Notes and Comments.
[J. F. I., icw treatments of the properties of matter; soufid, light, static and dynamical electricity, and magnetism, followed perhaps with some added chapters upon radiant electric energy, R6entgen and Becquerel rays and the recent discoveries in radio-activity. Little or nothing is taught respecting the intimate relationship and the profound analogies between all these subjects. Seldom is a word spoken concerning the bearing of all the isolated facts and principles exposed, upon the intellectual and practical needs of man. The profoundly important philosophy of the science is entirely omitted. Each subject is set forth to be learned and, alas, memorized,'by the student as. so many distinct and separate branches of physical science. Perchance in riper years, if the student pursues his studies, and after the formal and piece-meal knowledge that he early acquired is forgotten, he will come to realize, and delight in the thought, that a true and broad physics is not sets of equations, nor measurements of lengths, volumes, and curvatures, but a philosophy that applies to human life. He will see that its subject matter reaches to the confines of the universe and has relationship with every interest known to man. He will perceive that its grand laws and principles simply express in orderly form our most intimate knowledge of the world we live in. And he will see, too, that after all, "the most sublime scientific knowledge, in the last analysis, has no other foundation than common sense."