:

old enemy the Material Substratum. Matter, he says, is not something at the back of the sensible relations in which material things are known. It has a reality, but a symbolical one; it is an abstraction standing for the sum of all the sensible relations, different from any some or one, but not from all of them. If it is asked, what is the nature of Matter in itself? | the question is irrational. To this exposition we should like to add one thing, that the conceptions of matter and the identity of material things involve what may be called a Social Postulate. This paper before me is a persistent group of relations for you as well as for me. I call it a real piece of paper partly because I can feel as well as see it, but still more because I am sure that if you came where I am you would feel and see it, in the same way. The concurrence of the individual's different senses goes for nothing if the social test contradicts them. When in a particular case the social postulate breaks down, we say there is an hallucination if it habitually breaks down, we say the man has lost his wits. In like manner it seems to us that Mr. Lewes' theory of Judgment, though good as far as it goes, is incomplete from not taking into account the social uses of language. A good many difficulties vanish when we bear in mind that the real use of propositions is to give information to other people. Then we come to the still more vexed problem of Cause. The causal nexus so dear to metempirics is pitilessly shown up as a mere human figment; and the attempt to strike out an empirical theory by defining Cause as antecedent is also dismissed as being misconceived. Mr. Lewes' own solution is that not merely the mysterious nexus, but the whole conception of cause and effect as separate things, is a logical fiction. Cause and Effect are two aspects of the same thing; the cause is the analysis of the effect into a sum of conditions, and the effect is the synthesis of the cause into a resultant of conditions. "Could a cause exist as such before its effect, it could exist without its effect; but as the two are correlative aspects of the one event, this is impossible." Reserving the question whether it will ultimately be desirable to retain Cause at all as a scientific term, we think Mr. Lewes has at last disengaged the really scientific element which was involved in the current use of the word. But we are disposed to think Mr. Lewes is rather hard on Hume in this place. What looks like laxity and mere scepticism in Hume's language arises, we suspect, from its partly ironical character. He speaks with transcendental philosophers according to their transcendentalism. His position in the latter part of the Treatise on Human Nature is something of this kind :— If you ask experience for transcendental results you will get nothing; for myself, I am content with getting from it such knowledge as suffices for the conduct of life; but I say there is no other source of information, and for you therefore with your notions of knowledge there can be no knowledge at all, but only unanswerable questions; it is open to me, however, to leave such questions alone as being merely unreasonable. Returning to Mr. Lewes' own exposition

we find the like treatment applied with even more effect to the whole doctrine of the Absolute, which is shown to be from beginning to end a mistaken realizing of mere abstractions. In one very important chapter Motion and Feeling are dealt with, much like Cause and Effect above, as "one and the same process viewed under different aspects." This expresses a view towards which there has been a marked convergence among those who have approached the question in a scientific manner. When it is said that we cannot conceive how Matter and Mind are related to one another, "what is meant is, that we are unable to imagine why one object is the obverse of the other: which may be said of all relations." The conclusion is drawn that Feeling is the only "thing in itself:" which, one may remark, was also Hume's. After this chapter we do not quite understand what Mr. Lewes means when he says in an earlier place that he reserves the questions of Materialism and Idealism for another volume. We seem to have got pretty near the root ofthe matter already. It seems worth while to repeat here an often-repeated warning. No such extravagant proposition is put forward as that we are never to use popular and symbolical language. Mankind are not called upon to leave off talking about Matter and Canses; fictions and symbols are excellent things as fictions and symbols, the mischief is only the taking of them for realities. It may seem startling that people have gone on doing this so long; but one can only say that historically the thing is quite explicable, and in fact it could not be helped. Hereupon, no doubt, we are open to a whole battery of Hamiltonian declamation about veracity of natural faculties and so forth, all which we shall digest as best we may, and scientific philosophy will survive it.

