NATURE 



25 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 18S6 



LETTERS AND JOURNAL OF IV. STANLEY 



JEVONS 

 Letters and Joitynal of W. Sta7ilcy Jevons. Edited by 



His Wife. (London: Macmillan and Co., 18S6.) 

 A STRIKING but sad book is this autobiography; for 

 "^^ though " written to give the best idea of the character 

 of the man in the various relations of life more than 

 to recount scientific work," it is practically an autobio- 

 graphy : there is scarcely a critical remark upon his 

 thoughts or conduct in it. 



The family for many generations had been settled 

 in Staffordshire. The grandfather came to Liverpool, 

 and commenced business as an iron-merchant there, 

 and his son Thomas, a man of ability in many ways, 

 joined him in it This was the father of William Stanley 

 Jevons, who had, moreover, the almost invariable precedent 

 of a clever man {pace Mr. F. Galton), viz. a clever mother, 

 whom, however, he had the misfortune to lose at ten ye^irs 

 old. She was the daughter of William Roscoe, author 

 of the " Life of Lorenzo de Medici " and " Leo the Tenth." 

 Another misfortune, from which, however, he learnt the 

 value of money in a practical sense, befell him at the age 

 of thirteen, when the firm of Jevons and Sons failed ; 

 and his grandfather, who died in 1SS2 at the advanced 

 age of ninety-one, came to live with them. 



A characteristic very marked, and to a marvellous 

 extent affecting his whole subsequent life, was a bashful- 

 ness or " natural timidity of character which," his father 

 wrote him, " is the worst, or perhaps I may say the only, 

 weakness you have." This led to self-depreciation, and 

 at school the French master complained that he was far 

 too quiet and made no noise, and did not read above his 

 breath. Shrinking from his companions and their fun, 

 however, he early acquired the habit of directing his 

 attention and mental powers at his will, and nothing 

 tried his naturally passionate temper more than to be 

 compelled to leave the pursuit of the moment while still 

 engrossed in it. Reports of him as a scholar naturally 

 kept continually improving, and, though laboriousness is 

 throughout his characteristic, his sister writes in her 

 diary that she saw in Stanley at the age of fourteen the 

 dawnings of a great mind. 



Botany and chemistry, in both of which he subsequently 

 took honours, were the two sciences which attracted him 

 first. The former was begun under the loving eye of his 

 mother : the latter was the first that he took up at Uni- 

 versity College School, and " followed fiercer and fiercer 

 till he gained the University gold medal." 



He had decided at seventeen to go into a chemical 

 manufactory at Liverpool, in order to remain near home ; 

 but before he had ended his last term of study at the 

 University his wishes and plans were all upset by Profs. 

 Williamson and Graham recommending him for the 

 appointment of Assayer to the new Mint in Australia. He 

 shrank from it as being too heavy a post for a youth of 

 eighteen, and as going terribly against his wish to settle 

 at home. But an income of 675/. a year was too good an 

 offer to be refused. On June 29, 1854, not yet nineteen 

 years old, he set sail for Sydney. 

 Vol. XXXV.— No. 889 



While at Sydney he attacked the Australian meteorology, 

 and published his observations ; more, as he explains, to 

 show what phenomena had to be solved and what inter- 

 esting connections of cause and effect might be suggested. 

 Geology also, which he had commenced shortly before 

 he left England, he there followed up. There he 

 first suggested a collection of newspapers from all 

 parts of the world as a curious exhibition ; there 

 also he heard of the death, after seven years of re- 

 viving prosperity in trade, of his father in November 

 1855. Though doing so well financially, he still cherished 

 the feeling that he was losing time which he might put to 

 better advantage. After four years he resigned his post, 

 and on his return, via Callao, Panama, St. Thomas, 

 Havanna, and several cities of the L'nited States, he made 

 his way up country past Minneapolis, to visit a brother 

 who had gone out to settle there. Returning thence by 

 way of Niagara and Montreal to New York, he landed at 

 Liverpool, but soon went on to London and re-entered 

 the University. He joined several senior classes in com- 

 pany with his younger brother, whose education he was 

 then paying for. He had decided thenceforth to follow 

 up political economy and mental philosophy. 



His " Theory of Political Economy " was read as a 

 paper but not " approved" by the British Association at 

 Cambridge in 1862. It was published in 1 871, and 

 reached a second edition in 1879. Though it attracted 

 the attention of some eminent foreigners, it was coldly 

 received in England — the free use of mathematical 

 symbols placing it above the heads of those practically 

 engaged in commercial pursuits. In 1875, at the 

 British Association meeting at Bristol, he read another 

 well-known paper on the connection between sunspots and 

 the price of corn — bad crops of the latter, we need hardly 

 add, being followed by a high price and bad trade — and 

 though he spoke at first very doubtfully of his theory, yet 

 up to the time of his death, in 1882, he believed that a 

 great revival of trade would take place almost immediately, 

 to be followed by seven years of unprecedented prosperity, 

 and he had speculated accordingly. Gold, however, 

 alas, seems a more important factor than sunspots. 



A more famous paper still was his " Coal Question," 

 published in 1865. It was a question in which the whole 

 nation took an interest, and it supplied a text for one of 

 Mr. Gladstone's economical budgets. Accordingly it was 

 discussed in every paper, political, economical, or social, 

 and is perhaps better known now than any of his other 

 writings. 



His earlier writings had brought him in very little, and 

 in 1863 he had accepted the not very lucrative post of 

 tutor at Queen's College, Manchester. In 1866 he was 

 appointed Professor of Logic and Mental and Moral 

 Philosophy, and Cobden Professor of Political Economy, 

 at 300/. a year. A thorough teacher, he was much liked 

 by his pupils, never tiring of making them understand, 

 and watching their careers in after life. 



In December 1867 he married the daughter of Mr. 

 J. E. Taylor, founder and proprietor of the Manchester 

 Guardian. To her we are indebted for this well-arranged 

 selection of letters. 



In 1864 he published his first work on "Pure Logic,'' 

 chiefly founded upon Prof Boole's system. In 1S65 

 he invented a logical machine or abacus which he 



