth 

 cloud (which by the way had been altogether excluded by 

 his first definition from his category of clouds). " But 

 there is a sort of thing between the two which needs 

 another sort of definition, namely, mist." The definition 

 of this intermediate substance, however, Mr. Ruskin does 

 not supply, being content with asking what difference 

 there is between clear and muddy vapour. This division 

 of clouds has at least the merit of brevity, although it is 

 subsequently complicated by a further division into "two 

 sorts of clouds, one either stationary or slow in motion, 

 reflecting unre5olved light, the other fast-flying and 

 transmitting resolved light. [Really, clouds at a distance 

 and clouds overhead.] As regards the difference in the 

 nature of these, Mr. Ruskin merely " hints to us his 

 suspicion that the prismatic cloud is of finely comminuted 

 water or ice, instead of aqueous vapour " ; — it is difficult to 

 understand what he supposes the former kind of cloud to 

 be composed of. 



During the forty years previous to 1 871, according to 

 the certificate of Mr. Ruskin, the clouds, thus divided 

 and cross-divided, appear to have behaved themselves in 

 a peaceable and orderly manner. Even the "thunder- 

 cumulus " (English-Latin, by the way) did " its mighty 

 work in its own hour and in its own dominions, not 

 snatching from you for an instant or defiling with a stain 

 the abiding blue of the transcendent sky, or the fretted 

 silver of its passionless clouds'' We may remark that 

 these "good, old-fashioned, healthy storms" frequently 

 had rather extensive dominions : e.g. on August 13, 1857, 

 one of these storms was simultaneously felt over many 

 thousand square miles, and extended from the Land's 

 End to John o' Groat's, besides covering a very extensive 

 district on the north-western parts of the European 

 continent. The deportment of the great bogy meteor, 

 "storm-cloud or more accurately plague-cloud," of the 

 nineteenth century is exceedingly different. From one 

 part of Mr. Ruskin's description of this phenomenon we 

 imagined that he might allude to the sheet of stratus com- 

 monly occurring in winter anti-cyclones, a sheet which 

 occasionally covers upwards of 60,000 square miles, with 

 scarcely a rift in its surface, the greatest vertical thickness 

 of tlie cloud being only 300 or 400 feet. But this illusion was 



soon dispelled. For we find that " in the plague-wind the 

 sun is choked out of the whole of heaven all day long by 

 a cloud which might be a thousand miles square and five 

 miles deep." One would scarcely have expected so dense 

 a cloud mass merely to turn the sun red, but Mr. Ruskin 

 is angry with it for not doing so: "That thin, scraggy 

 filthy, raangey, miserable cloud, for all the depth of it, could 

 not turn the sun red as a good business-like fog did with 

 a hundred feet or so of itself." Further, it is accompanied 

 by a terrible wind by which "every breath of air is polluted 

 half round the world " [sic]. Mr. Ruskin omitted to men- 

 tion the effects of this plague-wind on agricultural or vital 

 statistics. " It is a wind of darkness," also " a malignant 

 wind." Further, " it always blows tremulously, making 

 the leaves of the trees shudder as if they were all aspens 

 but with a peculiar fitfulness which gives them an expres- 

 sion of anger as well as of fear and distress." Further, 

 " it pollutes as well as intensifies the violence of all 

 natural and necessary storms." Here again some ex- 

 planation is sorely needed, since we should much like to 

 know whether during the plague-wind barometric gradients 

 become steeper, or whether the force of the wind in rela- 

 tion to the gradient is greater than usual. 



Enough for the present of such bogies ; although we 

 fear that we have by no means done with them until our 

 literary men will master the simplest elementary primers. 

 But not enough of Mr. Ruskin, whom we could ill spare. 

 His EngUsh is often delicious; always in his most 

 dyspeptic diatribes amusing. And we can all appreciate 

 his concluding advice that we should " bring back our 

 own cheerfulness and our own honesty ; and cease from 

 the troubling of our own passions," and (not least we 

 think of all) "the insolence of our own lips." A good 

 recipe : add a dash of humility and of respect for the 

 opinions of wiser men ; — and all may yet be well, even 

 though our return to the paths of rectitude should fail to 

 dissolve the "raangey" clouds, and quench the fevered 

 wind of a storm-harried and woe-worn ei'a. 



W. Clement Ley 



SPINOZA 

 Ethic. By Benedict de Spinoza. Translated from the 

 Latin by William Hale White. (London : Trubner 

 and Co., 1883.) 



IF proot were requisite that the standard of value in 

 philosophy is different from that which obtains in the 

 estimation of scientific research, it would only be neces- 

 sary to point to the case of Spinoza. There is probably 

 no thinker of the nature of whose work there obtain con- 

 ceptions more hopelessly irreconcilable ; there is certainly 

 none about whose position there is more general unani- 

 mity. To refer to the more recent of his English critics, 

 Prof. Caird and Mr. Frederick Pollock are at one in 

 assigning to Spinoza most important functions in the de- 

 velopment of philosophical inquiry. Yet there is scarcely 

 a single point in his system as to which their respective 

 interpretations are not mutually exclusive. But as regards 

 the broad feature which makes Spinozism deeply interest- 

 ing to students of science in the strict sense there can be 

 no doubt. The application of the method of geometry to 

 philosophical problems finds its counterpart in the pre- 

 vailing, and apparently by no means diminishing, disposi- 