It was only to be expected that Mr. Lewes should now and then be led into an excessive use of his chosen instruments of thought. Certain physical theories touching atoms and other things are treated as abstractions, whereas they seem to us to be direct statements about matters of fact, which experiment will one day show by direct evidence to be either true or not. Mr. Lewes also makes free use of analogies for purposes of illustration, and some of these seem doubtful in the same sort of way. In particular, we cannot accept his parallel between Imaginary Geometry and Metempirics. We speak not of our own knowledge, but we understand from competent authority that the outcome of the new geometries of Lobatschewsky and others is that, as a physical matter of fact, we do not know what sort of space we are living in. Euclidean space is an ideal (and but one of divers ideals), and we only know that the real corresponds so nearly to it that we have not as yet been able to measure any difference. It is quite possible that by further experience of greater or smaller spaces than have hitherto been measured we may ascertain that there is a difference. Nor are we entitled, on the other hand, to say dogmatically that we may not somehow learn that there is no difference: in this case, however, the new knowledge, being absolutely exact would be different in kind

Ecclesiastes; a Contribution to its Interpreta tion; containing an Introduction to the Book, an Exegetical Analysis, and a Translation with Notes. By Thomas Tyler, M.A. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1874.)

AMONG all the books of the Old Testament there is perhaps none which has given rise to such divergent and numerous conjectures respecting its purport and origin as the one which is discussed by Mr. Tyler in the volume before us. By one scholar it has been thought its object to deny, by another to propound, the immortality of the soul; by others it has been supposed (as the curious reader may learn from the pages of Dr. Ginsburg's Introduction) to embody a compact summary of the history of the kings of Judah, or the poetical effusions chanted by an assembly of sages upon a series of given themes; it has been held even, such are the eccentricities of expositors, to be a treatise on the principles of court-etiquette!

Mr. Tyler is more sober. In an unpretending, though far from uninteresting, volume, he examines with care and minuteness this perplexing book for the purpose of deter mining, if possible, more convincingly than has been done before, its historical position. It has, indeed, been for long generally recognised that Ecclesiastes reflects an age widely different from that to which popular tradition ascribes it; but still the absence of any explicit historical allusions has left scope for much variety of opinion when the attempt is made to do more than assign it broadly to some period between the return from Babylon and the birth of Christ. Mr. Tyler, however, believes that it contains passages which can be shown, on the one hand, to have been written before the apocryphal Book of Sirach, on the other to bear evident traces of the influence of Greek philosophy. Of the latter it may suffice here to instance the " Catalogue of Times and Seasons" (iii. 2-8), in which Mr. Tyler sees the expansion of the Stoic ethical principle to "live conformably to nature;" the frequent allusion to "madness" as antithetical to wisdom, in which he traces another well-known Stoic conception; and passages such as iii. 18-22, v. 18-20, which appear to him to embody the teaching of Epicurus. The date of the book is thus fixed at c. 200 B.C.; its design, to be at once a recantation on the part of the author himself, and an admonition to dissuade others from the delusions of philosophical speculation. After meeting in anticipation, by an appeal to the Mishna and to Josephus, the difficulty that will be felt in conceding at such a period the presence of Greek in

It cannot be denied that Ecclesiastes offers points for comparison with both Stoic and Epicurean teaching, although it may, perhaps, still be questioned whether they are sufficiently characteristic to justify the inference that they were actually derived from contact with Greek thought. So far as Stoicism is concerned, it is noticeable that the more striking parallels are with the form which it assumed in the hands of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Even apart, therefore, from the question of date, might not such thoughts and expressions as apparently owe their origin to the individual rather than to the system, present themselves independently to another who, from temperament or fortune, was led to regard human life from a similar point of view? Parallels between different writers may be remarkable; but they may also be misleading. Herodotus, it will be remembered, makes Solon fix the limit of life at threescore years and ten, and puts into his mouth a sentiment identical even to the form of construction with Eccl. iii. 19, πāv έori äv0pwñос σvμpoр. And while M. Aurelius again and again plainly connects his ethical standpoint with the conception of Nature as an ever-flowing stream, hurrying one object away, and bringing on another for a brief moment to fill its place (iv. 43, v. 23, vi. 15, vii. 19, etc.; also vii. 1, 25, viii. 6, which throw some light upon the meaning of iv. 32, xi. 1), Mr. Tyler fails to point out any traces of a corresponding line of thought in Ecclesiastes. Such resemblances as there

