June 24, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



865 



that it does not contain a single allusion to the 

 main purpose or the principal thesis of the 

 Isook reviewed. 



The purpose of the book is to teach liberality 

 of mind. The author summons us to look at 

 every question from many points of view, to 

 learn a wise reserve of judgment and opinion 

 and to grant that there may be much in a 

 subject which we do not know and which may 

 yet be important. 



The thesis of the book is that the natural 

 sciences are especially adapted to secure this 

 type of mind. The sciences of nature are not 

 opposed to the sciences of the soul, but should 

 form a whole with them and, through education, 

 penetrate more deeply into the spiritual life of 

 the present time. They are the productive, as 

 the historico-psychological sciences are the re- 

 productive, sciences and form the real motive 

 power of our civilization. 



In particular they are adapted to this end by 

 at once stimulating and giving balance to what 

 he terms the isolating and the superposing habit 

 of mind. What does he mean ? 



How shall the mind deal with its cerebral 

 baggage, its chaos of sense impressions and 

 ■experiences? It may consider these mental 

 presentations from a single point of view, 

 rationalize them and build them into a com- 

 plete and final system, or it may, in accordance 

 tvilh the interest of the hour, combine and recom- 

 bine them and ever hold these constructions 

 •open for new material and fresh types. 



So the contrasted terms ' Isolation ' and 

 ' Superposition,^ familiar in the principle of the 

 parallelogram of forces, vector analysis and the 

 like, already extended in their application by 

 Boltzmann and others (Wiedemann's Annalen, 

 57, p. 45, 1896), are here made to occupy a 

 •central place in the theory of knowledge (pp. 

 123, 130, etc.). 



In education the ' isolating ' habit should pre- 

 dominate. Here the great purpose is to form 

 the will, and for this purpose nothing is so well 

 adapted as prolonged attention to some conge- 

 nial subject from a single point of view. The 

 aim is, through concentration of attention and 

 •effort, to secure unity of effect. And this habit 

 -of mind will always be useful, especially in art, 

 religion and manners. 



But with this ideal of a closed culture, a com- 

 plete system, a final view of the world and of 

 life, young people would go out into the world 

 children, intolerant, quick in contradiction, un- 

 able to see a subject from more than one point 

 of view, judging everything by their narrow 

 system or their personal experience (p. 145). 



But education, and particularly scientific edu- 

 cation, has another side. It is continually bring- 

 ing new fields of experience to bear upon and 

 modify the old. Especially in advanced educa- 

 tion the man learns to value that which is essen- 

 tial to the purpose in hand and to care less about 

 the universal, the complete and the systematic. 

 Every man is continually coming into a new 

 world of interests and activities, and a part of , 

 the ' fitness ' which secures ' survival ' and pros- 

 perity is the ability to adjust himself to these 

 changes. A large part of the book, which as 

 a whole consists of detached popular papers and 

 lectures, is made up of examples of these two 

 habits of mind in science and in life. 



As would easily be inferred, the author warns 

 us against making too much of the atomistic 

 philosophy. Monism he discredits as being a 

 closed system, a final view. Materialism finds 

 no favor in his eyes for the same reason. 

 'Science is neither materialistic nor idealistic' 



The second book named above is at once the 

 more interesting and the more important, but 

 a synopsis of it is impossible, as it is itself a syn- 

 opsis of the whole field of science in the inter- 

 est of a spiritualistic philosophy. The author, 

 Raoul Pictet, is well known by his early work 

 in the liquefaction of gases. He, too, aims to 

 be useful, especially to educated young men, 

 whom he finds everywhere burdened with 

 doubt, embarrassed by a philosophy of nega- 

 tion, believing nothing, hoping nothing, ready 

 to abdicate personality. 



The source of the malady he finds in a prev- 

 alent materialism which these young men sup- 

 pose that science has somehow established. 

 So he writes some 600 vigorous, entertaining 

 pages to show that the materialistic position 

 has not been proved ; that, in fact, science dis- 

 owns it. 



The questions : Is man a machine ? Is he 

 free ? bring us to the physical question : Can all 



