70 



NA TURE 



[July 15, 1922 



Tebb, Thudichum (p. 187), Strecker (p. 188), Zeisel 

 (pp. 219-221) are all spelt more or less inaccurately. 

 We do not for a moment suggest that such trivial 

 errors in typography constitute a serious blemish on an 

 admirable work ; we mention them rather in illustra- 

 tion of what we believe to be a national peculiarity. 

 Chemical errors seem nearly all to have been collected 

 in a list of errata, but the structural formulae of 

 quinine (p. 37) and of trypafiavine (p. 109) still require 

 revision. It is perhaps open to discussion whether 

 quinotoxine (p. 39) can be strictly described as the 

 ketone corresponding to quinine, and whether, in 

 French, phenyl potassium sulphate (p. 236) should 

 really be an " ether sulfonique " (but here we may be 

 getting on dangerous ground). 



Prof. Fourneau's book should find a place wherever 

 organic chemistry is taught to advanced students. It 

 may be warmly recommended to the pharmacologist 

 as a source of information on the chemistry of his 

 subject. To recommend to technical chemists a book 

 by the former director of the Poulenc laboratories 

 seems superfluous. George Barger. 



The Hegelian Method and Modern Science. 



The Ethical Theory of Hegel : A Study 0/ the Philosophy 

 of Right. By Prof. H. A. Reyburn. Pp. xx + 271. 

 (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1921.) 8s. 6d. net. 



THE " Rechtsphilosophie " was the last of the 

 works published by Hegel in his lifetime. 

 Originally it consisted of the rigorous, consecutively 

 demonstrated, chain of numbered paragraphs, which 

 he used as the framework of his courses of lectures. 

 In the form in which we now know it in the collected 

 edition published in 1833 two years after his death, 

 the editors have added the notes and emendations, 

 the celebrated Zusatze, with which Hegel was accus- 

 tomed to elucidate his theory in lecturing. 



Prof. Reyburn in this admirable study which he 

 entitles Hegel's Ethical Theory, deals mainly with the 

 • ' Rechtsphilosophie " but treats it as a general introduc- 

 tion to the whole philosophy of Hegel. It is doubtful 

 if for the modern student he could have chosen a 

 better way. Hegel had no ethical theorv in the 

 technical meaning of the term. His philosophy is 

 ethical theory and his ethical theory is his philosophy. 

 It cannot be otherwise if we once accept the view that 

 the real is the rational and the rational is the real. 

 If there be no realm of existence outside of and in- 

 different to value there is no need for a transcendental 

 theory of morality like Kant's or a utilitarian principle 

 like Bentham's. 



The study of Hegel is of peculiar interest at the 

 NO. 275O, VOL. I IO] 



present time, and more especially to those who are 

 conscious of the new methodology of science which 

 is manifesting itself in the most modern mathematical 

 and physical theories. So striking indeed is this that 

 had Hegel's place in the history of philosophy been 

 after instead of before the great scientific achieve- 

 ments of the end of the nineteenth and the opening 

 of the twentieth centuries, it would have been im- 

 possible to resist the belief that tin- Hegelian dialectic 

 had been suggested directly to its inventor by the 

 discoveries of science. What finer illustration of 

 identitv in difference, of advance by negation, of the 

 union of opposites in a higher synthesis, is to be found 

 than that afforded by the electrical theory of matter ? 

 There have been repeated attempts since Hegel to 

 reform philosophy by introducing into it what has 

 been called scientific method, but the great reform 

 which we are witnessing to-day is the introduction 

 of philosophical method into science. Its keynote is 

 that the concrete only is real. Science is discovering 

 that there is no means of giving self-hood, consistency, 

 independence, to the abstract, and this is the alpha 

 and omega of the Hegelian philosophy. 



Anyone who desires an easy introduction to the 

 thought of this most powerful and yet most difficult 

 philosopher of the modern period may be recommended 

 to read Prof. Reyburn 's book. 



H. W. C. 



Soaps and Proteins. 

 Soaps and Proteins : Their Colloid Chemistry in Theory 

 and Practice. By Prof. M. II. Fischer and others. 

 Pp. ix + 272. (Xew York: J. Wiley and Sons, 

 Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall. Ltd., 1921.) 

 245. net. 



THE principal author of the volume under notice, 

 who is a physiologist, states in his preface that 

 he is principally interested in the colloid chemistry of 

 the proteins, that this is too complex for direct analysis, 

 and that therefore he turned to the soaps, as sufficiently 

 analogous to the proteins in their colloidal behaviour 

 to enable one " from the surer ground of the soaps 

 ... to step over into the more slippery one of the 

 proteins I'hi2 visw of the possibilities of reasoning 

 by analogy will strike most people as decidedly light- 

 hearted, even in cases where the results to be thus 

 applied are unassailable, a condition which cannot be 

 claimed for the author's views on the nature ol soap- 

 liquid systems. 



The experimental work described consists in the 

 preparation of a very large number of pure soaps (in 

 the widest sense) and their examination under practi- 

 cally one aspect — their power to form gels with water 



