Chinese Encyclopedia Research Articles

German Popular Enlightenment in the Russian Empire: Peter Ernst Wilde and Catherine II

SEER, Vol.84, No. 2, April2006 German Popular Enlightenment in the Russian Empire: Peter Ernst Wilde and Catherine II ROGER BARTLETT THEproblem of the nature and definition of 'the Enlightenment'has engendereda wide range of responsesamong historians.Some scholars approached it essentially as a movement of ideas, the manifestation of changing consciousness,concepts and values among the eighteenthcentury European intellectual elite ideas particularly leading towardsfreedom in all its varied meanings.' The locusclassicus for such views was France, from where allegedly lesLumieres spread out further acrossthe Continent. The focuswas on big names, big ideas, big books perhaps the most famous of all being the Encyclopedie.2 Other scholars have laid different emphases. British historians, especially Roy Porter, have brought Britain to the fore as a primary centre of the phenomenon, and some researchershave laid greaterstresson national variationsand individuality,speakingabout European Enlightenments in the plural.3More attention has been drawn, too, to the social and Roger Bartlett is Professor Emeritus of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London and Special Professor in the School of Modern Languages, University of Nottingham. An earlier version of this article was read to the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia at its meeting inJanuary 2005. I am most grateful for comments received there, and to Simon Dixon, Isabel de Madariaga, Gary Marker and Claus Scharf for further generous comment and advice. 1 For instance, Paul Hazard, La Orise dela conscience europkenne (I680-I7I5), Paris, I935; Peter Gay, TheEnlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols, London, I967-70. 2 Following Chambers' Cyclopaedia. The eighteenth century was the first great age of modern encyclopaedias, also the time when the term itself became established. Besides the first major German encyclopaedia,J. H. Zedler's great Grof,e vollstandige Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften undKunste ... (64 + 4 vols, Halle-Leipzig, I732-54), Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie oudictionnaire raisonne dessciences, desartset desmetiers (35 vols, Paris,I75I-80), and the Encyclopaedia Britannica(initially 3 vols, Edinburgh, I768-7I, but succeeding editions expanded rapidly), the first printed Chinese encyclopaedia appeared, the enormous Gujin tushujicheng ('Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Present Times'), Beijing, 1726. It covers some 8oo,ooo pages and uses more than ioo million characters. 3 R. Porter and M. Teich (eds), The Enlightenment in National Context,Cambridge, io8i; S. Juttner and J. Schlobach (eds), Europaische Aujklarung(en). Einheit und nationaleVieyfalt, Hamburg, I992 (hereafter, Europdische Aujklddrung(en)); Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britainandthe Makingof theModernWorld,London, 2000 (hereafter, Enlightenment). ROGER BARTLETT 257 economicunderpinnings of the spreadof newideas,whetherin classbasedanalysessuchasJurgenHabermas 's thesisof the 'publicsphere' or in investigations of the book-trade andpublishing industry. Anotherpartof thismorerecenttrendemphasizes whathasbeen called the popularEnlightenment attemptsto relate the great abstract ideasto realeveryday life,or to usethemin practical waysto improvesociety.Alreadyat the beginningof the eighteenthcentury, thinkers wereanticipating KarlMarxinwantingnotjustto understand the world,but also to changeit.4As the centurywore on, a major development in European societieswastheeffortby benevolent membersoftheeducatedclasses privatepeopleindividually orin groups, or throughofficialagencies to spreadtheir light more widely throughsociety,to reachdownto the commonpeopleandhelpraise them out of ignorance,superstition and the commonills and vices of theirdailyexistence.Such socialactivistsactedfroma varietyof motives rationalcalculation,socialengineering,philanthropic or religious altruism. Therewasoftena strongelementofdutyandobligation ,moralor religious or both.The ethicalmodelof the 'enlightened patriot'couldoffera wayof life and approachto socialactionwhich constituted effectively a secularalternative to religious vocation.5 PopularEnlightenment alsoaccordedperfectly withthe leadingcameralist andphysiocratic theoriesof statecraft of the latereighteenthcentury; nordiditconflictwiththeideasofAdamSmithwhichbecameinfluentialaroundthe turnof the century.It combinedcameralist raison d'etat andbeliefin rationalordering of societywithpatriotic zealforcountry andfatherland, andwithChristian charitytowardsthe lessfortunate. Holger Boning,a recenthistorianof this phenomenonin the Germanies ,dieVolksaujkldrung, hastracedthe evolutionof sucheighteenthcenturyEnlightenedtheoryand practicein severalstages:from the abstractintellectualEnlightenmentto the 'economicand publicly useful' (gemeinniitzig-dkonomischen) phase, concernedparticularlywith agrarianand medical improvement,and throughto the 'popular Enlightenment' andits growingconcernforpopulareducation.6 This practical andactivistapproach to thespreadof Enlightenment became 4 Porter, Enlightenment, esp. chap. 3. 5 Discussed in the context of our area by Annelies Grasshof, 'Zur Mentalitat livlandischer Aufldarungsschriftsteller. Der Patriotismus August Wilhelm Hupels', in H. Ischreyt (ed.), ZentrenderAujkldrung, 2: KICnigsberg und Riga, Tubingen, 1995, pp. 2I7-35 (hereafter, 'Zur Mentalitat livlandischer'). 6 Holger Boning, 'Gemeinnutzig-okonomische Aufkldarung und Volksaufklarung. Bemerkungen zum Selbstverstandnis und zur Wirkung der praktisch-popularen Aufkldarungim deutschsprachigen Raum' (hereafter, 'Gemeinntitzig-okonomische Aufkldarung'), injJuttner, Schlobach, Europaische Aujklarung(en), pp. 2I8-48; see also, Das Volkim...

