136 



SCIENCE. 



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



affects the whole scheme, is that it is quite 

 unnecessary and superfluous. If, as the 

 law of the conservation of energy demon- 

 strates, all matter exists in a state of mo- 

 tion which is as unchangeable and inde- 

 structible as matter itself, is its one essen- 

 tial attribute, what more is required? Is 

 not this the true ' self-activity,' the true 

 hylozoism? Everything else follows from 

 this. Every higher manifestation is the re- 

 sult of aggregation, of compounding and re- 

 compounding — in a word, of organization, 

 first chemical, then biotic, then psychic. 

 All differences are diiferences of degree, and 

 the universe is one. 



The last question to be asked is : Why 

 pentalogic? Is the universe really a quin- 

 cunx ? Or has it been forced to take this 

 form ? We all know how strong the love 

 of symmetry is in man, and too great sym- 

 metry in a treatise claiming to be scientific 

 stamps it as artificial if nothing more. It 

 has been said that nature makes only in- 

 dividuals and man make species, genera, 

 families. The real world will not fit into 

 our square or round or oval frames. The 

 mind strains to make it fit. The search 

 for analogies has been universal. The 

 old cosmologies largely go by numbers — by 

 threes, or fours, or fives, or sevens, or 

 twelves. Eeasons for this are always at 

 hand — the number of fates, of points to the 

 compass, of fingers on the hand, of days in 

 the week, of tribes of Israel, of apostles, 

 etc. There has never been any difficulty 

 in making a philosophical system conform 

 to any of these charmed numbers. Instead, 

 therefore, of strengthening his argument 

 by referring (p. 112) to the well-known 

 origin of the decimal system in the number 

 of digits, and declaring that ' the universe 

 is pentalogic,' Major Powell has therebj' 

 greatly weakened it by an analogy devoid 

 of the least causal connection. Every 

 biologist knows that it was an accident that 

 in the phylogenetic development of the 



higher animals, from the many-boned fins 

 of fishes through the multidigitate Dijmeusta 

 to the five-toed Batrachians, the reduction 

 of digits happened to be arrested at this 

 stage. Eeally, though, it never was ar- 

 i-ested, but went on through the cloven- 

 footed ungulates, until iu the horse the 

 number was reduced to one ; so that the 

 horse is the most highly developed animal, 

 as Professor Cope and Dean Swift agreed 

 in asserting. But this theological argu- 

 ment is further demolished by the superi- 

 ority of other than pentalogic systems, the 

 duodecimal, and especially the octonal. If 

 four instead of five had been the magic 

 number no one can calculate the economy 

 it would have wrought in human affairs. 



The direct study of nature reveals every- 

 where irregularity, heterogeneity, amor- 

 phism, chaos ; and however laudable the 

 effort to reduce this anarchy to law and 

 this chaos to cosmos, any attempt in this 

 direction which goes beyoud the limit set 

 by concrete facts is, by minds trained to 

 the scientific habit, dismissed at once as not 

 science, whatever else it may be. 



It seems a pity that a book which is ob- 

 viously the product of such prolonged and 

 profound philosophical meditation by a 

 mind so well stored with scientific knowl- 

 edge and direct experience with the real 

 world should be handicapped in the manner 

 here pointed out. The above specifications 

 in this regard are not meant for criticisms. 

 They are made rather to prepare the reader 

 for what he may expect in the hope that he 

 may ignore them as far a^ possible and 

 persevere to the end, assuring him that, 

 read in the right spirit, this book will 

 furnish food for reflection and new views of 

 science and philosophy. Meanwhile we 

 commend to the author the two following 

 passages from his book : 



" For some purposes of discussion a 

 schematization may be of more or less 

 value, but it easily degenerates into illogical 



