104 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 55. 



that students are expected to acquire such 

 knowledge of physics as they get, by the use of 

 this book, and many pages of the text appear 

 to strengthen this view. A decade or more ago 

 it was quite a popular notion that the way to 

 treat physics was to begin, especially if the 

 learners were young children, with laboratory 

 exercises. The student was to find everything 

 out for himself, and all the great truths of 

 physical science were to be rediscovered every 

 day in the secondary schools. No greater 

 farce than this was ever enacted, for it was 

 Seriously approved and attempted by many of 

 the great masters of pedagogy. It has now 

 joined the host of other abandoned theories, at 

 least as far as those who really teach physics 

 are concerned, and it cannot be assumed that it 

 still survives, or indeed, that it ever existed at 

 the well-known institution from which this 

 book came. It must be, therefore, that the 

 volume is intended to be used as a guide in 

 laboratory practice which supplements text- 

 book and lecture instruction. From this stand- 

 point the text contains much that might well be 

 omitted, for it mvist almost necessarily have 

 been included in the text-book or lecture work; 

 and, although the plan may, and doubtless 

 does, suit the scheme of instruction and avail- 

 able facilities in the institution in which it was 

 prepared, a wider constituency could be served 

 by assuming fewer perfectly made instruments 

 and throwing the student on his own resources 

 to a greater extent, in the matter of adjusting, 

 designing and assembling the apparatus he is to 

 use. 



The Intellectual Rise in Electricity. By Paek 

 Benjamin. D. Appleton & Company. 8°. 

 Pp. 600. 



In the preparation and publication of this 

 volume Mr. Benjamin has done a work for 

 which all interested in physical science, and es- 

 pecially in electricity, will thank him. In these 

 days few men capable of properly recording the 

 progress of scientific discovery possess, at the 

 same time, the instinct of the historian to a de- 

 gree necessary for the making of a book like 

 this. Few will deny that a knowledge of the 

 history of a discovery, the circumstances and 

 conditions under which it was made, and par- 



ticularly the personality of the discoverer, add 

 enormously to the interest of the fact itself and, 

 besides, has its practical value in serving to fix 

 the fact more definitely and more lastingly in 

 one's memory. In the preparation of text- 

 books the historical and biographical inclina- 

 tions are usually either entirely suppressed or 

 held severely in check and the student who de- 

 pends on them alone, finds only the cold facts, 

 presented in their logical or scientific sequence 

 and stripped entirely of the charm of personal 

 and chronological relationship. The wise in- 

 structor makes up for this deficiency and to him * 

 Mr. Benjamin's work will be doubly welcome. 

 In making it an enormous amount of labor has 

 been expended in the consultation of original 

 sources of information, of many ages and many 

 tongues. It is practically a history of electric- 

 ity and magnetism from the earliest traditions 

 to the end of the last century. But the history 

 of one branch of science is like the history of one 

 nation or one race ; it cannot be written alone, 

 and this book of necessity involves a study of 

 the development of all physical science. When 

 one recalls the names that appear, Thales, Aris- 

 totle, Archimedes, Roger Bacon, Peregrinus, 

 Porta, Cardan, Gilbert, Galileo, von Guericke, 

 Boyle, Hooke, Newton, Halley, Gray, Nollet, 

 Franklin, together with many others, it be- 

 comes clear that in telling their lives one must 

 tell the history of natural philosophy, and the 

 history of natural philosophy is largely a his- 

 tory of the intellectual development of the 

 world. This doubtless suggested to the author 

 the peculiar and rather unfortunate title which 

 he has fixed upon his work. The account be- 

 gins with a chapter on the earliest traditions 

 relating to the ' amber phenomenon ' and to 

 the lodestone, which have always been consid- 

 ered as in some degree related to each other, 

 and a knowledge of which may have existed 

 among prehistoric people. What was known 

 among the Chinese, early Egyptians and Greeks 

 is discussed and the subject is followed in its 

 emergence from the periods of myth and legend 

 or tradition to that of real and fairly authentic 

 history. The discoveries of Columbus are dis- 

 cussed and two excellent chapters are devoted 

 to the work of Gilbert, the real father of the sci- 

 ence. The relations of Francis Bacon and Gil- 



