The Theology of Thomas Aquinas 1st Edition Rik

Van Nieuwenhove pdf download

https://ebookname.com/product/the-theology-of-thomas-aquinas-1st-
edition-rik-van-nieuwenhove/

Get the full ebook with Bonus Features for a Better Reading Experience on ebookname.com
Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment 1st

Edition Peter Karl Koritansky

https://ebookname.com/product/thomas-aquinas-and-the-philosophy-
of-punishment-1st-edition-peter-karl-koritansky/

Subordination in Native South American Languages 1st

Edition Rik Van Gijn (Ed.)

https://ebookname.com/product/subordination-in-native-south-
american-languages-1st-edition-rik-van-gijn-ed/

Thomas Aquinas On Human Nature Robert Pasnau

https://ebookname.com/product/thomas-aquinas-on-human-nature-
robert-pasnau/

Tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

Vol 10 of 10 Forgotten Books 2008th Edition White

https://ebookname.com/product/tales-of-king-arthur-and-the-
knights-of-the-round-table-vol-10-of-10-forgotten-books-2008th-
edition-white/
1 001 Best Slow Cooker Recipes The Only Slow Cooker
Cookbook You ll Ever Need Sue Spitler

https://ebookname.com/product/1-001-best-slow-cooker-recipes-the-
only-slow-cooker-cookbook-you-ll-ever-need-sue-spitler/

Organised Crime in Antiquity Keith Hopwood

https://ebookname.com/product/organised-crime-in-antiquity-keith-
hopwood/

Principles of Neural Science Sixth Edition Eric R.

Kandel

https://ebookname.com/product/principles-of-neural-science-sixth-
edition-eric-r-kandel/

Rules for the Transfer of Movables Wolfgang Faber

https://ebookname.com/product/rules-for-the-transfer-of-movables-
wolfgang-faber/

Botulinum Toxin Injection Guide 1st Edition Lb

https://ebookname.com/product/botulinum-toxin-injection-
guide-1st-edition-lb/
The Handbook of Country Risk 2008 2009 Jonathan Reuvid

https://ebookname.com/product/the-handbook-of-country-
risk-2008-2009-jonathan-reuvid/
   
Thomas Aquinas
edited by

   
and

  
   
Thomas Aquinas
Bologna, Museo Civico, Corale  (formerly ), fol. 75r. The folio shows the office for the feast
of St. Thomas Aquinas and probably dates to the years just after his canonization in . The
unusual inclusion of Dominican nuns as eager students of the saint, and the roundel depicting the
Apparition of Christ to the Maries, suggest that this choirbook was made for the women’s convent
of St. Agnes in Bologna. In the folio Thomas is represented as a teacher to all members of the
Church, both clerical and lay. The illumination has been attributed to a Bolognese artist known as
the Second Master of San Domenico, who participated in the decoration of several manuscripts
produced for Dominicans.
   
Thomas Aquinas
edited by

    
and

 

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

Copyright ©  by University of Notre Dame

Paperback published in 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The theology of Thomas Aquinas / edited by Rik Van Nieuwenhove and
Joseph Wawrykow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
 --- (cloth : alk. paper)
 : ---- (paper : alk. paper)
 : --- (paper : alk. paper)
ISBN 13: 978-0-268-09552-9 (web pdf)

. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, ‒ — Theology.

I. Van Nieuwenhove, Rik,  ‒ II. Wawrykow, Joseph Peter.
. 
'.' —dc


∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To Rose and Dianne
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Contributors xi
Abbreviations xiii
Editors’ Preface xix

 Quod Scit Una Uetula: Aquinas on the Nature of Theology 

Bruce D. Marshall

 Trinity 
Herwi Rikhof

 Trinity and Creation 

Gilles Emery, O.P.

 Analogy, Creation, and Theological Language 

David B. Burrell, C.S.C.

 Divine Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination, 

and Human Freedom
Harm Goris

 Trinitarian Anthropology 

D. Juvenal Merriell, C.O.

 Evil, Sin, and Death: Thomas Aquinas on Original Sin 
Rudi A. te Velde

 Right Reason and the Love of God: The Parameters 
of Aquinas’ Moral Theology
Jean Porter
 viii Contents

 Grace 

Joseph Wawrykow

 Hypostatic Union 

Joseph Wawrykow

 The Humanity of Christ, the Incarnate Word 

Paul Gondreau

 “Bearing the Marks of Christ’s Passion”: 

Aquinas’ Soteriology
Rik Van Nieuwenhove

 Theology of Church 

Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P.

 Sacraments 

Liam G. Walsh, O.P.

 Eschatology 

Carlo Leget

 Thomas Aquinas as Interpreter of Scripture 

Thomas Prügl

 Philosophical Theology and Analytical Philosophy 

in Aquinas
Paul O’Grady

 Faith and Reason Follow Glory 

Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.

A Note on the Literature 

Index 
Acknowledgments

The essay by David B. Burrell, “Analogy, Creation, and Theological

Language,” has appeared in slightly different form in American Catholic
Philosophical Association Proceedings, vol.  ():  ‒ , and is printed
here with the permission of the editor.

The essay by Gilles Emery, “Trinity and Creation,” was translated from
the French by Patrick I. Martin.

The essay by Thomas Prügl, “Thomas Aquinas as Interpreter of Scrip-

ture,” was translated from the German by Albert K. Wimmer.

Publication of a full-color dust jacket was made possible by a grant from

the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and
Letters, University of Notre Dame.

The editors have benefitted from their dealings with the capable staff
of the University of Notre Dame Press. Two people in particular are
deserving of our profound thanks: Jeff Gainey, former Associate Direc-
tor of the Press, for his interest and enthusiasm from the outset of the
project; and Rebecca DeBoer, for her diligent, patient, and unfailingly
intelligent copyediting.