are might well have suggested themselves to the author on the basis of passages like Ps. xxxix. 5, 6, xlix. 11, if, as seems indeed to have been the case, the circumstances of his life had been such as to force them with painful prominence on his attention. But although we thus, for more reasons than one, regard a comparison with M. Aurelius as likely to prove fallacious, we must admit that Mr. Tyler's labours have done something to render the presence in Ecclesiastes of Greek philosophical ideas, at least in a fragmentary form, not improbable. In translation and exegesis Mr. Tyler cannot be considered very successful; his style suffers from being unduly modernised, his renderings are at times precarious, and his explanations inexact and unsatisfactory, see, e.g., ii. 3, 5; iv. 14 (p. 94); v. 3, 8, 9; vii. 7, 9. His argument on page 8 (even if we accept the interpretation of vii. 14, and recognise a coincidence more than accidental), might with equal-or greater plausibility be reversed; and in comparing x. 8 with Sir. xxvii. 26, he appears to have overlooked what may be the common source of both, Prov. xxvi. 27. Faults such as these do not, however, seriously affect that portion of his book which is the most novel and attractive, namely, the Introduction; though, even here, we cannot help wishing that Mr. Tyler had made his work somewhat more complete. A larger synopsis of parallels from Greek writers, a sketch of the

Transit of Venus.-Detailed reports from the French Transit of Venus expeditions to St. Paul's Island and to Peking are given in the Comptes Rendus. At the former station, the transit occurred in the midst of a tremendous storm, but, comforted by the statement of the fishermen that the day of the new moon (which occurred on December 9), was always fine, M. Mouchez made every preparation, and was rewarded with complete success, the sky clearing just before the first internal contact, and clouding over again completely half an hour after egress. Although passing clouds interfered somewhat with the photography, no fewer than 443 daguerreotypes and 142 collodion negatives were obtained during the whole transit, and after deducting a certain number of unsatisfactory plates, there still remain 489 regard to the eye observations M. Mouchez saw a bright ring of light surrounding the part of the planet outside the sun, which he attributes to the atmosphere of Venus; and, further, an aureola, which seemed independent of the planet, and behaved just like a solar atmosphere. It is rather remarkable that while M. Mouchez, with the large eight-inch telescope, found great difficulty in like precision on account of this aureola, his comfixing the time of internal contact with anything panion, at the six-inch telescope, saw nothing of it, and made what he considered to be most accurate observations. M. Mouchez, however, places most reliance on the micrometer measures and on the photographs. At Peking the observers were equally fortunate, though passing clouds caused great anxiety. Both internal contacts were observed, a slight ligament being seen with the six-inch telescope, but no ring of light; while, with the eight-inch, nothing was seen but a few fringes. Contrary to what was anticipated, the Chinese received the expedition well, and even marked attention was paid them by some of the highest officials, while the dowager empresses showed their interest in the event by asking for a photograph of the phenomenon. The longitude

which will be available for measurement. With

well

of the French station was determined within one and a half seconds of time, and was also carefully connected by triangulation with the American station under Professor Watson's charge, while a survey of the town of Peking was made after the transit, the party being detained for two months by ice in the river.

Spectroscopic Observations.-Dr. Nicholas von Konkoly has for the last two years examined the spectra of meteors at every available opportunity, and has been enabled to establish the presence of the lines of sodium, magnesium, carbon, strontium, and possibly lithium, in the train, while the nucleus invariably gave a continuous spectrum in which the yellow, the green, or the red predominated, according to the colour, blue being very rare, and violet never seen. An interesting circumstance noted was that red meteors move with extraordinary velocity. Dr. von Konkoly also examined Coggia's comet of last year, and Encke's this year, observing the three well-known bands which are seen in the spectra of carbon compounds.

