is the title of a work in the press, from the pen of Rev. W. Kirkus, LL.B. The Rev. T. S. Norgate, who has already translated Homer's Odyssey and Battle of the Frogs and Mice into English blank verse, has the Iliad in preparation. M. Renan is about to publish the Lectures he had prepared for his class, but which he has been prohibited from delivering. "The Scientific Record " has seen the uncertain glories of an April day two numbers have appeared and its discontinuance is announced. David Page is engaged upon a series of books, to be called "Handy Outlines of Useful knowledge," to be followed afterwards by a series, to bear the title of the "Handy Library." 99 66 Rev. D. Thomas, D.D., Editor of the Homilist, author of "The Progress of Being," The Crisis of Being," &c., has in the press "The Genius of the Gospel," a homelitical commentary on St. Matthew. George Daniel, the D. G. of Dolby and Cumberland's Theatre, the eminent book hunter, antiquarian, and critic, author of "The Modern Dunciad," "Merrie England," &c., died April 5th, aged 75. The Rev. J. le. Mozley, Vicar of Old Shoreham, has been appointed Bampton Lecturer for 1865. Philip J. Bailey (c. 1803), author of "Festus," "The Mystic," "The Age," "The Angel World," "Creative Imagination," &c., has in the press a volume of minor poems. Rev. And. A. Bonar has in preparation "The Poets and Poetry of Scotland. from James I. to present time." Kinglake's "Crimea" has been translated into French by S. Karcher. P. G. Forchhammer (b. 1803), author of "The Athenians," and "The Rates or the Laws and the Revolutionist,” has just issued "Aristotle and his exoteric teachings;', and Alberti has published "The question regarding the Spirit and Order of the Platonic writings illustrated by Aristotle." The first part of Renan's "Mission to Phonecia" is out, and a biography of the author has just been published by M. M. Carfort and Bazouge. Prof. H. Helmholz, of Heidelberg, will publish his Lectures on "The Natural Law of Conservation of Energy," delivered at the Royal Institution. Mr. Robert Bell's "Annotated Edition of the English Poets," originally issued at half-a-crown, are to be reissued in shilling volumes. "Elia-na," a volume of inedited pieces from the pen of Charles Lamb (Elia) is announced. The committee of the Young Men's Christian Association, London, have refused to sanction the publication, under their auspices, of the lecture delivered in Exeter Hall, by Professor Owen, on "Science and Scripture," but Mr. Nesbit is to issue it in the series as usual, on his own responsibility. "What is Truth?" Pilate's old question, has been revived in a contorversy between Professor Kingsley and Dr. Newman, the latter of whom is said to be engaged on a reply to a pamphlet by the former, in which he will probably also touch up the Rev. F. Meyrick Kingsley's friend. Dr. Joseph Robertson is preparing a collection of the "Canons and Councils of the Ancient Scottish Church." European Philosophy. ARISTOTLE-THE SCIENCE OF NATURE. 66 AMONG the thinkers of the ancient world Aristotle has long held a foremost place. The science of sciences "-Logic-owes to him its scientific exposition. The method of Aristotle has for ages guided mankind in the art and process of transforming common knowledge into science. In the early dawn of reflective thought he first collected into one well-arranged whole the several forms in which men moulded experience into truth, tested their accuracy, and attested their worth. With the clearest and most vigorous critical faculty possessed by any of the sages of the past he combined a wider range of acquisition and a less shrinking industry. These he unitedly employed upon the loftiest problems presented for decision to the human soul-" What is truth?-How is it to be attained P-In what will it result? His unhesitant mind thrust aside the sophistry of indolence, and swept along the laborious course of his career with persevering energy and unslacking enthusiasm. To him the universe did not appear as a caterer to sense, a mystery of beauty, and a puzzle for the will. It was a volume of hieroglyphics written by some Mind, of which the cipher was to be discovered and the meaning read. The visible was only the sign of the invisible, and that which seemed, and was too often regarded as alone real, was felt by him to be only the mighty and beautifully written symbolism in which the secret of the gods was shadowed out to men. Here were appearances; behind them lay truth. In these the present senses found high delight; but from these the spirit of man was to extract a luxury of life to which the faint delights of sense would seem as worthless as the sand beside the diamond, meagre as the tiny light of stars compared with the rays of the day-god, evanescent as the world-life of man in contrast with the soul's existence in the state and fashion of its hereafter. Nature, that unceasing series of ever-working activities in which we live and move, at the same time that we are a part of it; that vast, various, and mysterious panorama of harmonious yet conflicting agencies; that scheme of beauty, power, and constant evolution and revolution; that whole expanse of the wonderful which sweeps before the vision and operates upon human thought-Nature, that unliftable veil behind which the gods hide and work; that maze of changeless changes; that complex intervolvement of phenomena; that system of seemings behind which Being lurks and in which we are—Ñature, the universe of visibilities and audibilities and tangi1864. 