The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend by Alan Lupack (review)

ALAN LUPACK, The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0-19-180287-9. $90. Alan Lupack's Guide to Arthurian Literature is a remarkably scrupulous attempt to document every surviving Arthurian textual monument from the earliest records to contemporary literary and musical compositions. He even acknowledges the contributions to the Arthurian corpus from such popular sources as pornography, painting, comic books, and Barbie dolls (see the complete list on p. 9). Even without an investigation of these intriguingly frivolous areas, the book is an impressive display of learning, compression, organization, and completeness. Lupack's Table of Contents provides the outline and guide to the organization of his book and if it appears to impose more coherence on his material than the notoriously unwieldy Arthurian corpus would seem to accommodate, it is nevertheless a necessary and functional heuristic that helps to guide the reader as well as the author through the masses of texts covered in this work. Chapter I, titled 'Early Accounts of Arthur, Chronicles and Historical Literature' is in itself a masterful achievement. In a mere 82 pages (including a Bibliography), Lupack surveys the remaining accounts (mostly enigmatic, dubious, or both) of the life and afterlife (the quondam et fitturus) of the historical Arthur and subsequent treatments of that history in verse, drama, and the novel from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. If, for most medievalists, there may be little new in the review of the ancient documents, there are bound to be revelations and surprises in at least some of the later treatments. The well-known is treated with admirable compression and efficiency, while the thoroughness of his investigation of the post-medieval treatments will undoubtedly lead most readers to texts previously unknown to them. The following section covers the traditional companion to the chronicles, the romances, and is similarly structured with a review of the medieval texts and an excursion into post-medieval materials. The strict coherence of Lupack's organizational structure breaks down at this point, however. The post-Chretien romances are subdivided into 'Lancelot and Guinevere,' 'Romances with Non-traditional Heroes, 'Lanval and Launfal,' 'Chastity Tests,' and 'Ballads.' While not quite as fanciful as Borges's description of the Chinese encyclopedia, there is a certain randomness to this division. Nevertheless, it serves the purpose of providing rubrics that allow Lupack to cover a vast array of romances and to defer the mass of material on Tristan, the Grail, etc., to fuller treatments in subsequent chapters. The following chapter, 'Malory, His Influence, and the Continuing Romance Tradition,' is the only one to concentrate on a single author (and his literary descendants). …