Finally, the book is dedicated to our wives, Rose Cunningham and

Dianne Phillips; their encouragement and commitment are a constant
source of strength.

ix
Contributors

David B. Burrell, C.S.C., Department of Theology, University of Notre

Dame

Gilles Emery, O.P., Faculty of Theology, University of Fribourg,

Switzerland

Paul Gondreau, Department of Theology, Providence College

Harm Goris, Department of Systematic Theology and Thomas In-

stituut, Katholieke Theologische Universiteit te Utrecht

Carlo Leget, Department of Ethics, Philosophy and History of Medi-

cine, University Medical Centre Nijmegen

Bruce D. Marshall, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist

University

D. Juvenal Merriell, C.O., St. Philip’s Seminary, Toronto

Paul O’Grady, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin

Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P., St. Thomas Aquinas Priory, River Forest,

Illinois

Jean Porter, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

Thomas Prügl, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

Herwi Rikhof, Department of Systematic Theology and Thomas In-

stituut, Katholieke Theologische Universiteit te Utrecht

xi
 xii Contributors

Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., Department of Religious Studies, The University of

Virginia

Rudi A. te Velde, Department of Theology, University of Tilburg, The Neth-

erlands

Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Mary

Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland

Liam G. Walsh, O.P., Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Theology, University of

Fribourg

Joseph Wawrykow, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

Abbreviations

Bibliographical Abbreviations

AHDLMA Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge. Paris: J. Vrin,

 ‒.

Albert the Great, Albertus Magnus. Opera omnia ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum
Cologne edenda, apparatu critico, notis, prolegomenis, indicibus instruenda curavit
Edition Institutum Alberti Magni Coloniense, Bernhardo Geyer praeside. In prog-
ress. Münster i. W.: Aschendorff,  ‒ .

BGPTMA Beiträge der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters. Münster i. W.,
 ‒,  vols. Neue Folge,  ‒.

Bonaventure, Doctoris seraphici S. Bonaventurae s.r.e. episcopi cardinalis Opera omnia.

Quaracchi Edited by the Fathers of the College of St. Bonaventure.  vols.
Edition Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae,  ‒ .

Borgnet B. Alberti Magni Ratisbonensis episcopi, Ordinis praedicotorum. Opera

omnia, ex editione lugdunensi religiose castigata, et pro auctoritatibus ad
fidem vulgate versionis accuratiorumque patrologiae textuum revocatur.
Edited by Auguste Borgnet.  vols. Paris: Vives,  ‒ .

CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. Turnhout: Brepols,  ‒ .

CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: Geroldi, ‒.

DS Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de rebus Fidei

et Morum. Quod primum edidit Henricus Denzinger et quod fun-
ditus retractavit auxit notulis ornavit Adolfus Schönmetzer. Editio
XXXII. Rome: Herder, .

xiii
 xiv Abbreviations

PL Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Latina. Edited by J.-P. Migne.

 vols. Paris,  ‒ .

Peter Lombard, Magistri Petri Lombardi Parisiensis episcopi Sententiae in IV libris

Sent. distinctae (Spicilegium Bonaventurianum  ‒ ). Edited by the Fa-
thers of the College of St. Bonaventure (Quaracchi).  vols., vol.  in
 parts. rd ed. Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad
Claras Aquas,  ‒.

RTAM Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale. Louvain: Abbaye du

Mont César,  ‒ .

SC Sources Chrétiennes. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Summa Halensis, Summa theologica. Edited by the Fathers of the College of St. Bona-
Quaracchi venture.  vols. Quaracchi: Collegium S.Bonaventurae,  ‒.
Edition

Writings of Thomas Aquinas

Leonine Edition Sancti Thomae Aquinatis doctoris angelici Opera omnia iussu impensaque/
Leonis XIII P.M. edita. (Some volumes have the general title: Opera
omnia iussu edita Leonis XIII P.M.) Edited by the members of the
Leonine Commission. Rome: Sta. Sabina,  ‒.

Theological syntheses:

ScG S. Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Liber de veritate Catholicae fidei

contra errores infidelium, qui dicitur Summa contra gentiles. Edited by
P. Marc with the help of C. Pera and P. Caramello.  vols. Turin: Mari-
etti, .

English translation by A. C. Pegis (Bk. I), J. F. Anderson (Bk. II),

V. J. Bourke (Bk. III), C. J. O’Neill (Bk. IV), published by the Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, .

Citations of ScG give Book, chapter, and the paragraph number ac-
cording to the English translation. Thus, ScG IV.. = Book IV, chap-
ter , paragraph .
 Abbreviations xv

Sent. Scriptum super libros sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi Episcopi

Parisiensis.  vols. Vols.  ‒  edited by P. Mandonnet, vols.  ‒ edited
by M. F. Moos. Paris: P. Lethielleux,  ‒.

Citations of Sent. are prefaced by the Book and followed by the dis-
tinction, question, article, and part of article. Thus, III Sent. d. q.
art. ad  = Scriptum on Book III, , response to fourth objection.

ST Summa Theologiae

Citations of ST give Part, question, article, part of article. Thus, ST

I.. ad  = ST Part One, question , article , the response to the
first objection.

English translations:

Summa Theologica. Complete English Edition in  vols. Translated by

the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster, Md.:
Christian Classics, .

Summa Theologiae. Latin text and English translation, Introductions,

Notes, Appendices, and Glossaries. London: Blackfriars in conjunc-
tion with Eyre and Spottiswoode; New York: McGraw-Hill,  ‒ .
 vols. Various translators.

Disputed questions:

De Car. Quaestio disputata de caritate

De Malo Quaestiones disputatae de malo

English translation by Jean T. Oesterle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, On

Evil. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, .

De Pot. Quaestiones disputatae de potentia

English translation, Saint Thomas. On the Power of God, by the En-

glish Dominican Fathers [L. Shapcote],  vols. Westminster, Md.:
Newman Press, .

De Spe Quaestio disputata de spe

De Spir. Creat. Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis

 xvi Abbreviations

De Ver. Quaestiones disputatae de veritate

English translation, Saint Thomas, On Truth, by R. W. Mulligan

(vol. ), J. V. McGlynn (vol. ), R. W. Schmidt (vol. ). Chicago:
Henry Regnery,  ‒ .

