2b4: Notices respecting New Books. 



hands of government ; suitability of epoch ; sympathy of others ; 

 persecution ; employment as teacher, lecturer, or examiner ; acting 

 as assistant to other investigators ; age ; marriage ; connexion with 

 scientific societies, and "international encouragement." It is 

 plain that many of these circumstances may be unfavourable as 

 well as favourable to scientific research ; and that is how Dr. Gore 

 treats them; but putting that on one side, we can scarcely be 

 wrong in supposing that these " circumstances " were treated of 

 just as they occurred to him. There is no apparent attempt at 

 classification, and no reason why the list should not be made longer : 

 e.g. w 7 hy not include amongst the "circumstances" the character 

 of the philosopher's father, or of his mother, whether he was an 

 only child or had brothers and sisters, whether he was a teetotaller 

 or given to wine and strong drinks, and so on ? The fact is that 

 there is no end to such a list ; every circumstance of a man's life 

 may be looked at in such a way as to suggest the question, Is it 

 favourable to scientific research? But there are only a few cir- 

 cumstances in which this point of view is not very artificial; and 

 those few Dr. Gore has neither singled out nor discussed. A 

 careful and discriminating account of the influence exercised by 

 such " circumstances " as encouragement at the hands of Govern- 

 ment, connexion with a scientific society, or active employment as 

 a teacher, would have been instructive and pertinent ; and this he 

 has hardly attempted. But when it comes to the influence of 

 marriage on scientific research, the wrong question is raised. In 

 most cases, it is true, a man can only support a wife and family 

 by spending all his strength on his profession ; and, of course, 

 absorption in a laborious profession is inconsistent with scientific 

 research. In these cases, marriage is simply incompatible with 

 research. If, however, we suppose this urgent necessity not to 

 exist, the question is then, not what the influence of marriage, but 

 what the influence of the woman married will be. If the philo- 

 sopher, for example, marries X, she will do her best to keep him 

 to his crucibles ; but if Y, she will make him frequent kettledrums 

 and other scenes of laborious amusement. The influence of marriage 

 on research, it would seem, cannot be discussed without a previous 

 classification of the characters of women ; and this, it is needless 

 to say, Dr. Gore does not attempt. To tell us that Lady Hamilton 

 helped her husband to write out his lectures (p. 280), that Mrs. 

 Flaxman was very much annoyed with Sir Joshua Reynolds for 

 telling her husband that by marriage lie was ruined for an artist 

 (p. 281), throws little light on the subject, not much more than 

 comes from the luminous fact that twenty thousand men and 

 women went to see Buffon buried (p. 203). Oddly enough, too, 

 Dr. Gore groups his examples as if on purpose to show that men 

 become active in scientific research independently of these " cir- 

 cumstances:" thus, some eminent men of science have been rich, 

 others poor; souk; have been well educated, others the reverse; 

 some have enjoyed the patronage of their sovereign, which others 

 have been entirely without, and so on. The only thing that can 

 be said appears to be that extreme poverty, absolute want of edu- 



