and ends with the grave--at least it should do. Unfortunately many
people of our generation were brought up in the languid atmosphere of
Victorianism where ill-health was tolerated, almost worshipped. In due
time we went to school--if it was summer we played cricket; if winter,
we played football; if spring, we ran races and jumped jumps and threw
hammers; but as for any real education in physical culture or athletics
we had none. Every young athlete should read _Success in Athletics_,
for in it he will find very simple and very excellent advice as to
how to train for every branch of field sport. The elements of success
upon which stress is laid are as follows: First, to choose a branch of
athletics suitable to the build of the individual. Second, to build up
the necessary muscles by training at home and in the gymnasium long
before practices are carried out on the track. Third, to study the
scientific side of the particular sport chosen, so as to acquire a
perfect style and to economise energy to the utmost extent.
The book begins very properly with a tribute of respect to athletes
who have fallen in the war; then chapters follow on running, jumping,
hurdling, and throwing weights of all descriptions; there are also
chapters on diet, massage, and clothing, and an appendix on leg
exercises. The book is illustrated with admirable photographs, but
it is a pity that these are not placed more in accordance with the
text. The chapter on "Hurdling" is among the best. The hurdler must
be "tall, fairly slim, and well 'split up,'" which being interpreted
means that his height must be contained in his legs rather than in his
body. He must build up the strength of his legs by special exercises,
such as high kicking, the splits, and skipping; and there is yet
another admirable exercise--the athlete, in a sitting position, puts
himself into the attitude of a hurdler topping a hurdle, the left leg
is stretched straight out, the right leg is at right angles to it, the
knee is bent and the inside of the leg is resting on the ground. The
exercise consists in raising the body so that only the left heel and
the inner side of the right calf are resting on the ground. It is a
most painful and excellent exercise.
We are glad to see that in the chapter on diet athletes are warned
against an excess of meat; one good meat meal a day is all that is
recommended. Meat, besides its nourishment, contains many poisonous
substances which are with difficulty eliminated from the system. Many
a good athlete has been wasted through inattention to this fact. The
chapter on massage is to our mind inadequate.
In the last chapter the following passage occurs: "... it is felt that
a new epoch of athleticism in Great Britain is about to commence--that
an entirely new breed of athletes will arise or be recruited from the
ranks of those who through four and a half years of war have learned
the true meaning of discipline and the importance of close attention to
the least little detail of instruction." Now we all feel that something
good must come after all this suffering and slaughter; the Briton has
proved that he is possessed of true greatness; how can this greatness
be turned to full account? Let us give up once for all this idea of
record-breaking and producing freaks who can jump an inch higher than
any other man or throw a hammer a foot farther. At best that is a
very low ideal, and such over-specialisation produces ugliness and
unhealthiness. The only kind of athlete that we want to contemplate is
the all-round athlete who can run fast and far, jump high and broad,
and have sufficient strength for heavy events. An instance of what
we mean occurs in this book--the pictures of A. E. Flaxman show a
magnificent athlete of about eleven stone; such a man would have to
compete in heavy events with mountains of flesh weighing twenty stone;
hence all Flaxman's symmetry and grace and style are wasted, and the
mountain wins the points for his side. This is all wrong. We should
abandon the practice of selecting one athlete for one event. We should
have teams composed of all-round athletes, each of whom competes in
all events; these athletes will not break records, but they will be
super-athletes such as a great nation should aim at producing. When we
have got rid of this odious specialisation it will be time to aim still
higher, and produce not only the all-round athlete but the all-round
man, made up of mind, character, and muscle, all developed to the
utmost extent.
PHILOSOPHY
AN INVISIBLE KINGDOM. By W. S. LILLY. Chapman & Hall. 15_s._ net.