2 D bilities, is man to stand gazing on it for ever, in the long progress of the generations, a baffled, helpless, and unsuccessful inquirer? or is he yet to win the secret of science from her? Ages had puzzled and guessed and toiled, but that awful, all-enclosing sphinx had made small sign of expounding her riddle. "The Inscrutable " might still be worn by her as a title. The intermixed spheres of animate and inanimate objects contained within them problems insoluble to the faculties of humanity; but did they lie beyond the possibility of decipherment or discovery? In this little speck of life which constitutes himself man finds a personality, in which there are innate, or sown by some power, potentialities that stretch out of him, that are indefinite if not infinite; a faculty of activity which rebels against the limits of time and spurns the bounds of space, but with impassioned thirst and eagerness seeks to countervail death and the grave in their influences over his efforts and his memory. Clear, though far down in human consciousness, are observable the springs of causal power, which, on being touched by intelleet, initiate effects unending in their series, and these take away from man the keen sense of his own littleness, and incite him to regard himself as the master of nature, the controller of results, the framer of his own pathway in the world. Yet this small speck of "Intellectual Being" is enclosed in a sheath of senses which is surrounded by a world of far forth-stretching actualities. The horizon of existence widens with every exertion of sense and thought; the idea of being expands beyond imagination's power, and out-distances the capacities of calculation. With excursive and discursive onsweep it passes from world to world, system to system, and protends its flight till, in the intense vastness of space, it flags and fails; then passing from the expansions of space it journeys through the perplexing stretches of time, and tries to outstrip the day of creation or outgo the hour of dissolution-in both feeling and confessing its impotence in the very act of putting forth, exercising, and becoming conscious of its strength. Among all the countless multitudes of its sensations; among all the innumerable potentialities inherent in his activities-how may man acquire a knowledge of the truth? Suspense of judgment is impossible. Is there, then, any guidance attainable through the vastness and the gloom into a radiant and accessible temple where the student of truth may at once know and adore? If such there is, give it quickly to a yearning world. If such there is not, who will show us any passage thitherward, and make straight the paths for us? Is philosophy-the love of wisdom -inane, useless, impossible? Are all the ardours of the soul, its ambitions and its efforts, ineffectual to show or enable man to know the truth? Is nature ever to be elsewhere-never to be here, in the yearning mind of humanity ? Is a science of nature possible? It is; but it is, only as a consequent of a science of thought, i. e., of reasoning. Hence the priority of logic in the philosophy of Aristotle. Logic is the science of thought. Thought is the interpreter of nature. Nature is the sum of objective realities, and the revealer or suggester of those diviner essences from whose will or work they take their origin. It is, besides, the exciter and occasioner of thought. Within man, thought dwells and acts. To know, therefore, the laws of thought, is to have the key to the science of nature. 66 Dialectic is the science of investigation, and is itself the science of sciences. The palpable and definite realities of the outward world are only knowable as science, and to man, by systematic observation and reasoning-which unitedly constitute philosophical research. That a body of doctrine may possess shape, unity, and coherency, it must be pervaded by thought rigorously verified and tested; and hence a science by which thought may be subjected to definite and well-considered tests is indispensable and preliminary. Sensation informs man that a thing is, experience what it is, science why it is and is as it is, and philosophy wherefore it is or what is its final cause. All these are forms of thought about things; but logic is thought about thought, the science of intellection. Logic is productive thought, Memory is reproductive thought; both together give birth to Science, who is the daughter of Reason and the mother of the Arts. Experience supplies the elements of all science." Science commences when, from a number of experiences, a general conception is