No. III. was “An ESSAY On the Great EFFECTS of Even Languid and Unheeded LOCAL MOTION.” By the Hon. Robert Boyle. Published in 1685, and, as appears from other sources, “received with great and general applause.” I confess I was a little startled to find how near this earlier philosopher had come to the modern doctrines, such as are illustrated in Tyndall's “Heat considered as a Mode of Motion.” He speaks of “Us, who endeavor to resolve the Phenomena of Nature into Matter and Local motion.” That sounds like the nineteenth century, but what shall we say to this? “As when a bar of iron or silver, having been well hammered, is newly taken off of the anvil; though the eye can discern no motion in it, yet the touch will readily perceive it to be very hot, and if you spit upon it, the brisk agitation of the insensible parts will become visible in that which they will produce in the liquor.” He takes a bar of tin, and tries whether by bending it to and fro two or three times he cannot “procure a considerable internal commotion among the parts “; and having by this means broken or cracked it in the middle, finds, as he expected, that the middle parts had considerably heated each other. There are many other curious and interesting observations in the volume which I should like to tell you of, but these will serve my purpose.
--Which book furnished you the old cover you wanted?--said I.
--Did he kill the owl?--said the Master, laughing. [I suppose you, the reader, know the owl story.]--It was Number Two that lent me one of his covers. Poor wretch! He was one of three, and had lost his two brothers. From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath. The Scripture had to be fulfilled in his case. But I couldn't help saying to myself, What do you keep writing books for, when the stalls are covered all over with 'em, good books, too, that nobody will give ten cents apiece for, lying there like so many dead beasts of burden, of no account except to strip off their hides? What is the use, I say? I have made a book or two in my time, and I am making another that perhaps will see the light one of these days. But if I had my life to live over again, I think I should go in for silence, and get as near to Nirvana as I could. This language is such a paltry tool! The handle of it cuts and the blade doesn't. You muddle yourself by not knowing what you mean by a word, and send out your unanswered riddles and rebuses to clear up other people's difficulties. It always seems to me that talk is a ripple and thought is a ground swell. A string of words, that mean pretty much anything, helps you in a certain sense to get hold of a thought, just as a string of syllables that mean nothing helps you to a word; but it's a poor business, it's a poor business, and the more you study definition the more you find out how poor it is. Do you know I sometimes think our little entomological neighbor is doing a sounder business than we people that make books about ourselves and our slippery abstractions? A man can see the spots on a bug and count 'em, and tell what their color is, and put another bug alongside of him and see whether the two are alike or different. And when he uses a word he knows just what he means. There is no mistake as to the meaning and identity of pulex irritans, confound him!