REVIEWS — MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 373 



the powers as well as the thoughts of men are " widened with the pro- 

 cess of the suns." 



Although this dissertation is headed " A General View of Mathe- 

 matical and Physical Science," into one important branch thereof, 

 namely, the abstract part, or pure mathematics, Professor Forbes has ' 

 declined to enter. He says — 



The mechanical and experimental sciences alone constitute a body of knowledge 

 so large that it is a responsibility sufficient for one person to attempt to grasp 

 them all, and to set forth in order the steps of progress and improvement which 

 have been so rapid and even so startling. Since some of these have scarcely as 

 yet been historically digested, and the broad features of contemporary discovery 

 have not been gradually separated by the judgment of an impartial posterity 

 from those slighter though praiseworthy details, which lapse of time and advance 

 of knowledge will throw into the shadows of distance, — this most laborious task 

 falls principally upon the reviewer. The length and breadth of the subject of 

 natural philosophy, and the cumbrous and scattered depositories of knowledge in 

 which its records must be sought, combine to render not only the undertaking an 

 arduous one, but the result of it a good deal more bulky than might be desired, 

 or than was easily possible, in dealing with the glorious, but compact, history of 

 Newton's age. It might be compared to the difference between writing a history 

 of the Jews or Romans and that of the whole of modern Europe. 



The mere magnitude of the undertaking, then, might well excuse me from 

 entering upon the cognate, but exceedingly distinct, subjects of the logic of induc- 

 tive discovery and the progress of the pure mathematics. But an equally sound 

 reason might be found in my consciousness of inadequacy to undertake, whatever 

 had been the dimensions of my work, a threefold scheme of such magnitude and 

 difficulty. I do not think that any one person could be found to treat the whole 

 as it ought to be treated, and I am certain that I am not that person. 



Against such a plea, so urged, nothing can be said, yet it is impos- 

 sible to help regretting that it should be so. It is true that analysis 

 must always always be subordinate to philosophy, and its very nature 

 is dictated by the requirements of its application to physics ; true also 

 that a physical problem has sometimes suggested the general method 

 in analysis which includes its solution as a particular case, and the 

 practical value of a process is proportional to the number and impor- 

 tance of the problems to which it applies ; yet we should remember 

 that every epoch of great physical discovery has been immediately pre- 

 ceded by some grand extension of analysis, and that philosophy has 

 too often long lain helpless till the analyst furnished her with the 

 means of moving. Without the algebra of Descartes and Newton's 

 method of series, Newton's Mechanics would have been barren of con- 

 sequences, and without the integral calculus modern science would be 

 reduced to a skeleton. Just as the immense development of our 

 engineering and commercial enterprise was due to the invention of the 

 slide-rest and the improvements of machinery consequent on this ; just 