The Relative Motion of the Components of 61 Cygni.-Without being aware of M. Flammarion's results, Mr. J. M. Wilson, of Rugby, has discussed all the observations of this remarkable

double star, and is led to the conclusion that although all the observations of the present century can be perfectly represented by uniform motion in a straight line, yet this hypothesis will not satisfy the observations of the last century (three in number), the relative path appearing to consist of two straight lines inclined about 54° to each other, while the observations are not accurate enough to discriminate between two such lines and a curve touching them. In fact, Mr. Wilson considers it unsafe to draw any conclusion at present, the motion being so very nearly uniform and in a straight line, that no curvature in the path can be established with certainty. Mr. Wilson's paper is given in the Monthly Notices for April.

The Solar Eclipse.-The expedition sent to Siam seems to have had only a partial success, the attempt to photograph the spectrum of the corona, from which so much was hoped, having failed. Good photographs, however, were obtained of the corona itself, which are certain to be of great value, and satisfactory results were secured with the prismatic camera, a combination of a prism and a camera, which gives for every bright ray in the spectrum a corresponding image of the luminous object. It seems doubtful, however, whether anything more was obtained with this than photographs of the chromosphere and prominences, depicted as rings corresponding to four different rays in the spectrum, the central portion (the sun itself) being stopped out by the black moon. This being the first time that any such attempt has been made, perfect success was hardly to be expected, and the party seem, besides, to have been delayed so long on their journey that they had not sufficient time to get their instruments and photographic apparatus in good order. Dr. Janssen, also in Siam, got good results, which confirm those obtained in 1871, but he was not favoured with a very clear sky.

Temperature of the Sun's Surface.-M. Faye, in servations on the relative temperature of different the Comptes Rendus, discusses Mr. Langley's obparts of the sun's surface, drawing special attention to the result arrived at by Mr. Langley that the equatorial regions of the sun are not sensibly hotter than the polar, and that therefore all analogies founded on terrestrial phenomena such

as trade winds are false, the currents in the sun

being, not towards the equator, but parallel to it, as shown by the drift of sun spots. M. Faye hence derives support for his theory of the sun in contradistinction to that of P. Secchi.

The Sun's Parallax.-From the observations of the small planet Flora made in 1873, at various northern and southern observatories, Professor Galle has now deduced as a definitive result for the sun's parallax 8"-879, with a probable error of about 004; and though some discordant observations have been rejected, their retention would hardly affect the result, which seems deserving of great confidence, on account of the accuracy with which observations of a star-like point, such as the planet Flora, are made. The close agreement of Dr. Galle's value with those obtained by other deduced from his planetary researches a parallax methods is very remarkable, Le Verrier having of 8"-86; while Cornu from the velocity of light, combined with Delambre's value of the time taken by the ray to traverse the earth's orbit (determined from a thousand eclipses of Jupiter's first satellite), found the value 8"-88. The modern value, how

ever, of the aberration-constant (which depends on the ratio of the velocity of the earth in its orbit to that of light), does not agree very well with this, giving a parallax of 8" 80, so that there is still a little uncertainty, which we may hope that the late Transit of Venus will clear up.

Variability in the Star 61 Geminorum.-Mr. Webb, in the Monthly Notices, calls attention to one of the components of this double star, which seems to have undergone some curious changes, having been recorded in the Bedford Catalogue as of the ninth magnitude, though recent observers

of a pair of observations of the return ray for the single observation of a total extinction. Professor Cornu's most recent determination was made in the summer of 1874, the two stations being the Paris Observatory and the tower of Montlhéry, 14 miles apart. A mean of 508 experiments gave 300,400 kilomètres, or 186,660 miles per second.

