Book Reviews

Abstract

THE first edition of this book by the accomplished and efficient head-master of Uppingham School appeared with the pseudonym “Benjamin Place”on its title-page; this second and much-enlarged edition bears the author's own name. The title may be apt to mislead some as to the nature of the contents; it is not a work on Biology. The author apparently means by “Life-Science” the science of those phenomena which are the manifestations of the higher kinds of life, as opposed to those sciences which deal with “matter animate and inanimate.” “The world open to man's intelligence,” he divides into two parts: “On the one side there is matter animate and inanimate, which as matter is capable of material investigation, and which is below man. On the other side there is life as displayed in feeling and thought, and belief founded on the facts of life. The science of this is Life-Science.” Mr. Thring believes that man cannot live by science alone; that there is a kind of knowledge, a circle of belief, a region of activity, quite outside and independent of science strictly so-called, and which is of far more importance to the great bulk of humanity than any amount of scientific knowledge. To Mr. Thring, in the present “displacement of traditional ideas, it has seemed no useless task to look steadily at what has happened, to take stock, as it were, of man's gains, and to endeavour, amidst new circumstances, to arrive at some rational estimate of the bearing of things, to examine the instruments and means at our disposal, to examine our strength; so that the limits of what is possible, at all events, may be clearly marked out for ordinary persons.” “This book is an endeavour to bring out some of the main facts of the world.” Mr. Thring puts forward many statements regarding the inadequacy of language as a vehicle for thought, and on the imperfection of human intelligence itself at the present stage of man's progress, which claim the consideration of all those who are inclined to deny them; and much of what he says, as to the sphere and power of scientific research, deserves to be pondered by all earnest seekers after truth, and, indeed, has almost always been admitted by the highest intellects, who have tried to explore “the great ocean of undiscovered truth.”Mr. Thring's style is characterised by a rugged force, and a certain novelty of expression and even of construction, which will render his book interesting to many readers, and which are frequently the outcome of his intense earnestness and the thoroughness of his convictions, as well as of impatience with those intolerant scientific specialists who imagine the little group of phenomena that comes within the ken of their limited vision to be the universe. We heartily commend the book to the attention of our readers.