The late Mr. Lilly was a Roman Catholic journalist who combined
attachment to his faith with adherence to a benevolent paternalism
in politics. This posthumous volume, edited by Dr. William Barry, is
partly concerned with political and sociological problems, though
there are two essays on _Memory_ and _Sleep_ which do little but
review current opinion on those two functions. The political essays
suffer from their date. Although fond of appeals to history, Mr. Lilly
discusses the affairs of the moment from the angle of the moment; there
is much talk of universality, but very little application. Indeed at
times one doubts if he could have seen the precise significance of his
opinions. For instance, he was a determined opponent of democracy,
and quotes with approval Mill's statement that "Equal voting is in
principle wrong"; and he proceeds to state a doctrine of political
justice which does not differ in principle from that stated by Trotsky.
Where Mr. Lilly and Trotsky would differ is, of course, on the question
into whose hands political power was to be put. Also one finds it
difficult to understand how a Roman Catholic can agree--as Mr. Lilly
does--with Ibsen's creed, "The minority is always right." Here are Mr.
Lilly's words:
If there is one lesson written more legibly than another in the
annals of the world it is that majorities are almost always wrong;
but that is the prerogative of minorities--nay, it may even be of a
minority of one. That is the verdict of history. It holds good of all
ages.
Mr. Lilly might contend that he is not bound to square his opinions
with St. Augustine's _Securus judicat orbis terrarum_; but how can his
statement be reconciled with the practice of his Church? All General
Councils, which decide Catholic dogma, have come to their decisions
by taking a vote and accepting the verdict of the majority. This has
been so from the Council of Jerusalem to the Vatican Council. Are we to
believe that only in matters ecclesiastical the minority is wrong?
Mr. Lilly was also rather apt to substitute mere statement for
argument. Thus, in discussing the modern position of women, he writes:
Of course reason itself declares that on the physical and psychical
inequality of the sexes, and on the willing obedience of the weaker,
the happiness of both depends. It is the lesson which Shakespeare has
worked out, with consummate art, in the _Taming of the Shrew_.
It is evident that, whatever may be thought by a modern man or woman
about the equality of the sexes, no satisfactory argument can be
based on the premise that women's physical and psychical inferiority
is an axiom. In his discussion on Socialism and on Trades Unions,
Mr. Lilly displays the same incapacity to understand his opponent's
starting-point. He has plenty of sense and a desire for fairness which
makes him quote Aquinas' declaration on riches--that they are only
lawful if they are possessed justly and used in a proper manner for the
owner and others--and apply it to modern fortunes. His last essay is on
Newman, and is rather inadequate, as it appears to have been written
without reference to Mr. Wilfrid Ward's life. It is too early to
write about that excessively human, lovable spirit in the artificial
language of the official hagiographer: there are, however, sentences
which arouse interest. We do not remember seeing it stated before
that, late in life, Newman "perused translations of _The Critiques of
the Pure_ and _The Practical Reason_, pen in hand--that was his usual
way--and made some notes on them." It would be interesting to see these
notes.
EMERSON AND HIS PHILOSOPHY. By J. ARTHUR HILL. W. Rider. 3_s._ 6_d._
net.
This brief essay on Emerson is marked by enthusiasm, and shows
evidence of a wide acquaintance with Emerson's works, but is otherwise
unremarkable. Mr. Hill gives a brief biography of his hero, and then
discusses him in relation to his views on religion, science, with
chapters on Emerson's style, poetry, and criticism. His last chapter is
a brief _résumé_ of _English Traits_ and _Representative Men_, treating
those very readable books as if they were essays in some unknown
language. Mr. Hill's own opinions hardly inspire one with confidence in
his capacity to interpret emotions.
Beautiful language, true poetry, often contains little truth and not
much passion; we feel that the poetry is in the beauty of the images
evoked, or in the sheer unanalysable charm of the words as sounds,
or--more generally--both combined. The more "thought" there is in
poetry the less poetical it is.
There is much virtue in inverted commas, and no doubt "thought" is
absent from the _Antigone_, the _Divina Commedia_, _Hamlet_, _Paradise
Lost_, _Tintern Abbey_, and _The Ring and the Book_; but we cannot
follow Mr. Hill in his contention that these poems lack truth or
passion. Nor indeed can we remember any poem of which his remark
would be true. Mr. Hill's observations on Emerson's style and his
biographical portions of the essay are not quite so off the mark. Few
readers will accept his very high estimate of Emerson, and he fails
to remove our suspicion that the great American writer, who was never
known to laugh, was at times perilously near being an ordinary prig.