De Virt. Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus in communi

Quodl. Quaestiones de quodlibet I ‒XII

Commentaries on the Bible:

In Is. Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram

In Ier. Postilla super Ieremiam

In Iob Expositio super Iob ad litteram

Cat. in Ioh. Catena aurea in Ioannem

In Matt. Lectura super evangelium S. Matthei. S. Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris An-

gelici evangelium S. Matthaei lectura. Edited by Raphael Cai, O.P.
Turin-Rome: Marietti, .

Citations of this commentary give biblical chapter and verse, and

the paragraph in this edition. Thus, In Matt. :, no. = on chap-
ter , verse , paragraph .

In Ioh. S. Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Super evangelium S. Iohannis

lectura. Edited by Raphael Cai, O.P. Turin-Rome: Marietti, .

In Ioh. :, no. = on chapter , verse , paragraph .

In Psalmos Postilla super Psalmos

Ad Rom. Expositio super Epistolam ad Romanos. In S. Thomae Aquinatis Doc-

toris Angelici Super Epistolas S. Pauli lectura. Edited by Raphael Cai,
O.P.  vols. Turin-Rome: Marietti, .

Citations of the commentaries on the Pauline Epistles give biblical

chapter and verse, and paragraph in this edition. Thus, Ad Rom. :,
no. = on chapter , verse , paragraph .
 Abbreviations xvii

In I Cor. Super I ad Corinthios

In II Cor. Super II ad Corinthios

In Gal. Super ad Galatas

In Eph. Super ad Ephesios

In Phil. Super ad Philippenses

In Col. Super ad Colossenses

In I Thess. Super I ad Thessalonicenses

In II Thess. Super II ad Thessalonicenses

In I Tim. Super I ad Timotheum

In II Tim. Super II ad Timotheum

In Tit. Super ad Titum

In Heb. Super ad Hebraeos

Commentaries on Aristotle:

De An. Sententia libri De anima

De Caelo Sententia De Caelo et mundo

De Sensu Sententia De sensu et sensato

Ethica Sententia libri Ethicorum

Meta. Sententia super Metaphysicam

Periherm. Sententia super Peri hermenias

Phys. Sententia super Physicam

Post. Anal. Sententia super Posteriora Analytica

Other commentaries:

De Causis Expositio super librum De Causis

De Div. Nom. Super librum Dionysii De divinis nominibus

De Trin. Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate

 xviii Abbreviations

Polemical writings:

De Aet. Mundi De aeternitate mundi

De Uni. Int. De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas

Treatises:

Comp. Theol. Compendium Theologiae

De Ente De ente et essentia

De Rat. Fid. De rationibus fidei

De Sub. Sep. De substantiis separatis

Editorial Abbreviations

a., aa. articulus, articuli

ad (cum numero) responsio ad obiectionem (argumentum)
arg. argumentum
art. articulus
c. corpus ( = body of article)
ch., chs. chapter, chapters
d., dd. distinctio, distinctiones
lect., lects. lectio, lectiones
lin. linea, lineae
n., nn. note, notes
N. F. Neue Folge
no., nos. numero, numeros
n.s. new series
ob., obj. obiectio
q., qq. quaestio, quaestiones
qc. quaestiuncula
resp. responsio
sol. solutio
tr. tractatus
Editors’ Preface

This volume offers an introduction to the theology of the great thir-

teenth-century Scholastic, Thomas Aquinas, covering the major areas
of theological investigation. After an initial essay on the nature of the-
ology according to Aquinas (Marshall), there are contributions on his
trinitarian thought (Rikhof, Emery) and his teaching about speaking the
Christian God (Burrell); on God’s providential rule (Goris); on theo-
logical anthropology, the moral life, and the movement of the human
person to God as end (Merriell, te Velde, Porter, Wawrykow); on Christ
(Wawrykow, Gondreau), his saving work (Van Nieuwenhove), and its
communication (O’Meara, Walsh); and on the end things (Leget). The
volume concludes with essays on Aquinas’ scriptural exegesis as part of
his theological project (Prügl); on Aquinas’ concern for “philosophy”
and possible openness to more recent philosophical trends (O’Grady);
and on the rapprochement between Aquinas and Protestant theology
(Rogers). The intended audience of this volume is broad. By engaging
Aquinas’ texts on their own terms and presenting his ideas in a style
that is meant to be straightforward as well as theologically sophisti-
cated, the volume should be of considerable service both to newcomers
to Aquinas and to those who are already conversant with his thought.
In commissioning these essays, the editors were direct in their in-
structions. Each essay was to be on an important aspect of Aquinas’ the-
ology or its reception. The approach was to be historically sound, sen-
sitive to Aquinas’ strategies as a theologian, and attentive to his ways of
proceeding in addressing significant topics in theology. Each essay was
also to be alert to the overall form of Aquinas’ theology, relating the
topic of the essay to Aquinas’ most basic theological convictions. And,
finally, the contributors were asked to ponder, where possible, the con-
tributions that Aquinas might make to contemporary theological dis-
course. The result is a volume that will be of interest to a wide range of
readers—to those who crave to know more about this great Scholastic
theologian and about his theological work in its historical setting; to

xix
 xx Editors’ Preface

those who in their own attempts to resolve the issues that are of abiding con-
cern to working theologians want to consider, at least, Aquinas’ point of view.
The cast of contributors to this volume is international in scope. No fewer
than eight nations (Canada, Flanders, the United States, Ireland, Germany, En-
gland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) are represented in this volume. Major
locales for the study of Aquinas find representation in the volume: Fribourg,
Utrecht, and Notre Dame, Indiana. The essays are by a judicious mix of younger
and more established scholars. Each takes historical theology very seriously, as
both interrogation of the past and retrieval of the basic, most vital insights of
classical theologians. As a rule, the essays are shaped by close reading of the
pertinent texts of Aquinas himself. The reader should come away with a good
grasp of Aquinas’ major theological claims, as well as guidance in how best to
read Saint Thomas.
While the contributors are united by their appreciation of Aquinas’ theo-
logical genius and their use of a historical-theological approach to his writings,
there are occasional disagreements in the essays that follow on particular points
of interpretation. Marshall, O’Grady, and Rogers differ on the status of the
“philosophical” in the theology of Aquinas. Wawrykow (in his chapter on grace)
offers an assessment of the importance of efficient causality in providence that
departs from that offered by Van Nieuwenhove. Sufficent textual information is
provided in each case to allow the reader to decide the adequacy of each inter-
pretation. Nonetheless, the overall picture of Aquinas that emerges from this
volume is quite consistent—not surprising, given the commitment of all of our
authors to close reading of texts as well as their refusal to bend Aquinas to the
demands of some modern or postmodern scholarly agenda, whether theological
or philosophical.
Appended to the volume is a bibliographical orientation, that is, a set of in-
structions on how to learn about editions and translations of Aquinas’ writings,
as well as about the scholarly research over the past century.


