578 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 177 



of its benefactors ; and. in the case of those whose 

 lives are uneventful, this can only be known from 

 their own private papers and those of their friends. 

 Jevons was not, indeed, a man of the highest 

 genius, and his works are not likely to make an 

 epoch in any department of knowledge ; but they 

 are fresh in thought and often original, and near- 

 ly always provocative of thought in his readers. 

 Moreover, he wrote a clear and easy style, which 

 makes his letters interesting from a literary point 

 of view. 



Most of the letters in the collection before us 

 were written to his relatives and personal friends, 

 though many of the later ones are addressed to 

 correspondents in the learned world. The most 

 interesting part of the book to us is that which 

 treats of the author's education and his early labors 

 in the mental and social sciences. William Stanley 

 Jevons was born in Liverpool in 1835, and met his 

 death by drowning, at Bulverhythe, near Has- 

 tings, in 1882 ; so that his life covered a period 

 of not quite forty-seven years. His father was a 

 merchant, but failed while Stanley was a boy, 

 after which the family were in only moderate cir- 

 cumstances. Stanley's mother died while he was 

 very young, and he was taught at home by a gov- 

 erness until he was more than ten years old, when 

 he was sent to school in Liverpool. At the age of 

 fifteen he went to London to attend University 

 college school, and afterwards studied at the col- 

 lege itself till he reached the age of nineteen. At 

 that time he was offered the position of assayer in 

 the mint at Sydney, in Australia ; and, though at 

 first averse to taking it, he ultimately accepted 

 and retained the post for four years. The duties 

 of the office seem never to have been much to his 

 taste, and he had not held it long when he began 

 to entertain designs and aspirations which ren- 

 dered a return to England necessary. What these 

 designs were he makes known in a letter to his 

 sisters. He writes that in his inmost soul he has 

 but " one wish, or one intention, viz., to be a pow- 

 erful good in the world. To be good, to live with 

 good intentions towards others, is open to all. . . . 

 To be powerfully good, that is, to be good, not to- 

 wards one, or a dozen, or a hundred, but towards 

 a nation or the world, is what now absorbs me. 

 But this assumes the possession of the power. . . . 

 I also think, that, if in any thing I have the 

 chance of acquiring the power, it is that I have 

 some originality, and can strike out new things " 

 (pp. 95, 96). 



It appears, also, from another of his letters, that 

 he had also chosen the field in which he was to 

 work ; for he writes that he intends " exchanging 

 the physical for the moral and logical sciences, in 

 w hich my forte will really be found to lie." 



With such aspirations as these, Jevons could not 

 be content to remain in Australia ; and according- 

 ly in 1859 he left his post at Sydney, and returned 

 to England by way of Panama and the United 

 States. On reaching home, he returned to study 

 at University college, where he remained till he 

 had taken the degree of M.A., devoting himself 

 mainly to mental and social philosophy. After 

 finishing his studies, he was for some time in 

 doubt as to how he was to get his living, but was 

 soon offered a position as tutor in Owens college, 

 Manchester, which he accepted, being then twen- 

 ty-eight years of age. A few years later he was 

 appointed professor of philosophy and political 

 economy in the same institution, and not long 

 afterwards he married. 



He had now attained a position which enabled 

 him to carry on his chosen work, and he had al- 

 ready published some essays which had given 

 him a reputation as an economist and statistician. 

 The most important of these was the one on the 

 coal-question, in which he warned his country- 

 men that their supply of coal was not inexhausti- 

 ble. These essays did not at first attract the notice 

 he expected, and, as he had not then attained his 

 professorship, he seems to have suffered much 

 from depression of spirits. Yet he did not swerve 

 in the least from his chosen path ; for he writes in 

 his journal as follows: "Whence is this feeling 

 that even failure in a high aim is better than suc- 

 cess in a lower one ? It must be from a higher 

 source, for all lower nature loves and worships 

 success and cheerful life. Yet the highest success 

 that I feel I can worship is that of adhering to 

 one's aims, and risking all" (p. 218). The next 

 day after this was written, he received a letter 

 from Mr. Gladstone, warmly commending his 

 pamphlet on the coal-question ; and from this 

 time onward his reputation continued to grow. 



Of the author's works, however, we have no 

 space to speak at length. We cannot accord him 

 a place among the great thinkers of the world, 

 and it seems to us that he tried to be more original 

 than he had the power to be, though his works are 

 very suggestive. His mathematical theory of po- 

 litical economy has not been accepted by any lead- 

 ing thinker, and has remained thus far without 

 influence on the development, of the science. He 

 urges that economical phenomena can be treated 

 mathematically, because they can be expressed in 

 terms of more and less ; but, in order to treat them 

 mathematically, we must be able to say how much 

 more or less, and this, in the case of human de- 

 sires and efforts, is impossible. Again : Jevons 

 seems to have thought, that, in his doctrine of 

 ' the substitution of similars,' he had presented an 

 entirely new theory of reasoning; whereas the 