Professor Adams mentioned that M. Cornu had contributed in no small measure to the success which had attended the formation in France of a society closely corresponding to our British Association, and assured him that the Physical Society felt grateful for his presence, as he could well understand the difficulties with which the early days of such a society are beset. M. Cornu stated, in answer to a question of Professor G. C. Foster, that he objected to the revolving mirror method because it was impossible to say to what extent the movement of the revolving mirror, and the disturbance of the air in its neighbourhood, affected the reflexion and propagation of the ray of light.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE (Tuesday, May 11). COLONEL A. LANE Fox, President, in the Chair. Mr. Moncure D. Conway, M.A., read a paper on "Mythology." He maintained that the evolution of Mythology was the reverse of what the facts of physical evolution might suggest; it was not from beneath, upwards to higher things, but rather from the grand in nature, that the human mind had arrived at the association of mystical meanings with the stock and stone, plants and animals, which figured so largely in popular mythology. Sacred animals were consecrated as symbols of the higher phenomena. Flowers and plants derived their potency from connexion with solar or lunar influences, still represented in the belief that to be healing they must be gathered at certain holy times or at certain phases of the moon. It was also maintained that the gods were personifications of power, and unmoral. They were gradually divided into good and evil, the demoniac powers being for a long time not diabolical, but personifications of hunger, thirst, and the dangers and impediments of life. The idea was combated that men had ever worshipped purely evil powers. The legend of Eden was held by Mr. Conway to be inexplicable by Semitic analogues. In India were found the myths of serpent-guarded trees and the apple of immortality, and the curse on the serpent which had puzzled theologians was explained by the theory of transmigration.

66

A paper, by the Rev. A.HI. Sayce, M.A., was read, on Language and Race." The author held that the fallacy of considering language a sure and certain test of race was one to which few modern philologists would commit themselves; there was no assertion which could be more readily confronted, more clearly be demonstrated to be false. Society implied language, race did not; hence, while it might be asserted that language is the test of social contact, it might be asserted with equal precision that it is not a test of race. Language could tell us nothing of race. It did not even raise a presumption that the speakers of the same language were all of the same origin. It was only necessary to look at the great states of Europe with their mingled races and common dialects to discover that language showed only that they had all come under the same social influences. Race in philology and race in physiology, meant very different things.

Mr. A. W. Franks, F.R.S., exhibited an inscribed wooden gorget from Easter Island.

GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY (Wednesday, May 12). J. EVANS, ESQ., F.R.S., President, in the Chair. Principal Dawson, of Montreal, communicated a paper "On the Occurrence of Eozoon Canadense at Côte St. Pierre." Having visited this locality last autumn, he examined the white thin-bedded crystalline limestone of Lower Laurentian age, and

detected two new forms of the celebrated foraminifer. Although these may turn out to be distinct species of Eozoon, it is safer to regard them at present as merely varietal forms of E. Canadense, and he accordingly distinguishes one as variety minor, and the other as variety acervulina. Dr. Dawson also described some serpentine casts of the globular chamberlets of a foraminifer resembling Globigerina. The Rev. Oswald Fisher, of Cambridge, offered some criticisms on Mr. Mallet's theory of Vulcanicity. Reviewing the several sections of Mr. Mallet's famous paper seriatim, he pointed out those sections to which he took exception, and gave his reasons based on mathematical and physical grounds. With reference to the hypothesis that the great features of the earth's surface are directly connected with the contractions of the cooling crust, Mr. Fisher maintained that if the crust cooled down from the extreme temperature of 4,000° Fahr. to 0°, the difference of contraction in two adjacent areas would not amount to more than a mile in a thickness of 400 miles. He argued against the hypothesis that volcanic phenomena are produced by the heat which is developed by the transformation of the mechanical energy due to movements in the earth's crust, since it appears difficult to understand how such heat could become sufficiently localised to effect fusion of the rocks. At this meeting Sir P. de M. Grey Egerton, Bart., was elected a VicePresident, and Mr. Carruthers a member of Council; the vacancies thus filled having been caused by the death of Sir Charles Lyell.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

(Wednesday, May 12).

MR. SERJEANT Cox, President, in the Chair. Mr. Serjeant Cox read a paper "On some of the Phenomena of Sleep and Dreams," the purport of which was to show that the difference between the waking and the dreaming mind was caused by the suspension of the action of the will. The sleeper was conscious of the action of his mind, but was unable to control it as when awake. His implicit belief in the reality of the dream is due to this incapacity to try the reality of the mental impressions by the exercise of that combination of faculties which is employed in the process of reasoning. Mr. George Harris then read a paper "On the Psychology of Memory," describing the various problems presented by this mental faculty which await solution and should engage the attention of the Society. The subject of the next meeting will be "The Duality of the Mind."

ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON (Thursday, May 13).

In the fifth of the present course of lectures at the Society's Gardens, Professor Garrod treated of the chevrotains and of the hollow-horned ruminants. The chevrotains (Tragulidae) are small hornless animals which inhabit tropical Asia and Africa, and in outward appearance they strongly resemble the musk deer, with which they were formerly associated. In their anatomy, however, they show many points of affinity to the non-ruminating ungulates, notably in the structure of their vertebrae, legs, and digestive organs, and they are now. consequently regarded as having changed less in organisation than the other ruminants, and as being the nearest living representatives of the ancient forms from which all the even-toed ungulates are probably descended. The general characters of the hollow-horned ruminants, or oxen, sheep, goats, and antelopes, were described, and the peculiarities of the more remarkable species were pointed out and illustrated by numerous specimens. Special attention was directed to the giraffe and the pronghorn, both of which are remarkable in the exceptional structure of the horns. In the former well-known animal the horns are covered by the hairy skin, and are not true processes of the frontal

bones, but are formed from independent centres of ossification. In the prong-horn of North America the outer covering of the horns is shed every year, but the bony cores are persistent throughout life. The next two lectures will be "On Camels and Llamas," by Professor Garrod, on Thursday, May 27; and "On Elephants," by Professor Flower, F.R.S., on Thursday, June 3, on each day at 5 P.M.

SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES (Thursday, May 13). A PAPER was contributed by the Rev. Assheton Pownall, giving an account of a glass vial found in the church of Anstey, Hertfordshire. Similar vials have been discovered in churches in the counties of Leicester, Cornwall, and Warwick. It is supposed that some of these contained holy oil miraculously distilled from the relics of saints, especially of St. Katharine; but the contents of the Anstey vial were proved by analysis to be blood, probably itself a relic. Professor Bunnell Lewis sent for exhibition the rubbing of a Roman inscription, found on a slab of red sandstone measuring 4 feet by 1 foot 10 inches, near Brougham Castle in Westmoreland. The workmanship is inferior, the types of the letters being rude, and the spelling faulty. The inscription runs as follows:-"Plum. Lunari. titul. pos. coniugi carisim.;" the terminations of the second and last words are lost by mutilation, so that the sex of the deceased is uncertain. The best rendering offered was "Plumae Lunaris titulum posuit coniugi carissimae;" but the two names are so uncommon that this interpretation is very uncertain. A few other objects of interest were exhibited, including a Chinese cloisonné enamel incense burner from the Summer Palace at Pekin, now in the possession of Mr. Bruton; a silver ring of the fourteenth century found at Howth, ornamented with two hands and a crowned monogram, and a seal found near Drogheda, bearing a galley and the name of Walter Champioun.

ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY (Friday, May 14). LORD LINDSAY, Vice-President, in the Chair. Mr. Russell, Director of the Sydney Observatory, gave an account of the observations of the Transit of Venus made in New South Wales, and of the various appearances seen by different observers with telescopes widely differing in size, after which Mr. Stone made some remarks on the "black drop" as seen at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, a very bright field having been used, in order to exhibit this phenomenon in the most marked manner. An interesting discussion then followed, in which Lord Lindsay, Mr. De La Rue, Captain Abney, Captain Noble, Mr. Ranyard and others, took part, on the question of photographic irradiation as affecting the records of the Transit of Venus, and a short paper was read by Mr. Christie on the same subject. Mr. Dunkin then read a paper by Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, calling attention to a remarkable change in the proper motion of a small star in Cetus, which seemed to imply motion in an orbit, as in the case of Sirius and Procyon, and Mr. Dunkin confirmed this result by an examination of recent observations made at Greenwich. There were several

other papers presented, but their titles only were read, the meeting having already lasted beyond the usual hour.

FINE ART.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.

(Third Notice.)

General Subjects (continued).-Two of the really fine exhibitors at the Academy are Mr. Alma Tadema and Mr. Herkomer: their pictures would be leading attractions in any annual exhibition in Europe (indeed, the larger work of the Dutch master was displayed last year in Paris with great applause), and would hold their place