One

Quod Scit Una Uetula

Aquinas on the Nature of Theology

 . 

During the season of Lent, perhaps as late as , Thomas Aquinas

gave a series of instructional sermons on the Apostles’ Creed in his Ne-
apolitan vernacular.1 We have them only in later Latin summaries by
his secretary, Reginald of Piperno, but the simplicity and directness of
Aquinas’ address to the faithful gathered for Lenten Vespers still comes
through. He begins by observing the radical difference Christian faith
makes in human life, including human knowing. Even the humblest
believer in Christ knows more about God and how to lead a good life
than the most profound philosopher was able to know without faith in
Christ.

Despite all of their effort, none of the philosophers before the com-
ing of Christ was able to know as much about God, and about what
is necessary for life, as one old woman [uetula] knows by faith after
Christ’s coming. Hence it is said: “The earth is full of the knowl-
edge of God” [Isaiah :].2

Not only soteriologically and morally, but epistemically, Christ’s advent

is the decisive event in human history. The faith it calls forth makes
unlettered Neapolitan crones wiser in the ways of God than Plato and
Aristotle.


  Bruce D. Marshall

This may seem remarkable, since we do not “see” what we believe, but
simply cling to it by faith on the authority of God, who instructs us in Christ
about what we ought to hold true. Aquinas firmly insists, however, that believ-
ing what we cannot see would only be a mistake if we could see everything —if
we “could know perfectly all things visible and invisible.” But of course we can-
not. In fact, in its present state “our knowledge is so weak that no philosopher
has been able completely to investigate the nature of a single fly.” Therefore the
genuinely foolish course is the philosopher’s unwillingness, rare in a uetula, “to
believe anything about God save what a human being is able to know by his
own resources [per se].” God subdues this epistemic pride, as Job teaches: “God
is great, and conquers our knowledge” ( Job :).3
Indeed, even in the most ordinary worldly matters we cannot get along
without holding countless beliefs on the authority of others. This may happen
because we want to learn some science or art, and have to assume that the per-
son teaching it to us knows more about it than we do. But the weakness of our
intellect goes deeper than this. Even on a seemingly obvious matter like who
our own father is, we have no choice but to believe the testimony of others. On
this important issue, as with so many others, we have no way to transform our
believing into seeing. Aquinas finds nothing wrong in this. We could not sur-
vive unless we were willing to accept the weakness of our intellect and act ac-
cordingly. “If a human being were willing to believe only what she knew with
certainty, she could not live in this world. How can one person live without be-
lieving another?” When it comes to God, where the weakness of our intellect is
most telling and our need for instruction most profound, the epistemic lesson
is unmistakable: “No one ought to doubt concerning the faith, but ought to be-
lieve what belongs to faith more certainly than she believes what she sees, be-
cause human vision can be deceived, but God’s knowledge is never mistaken.”4
Thomists past and present would probably be puzzled at the inclusion of
Aquinas’ praise of the uetula in an account of his idea of theology. Every faith-
ful Catholic, including the old woman chattering to her crucifix (in Newman’s
phrase, kindly meant), of course has some important items of knowledge which,
in the nature of the case, are unavailable to human beings who knew nothing of
Christ’s advent: that the one God is three distinct persons, that Jesus Christ is
God, incarnate for the world’s salvation, and so forth. But for many interpreters
of Aquinas this has little to do with his conception of theology. For Aquinas the-
ology, after all, is a science, of which the uetula knows nothing. Theology is
knowledge of a quite particular kind, for which the model is provided, in Aquinas’
view, by just those Greek philosophers who lacked the items of Christian knowl-
edge that the old woman has.
 Quod Scit Una Uetula 

More than that: about even the most mundane matters, to say nothing of
God, the uetula does not have a single cognition that approaches the epistemic
rigor regularly attained by the ancient philosophers, even about God—despite
their lack of Christian faith. As Aquinas does not fail to note in the Collationes
Credo in Deum, however much we human beings need faith in this life, it is not to
be confused with knowledge, in the properly demanding sense of the term. “It is
necessary that one human being believe another concerning those things which she
is not able to know perfectly by her own resources.”5 To many Thomists it has seemed
that the science of theology must take these rationally accessible certainties as
given, and build on them as far as it can. Christian faith no doubt includes truths
beyond reason’s grasp. As Aquinas famously observes, however, “grace does not
destroy nature, but perfects it”—a phrase often taken to sum up his understand-
ing of theology.6 It seems that Aquinas attributes to the elderly illiterates in his
Naples congregation only a modest epistemic advantage, which must retreat into
insignificance when we come to consider the nature and tasks of theology.
One way to approach Aquinas’ conception of theology is to see whether his
apparent celebration of the uetula’s epistemic advantage genuinely conflicts with
his ideas about theology as a science, and about the superiority of “scientific”
knowledge. In order to do this, we will need to look in some detail at the way
Thomas handles three questions:

. Why do we need theology in the first place?

. In what sense is theology a science?
. How is the wisdom of theology connected to that knowledge which we
human beings can attain by our own resources?

