37* REVIEWS — MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



as every enlargement of the domain of experimental discovery may be 

 traced to some refinement of instruments or modes of observing ; so 

 has the progress of physical science been related to that of analytical. 

 At the present time the two appear to have, unhappily, somewhat 

 parted company ; analysis is going its own way without seeming to 

 heed its companion,- and philosophy is dragging heavily from the deser- 

 tion : or, to quit metaphor, most of our sciences have now reached that 

 point where the problems pressing for solution involve no doubt or 

 difficulty as to the principles to be employed, but are irreducible 

 simply from the enormous difficulty and complication of the analytical 

 processes which at present are at our command. Whether the dead- 

 lock is to be got over by the laborious calculations of algorithms — such 

 as tabulating the values of numerous definite integrals — or whether our 

 known methods are to give rise to a new one, which shall at once 

 include and supersede them — who can tell 1 



Apart from its rendering the history incomplete, Professor Forbes' s 

 determination is the more to be regretted from the biographical form 

 which he has adopted, as an apparent injustice arises to individuals 

 whose analytical labors (apart from merit on their own abstract ground) 

 should claim, though indirectly, a share in the triumphs of science. 

 The man who invents a theorem may be, even by its practical outcome, 

 more praiseworthy than he who has made a successful experiment or 

 even determined a natural law. 



In filling in the outline which we have already quoted, Professor 

 Forbes has had before him the " History of the Inductive Sciences," 

 and the " Kosmos," works of which praise would be an impertinence ; 

 he has, however, wisely evaded coming into competition with these by 

 the plan he has adopted of connecting the history of each science with 

 the biographies of those who contributed to its rise and progress. 

 Whatever is thus lost in the continuity of the history is atoned for by 

 the human interest with which it becomes invested. Some one has 

 remarked that the life of a man of science rarely presents any incidents 

 of interest apart from his science ; reciprocally, it is here shewn that 

 the history of science can only be thoroughly understood by aid of the 

 lives of those who have spent themselves in her service. In addition 

 to the physical sciences, Professor Forbes has included the mechanical 

 and kindred arts, and we cannot resist quoting the following eloquent 

 passage, which justifies (if justification were necessary) his course : — 



My chief reason for including such subjects as the steam-engine, the strength 

 of materials, and some great examples of construction, and the electric telegraph, 

 is that these important practical improvements are both historically and logically 

 interwoven with the progress of pure and abstract Physics. They have besides 