As to Emerson's influence on his contemporaries and successors, it
is generally underestimated. The _Essays_ in particular are always
a delight to youth, and are read with avidity by boys at the most
impressionable age. A great deal of modern individualism, of modern
defiance, which is often put down to the discredit of Ibsen, or
Nietzsche, or Blake, is really due to Emerson. He was the first eminent
man to preach disobedience as an ethical duty; his conscience was
always uneasy if he caught himself conforming; and this uneasiness,
which a more vigorous man in a more natural society would have
recognised as an emotional mood, Emerson distorted into a kind of
council of perfection. "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,"
he proclaims exaltedly, not seeing that this sentiment has, as a
generalisation, already been contradicted by his birth and his
marriage, and is to be finally quashed by his death.
SCIENCE
A TREATISE ON GYROSCOPIC AND ROTATIONAL MOTION. By ANDREW GRAY, F.R.S.
Macmillan. 42_s._ net.
It was quite time that we had in English a standard treatise on
gyroscopic motion. Space is, of course, devoted to the subject in
various well-known text-books on rigid dynamics, and there are one
or two good little books of an elementary nature, such as Perry's
_Spinning Tops_ and Crabtree's _Spinning Tops and Gyroscopic Motion_,
but hitherto the man in search of detailed information on problems
concerning tops in the widest sense has had to go to Klein and
Sommerfeld's _Theorie des Kreisels_, if he could not find what he
wanted in Sir George Greenhill's _Report_. That Professor Gray should
be the man to supply our want is only fitting. At the University of
Glasgow, where he succeeded to the chair of Natural Philosophy left
vacant by Lord Kelvin's death, an interest in gyroscopic motion is
traditional, and Professor Gray inherited a collection of apparatus
for experiment in this field which he has extended by many ingenious
and convenient forms of gyroscope described in the book before us.
His own researches on the general dynamics of gyroscopic systems have
added clearness to that branch of applied mathematics, and his son
is an expert in the design and application of practical gyrostats. A
judicious combination of experimental and theoretical treatment forms
the great attraction of Professor Gray's book.
The problems of gyroscopic motion range from the behaviour of the
schoolboy's top to that of this great top, the earth, and include a
great number of engineering applications. The torpedo is kept in its
course by a gyroscope; the gyroscopic compass, which makes no use
of magnetic properties, has rendered possible the navigation of a
submerged submarine; Schlich invented a gyroscopic apparatus, which
has been tried successfully in small ships, for keeping a vessel from
rolling in a rough sea; with Brennan's monorail the car is kept upright
by means of a gyroscopic device; and many other ingenious uses have
been made of the seemingly paradoxical properties of spinning tops. The
gyroscopic compass is, unfortunately, not treated in Professor Gray's
book, nor is there any account of other naval and military applications
of the gyroscope, since the author, finding that the official secrecy,
necessarily imposed at the time of writing, would prevent him giving
anything but a fragmentary account, has preferred to reserve his
discussion of these appliances to a promised second volume. Very little
is said of the monorail (in fact, Brennan's name is not mentioned),
which is less explicable. Many practical applications of gyroscopic
theory to such problems as the drift of projectiles, golf balls, and
boomerangs (the last-named treated necessarily in a very general
manner) come up for consideration, and the forgotten diabolo, child of
a passing craze, is resurrected to provide an example of the effect
of equality of the principal moments of inertia on the stability of
rotation of a body under no forces. Most attention is, however, given
to the first two subjects mentioned above--the top spinning on a flat
surface, and the earth spinning through space--which are, of course,
the classical problems in rotational dynamics. It need scarcely be said
that Sir George Greenhill's work is abundantly cited.