Salvation and sacra doctrina

Aquinas opens his Summa Theologiae with a question, comprising ten articles,
on “holy teaching” (sacra doctrina).7 He thinks it important to clarify, at the out-
set of the enterprise, “what sort [of teaching] this is, and how far it extends.”8
This is not surprising, since from beginning to end the Summa is an exercise in
sacra doctrina.9 For Aquinas the first thing to consider is why we have to have
this sort of teaching at all.
Aquinas often gives multiple reasons in support of the positions he takes, but
here he relies on only one. We need sacra doctrina because our salvation depends
on it. The goal of life for which God has made us—the enjoyment of God him-
self, seen face to face—is wholly beyond our power to attain. In particular, life’s
  Bruce D. Marshall

aim exceeds the grasp of our reason. Left to our own cognitive devices, we would
never be able to know what the aim of life is, let alone be able to attain it. Sin
makes this problem much worse, but since we are creatures, finite and contin-
gent, yet made for an end beyond all creation, we would have this problem even
without the burden of sin—it just goes with being the sort of creatures we are.
“The human being is ordered by God to an end which exceeds the comprehen-
sion of reason, as Isaiah [:] says: ‘Without you, O God, the eye has not seen
what you have prepared for those who love you.’ ”10
Unless we can rely on God to tell us what we can never find out on our own,
there will be no salvation for us. In order to attain any goal we first of all have
to know what the goal is, so that we can direct our intentions and actions to it.
For just this reason— unde, as Aquinas tersely says—“it was necessary for human
salvation that certain matters which exceed human reason be known to [us] by
divine revelation,” and, correlatively, “received through faith.”11 Precisely these
saving matters, into which reason has no business seeking to pry, are the province
of sacra doctrina.12 This saving doctrine includes, in fact, “that which is known
to [God] alone concerning himself, and is shared with others through revela-
tion.”13 Knowledge of the glory which God has prepared for those who love
him “is not received from sensible things, but from divine revelation”; as such it
cannot “ascend” into our minds from our interaction with the world, but must,
like every perfect gift, “descend from the Father of lights ( James :).”14
The whole weight of sacra doctrina, and with that the whole work of the
Summa Theologiae, turns on Aquinas’ cryptic “unde.” We need a teaching “be-
yond the philosophical disciplines, which reason investigates,” because we need
to know the aim of life, and we need to know the aim of life in order to attain
it—to be saved.15 If the aim of life could be known (praecognitum) without this
“holy teaching,” then there would be no need for such teaching. Our need for it
indicates that reason’s shortcoming goes beyond an inability to demonstrate or
know with certainty what life’s final goal is. By itself, reason appears unable even
to give us an adequate idea of life’s true aim—adequate, that is, to orient our in-
tentions and actions toward this goal.
Reason can, to be sure, “investigate” at least some truths about God on its
own, by attending to what creatures tell it of their source. Even with regard to
matters where God may be known per creaturas, however, divine revelation is re-
quired if this knowledge is to have any saving effect. This is partly because of
the weakness of even the best human intellect. Any truths about God which we
might attain by reason would be grasped only “by a few, after a long time, and
with the admixture of many errors.”16 But Aquinas evidently also thinks that
the kinds of truths accessible to reason are, by themselves, unable to provide us
 Quod Scit Una Uetula 

with the needed knowledge of life’s ultimate aim. For that we need access to
what God alone can tell us about himself. “The deep things of God,” Aquinas
observes in comment on  Corinthians :, “are those which lie hidden in him,
and not those which can be known about him per creaturas; these latter seem to
reach only as far as the surface.”17 Without knowledge of these depths, we can-
not recognize God as our last end. The surface truths available to reason cannot
tell us this.18 We thus need God’s instruction not only in order to reach life’s aim,
but even to know what it is.19
Since salvation “is accomplished by the incarnate Son and by the gift of the
Holy Spirit,” the truth beyond reason which we most need to know concerns
the distinction of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father. The doctrine of
the Trinity—or more precisely, “the knowledge of the divine persons”—is a sav-
ing truth for Aquinas. The chief reason we need to know it is “in order to think
rightly concerning the salvation of the human race.”20 Or as Aquinas elsewhere
maintains, “The Christian faith,” which clings to that body of saving doctrine
we receive from God, “consists above all [principaliter] in the confession of the
Holy Trinity, and it glories especially in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”21
The knowledge of Jesus Christ is, indeed, “the consummation of the whole en-
terprise of theology.”22 On account of being one of the holy Trinity, Jesus Christ
is himself the goal of human life, and on account of being that divine person in-
carnate, crucified, and risen, he is at the same time “our way of reaching God”
(via . . . nobis tendendi in Deum).23
Thus sacra doctrina always has a soteriological purpose. Even at its most
recondite — and “holy teaching” in Aquinas’ hands can become a highly intri-
cate affair — theology always serves the practical aim of helping human beings
attain their ultimate destiny. No merely speculative knowledge belongs to sacra
doctrina, no knowledge, that is, acquired as an end in itself, apart from any con-
sideration of the wider human purposes it may serve. To put it differently: no
talk of God can belong to genuine knowledge of him which cannot aid in the
attainment of God as life’s final aim. Aquinas does, of course, argue that sacra
doctrina is a contemplative (speculativa) as well as a practical science, indeed that
it is primarily contemplative. By this he does not mean, however, that this teach-
ing may ever be divorced from the purpose which alone justifies its existence,
which is human salvation. Instead, Aquinas’ point is that the saving aim of sacra
doctrina, God seen and contemplated by human beings, gives the whole of this
teaching its basic character. Since the final aim is not made by us, the product
of our own act, but is God himself, who makes human beings and makes them
blessed, sacra doctrina should be thought of as more contemplative than prac-
tical in character.24 At the same time, the end of life is, in a sense, a human act,
  Bruce D. Marshall

