Science, Leading and Misleading. By Arthur Lynch. (Murray. is. 6d.)

COLONEL LYNCH dedicates his book to men of wit and under- standing " hoping that the individual responses may swell

into the great voice of the public." If the masses agreed with the author, it would be a faithless but amusing world. " Brain- wrecked professors " would perish in the ruins of our Univer-

sities ; Dean Inge would write no more " learned nonsense," and the mental ventosity (the author's excellent phrase) of three-quarters of the 'world's philosophers, past and present, would collapse like a pricked balloon. Even gravity is gravely questioned—" Newton jumped to a conclusion," says Colonel Lynch. Again, the conservation of energy may very possibly be a myth—a German scientist has written a book about it. And the parallelogram of forces, " although a good working conception, does not appear to be proven." Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood " contains a hiatus." For the arteries cannot be tubes through which blood is propelled as by a force pump, for since the height to which a body is pro- jected varies as the square of its initial velocity, the pulse of a tall man would be different from that of a short one, which is not so. As to Haeckel, his arguments were loose, and " in more than one instance ht deliberately perverted facts by exhibiting in his drawings certain forms which are not found in nature." Few scientists escape the lash and no philosophers. This is all refreshing and useful to a certain degree, for we are far too ready to become static in our ways of thought and refrain our eyes from the dazzle of new thinking.

One of the most interesting stories in the book, although rather a ghastly one, is that of a great surgeon who, while exploring the inside of a patient on the dissecting table, turned round to the author (who was acting as his dresser) and poising his dripping knife observed sententiously, " Don't you agree that Arthur Balfour is the greatest thinker in Europe ?

I heard the question with amazement, but, after a pause, I answered timidly : Well, I should have to begin by making certain reservations.' What do you mean ? ' my surgeon cried, and there was more truculence in the voice than that implied in the words. My future depended on his goOd will ; but there are desperate situations in which even the worm will turn, and I replied : I have read his books ; have you ? " Aoawh ! ' he cried, if you put it that way, I have never read a line that he's written ! ' And with that, as the young lady was quivering on the table, he turned contentedly to the job that he really knew,. and, with a deftness begot of the butcher and the seamstress, quickly completed the operation. The point of the story is that this man had standing enough and brains enough to have become President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and in that office it is quite possible that he might have entertained Arthur Balfour at some important official banquet. and that, in his capacity as President, be would utter the words which had so disconcerted me, though possibly not knowing more about Arthur Balfour's writings than he did at that moment. These words would have been broadcast all over the world: arid rha world would _have said :. Science endorses Arthur Balfour's

philosophy." ,

Now without questioning Lord Balfour's gift of clarity and exposition, nor indeed his learning, there is much in this story to give one pause. It is a fact that many reputations are made in just the manner that Colonel Lynch suggests.

- The consideration of the square root of minus one, that " imaginary " that has exercised thinkers for a century, leads our author to this conclusion :—

" In reading the works of the great mathematicians, one often sees that the result has been known to, or guessed by, the author, and that he has not reached it by the route of the difficult and tedious arguments which he inserts. What he has been doing there is to show, by the use of certain conventional instruments, a truth that he has arrived at by the exercise of other faculties. . . These intuitions should themselves be the subject of research . . .

This, of course, is as true of mystics as it is of mathematicians, if indeed there be any difference between the two. Both search the One amidst the manifold, each express their inkling of reality and give form and substance to the faculties within them, even as the eggs of the viper, the goose, and the eagle, in Galen's famous example, will produce creatures of the earth,

the marsh and the high air.

Not so many years ago Bishop Wilberforce fought unflinch-

ingly against Darwin and Huxley, and Hugh Miller went to the length of saying that the fossils in the rocks were but another proof that " God moves in a mysterious way." As the author says, " had the question been decided by popular suffrage, they " (i.e., the then orthodox defenders of error)

would have been swept in to the top of the poll on a wave of national enthusiasm." It is right and proper to be reminded of these facts, for they serve to inculcate that humility without which we shall not advance in knowledge.

Some learned men—Cardinals of Thought, as Colonel Lynch

calls them—may dislike the levity of this book, for it exposes shams and snobberies with a flippancy that is not always justifiable (scientists are human after all and no man can be wise all the time), yet it is a healthy and encouraging reflection that truth is being more and more pursued (and faced) not to support a theological thesis or a personal reputation, but for its own stark sake. A modern Baron Thenard would not say to an Emperor and Empress in his laboratory "These two gases

will now have the honour of combining before Your Majesties.'

F. Y.-B.