Borges's Encyclopedia and Classification in Presidential Studies

In her 1990 address before the Presidency Research Group, Betty Glad argued that the alleged low status of presidential studies was based large part upon a model of science used theoretical physics. Instead, she contended, if research botany and some other sciences were employed as a model, other approaches, particularly classification, would be prominent. studies would be less preoccupied with a misplaced scientific status hierarchy and more capable of generating explanations and offering predictions. (1) Indeed, not only are there now several classificatory models that have attracted the attention of presidential scholars but the field itself is preoccupied with classificatory schema. What if, however, a major focus upon classification as a research activity leads not to a rigorous and robust body of knowledge presidential studies as Glad predicts but rather to a version of the emperor's encyclopedia described by Jorge Luis Borges which phenomena are cataloged a completely ersatz fashion? This essay examines the utility of classification as a goal of presidential studies by assessing dichotomies offered by Fred Greenstein, Richard Neustadt, and Jeffrey Tulis and typologies presented by Stephen Skowronek and James David Barber. The distinction the philosophy of science between natural and conventional classification is reviewed and standards for the general evaluation of classification are proposed. The essay concludes that there is a pronounced tendency for these classifications to drift toward the status of those Borges's encyclopedia that can only be effectively resisted by continual theoretical reassertion of the executive himself as a disruptive force. Encyclopedias Glad is certainly appreciative of the problems of classification. In presidential studies, as other areas of social science, phenomena are particularly complex and as such are subject to a variety of explanations. She notes that the researcher's main resources are whatever concepts he or she can borrow from other areas, plus prior experience, common sense, and the ability to think carefully (i990, 20). Glad recognizes that the synthetic reasoning of classifiers might be regarded as wrong, mystical or metaphysical by those who seek general laws (8). Borges too notes the problems of classification. He introduced his famous encyclopedia the course of discussing the classifications of John Wilkins, a Victorian linguist. Borges clearly admired Wilkins's curiosity and ambition. What troubled him were the ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies his classification (1999, 230). The effort reminded him of a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. He proceeded to list one entry in its distant pages. Animals were divided into a. Those that belong to the Emperor b. Embalmed ones c. Those that are trained d. Suckling pigs e. Mermaids f. Fabulous ones g. Stray dogs h. Those that are included this classification i. Those that tremble as if they were mad j. Innumerable ones k. Those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush l. Others m. Those that have just broken a flower vase n. Those that resemble flies from a distance Borges is clearly more skeptical of the classification project general than Glad, although it is less clear that his citation of the example from the emperor's encyclopedia is meant to suggest that all such efforts are utopian. (2) Nevertheless, Glad's optimism and Borges's skepticism provide a valuable matrix for discussion. For example, if one attempted to stay close to Borges's encyclopedia, one could present a classification for a Presidential Encyclopedia (II) that went like this. Presidents are divided into a. Those who are Democrats (or Republicans) b. …

Literary Truth as Dreamlike Expression in Foucault's and Borges's "Chinese Encyclopedia"

Literary Truth as Dreamlike Expression in Foucault's and Borges's "Chinese Encyclopedia"

BOOK REVIEW: Edited by Murray Baumgarten and H. M. Daleski.HOMES AND HOMELESSNESS IN THE VICTORIAN IMAGINATION. New York: AMS Press, 1998.

Having read this set of essays, I am reminded of two characteristically Victorian and Dickensian terms: the miscellany and the curiosity. Enclosed in the volume's pages are twenty essays constituting a most miscellaneous collection that as a whole make a very curious sort of book. The book's oddity can in part be traced back to its distinctive origins, an international conference, "Homes and Homelessness in Dickens and the Victorian Imagination," held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, under the combined sponsorship of that institution's Center for Literary Studies and the Dickens Project at the University of California. Like many conferences, this one attracted a variety of papers, several of them, apparently, only momentarily engaged in thinking about homes or homelessness or Charles Dickens or the Victorian imagination, and very few at all engaged in thinking about all of these themes simultaneously. The editors have accomplished something of a feat in finding subheadings that encompass the range of topics addressed in the volume. Subheadings range from a methodologically and topically consistent unit on "Dickens and the Idea of Home" to the ever more belabored, such as a final unit called "Other Homes, Other Places." This section includes essays on Henry James and a particularly pointed essay by Emily Budick on current political misreadings of sentimentality in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52). The volume reminds me of the quotation in Jorge Luis Borges from a "certain Chinese encyclopaedia," a quotation cited by Michel Foucault in his The Order of Things (1966). In that volume, Foucault reminds us, the author toiled heroically to classify all animals: those "belonging to the Emperor," those that were "embalmed," those that were "sucking pigs," and finally a last category, "et cetera" (1973 edition, xv). In recollecting this category, I am thinking especially of Yehoshua Ben-Arieh's contribution to this collection, a well-informed commentary on "The Painting of Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century by British Artists," the pertinence of which to homes, homelessness, or Dickens escapes me.