but an act of seeing —speculatio, as Aquinas sometimes calls it—rather than of

making. As a result, the teaching by which this end is reached is, once again, pri-
marily “speculative” in nature.25
After Aquinas the view that theology is, on the contrary, primarily practical
rather than speculative or contemplative became quite common outside his own
Dominican order. This need not amount to a significant substantive difference
from Aquinas. Thus Duns Scotus, for example, argues that theology is practi-
cal rather than speculative just because there is nothing in it which is incapable
of increasing our love for God and the practices which enact that love. His rea-
son for calling theology practical is pretty much the same as Aquinas’ reason for
calling it speculative: everything in it is at least capable of directing us to the at-
tainment of life’s ultimate aim.26
Evidently Aquinas’ sacra doctrina embraces considerably more than we now
customarily mean by “theology.” The Bible itself — the text, and not simply its
interpretation —belongs to holy teaching, and indeed scripture forms the basis
for the whole of sacra doctrina. Holy teaching can use concepts and arguments
drawn from any quarter, not least from the ancient philosophers, even though
they knew nothing of Christ. But no such use of “philosophical authorities” es-
tablishes the truth of a claim in sacra doctrina. Only the use of canonical scrip-
ture can do that, since by it God teaches us those truths about the depths of his
own life which alone can lead us to him. Even the teaching of the fathers and
doctors of the church, while closer to the heart of sacra doctrina than that of the
philosophers, can serve only as probable, rather than conclusive, support for a
teaching.27 It is thus unsurprising that Aquinas sometimes uses “holy teaching”
and “holy scripture” interchangeably.28
To be sure, on occasion Aquinas also treats theology as co-extensive with
sacra doctrina. Literally, “theology” just means talk about God (sermo de Deo), and
in that broad sense all of Christian holy teaching is theology.29 But not all the-
ology is sacra doctrina. Philosophers certainly talk about God, but since their en-
terprise lacks by definition that apprehension of, and reliance upon, God’s teach-
ing about himself which is constitutive of Christian sacra doctrina, their theology
“differs in kind” (secundum genus) from “the theology which belongs to holy teach-
ing,” and is not to be confused with it.30 Aquinas’ thoroughly scriptural notion
of sacra doctrina, and thereby of theology, conforms to his own vocation. His
professional title, as we would call it, was not “theologian,” but magister in sacra
pagina —master of the sacred page—and his daily work was teaching the Bible.31
So far, Aquinas’ conception of theology — of holy teaching — apparently
accords to the uetula a considerable epistemic advantage over even the most in-
tellectually accomplished non-Christian. She does not simply possess some cog-
 Quod Scit Una Uetula 

nitive items additional to those which human reason can arrive at on its own. She
knows the final aim of human life, and she knows the way to reach it. She has
this knowledge because she believes what God teaches about himself in Christ.
The uetula gets her knowledge by relying on God’s attestation of himself in scrip-
ture, as interpreted under God’s guidance in the community of faith to which
she belongs. There is no other way for human beings to know life’s final aim. So
while human reason can know much of which the uetula has not the slightest
inkling, she has knowledge of the highest things, of that which it is best to know.
This is worth far more than even the greatest knowledge of lesser things, since
it enables the old woman to do what even the most accomplished philosopher, ab-
sent Christian faith, cannot: orient her whole life, including the life of her mind,
modest though it may be, to her final end.32 Her advantage is therefore great,
and genuinely epistemic. With her knowledge of life’s end goes the capacity to
accomplish the chief purpose for which she has a mind in the first place — to
see God.

Theolog y as a Science

. Aristotle and the Logic of Holy Teaching

Having established that only God can teach us the true aim of our life and how
that aim — God himself — may be reached, Aquinas spends much of the re-
maining space in the Summa Theologiae’s opening question trying to specify how
the saving doctrine which God imparts can be thought of as a science. His idea
of a “science” comes not from the modern experimental and mathematically rig-
orous study of nature, of course, but from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. Aquinas
knew this treatise well (it was one of only two parts of Aristotle’s Organon upon
which he wrote a commentary), although the idea that Christian theology veri-
fies Aristotle’s notion of a science was not original with him.33
On the Aristotelian view which Aquinas takes up, a science is a system of
thought at once deductive and empirical. It aims to explain states of affairs which
we observe or otherwise accept (for example, that the planets, unlike the stars,
do not twinkle) by tracing them back with syllogistic necessity to principles which
provide a causal account of these states of affairs (for example, that planets are
near, and what is near does not twinkle).34 When we reach principles which can-
not be syllogistically resolved into further and yet more basic premises, we have
arrived at the first and most essential truths of a particular science, and so of the
part of nature which it treats. These truths cannot themselves be demonstrated,
  Bruce D. Marshall

but are known in a direct and non-inferential way. They are what Aquinas often
calls “principia per se nota,” principles known “through themselves,” rather than
through some other and more basic premises, and thus principles which are in
some way self-evident.35
Aquinas’ effort to think of sacra doctrina as more or less an Aristotelian sci-
ence runs into several problems. Of these perhaps the most obvious is that the
“principles” of Christian holy teaching fail to meet the chief requirement for
premises of scientific knowledge. Sacra doctrina takes for its principles truths
about God and God’s saving works which God himself makes known, and which
form the articles of the church’s faith.36 But these Christian teachings are not
“known through themselves.” They do not elicit unhesitating assent from anyone
who understands the terms in which they are put. On the contrary, they may
reasonably be doubted, and many people in fact hold them false. So it seems that
Christian holy teaching cannot count as a science.
We may be puzzled as to why Aquinas cares that it should. Having estab-
lished that sacred doctrine relies on saving truths beyond reason’s reach, what is
to be gained by trying to show that this teaching conforms to an ideal of knowl-
edge suited to what lies within reason’s grasp? Aquinas’ chief motives on this score
perhaps come to light when he considers whether having a reason for what you
believe reduces the merit (the fitness for salvation, we might say) of Christian
faith. Not, he argues, if the urge for rational clarity stems from faith’s willing
embrace of the truths God reveals. In that case “a person loves the truth which
he believes, turns it over in his mind, and eagerly considers whether any reasons
can be found for it.”37 Love for the saving truth by which God leads us to him-
self elicits in the believer a longing to understand what he believes, to turn his
mind as best he can from the surface to the depths of the self-revealing God.38
In beings who think discursively — who cannot, like God, apprehend every-
thing at once but must move from thought to thought — the believing mind’s
yearning to share in the inherent luminosity of divine truth naturally takes the
form of a desire to see the rational connections among the truths of faith, and in-
deed among all the beliefs we hold true. This being the case, we cannot be in-
different to whether our best idea of a rationally connected body of knowledge
describes sacra doctrina. And if it does not, then it seems we will have to grant
that, as far as we can tell, Christian teaching itself will forever frustrate the be-
liever’s desire for reasoned understanding.39
Aquinas bids to save theology as a science while granting the evidently un-
scientific character of theology’s first principles, by adapting a further notion
from Aristotle. According to the Posterior Analytics a hierarchical relation ob-
tains among the sciences, in which some sciences are subordinated to others.40
 Quod Scit Una Uetula 

