Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/887

Rh K S R S 853 a vat, whence it is ladled into barrels ready for the market. Rosin varies in colour, according to the age of the tree whence the turpentine is drawn and the amount of heat applied in distillation, from an opaque almost pitchy black substance through grades of brown and yellow to an almost perfectly transparent colourless glassy mass. The commercial grades are numerous, ranging by letters from A, the darkest, to N, extra pale, superior to which are W, " window glass," and WW, " water white " varieties, the latter having about three times the value of the common qualities. Rosin is a very brittle and friable resin, with a faint piny odour, softening at about 176 and melting completely at the temperature of boiling water. It dis- solves freely in ether, benzol, and chloroform, and to some extent in alcohol and fatty oils. When exposed to the action of hot dilute alcohol or when boiled with alkaline solutions it takes up a molecule of Avater and becomes converted into abietic acid, a change which also takes place slowly in the air when the resin is yet mixed with the essential oil as it flows from the trees. Rosin is thus regarded as an anhydride of abietic acid, and its use in yellow soaps is due to the fact that this acid itself com- bines with caustic alkalies to form a kind of soap. In addition to its extensive use in soap-making, rosin is largely employed in making inferior varnishes, sealing wax, and various cements. It is also used for preparing shoemaker's wax, for soldering metals, for pitching lager beer casks, for rosining the bows of musical instruments, and numerous minor purposes. In pharmacy it forms an ingredient in several plasters and ointments. On a large scale it is treated by destructive distillation for the production of an oily complex hydrocarbon, having a tarry odour and a whitish opalescent colour, which under the name of rosin oil is much used as a lubricant. Rosin oil also enters extensively into the common kinds of fatty oils as an adulterant. The chief region of rosin production is the southern coast States of the American Uuion, the ports of Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, and Brunswick being the principal centres of the trade. American rosin is obtained from the turpentine of the swamp pine, Pinus australis, and of the loblolly pine, P. Tseda. The main source of supply in Europe is the " landes " of the departments of Gironde and Landes in France, where the sea pine, P. maritima, is extensively cultivated. In the north of Europe rosin is obtained from the Scotch fir, P. sylvcstris, and throughout European countries local supplies are obtained from other species of pine. The imports into the United Kingdom average about 1,250,000 cwts. annually, nearly the whole of which comes from America. In 1883 the amount imported was 1,377,368 cwts. (1,337,848 cwts. from the United States and 16,242 cwts. from France), the total estimated value of the imports being 400,938. ROSMINI-SERBATI, ANTONIO (1797-1855), perhaps the most important figure in modern Italian philosophy, was born at Rovereto in the Italian Tyrol in 1797, and died in 1855. With every worldly advantage as the eldest son of a noble and wealthy family, from an early age he resolved to devote himself to God's service in the Catholic priest- hood. He became the founder of a new religious order, named the Institute of Charity, but known in Italy gene- rally as the Rosminians. The members may be priests or laymen. All are prepared to do any works of charity corporal, intellectual, or spiritual to which they may be directed by divine providence, under obedience to their superior, to the bishops, and to the pope. They have branches in Italy, England, Ireland, France, and America. In London they are attached to the ancient church of St Etheldreda, Ely Place, Holborn, where the English transla- tions of Rosmini's works are edited. Rosmini's Sistema Fllosofico set forth the conception of a complete encyclopaedia of the human knowable, synthet- ically conjoined, according to the order of ideas, in a perfectly harmonious whole. This conception Rosmini developed in more than forty volumes. Here a brief notice of the characteristic principle of his philosophy must suffice. Rosmini, contemplating the position of recent philosophy from Locke to Hegel, and having his eye directed to the ancient and fundamental problem of the origin, truth, and certainty of our ideas, wrote: "If philosophy is to be restored to love and respect, I think it will be necessary, in part, to return to the teachings of the ancients, and in part to give those teachings the benefit of modern methods " (Theodicy, n. 148). Pursuing therefore the now generally approved method of the observation of facts, he most carefully examined and analysed the fact of human know- ledge, and obtained the following results: (1) that the notion or idea of being or existence in general enters into, and is presupposed by, all our acquired cognitions, so that, without it, they would be impossible ; (2) that this idea is essentially objective, inasmuch as what is seen in it is as distinct from and opposed to the mind that sees it as the light is from the eye that looks at it; (3) that it is essentially true, because " being " and " truth " are conver- tible terms, and because in the vision of it the mind cannot err, since error could only be committed by a judgment, and here there is no judgment, but a pure intuition affirming nothing and denying nothing ; (4) that by the application of this essentially objective and true idea the human being intellectually perceives, first, the animal body individually conjoined with him, and then, on occasion of the sensations produced in him not by himself, the causes of those sensations, that is, from the action felt he per- ceives and affirms an agent, a being, and therefore a true thing, that acts on him, and he thus gets at the external world, these are the true primitive judgments, contain- ing (a) the subsistence of the particular being (subject), and (b) its essence or species as determined by the quality of the action felt from it (predicate) ; (5) that reflexion, by separating the essence or species from the subsistence, obtains the full specific idea (universalization), and then from this, by leaving aside some of its elements, the abstract specific idea (abstraction) ; (6) that the mind, having reached this stage of development, can proceed to further and further abstracts, including the first principles of reasoning, the principles of the several sciences, complex ideas, groups of ideas, and so on without end ; (7) finally, that the same most universal idea of being, this generator and formal element of all acquired cognitions, cannot itself be acquired, but must be innate in us, implanted by God in our nature. Being, as naturally shining to our mind, must therefore be what men call the light of reason. Hence the name Rosmini gives it of ideal being ; and this he laid down as the one true fundamental principle of all philosophy, and the supreme criterion of truth and certainty. This he firmly believed to be the teaching of St Augustine, as well as of St Thomas, of whom he was an ardent admirer and defender. The above seven points could only be hinted at here. A complete and exhaustive treatment of them will be found in Rosmini's New Essay on the Origin of Ideas, which has lately been rendered into English (London, 1883-84). Rosmini's Sistcmrf Filosqfico has been translated into English by Davidson (Eosmini's Philosophical System, London, 1882). The volume contains also a biographical sketch of the author, with a complete catalogue of his writings, ninety-nine in all, on philo- sophical, religious, and miscellaneous subjects, and a copious list of works relating to his life and philosophy. ROSS, a county in the north of Scotland. CROMARTY (q.v.) consists of detached portions scattered throughout Ross, and for most administrative purposes the two coun- ties are regarded as one. The united area of their mainland portion lies between 57 8' and 58 6' N. lat, and 3 47' and 5 52' W. long., and is bounded N. by the Dornoch Firth and Sutherlandshire, E. by the Moray Firth, S. by