Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/579

 chapters. The first is preliminary, on the physical properties and sources and formation of coal. This is followed by "The Atmosphere," "Fuels," "Analysis of Coal," "Combustion," "Air required for Furnace Combustion," "The Furnace," "Products of Combustion," "Thermal Power of Fuels," "Heat," "The Construction of Furnaces," "Mechanical Firing," "Spontaneous Combustion of Coal," "Coal-Dust Fuel," "Liquid Fuel," "Gaseous Fuel," "Utilizing Waste Gases from the Furnace," "A. Ponsard's Process and Apparatus for generating Gaseous Fuel."

author of this book, who ought to know the most about it, indicated its scope and the purpose he had in writing it in the following introductory passage:

The object of this essay is to discuss the moral nature—to point out, in the first place, its general relation to the other groups of functions belonging to, or rather making up, the individual man, and also its relations to man's environment. Secondly, to show its radical separation from these other groups of functions; then to attempt to decide of what organ it is a function—to consider whether it is a fixed quantity, or whether, like the active nature and the intellectual nature, it is in course of development. And, if the moral nature is progressive, to try to find out what the essential nature of this progress is—upon what basis the progress itself rests—the direction of the progress in the past and in the future—its causes—its history—and the law of it and to point out the conclusions which can be drawn from this progress as to the character of the universe in which we live.

We hardly think, however, that the work can be classed among important contributions to the progress of ethical science. It seems to stand, in fact, in the same relation to the constitution of the moral world that the old doctrine of the four elements—fire, air, earth, and water—stood to the constitution of the physical world. There were ingenuity and a crude utility, when nothing was known of nature, in this conception of four elemental constituents by the endless commixture of which all natural things were accounted for, but it would not be a step forward to revive it now. Dr. Bucke takes, as the foundation of his ethical system, the four simple moral elements—faith, love, hate, and fear—and, by combinations of these with each other, and with still other ideas, he aims to solve all moral problems and account for all moral phenomena. He is a physician, and links his theory with physiological and anatomical science, by assuming that the sympathetic system is the nervous center of the moral nature. He gives woodcuts of the ganglionic chains, of the cerebro-spinal and great sympathetic nerves, accompanied with an interesting account of their anatomical structure and physiological functions, and he assumes the moral relations of the sympathetic system because of its intimate association with the emotional life.

in his celebrated St. Andrew's defense of classical studies in modern education, in replying to the charge that there is little valuable information to be got out of old Greek and Latin books, declared that ancient literature contains a great deal of "the wisdom of life" which may be profitably studied in these times. He did not say what there was about this wonderful wisdom that should make it necessary, after two thousand years of further experience, and all the vast developments of modern knowledge, that our youth should be compelled to learn two dead languages in order to arrive at it. Precious, indeed, must be that "wisdom of life" which is incapable of being transferred from one form of speech to another. The compiler of the volume before us quite fails to see Mr. Mill's point, and has gone about the task of importing the said wisdom of the ancients into the English tongue, so that it may be made available by multitudes who know nothing of the classical languages. The first chapter is a kind of historical essay relating to the ancient Stoical moralists. Chapter II. is devoted to religion; Chapter III. to maxims of self-control; Chapter IV. to maxims of self-culture; Chapter V. to maxims of