This can happen in several ways, but when it comes to theology the one which
interests Aquinas occurs when a “subalternate” science (sub altero — under an-
other) relies on principles delivered to it by another science. The higher science
(say, physics) demonstrates conclusions which the lower science (say, engineer-
ing) accepts as its own axioms, trusting that these principles have been estab-
lished as items of genuine knowledge in the higher science.41 Thus the practi-
tioners of a “subalternate” science like engineering credit the practitioners of
physics with a kind of grasp upon the basic premises of engineering which they
do not themselves possess, but upon which the scientific character of their own
enterprise depends. So it is with sacra doctrina. It “proceeds from principles known
by the light of a higher science, namely that of God and the blessed. Hence, just
as music credits principles taught (tradita) to it by arithmetic, so holy teaching
credits principles revealed by God.”42
This argument for the scientific character of theology has evident limita-
tions. In the case of the sciences whose principles are available to human reason,
it is always possible to ascend from the epistemic position of the lower science
to that of the higher—for the engineer to become a physicist. But the principles
of sacra doctrina can never, at least in this life, become per se nota for us. We must
content ourselves with an epistemic situation in which certainty about the prin-
ciples which lead to life’s consummation depends on trusting our teacher about
life’s end—God in Christ—and not on resolving these convictions into prem-
ises which are rationally unavoidable (whose opposite, as Aquinas suggests, is
unthinkable).43 Nor are the principles of our earthbound holy teaching the con-
clusions of a science practiced by the blessed in heaven (still less by God), as the
engineer’s premises are conclusions of the physicist’s arguments. Rather, we
believe the very same things that God and the blessed, each knowing in a quite
different and radically more direct way than we, see to be true.
Still, theology shares certain features with those sciences which are humanly
attainable. Though the engineer might become a physicist, she normally does not.
Instead she, like the theologian, takes on trust premises of which she presumes
others have a more rigorous knowledge. But no one thereby doubts the scientific
character of engineering. And just as the engineer might attain the more rigor-
ous level of knowledge upon which her science finally depends, so the person who
holds true the articles of faith rightly hopes to know better what she now believes,
“when we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” ( John :).44
For all the difference in the way they are known, the principles of sacra doc-
trina also display a certain similarity with principia per se nota. The articles of
faith cannot be demonstrated to those who deny them, but neither can the prin-
cipia per se nota upon which other sciences eventually depend. Yet we can show
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 XLVIII.] THERMAL AND ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY. 385
Postscript. — As I have not given the experimental data for the first
part of this paper, I may state here the peculiarity upon which the
above deductions chiefly depend. The law of cooling is nearly the
same (to a constant factor) for iron and the two kinds of copper
throughout the range of temperatures employed. But the statical
curve for iron differs considerably from that for copper. The ratios of
the temperature-excesses at intervals of three inches along the long
bars increase at higher temperatures in iron much faster than in
copper. In fact, the inferior copper almost realises Lambert's result.
ADDITION TO XLVIII. [In July, 1887, I wrote the subjoined
Introduction to a paper by Professor Crichton Mitchell on the
"Thermal Conductivity of Iron, Copper, and German Silver," which
appears in the Trans, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxxni. It
is given here because it briefly narrates how the work described in
the preceding paper was subsequently followed up. 1898.] Shortly
after I read to the Society my paper on "Thermal and Electric
Conductivity " [No. XLVIII. above], in which I stated that the results
were " by no means final, even so far as my own work is
concerned," I was requested by Sir Wyville Thomson to undertake
the examination of the " Pressure Errors of the ' Challenger '
Thermometers." This investigation led to another on the "
Compression of Sea- Water," and allied subjects, which is not yet
finished. Meanwhile, though I had prepared everything for my
promised repetition of the experiments on Thermal Conductivity, the
bars formerly used having been nickelised, &c, I found that it would
be impossible for me to carry out the investigation. I therefore asked
Mr Mitchell, who, as Neil-Arnott Scholar, had already done good and
careful work on Thermal Conductivity in my Laboratory, to repeat the
experiments under the altered conditions. I put at his disposal all the
apparatus which was employed in the former research. The
Government Grant Committee allowed a sum for the payment of a
computer to reduce the results, and the observations were at once
commenced. The results are now laid before the Society, and are
probably as good as the method and the thermometers employed
can furnish. As regards the method, one grand defect is the
uncertainty as to the relative amounts of surface loss of heat in the
two parts of the experiment. The nickelising has, to a very great
extent at least, removed the part of this uncertainty which was due
to oxidation of the bars; but there remains another part, not at all
easy to reckon and allow for, which depends on the fact that each
thermometer in the long bar is maintained for hours in a nearly
constant state of graduated temperature throughout its stem, while
the corresponding state of that in the short bar not only varies
rapidly as the cooling proceeds, but probably always materially
differs from it. No attempt has been made to correct the results so
far as this cause of error (which is probably of no great importance)
is concerned. It is clear that its effect will be to make the T. 49
 386 THERMAL AND ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY. [XLVIIl. rate
of cooling a little too small at the lower, as compared with the
higher, temperatures. Another defect, which indeed Forbes pointed
out, is due to the very small temperature-gradients towards the
colder end of the long bar. Mr Mitchell has carried out my suggestion
of an artificial cooling of the middle of the bar, and it is highly
interesting to compare together the results he has obtained with and
without this cooling. Angstrom expressly stated (Pogg. Ann., cxvill.
1863) that no account need be taken of the change of specific heat
with temperature. In my paper above referred to, I said that it
