t88 5 .J 
Analyses of Books. 
551 
Scientific Romances, No. II. 
the Valley. By C. H. 
Sonsenschein, and Co. 
The Persian King, or the Law of 
Hinton, B.A. London: Swan, 
Some time ago we had the pleasure of noticing the first of these 
. bcien tihc Romances ” from the pen of Mr. Hinton. Concern- 
rng the purport of that treatise not the slightest doubt could 
exist. Some persons might be led by its reasonings to an accept- 
ance-transitory or persistent — of the conception of space and 
matter as four-dimensional or even n-dimensionah Others 
might doubtless throw it aside as an idle though ingenious paradox. 
But all alike would see, at least, what the author was seekin- to 
prove. But in the work now before us the case is very different, 
there is no one interpretion of the allegory which will force 
itself upon all readers as the only one possible. One interpreter 
may say that the author is combatting the notion of energy run- 
ning down and of the universe being gradually resolved into a 
caput mortuum, as the old alchemists would have called. 
Another, basing on p. 127, lines 1 to 4, may see here an assertion 
of “ substantialism ” of the existence of imponderables. A third 
fixing his attention on the lower part of the same page, and on 
ceitain corioborative passages elsewhere, might contend that Mr. 
Hinton’s main objedt was to explain the Divine adtion in the 
government of the universe. 
Yet another plausible interpretation is that the author is ex- 
pounding the relations of pleasure and pain, arguing that just as 
adtion and readtion are equal and opposite, and that as a semi- 
oscillation of the pendulum pre-supposes the other half, so every 
pleasuie felt in the universe involves a certain corresponding 
amount of pain in the same sentient being or in some other! 
I his might, perhaps, be expanded into a theory of one of the 
mysteries of the world, vicarious suffering. But if pleasure 
necessitates pain, pain must also necessitate pleasure. If we bear 
pain, 01 inflidt it upon ourselves, do we give a corresponding 
amount of pleasure to some being ? If so, we have a philosophy 
of asceticism. But if we inflidt pain upon some one being, A, do 
we not in like manner then occasion pleasure to some other being, 
B ? Singularly enough the ascetic or self-tormentor is, we believe’, 
without exception, the first to torment others. 
But leaving such rambling speculations, let us ask whether 
pleasure and pain are of necessity equal and opposite, lying, like 
the semi-oscillations of a pendulum on opposite sides of some 
neutral or zero point ? We think not universally so. For pain 
is often merely the intensification of a feeling which in lower 
degrees is pleasure. If we suffer from cold we hold our hands or 
feet to the fire, and we feel pleasure in so doing. But if we hold 
them gradually nearer and nearer, or if the fire is urged to a 
fiercer heat, we find the pleasure gradually passes into pain, 