"In the present work my aim has been to refer, as far as possible, each
gyrostatic problem directly to first principles, and to derive the
solutions by steps which could be interpreted at every stage of the
progress," says the author in his preface, and he has followed this aim
with considerable success. It is, of course, impossible to treat many
of the problems of rotational dynamics without mathematical analysis of
some complexity, and a knowledge of elliptic functions and such-like
weapons of the applied mathematician lies, perhaps, outside the scope
of the average engineer and inventor. Professor Gray, who deplores the
present ignorance of inventors in the matter of gyroscopic motion, has
kept the needs of this class before him, and has taken care to arrange
his matter so that those who cannot always follow the mathematical
exposition given can, at least, gain a clear knowledge of the results.
The first chapter, which contains no mathematical symbols, forms an
excellent introduction to the subject and is quite elementary, and
elsewhere in the book, when practical problems, such as the drift of
a projectile, are being discussed, the nature of the investigation is
stated as simply as may be. Throughout the inquiry is illustrated, as
far as possible, by experiment and diagram.
"Les Anglais enseignent la méchanique comme une science expérimentale;
sur le continent, on l'expose toujours plus ou moins comme une science
déductive et _a priori_. Ce sont les Anglais qui ont raison, cela va
sans dire." In these words, the late Henri Poincaré, the greatest
mathematician of his generation, praised the British tradition of
teaching dynamics as an experimental subject, which is so well
maintained in this book. Some specialists, no doubt, will find minor
omissions in their subject, but, on the whole, with the exceptions
already noted, the book is very complete. It is printed with the
well-known elegance in all that pertains to mathematical symbols of
the firm of Robert Maclehose, and the general production is very good.
We do not understand, however, why the illustrations in the first
chapter are nearly all reproduced a second time further on in the book,
especially as they are mostly photographs of apparatus, which do not
necessitate frequent reference. And--the question that has to be asked
so often with English books--why is the index so defective?
EVERYDAY EFFICIENCY: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO EFFICIENT LIVING. By FORBES
LINDSAY. W. Rider & Son. 4_s._ 6_d._ net.
It is stated in the preface that the material of this _Practical Guide
to Efficient Living_ has been used extensively as a correspondence
course, so that anyone who is thinking of paying pounds to be taught
by post how to be efficient can save most of his money. All the most
notable authorities on Efficiency--Ike Marvel, Buddha, Arnold Bennett,
Walter Dill Scott, Prentice Mulford, Yoritomo-Tashi, and Baudelaire (to
what the last-named said is added what he might have said)--are quoted,
and many varieties of type and a liberal use of capital letters add to
the strenuousness of the book. There is much about Ideals ("Ultimate
and Other Ideals") and much about Money, much about Character Formation
and much about Vocational Efficiency. We attribute our own inefficiency
largely to the fact that we cannot whistle, for this seemingly trivial
accomplishment is of far-reaching use--"Whistle and wear a smile for
fifteen minutes, and you will most assuredly begin to feel cheerful";
"Sing and whistle as you dress." But, again, we have not done the
essential thing, which is, we are told, to read the lessons of the
Course again and again, and to devote close thought to them. Alas,
we fell a victim to Waning Will, a fault early handled in the book,
and although somewhat comforted to learn that it is a "common form of
weakness," we could not bring ourselves to adopt the cure, which is
"When a resolution is formed, record it definitely in your file under
the head of Ideals, Aspirations, Tasks, Duties, or other appropriate
designation." The appropriate designation for the reading of this book
is undoubtedly Task. The author, who has also written books entitled
_Efficiency_ and _The Psychology of a Sale_, is a man who has evidently
obeyed his own great precept, "Don't admit any limit to your attainment
and capacity." His intense self-respect will prevent him feeling hurt
on learning that a smile is the only aid to efficiency which we have
derived from his book.
ANAPHYLAXIS AND ANTI-ANAPHYLAXIS. By DR. A. BESREDKA. English Edition
by S. Roodhouse Gloyne. Heinemann. 6_s._ net.