Die Leishu der imperialen Bibliothek des Kaisers Qianlong (reg. 1736-1796): Untersuchungen zur chinesischen Enzyklopadie (review)

Reviewed by: Die Leishu der imperialen Bibliothek des Kaisers Qianlong (reg. 1736-1796): Untersuchungen zur chinesische Enzyklopädie (The leishu in the imperial library of the Qianlong emperor [r. 1736-1796]: Investigations into the Chinese encyclopedia) Hans van Ess (bio) Christoph Kaderas . Die Leishu der imperialen Bibliothek des Kaisers Qianlong (reg. 1736-1796): Untersuchungen zur chinesische Enzyklopädie (The leishu in the imperial library of the Qianlong emperor [r. 1736-1796]: Investigations into the Chinese encyclopedia). Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Bd. 4. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998. 336 pp. Hardcover DM 198, ISBN 3447040599. This book is the first major attempt to discuss and analyze a collection of Chinese lei-shu in a systematic way. Because there are no comparable previous studies on this topic, Christoph Kaderas has chosen to concentrate on the sixty-five lei-shu contained in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu, which today is easily accessible to many scholars worldwide and at the same time has the most substantial collection of classical lei-shu. Kaderas starts with a critique of the conventional rendering of the term lei-shu as "encyclopedias." He feels that this Western term should no longer be used as an equivalent for lei-shu, and that "classified book" would not be of much help either, since there are many other works in the Chinese tradition (such as the Chou-li, Shuo-yüan, and the Hsin-hsü) that could be treated under the heading "classified book" but have never been called lei-shu by Chinese authors. The combination lei-shu was applied to book titles only rather late, in the seventeenth century, and the word lei, which we do find in earlier collections, does not seem to reveal important clues as to why a given book was classified as a lei-shu later (chapter 2, sections 4 and 5). Juxtaposing the European concept of the "encyclopedia" and the Chinese lei-shu, Kaderas points in his third chapter to the fact that European encyclopedias presupposed an inner nexus holding together all the concepts discussed in the work. Since the eighteenth century, European encyclopedias claimed to contain in a systematic way all the contents worth knowing by someone who wanted to pass for an educated person. According to Kaderas a similar attempt was never made by the authors of Chinese lei-shu, which followed a much more practical purpose. Unfortunately, the reader has to wait until page 268 before hearing something about the actual function of a Chinese lei-shu. Until then, the reader simply has to believe Kaderas that the function of European encyclopedias was so very different from that of lei-shu. Chapter 4 contains the bulk of the work. After reformulating the commonly asked question "Which lei-shu are representative of the genre?" to "Which lei-shu A were declared as representative at a certain time B by a group of persons C?" Kaderas proceeds to point to the fact that various editions of the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu can contain different versions of a given text. This is an interesting hint that is [End Page 154] unfortunately not followed by concrete examples. On page 49 Kaderas states that he has based his research on the Wen-yüan Ko reprint of 1987, but he does not cite the editions from other pavilions—which are admittedly not easily accessible. Note 197 starting on page 142 seems to be giving an example of how the Wen-yüan Ko is different another edition, but it turns out that the latter is not from the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu but the collection of lei-shu found in the Yen-ching Ta-hsüeh T'u-shu-kuan. Pages 51-257 consist of meticulously annotated descriptions of the sixty-five lei-shu found in the Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu. These descriptions contain notes on the importance of a lei-shu for a given context, on its content, and on different editions. This part of the work is extremely valuable for anyone interested in quick references to the major lei-shu of imperial China. Some of these texts— such as the Tai-p'ing y...

Ideology in the Orientation of Researchers in the Identification and Gathering of Empirical Data

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies bring to mind the ones in a certain Chinese encyclopedia named Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) belonging to the Emperor; (b) embalmed; (c) domesticated; (d) pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous; (g) stray dogs; (h) included in this classification; (i) madly agitated; (j) innumerable; (k) drawn by a very fine camel-hair brush; (1) et cetera; (m) that just broke a vase, (n) that look like flies from afar.

Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature by David Williams

REVIEWS ralizations are a fashionable precaution for the ideologically circum­ spect author; here Theresa Tinkle convincingly displays the multiple, discordant, and creatively chaotic nature of her subjects and the deep historical roots of their conflicted meanings, while in no way dissolving, but on the contrary strengthening, her readers' awareness of the pro­ fundity of medieval poets' engagement with the figures of Venus and Cupid and the philosophical importance of the poetic structures cen­ tered upon them. HELEN PHILLIPS University of Nottingham DAVID WILLIAMS. Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature. Montreal and Kingston; London and Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996.Pp.xiv, 392. $55.0 0. David Williams's challenging study of the monster in medieval thought and literature goes well beyond the catalog-style discussion that seems to be a typical feature of books and articles in this subject area.Williams offers a framework of understanding for monstrosity, contending that in medieval cosmology, and specifically in Pseudo­ Dionysian thought, the idea of the monster has a centrality to the scheme ofthings that postmedievals have to recover.The monster is not contra naturam, but rather extra naturam. Williams quotes Isidore's Etymologiae 1 1.3.1-2: "Varro says that portents are things which seem to have been born contrary to nature, but in truth, they are not born contrary to nature, because they exist by the divine will, since the Creator's will is the nature of everything created.... " The monstrous can be seen to have a major function within the scheme of things be­ cause of a series of moves Pseudo-Dionysius offers in his cognitive sys­ tem that effectively constitute a deformed discourse, or the proper in­ terpretation of sacred symbols.Pseudo-Dionysius, readers of The Cloud of Unknowing and related treatises will remember, offers the negative path to God: what God is not is easier to consider than what He is. Operationally this negation yields to paradoxical utterances and the failure to make any positive predication about God; this failure, how343 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ever, liberates the knower from the "logical" limits of predication and points to a transcendent possibility. As Cusa has it, God is the coinci­ dence of opposites. The monster is similarly a sign of negation, point­ ing to the paradox of "what is" and "what is not" or the transcendent. Amplifying John Scotus Eriugena and his Periphyseon, Williams can argue that in Eriugena's worldview "God the Creator is also seen as monster." Eriugena is a key figure for Williams because he sees the ninth-century thinker as creating a teratological symbolism based on a liberal interpretation of Pseudo-Dionysius. Having established the philosophical basis for his book in negative theology, Williams goes on to the second part of his grand argument, which part gives the necessary links between the general theory ofmon­ sters and the specific representations of them in select texts. Part 2, "Taxonomy," is, in one sense, the catalog of monsters so often seen in scholarship, but here it comes forward not as a descriptive inventory of things that go bump in the night but in the context ofa considered the­ ory offorms, based on the history ofideas. Williams does not lose sight of the foundation he established earlier, repeating the central ideas of negative theology and paradoxical utterances from time to time in his taxonomy with good rhetorical effect. Admittedly such a taxonomy is "a system ofcategories ofnothing," a contradictory "structuring ofdis­ order," and yet the "requirement of an affirmative discourse that at­ tempts to understand the negative." Foucault's famous comment on the Chinese encyclopedia and its taxonomy of animals is a proper motto to this theme that the "exotic charm ofanother system ofthought" makes us understand "the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that." Williams's first taxonomic divide is "The Body Monstrous," wherein size (i.e., pygmies, giants), locus and position (an­ tipodes, shape-shifters), the head (multi-, bi-, tri-, a-cephalic, as well as the human-headed animal), the mouth, the eyes, ears, and lips, and the genitals (disembodied, vagina dentata, and the hermaphrodite) are or­ dering categories. Since the body...

Chinese sources suggest early knowledge of the ‘unknown’ ungulate (Pseudonovibos spiralis) from Vietnam and Cambodia

A survey of historical Chinese encyclopaedias, compilations and textbooks from the Ming and early Qing dynasties (14th to 18th centuries) was carried out for information that might fit an animal from Vietnam and Cambodia which is known only from its distinctive horns. These horns have a raised, rib‐like pattern of rings round much of their length, and a backward curl of the horn's tip. One illustrated text found in the San Cai Tu Hui, a compilation of knowledge by Wang Chi and his son Wang Si Yi (1607), seems to bear a close resemblance to the information which has recently been gathered during field trips in Cambodia and Vietnam. The authors conclude that additional information on endemic animals in the region may be found in the writings of that part of the world.

