282 



SCIENCE. 



The latest number of the journal of the Royal 

 Microscopical Journal is largely occupied with papers 

 discussing the question of angular aperture ; that by 

 Mr. Frank Crisp disposes of 60 pages, and another by 

 Professor E. Abbe occupies 30 pages. 



The editor of the American Journal of Microscopy 

 proposes to offer the whole of Mr. Crisp's paper in a 

 forthcoming number • those, therefore, who are inter- 

 ested in the subject can read it there in its integrity; 

 in the meantime, the resume to be found in another 

 part of this issue, may be found useful. We may re- 

 mind our readers that this discussion has continued for 

 the last ten years, with the prospect of a settlement of 

 the question as remote as ever. 



Probably the Counsel for Cadet Whittaker, at the 

 recent court-martial, was not aware of the magnitude 

 of the question when he asked Professor Piper, of 

 Chicago, " What is Angular Aperture ? " Perhaps Mr. 

 Park Benjamin, who is said to have prompted the 

 question, will himself answer the question. 



A writer in : ' The Journal of Science" defends 

 the old system of " Weights and Measures " as against 

 the metric system. He admits that in refined scien- 

 tific investigations the metric system has advantages, 

 but he is opposed to it for purposes of daily life and 

 retail trade. He maintains that the nomenclature and 

 the notation of the metric system requires reorganiz- 

 ing, with plain, simple and short names for its various 

 grades, to be expressed in such a manner as to banish 

 the decimal point beyond all ordinary transactions. 



It appears to us that the metric system requires 

 little apology for its defects, when, as the writer ad- 

 mits, the old system is complicated, and has a total 

 want of unity in its weights and measures. In Eng- 

 land, a peck of potatoes, apples, etc., is 20 lbs. in 

 Lancashire, 21 lbs. in Sheffield, 14 lbs. in Hudders- 

 field, and 16 lbs. in Halifax. A stone of anything is 

 in some districts 1 4, and in others 1 6 lbs. A gill in 

 the north of England is half, but in the south only a 

 quarter, of a pint. Almost every county has its pecu- 

 liar acre, and these examples might be multiplied. 



A writer in " The Astronomical Register" draws 

 attention to an error in the "Memoir" of Sir William 

 Herschell, and repeated by Professor Holden, in " Sir 

 William Herschell, his Life and Works" in styling 

 Sir William a baronet. 



We find Mr. James L. McCance is correct in mak- 

 ing the inference that Sir William Herschell was 

 created a knight, only. His son, Sir John Frederick 

 William, was created a baronet in 1838. 



We notice that Burke's Peerage affords little infor- 

 mation on the subject, giving no date when the great 

 astronomer was created a knight. Professor Holden 

 mentions the year 181 6 as the date of that event. 



THE UNITY OF NATURE. 



By the Duke of Argyll. 

 VIII. 



THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT 

 OF THE UNITY OF NATURE. 



If any one were to ask what is the origin of hunger or 

 what is the origin of thirst, the idleness of the question 

 would be felt at once. And yet hunger and thirst have 

 had an origin. But that origin cannot be separated from 

 the origin of Organic Life, and the absurdity of the ques- 

 tion lies in this — that in asking it, the possibility of mak- 

 ing such a separation is assumed. It involves either the 

 supposition, that there have been living creatures which 

 had no need of food and drink, or else the supposition, 

 that there have been living creatures which, having that 

 need, were nevertheless destitute of any corresponding 

 appetite. Both of these suppositions, although not in 

 the abstract inconceivable, are so contrary to all that we 

 know of the laws of Nature, that practically they are re- 

 jected as impossible. There always is, and there always 

 must be, a close correspondence between the intimations 

 of sensibility and the necessities of Life. Hunger is the 

 witness in sensation to the law which demands for all 

 living things a renewal of force from the assimilation of 

 external matter. To theorize about its origin is to theor- 

 ize about the origin of that law, and consequently about 

 the origin of embodied Life. The Darwinian formula is 

 not applicable here. Appetite cannot have arisen out of 

 the accidents of variation. It must have been coeval with 

 organization, of which it is a necessary part. The same 

 principle applies to all elementary appetites and affec- 

 tions, whether they be the lower appetites of the body or 

 the higher appetites of the mind. They exist because of 

 the existence of certain facts and of certain laws to 

 which they stand in a relation which is natural and neces- 

 sary, because it is a relation which is reasonable and fit- 

 ting. Really to understand how these appetites and 

 affections arose, it would be necessary to understand how 

 all the corresponding facts and laws came to be. But in 

 many cases — indeed in most cases — any such understand- 

 ing is impossible, because the facts and the laws to which 

 every appetite corresponds are in their very nature ulti- 

 mate. They are laws behind which, or beyond which, 

 we cannot get. The only true explanation of the appe- 

 tite lies in the simple recognition of the adjusted relations 

 of which it forms a part ; that is to say— in a recognition 

 of the whole system of Nature as a reasonable system, 

 and of this particular part of it as in harmony with the 

 rest. Any attempted explanation of it which does not 

 start with that recognition of the reasonableness of Nature 

 must be futile. Any explanation which not only fails in 

 this recognition, but assumes that the origin of anything 

 can be interpreted without it, must be not only futile but 

 erroneous. 



Men have been very busy of late in speculating on the 

 origin of Religion. In asking this question they gener- 

 ally make, often as it seems unconsciously, one or other 

 of two assumptions. One is the assumption that there 

 is no God, and that it must have taken a long time to in- 

 vent Him. The other is that there is a God, but that 

 men were born, or created, or developed, without any 

 sense or feeling of His existence, and that the acquisition 

 of such a sense must of necessity have been the work of 

 time. 



I do not now say that either of these assumptions is in 

 itself inconceivable, any more than the supposition that at 

 some former time there were creatures needing food and 

 drink and yet having no appetites to inform them of the 

 fact. But what I desire to point out is, first, that one or 

 other of these assumptions is necessarily involved in most 

 speculations on the subject, and secondly, that, to say the 

 least, it is possible that neither of these assumptions may 

 be true. Yet the method of inquiry to be pursued re- 