Medical research bears so directly on the well-being of every one of
us that it is astonishing that more people do not take an interest
in it. The existing indifference may be attributed partly to the
lack of good popular books describing recent advances in an easily
comprehensible way, partly to the nomenclature adopted by the medical
profession, which is apt to frighten the layman into imagining that
the exotic polysyllables in question can be used only for phenomena
of unimaginable complexity and obscurity. Complex they always are, of
course, with the complexity of all natural manifestations, but very
often the main lines of the problems which have arisen, and the methods
of attack, can be stated in plain language. The book before us, which
deals with the profoundly interesting subject of anaphylaxis, is not
avowedly written for the enlightenment of the public, yet it is in
most parts accessible to anybody with a slight knowledge of medicine,
and, not being a "popular" book, it has the advantage of being free
from the erroneous generalisations so often introduced in presenting
a branch of science to the lay reader. The subject is described as one
still in the course of development, and is not given that false air of
completion so dear to the populariser.
The phenomena of anaphylaxis are among the most striking in medical
science, and have only recently been investigated, for although
isolated cases of what we should now call anaphylaxis had been
previously noted, Richet was the first to show the significance and
extent of the subject in his memoir of 1902, in which he established
many of the most important points. The essence of anaphylaxis is that
the injection into an animal of a small quantity of one of certain
substances--which in some cases are, and in others are not, poisons
(with a poison the dose must, of course, be less than the fatal
one)--puts the animal in a particular sensitive state, so that a very
small second injection produces fatal results of a very violent and
well-marked character. Some time must elapse after the first injection
for the sensitive state to establish itself, and the second injection
must be of exactly the same nature as the first, this latter fact
constituting the so-called specificity of the anaphylactic effect.
This specificity has been applied for identifying blood of a doubtful
source, since an animal which has been sensitised with an injection
of blood from a given species is sensitive only to blood of the same
species. Further, the blood of an animal in the sensitive state can
be used to render another animal sensitive, a result known as passive
anaphylaxis.
The important bearing of anaphylaxis on clinical practice is obvious.
With therapeutic sera accidents have been fairly common in the
past, grave effects following a second injection; this is a pure
anaphylactic phenomenon. Much research has been done to find out
methods of preventing the anaphylactic shock, and the most important
advances in the field of anti-anaphylaxis are due to Dr. Besredka. His
book naturally devotes much space to this aspect of the study, and
gives details of the successful technique which he has developed. He
worked mainly on guinea-pigs, having obtained extreme regularity of
reaction with these animals. His most important result, both from the
theoretical and the practical standpoint, is that vaccination against
anaphylaxis can be produced by a system of gradually increasing doses,
starting with the injection of a very small amount of the substance in
question. This has led to a routine for serum injection by graduated
doses, which has been successful in averting serum sickness. Besredka's
interpretation of his results is against Richet's theory that the
second injection combines with a substance, the toxogenin, present in
the serum as a consequence of the first injection, and so produces a
poison, the apotoxin. He considers rather that the reaction of the
injected substance, the antigen, with the substance already formed
(which he calls sensibilisin) itself produces the fatal result by
disturbing the equilibrium of certain nerve cells where the combination
takes place. By graduating the doses the reaction is watered down
into a series of slight shocks, so that the great shock produced by a
single injection is spread over a comparatively large time, and becomes
innocuous. He finds an analogy between the effect and the mixing of
water and sulphuric acid. If the water is poured in quickly there is an
explosive action, but if it is added gradually the combination takes
place without violence. "In our opinion the anaphylactic poison does
not exist."
There are a great number of interesting experiments cited in the book
which we cannot mention here. The translator has done his work well,
although we do not like some of his importations from the French. It
should not be impossible to find expression more English than "titre of
toxicity" and "fulminating cases." He has added an excellent chapter on
"Recent Work on Anaphylaxis." We are glad to see at last a short work
in English on the subject, which is one of the most fascinating fields
in modern medicine. Somebody should translate and bring up to date
Richet's excellent little book. It is a pity that the nomenclature of
the subject cannot be made uniform.
THE NEW TEACHING SERIES OF PRACTICAL TEXT-BOOKS:
APPLIED BOTANY. By G. S. M. ELLIS.
FOUNDATIONS OF ENGINEERING. By W. H. SPIKES.
CHEMISTRY FROM THE INDUSTRIAL STANDPOINT. By P. C. L. THORNE.
Hodder & Stoughton. 4_s._ 6_d._ net each.