‘ oo 
418 
to stop. But since, in fact, it keeps on, there 
must be a cause for this mysterious behavior. 
The cause the author thus describes: ‘‘ Little 
as is known of the action of air and the ethe- 
real substance, . . . and novel as is the thought 
of them as continuers of motion, no violence is 
done to the current understanding of their na- 
ture by imagining them as in the act of urging 
forward an object enveloped in them. ‘The ob- 
ject cannot be made to move without causing 
much that is before it to move in the same 
direction, and much also to be dissipated lat- 
erally. Thus by opening a path is resistance 
lessened. . . . Now consider what must simul- 
taneously take place in the rear. A space must 
be vacated by the object, and as quickly filled 
up by an in-rushing from all directions ex- 
cept that of the object. To the confluence of 
forces so formed, there is no outlet except in 
the direction of the object: consequently this 
direction they take, impelling the object for- 
ward’’ (pp. 59, 60). Thus it is that the ball 
moves: the air pushesit. It follows, of course, 
that no body would follow the first law of 
motion in a vacuum, and that air not only 
resists a body’s motion, but also helps it to 
move; and so, in company with the various 
‘less stable substances’ that exist in space, 
and of which, as we learn, ‘there must be 
many besides heat and light,’ the air or some 
other gas forms the necessary condition for the 
continuance of any motion. Much more talk 
of a similar sort follows, about inertia and 
gravity and like traditional conceptions, for 
which our author has new explanations, quite 
as clear and satisfactory as the foregoing. 
Now, such passages illustrate the truth that 
the possibility of Keeley-motor investors also 
illustrates, a truth painful but indubitable ; 
viz., that high intelligence, coupled with con- 
siderable learning, does as yet, in our enlight- 
ened land, neither prevent a man from having 
the wildest notions about the simplest matters 
of elementary physical science, nor enable him 
prudently to conceal his ignorance. There 
are shrewd and educated men to be found, who 
will invest money in impossible motors; and 
there are ingenious and not unlearned men to 
be found, who, like our author, will talk in 
such confused and ignorant fashion about the 
simplest matters of science, which ought to 
have been made clear to them in their school- 
boy days: yet about other matters they do 
speak like men of sense. Their defect is not 
lack of mental power, but simply gross igno- 
rance. Such speech at this time of day is dis- 
heartening. But possibly students of science, 
and more especially teachers of science, may 
SCIENCE. 
[Vou. III., No. 
do well to consider occasionally, in view of 
such ingenious rubbish as this, what a work 
they have yet to do, before the public mind is 
so well trained in elementary conceptions that 
nonsense like the foregoing shall be not merely 
nonsense, but impossible to men of our au-— 
thor’s intelligence. Good.elementary instruc- 
tion in physical science is certainly very much 
needed ; and here is an illustration of the need, 
—an extraordinary mind, condemned to seem- 
ingly hopeless error, on important questions 
of the most elementary sort, all for the lack of 
a few hours of sensible teaching in boyhood 
or since. Meanwhile let the case serve as a 
warning to those who imagine that our Ameri- 
can public is to receive useful instruction in 
elementary physical science from the now pop- 
ular works of the great teacher of the evolu- 
tion-philosophy. Here is a very good student 
indeed, diligent, logical, and ingenious. What 
philosopher could hope for a better? He has 
carefully studied Mr. Spencer’s works, and 
this is what he has got out of them. If, he 
tells us, an object were pushed into an abso- 
lute vacuum with any velocity whatever, we 
are obliged by the necessities of our thought 
to suppose that this object ‘‘ would therefore 
be stopped by the withdrawal of external in- 
fluence.’’ Such, Mr. Spencer may notice, is 
the effect of a use of the ‘universal postu- 
late’ by a very devout student, who seems to 
accept so much of the Spencerian system 
without reserve. The effect of further doses 
of the ‘universal postulate *® upon our popu- 
lar thought in America can only be. conjec- 
tured. Deliver us from it, merciful powers ! 
It is only just to add, that Mr. Lacy, while 
rejecting the doctrine of the unknowable, is not 
opposed to the philosophic foundation of the 
positive Spencerian doctrines viewed generally, 
and finds his objections ‘‘ not incompatible with 
estimation of the ‘Synthetic philosophy’ as 
perhaps the noblest speculative product of a 
single mind.’’ We cannot do better than to 
leave the product and the worshipper in this 
happy attitude towards each other. 
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF ALABAMA. 
Geological survey of Alabama. Report for the years 
1881 and 1882, embracing an account of the agricul- 
tural features of the state. By EUGENE ALLEN 
SmitH, Ph.D., state geologist. 
W. D. Brown & Co., pr., 1883. 615 p. 8°. 
Tue law organizing the geological survey of 
Alabama requires from the state geologist, 
among other things, a report upon the agricul- 
tural resources of the state; and the’ present 
: 61. 
Montgomery, 
> 
