124 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 213. 



east to west, as men run along the surface 

 of the earth at will. But the heavenly 

 bodies move by constantly repeated paths, 

 and so primitive man invents myths to ex- 

 plain these repeated paths." 



" Fallacies are," as our author clearly 

 points out, " erroneous inferences in relation 

 to things known. If there were no realities 

 about which inferences are made, fallacies 

 would not be possible. The history of sci- 

 ence is the discovery of the simple and the 

 true ; in its progress fallacies are dispelled 

 and certitude remains." 



These extracts from Powell's book will 

 show how much that is valuable and 

 suggestive and instructive is to be found 

 in it. I regret that I am forced to form 

 a very different estimate of the construc- 

 tive part of the book, for, as the author 

 expounds his own system of philosophy, he 

 seems to me to be one of those ungracious 

 pastors who, while pointing out to others the 

 steep and thorny way, themselves the 

 primrose path of dalliance tread, and reck 

 not their own read. 



The book begins with a delightful and 

 instructive anecdote of a party of Indians 

 throwing stones across a caiion. The dis- 

 tance from the brink to the opposite wall 

 did not seem very great, yet no man could 

 throw a stone across the chasm, though 

 Chuar, the Indian Chief, could strike the 

 opposite wall very near its brink. The 

 stones thrown by others fell into the depths 

 of the canon. " I discussed these feats 

 with Chuar, leading him to an explanation 

 of gravity. Now Chuar believed that he 

 could throw a stone much farther along the 

 level of the plateau than over the caiion. 

 His first illusion was thus one ver}' common 

 among mountain travelers — -an underesti- 

 mate of the distance of towering and mas- 

 sive rocks when the ej'e has no intervening 

 object to divide space into parts as measure 

 of the whole." 



" I did not venture,' ' says our author, " to 



correct Chuar's judgment, but simply sought 

 to discuss his method of reasoning. " 



He explained that the stone could not go 

 far over the caiion, because the empty 

 space pulled it down, and, interpreting 

 subjective fear of falling as an objective 

 pull, he pointed out how strongly the empty 

 void pulls upon the man who stands on the 

 brink of a lofty cliff. 



" ISTow, in the language of Chuar's people, 

 a wise man is said to be a traveler, for such 

 is the metaphor by which they express great 

 wisdom, as they suppose that a man must 

 learn by journeying much. So in the moon- 

 light of the last evening's sojourn in the 

 camp on the brink of the caiion, I told 

 Chuar that he was a great traveler, and 

 that I knew of two other great travelers 

 among the seers of the East, one by the 

 name of Hegel, and another by the name of 

 Spencer, and that I should ever remember 

 these three wise men, who spoke like words 

 of wisdom, for it passed through my mind 

 that all three of these philosophers had rei- 

 fied void and founded a philosophy thereon. " 



The system of philosophy which it is the 

 aim of this book to expound is, so far as I 

 can gather it from a single reading, about 

 as follows : 



"It was more than chance," our author 

 tells us, " that produced the decimal system, 

 for the universe is pentalogic, as all of the 

 fundamental series discovered in nature are 

 pentalogic by reason of the five concomitant 

 properties. The origin of the decimal sj'S- 

 tem was the recognition by primitive man 

 of the reciprocal pentalogic system involved 

 in the two hands of the human body." P. 

 112. 



"Thus, in geonomy, p. 43, we deal with an 

 earth comj)osed of five encapsulated globes 

 enclosing a nucleus, and presenting: (1) the 

 centrosphere, (2) the lithosphere, (3) the 

 hydrosphere, (4) the atmosphere, (5) the 

 etherosphere." 



" In the human mind, again, we have the 



