July 16, 1886.] 



SCIEMJE. 



65 



husband, commanding her sons, and ruling the 

 rest as she pleases. The remarks just made apply, 

 as above said, to the mothers of sons only. 



Again, take the case of the widow from infancy : 

 shorn of much that women vahie in the world, 

 dressed in coarse clothing, deprived of her orna- 

 ments, compelled to fast till health breaks down, 

 made to subsist on the coarsest of food, kept out 

 of what amusements come in the way of the rest 

 of the household, forced into being the unpaid 

 drudge of the family, held to be the legitimate 

 butt of the ill nature of all, considered fit only to 

 amuse the children, openly called and taught to 

 think herself a creature of ill omen, — this being 

 the cause of all the rest of her sorrows, — super- 

 stition has indeed nowhere else shown more 

 clearly its power to pervert the reason of man. 

 How much the women dread widowhood is ex- 

 hibited to the full in the fact that to call a woman 

 a widow is to offer her a dhe insult, and from her 

 earliest childhood a girl is taught to pray that she 

 may die while yet the red spot, which is the sign 

 of the married state, remains on her forehead. 



It must not be thought, however, that an Indian 

 woman's life is necessarily all unhappiness. Hu- 

 man nature in her case is as capable of adapting 

 itself to circumstances as elsewhere ; and since the 

 ultimate gauge of permanent individual happiness 

 is suitability of temperament to immediate sur- 

 roundings, many a woman in India must be so 

 constituted as to be quite content with the life she 

 is called upon to lead, and in fact to enjoy it. 

 "When a girl is naturally sedate, yielding, and 

 good-natured, of blunt susceptibilities, limited 

 aspirations, and strong religious emotions, she 

 will give in to her mother-in-law, avoid quarrel- 

 ling without effort, follow the course of life laid 

 down for her without demur, thoroughly believe 

 it to be the only desirable life to lead, find the 

 innumerable restrictions imposed upon her not 

 unwelcome, and become contented with her con- 

 tracted sphere, and, if those about her happen to 

 be kind, be quite as happy as any girl in the 

 world. But the potentialities for misery involved 

 in her surroundings are enormous, and, where 

 such is the case, to argue that misery is not the 

 frequent result would be to argue against human 

 nature. 



Such is the life of Indian women as described 

 by Captain Temple ; and there seems to be little to 

 deprive it of its gloom, except the frequent holi- 

 days and the feasts that attend them. He tells us, 

 however, that the women themselves are the 

 strongest supporters of the social system which 

 dooms them to such a hfe ; and this he attributes 

 in part to religious sentiment, and in part to the 

 well-known fact, that women, all the world over, 



are the strongest advocates of social rules and 

 ceremonies. 



As to the best methods of improving the 

 women's lot, the author of the paper spoke some- 

 what hesitatingly. He thinks that something 

 may be accomplished by the native monotheistic 

 church known as the Brahmo Somaj ; and he 

 alluded favorably to the efforts of certain mis- 

 sions of European origin, and to the society or- 

 ganized under the auspices of Lady Dufferin for 

 furnishing medical aid to women. He took occa- 

 sion to reprobate the practice of child-marriage, 

 and expressed the hope that it may be disallowed 

 by law. There is now pending in the Indian 

 courts a case in which the question of the legality 

 of such marriage has been raised ; and if the de- 

 cision should be against its legality, an important 

 reform would thus be wrought. It is evident, 

 however, that the main cause of the evils that 

 Captain Temple has pointed out, is the system of 

 caste ; and so long as this system prevails, there 

 can be no satisfactory improvement in the life of 

 Indian women. 



MINCHIN'S STATICS. 



In the third edition of his valuable treatise on 

 statics, of which the second volume has recently 

 appeared. Professor Minchin has enlarged the 

 work by about two - thirds of its previous 

 amount. The new matter is almost all con- 

 tained in the second volume, and consists largely 

 in an exposition of the theory of screws, a chap- 

 ter on astatic equilibrium, and very large additions 

 to the chapters on the theory of attraction, electro- 

 statics, and the theory of strains and stresses. 

 There are also other important additions, notably 

 in the chapter on virtual work. The theory of 

 attraction is far more extensively treated than in 

 the second edition, the space devoted to it being 

 123 pages as against 37. Spherical harmonics are 

 introduced in the present edition, and it may be 

 mentioned that the author proposes and employs 

 the term 'Laplacian' to denote a Laplace's co- 

 efficient. 



In the preface to the second volume the author 

 lays stress on the fact that he has, in the chapter 

 on attractions, explicitly adopted the C. G. S. sys- 

 tem, in order to constantly fix the mind of the 

 student on the concrete reahties for which his sym- 

 bols stand. This is undoubtedly most desirable ; 

 but we cannot help suspecting that the importance 

 of this and similar points of discipline, as objects 

 of a scientific treatise, are overestimated by Pro- 

 fessor Minchin and other English writers. It is 



A treatise on statics. By George M. Minchen. Vol. ii. 

 Oxford, Clarendon pr., 1886. 8°. 