formed, which colligates and brings into one these and all similar cases. "Experience is of individuals, science of universals." Method is the pathway from particulars to generals, from details to classes of objects and laws of being or activities. "In all processes of mental evolution," says Coleridge, "the objects of the senses must stimulate the mind, and the mind must, in turn, assimilate and digest the food which it thus receives from without. Method, therefore, must result from the due mean, or balance, between our passive impressions and the mind's reaction on them." "The first idea of method is a progressive transition from one step in any course to another; and where the word Method is applied with reference to many such transitions in continuity, it necessarily implies a principle of unity with progression. But that which unites and makes many things one in the mind of man must be an act of the mind itself, a manifestation of intellect,”- a guiding logic. Logic shows us the laws of thought in all its methodic processes, in all its efforts to initiate or follow a pathway from idea to idea. Logic is, in fact, the method of scientific thinking. It is the basis of positive science. Experience impinges upon the intellect in its passive state, and rouses it into activity. If, in its active and investigating progress, it follows the right laws of thinking, it will arrive at the truth; if, in haste or carelessness, it pursues the wrong pathway, its course is towards error; and hence Aristotle agrees with Bacon in asserting that "a cripple in the right way may beat a racer in the wrong one; nay, the fleeter the racer is who has once missed his way, the farther he leaves it behind;" though he differed from his modern rival's aphorism, "Physics is the mother of all the sciences." Logic, with Aristotle, is the central and initiative science, whence all other truth radiates to the farthest circumference of philosophic thought. Experience is attainable, but intransmissible. Science is both teachable and learnable. Through science the worth of experience becomes knowable. All sciences have principles, and each is based upon some special idea and its relations. Experience supplies opinions, but science yields certainties. Experience gives occasion to ideas, but science furnishes these ideas and evolves their relations. The evolution of ideas is the labour of logic. It is an antecedent science, prior to and distinct from physics, which is not only a knowledge of nature, but an interpretation of it. Logic, therefore, holds the first place among the philosophical sciences as the pre-requisite of each. Wisdom is systematic thought regarding nature and its revelations, suggestions, and laws. Thought on the one hand, and nature on the other, form together the warp and woof of science. Logic is the marvellous agency by which the inextricable intertwisting of experience and thought fashions itself into the many-pattern web of the sciences of nature. To give its right place to logic is an indispensable preliminary to an accurate understanding of the teachings of Aristotle regarding physical science, and this alone enables us to see the measure of actual truth he reached, to comprehend his errors and their causes, but still more to learn from his errors to avoid their causes, and to find true results issuing from our truth-seeking. Aristotle accepts experience as the material of science, but makes reason the architect. Sense yields a knowledge of particulars and details; science contents itself only with generals and laws. Induction converts experience into ideas, and logic educes from these ideas laws. Sensation excites perception; perception passes into memory; memory retains these perceptions till comparison examines them, determines their distinctions, or fixes their resemblances ; induction collects the materials which experience furnishes; judgment verifies them; reason colligates them, and brings out of them the secret of their working, or their cause; and thus sensation is transmuted into science. Complete knowledge is only attainable after complete experience, completely verified. Hence Aristotle justly says, "More dependence must be placed on facts than reasonings, which must agree with facts;" and gives, correctly enough, as a rule for scientific inquiry, "Let us first comprehend the facts, and then we may seek for their causes." "We must not accept a general principle from logic alone, we must prove its applicability to each fact; for it is in facts that we must search for general principles [or ideas], and these must always agree with [and be derived from] the facts." To explain nature we must not only know it, but know the reason of it. Science is an explanation of nature. Explanation, in so far as man is concerned, is only possible by a process of induction from particulars to generals, and hence, "proof must first lie in the correctness of our inductions,” and when these generals have been obtained and an inference is made from these to any new particulars, proof lies in the correctness |