i88i.J 
Analyses of Books . 163 
servation which would show that the finer and more complex 
forms of vital motion could exist otherwise than in the dense 
material of organic life. True; we cannot demonstrate or even 
conceive of an organised gas or organised ether, and yet he 
adduces certain analogies which may point to a different conclu- 
sion. He says, “ The observer with a deaf ear only recognises 
the vibration of sound as long as it is visible and may be felt, 
bound up with heavy matter. Are our senses, in reference to 
life, like the deaf ear in this respedt ? 
The ledture on “Thought in Medicine” gives some striking 
instances of the amusing arrogance of metaphysicians. “Scho- 
penhauer calls himself a Mont Blanc by the side of a mole-heap 
when he compares himself with a natural philosopher.” 
It must be remembered that Prof, Helmholtz distinguishes 
between metaphysics and philosophy. He lays down the prin- 
ciple that a “ metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion 
or a concealed experimental conclusion.” 
The discourse on “Academic Freedom in German Universi- 
ties ” is not laid before the reader in its original state. With the 
consent of the author, the translator has omitted some passages 
and modified others which he considers would convey an erro- 
neous impression of the state of things as now existing in Oxford 
or Cambridge. It may still, however, be questioned whether the 
alterations in the English Universities approximate them tangibly 
to the German system. If Science is taught, it is taught as 
something to be examined in, not to make discoveries in. Of 
no English University can it be said, as Prof. Helmholtz truly 
says concerning those of his country, “ Scholars speaking the 
most difficult languages crowd towards them, even from the 
farthest parts of the earth.” 
The author remarks that in college ledtures, both in England 
and France, greater weight is laid upon eloquence than in Ger- 
many. It seems to us that our national worship of rhetoric, and 
the extent to which we are swayed by it, is a grave element of 
weakness. 
There are few persons who cannot reap benefit and instruction 
from the work which we have thus briefly endeavoured to sketch. 
Tables fov the Analysis of a Simple Salt, for Use in School 
Laboratories. By A. Vinter, M.A. London : Longmans 
and Co. 
“ The cry is still they come !” We have often groaned in spirit 
over the fertility of the English press in elementary works on 
chemistry, and wondered how long professors and teachers will 
go on trying to give us old fadts and dodtrines with a new face. 