Book reviews

Om uppfostran (Martin Buber, 1993) is reviewed by Siv Illman.The Chinese Encyclopedia Judaica (1993) is reviewed by Theodor Katz.Directory of individuals interested in the Jews and the Jewish communities of East, Southeast and South Asia (ed. Frank Joseph Shulman, 1993) is reviewed by Theodor Katz.I den frågande själ? Essäer i judiska ämnen (Mikael Enckell, 1993) is reviewed by Karl-Johan Illman.Uppbrottet. Bibelteologisk kommentar till andra Moseboken (Göran Larsson, 1993) is reviewed by Karl-Johan Illman.Periodiska systemet (Primo Levi, 1993 övers.) is reviewed by Ulrika Lindblad.Från Auschwitz till Günskirchen (Therese Müller, 1993) is reviewed by Ulrika Lindblad.The Jews of dynastic China: a critical bibliography (Michael Pollak, 1993) is reviewed by Theodor Katz.Zeugnisse jüdischer Kultur (Heinrich Simon, 1992) is reviewed by Theodor Katz.The religion of Jesus the Jew (Geza Vermes, 1993) is reviewed by Ulrika Lindblad.

THE CAPITAL SOURCES OF CHINA'S INDUSTRIALIZATION

THE CAPITAL SOURCES OF CHINA'S INDUSTRIALIZATION

Chaucer's "Literature Group" and the Medieval Causes of Books

Modern readers often confront medieval text as if it were Chinese encyclopedia that exhibits, as Michel Foucault puts it, exotic charm of another system of thought, even as it exposes limitation of our own.' The sequence and arrangement of things seem strange to us because we have lost the categorical grid that names the hidden relationships prescribing their order. VII of The Canterbury Tales, for instance-a story that links together the tales of the Shipman, the Prioress, the pilgrim Chaucer, the Monk, and the Nun's Priest-is notoriously problematic.2 F. N. Robinson observes that there seems to be no principle of arrangement save that of contrast or variety. Larry D. Benson, the most recent editor of Chaucer's works, notes that Fragment VII is the longest and most varied of the fragments and lacks any very clear unifying theme. 3 The fragment, in short, like Borges's Chinese encyclopedia, has eluded our powers of classification; its underlying conceptual code has largely remained undeciphered. Concentrating on the evidence of the links, Alan T. Gaylord suggested two decades ago that the fragment is controlled by single, though admittedly very broad subject: the art of story-telling. Gaylord's tentative designation of VII as literature group has gained fresh (albeit indirect) support recently in the growing awareness that Chaucer's work, taken as whole, exhibits an undisguised self-consciousness about the making of make-believe and represents, as Robert Edwards puts it, a sustained reflection on the nature and devices of art. 4 Not only does Chaucer fictionalize himself as writer in the dreamer-persona of the early poems, the narrator of Troilus and Criseyde, the accused (and penalized) poet of the Legend of Good Women, and Chaucer the pilgrim; he creates in each of the pilgrims

Why Do We Tell the Same Stories?: Law Reform, Critical Librarianship, and the Triple Helix Dilemma

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought-our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography-breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (1) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.' In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.l

Mr. Edward A. Martin

MR. E. A. MARTIN died at the age of seventy-nine on December 14 at Brighton, where his father had been mayor before him. Mr. Martin was well known as a lecturer on geological subjects, some of which he published in book form. His Sussex Greology and other Essays (Archer and Co., London, 1932) includes a chapter on Clayton Windmills and the Dew-Ponds, among which is mentioned the windmill illustrated in NATURE of February 27, 1932, from the great Chinese Encyclopedia of 750 volumes in the eighteenth century. His researches on dew-ponds appeared in papers for the British Association and Royal Geographical Society. Other essays appeared in the South-Eastern Naturalist, of which he was honorary editor from 1916 until 1924.

New Encyclopaedias

Whatever title to intellectual distinction the future historian may deny to our time, its right to be called the age of encyclopaedias will hardly be challenged. We have general encyclopaedias on a scale almost Chinese and special encyclopaedias of every branch of learning, science, and art. No generation has put so much of its time—profitably or unprofitably—into co-operative enterprises for alphabetizing all knowledge. We have had within the last few years two large Bible dictionaries—one of them with two supplements; a Jewish Encyclopedia in twelve volumes; new editions of the standard Protestant encyclopaedia of Herzog-Plitt-Hauck and of the Catholic encyclopaedia of Wetzer and Welte-Hergenröther-Kaulen; the beginning of a great Catholic Encyclopaedia in English and of an encyclopaedia of Islam; and now the first instalment of an Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, which will extend to at least ten volumes.