appears that, in iron especially, this change produces a very
considerable effect on the estimated values of the conductivity. In
default of better data, Mr Mitchell has used those given (after Nichol
and others) in a short paper in Proc. R.S.E. [Reprinted, as Addition
II., below. 1898.] The importance of this correction is shown by the
comparison of the results obtained from it with those obtained when
it is not applied. Mr Mitchell's experimental results are given in such
a form that any subsequent improvement in these data can be taken
advantage of without further experiment, and with very little trouble
in the matter of calculation. The fact that the various short bars
were exactly similar in surface in his experiments has enabled him to
make a rough test of the accuracy of these data. In the paper above
referred to, [p. 390, below], I showed that the consideration of the
rise of specific heat with temperature would destroy if not overcome
the apparent fall of conductivity of iron at higher temperatures. But I
had not then the means of properly applying the correction without
repeating about one-half of the laborious calculations incident to
Forbes' method. Mr Mitchell has in his calculations taken account of
this consideration : and it must be regarded as one of the chief
features of his paper that he has thus shown that iron does not form
an exception to the law that ordinary metals improve in thermal
conductivity as their temperature is raised. As I am responsible for
the methods employed by Mr Mitchell in the experiments and
calculations, though not for the calculations themselves, I must state
here the directions given and the grounds for them, at least in so far
as they introduce processes differing (to any considerable extent)
from those used by Forbes or by myself. 1. As to the empirical
formula (B) for the statical curve, in the special case of the iron bar
when there was no artificial cooling. This I obtained by plotting the
logarithms of the temperature-excesses as ordinates, the abscissae
being distances along the bar. The curve so obtained was nearly
straight at the lower temperatures, and became rapidly more curved
at higher temperatures. I therefore treated it as a branch of a
hyperbola, and found its asymptote. Thus the form of the empirical
expression was suggested at once. 2. The allowance for the unequal
heating of the stems of the thermometers was obtained thus : —
 XLVIII.] THERMAL AND ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY. 387 Let
v be the observed temperature (not the temperature-excess), w the
true temperature, and in accordance with § 10 of my paper e =
10/2502 = 0-00016. From the result of Mr Mitchell's comparison of
the two thermometers, one partially, the other wholly, immersed in a
paraffin bath, I have been confirmed in my assumption of an error of
10° at 250° C. Then we have iv = v + ev\ Thus, for the true
temperature-gradient in the statical experiment, dw ., - . dv d* = (l
+ 2e^T*Similarly, for the true rate of cooling, we have dw ,, . . dv *-
& + *»*• The quantities on the right-hand sides are given by the
experiments, or deduced directly by graphical methods or
calculation. For the statical curve of cooling it is easy to see in this
way that each instalment of area must be multiplied by where v^
and v2 are the limiting temperatures of the instalment. It is clear
that this correction increases the gradient at any point of the bar in
a greater ratio than that in which it increases the total area of the
corresponding part of the curve which expresses the flux of heat ; so
that its effect must be to diminish the estimates of conductivity at
higher, more than at lower, temperatures. 3. I was much surprised at
the first results obtained by Mr Mitchell for the rates of cooling at
high temperatures. At my instance he has repeated this part of the
experiment in a form similar to that which I had employed, and
certainly less likely to entail error, and the data thus obtained have
been incorporated in the paper, in so far as they relate to the
specified tables. [The remaining small difference between our results
may be due to an overestimate in my 6 p. c. reduction for oxidation.]
4. There still remains a possible source of error, due to the
thermometers themselves:— Kew Standards though they be. This
arises from the way in which the 200° C. and 300° C. points were
determined at Kew. The tubes having been carefully calibrated
before filling, the standard points 0° C. and 100° C. were directly
determined in the usual manner. But the positions of 200° C. and
300° C. were determined by taking successive portions of the tube
whose volume (cold) corresponded to that of the portion (also cold)
from 0° C. to 100° C- I have not the means of making allowance for
this defect, which will probably mar all experiments of the kind until
suitable air-thermometers are employed. 49—2
 388 THERMAL AND ELECTKIC CONDUCTIVITY. [XLVIII. 5.
The fact that the values of conductivity deduced from experiments
on the iron bar, when its full length is employed, differ so
considerably from those obtained when it is artificially cooled in the
middle, appears to be intimately connected with a remark made in
my paper (§ 14) that " in measuring conductivity, at whatever
temperature, things ought to be arranged so as to avoid any slow
flux of heat." It seems that, even after the lapse of eight hours, the
steady state of temperature has not been reached in the colder parts
of the long iron bar. 6. As the numerical data, concerning specific
gravity and specific heat, which Mr Mitchell has (in default of better)
been obliged to employ, are only rough estimates, I asked him to
test them by finding the ratios of the rates of cooling of copper and
iron at various common temperatures. The surface material was the
same in the two bars, and their dimensions equal, so that the
amount of heat lost in a given (short) time must have been the
same for each at the same temperature. The ratio of the rates of
cooling should therefore be constant for all temperatures if, and only
if, the rate of change of specific heat with temperature be the same
for each of the two materials. The result does not seem to favour
the accuracy of the assumed data, but the process employed is not
by any means an accurate one. 7. As my determinations of the
relative electric conductivities of the bars had been verified by Mr
DArcy Thompson, there is no necessity for their repetition. But,
using them, with Mr Mitchell's results for thermal conductivity, my
comparative table [ante, p. 384], should be altered (subject, of
course, to correction for improved values of specific gravity and
specific heat) to something like the following: — Thermal. Electric.
Copper (Crown) 1-5 1-729 „ (C.) . 10 1-000 Forbes' Iron . 0-23 0264
Lead 012 0149 German Silver ADDITION II. 013 0117 Note on
Thermal Conductivity, and on the Effects of Temperature-Changes of
Specific Heat and Conductivity on the Propagation of Plane Heat
Waves. [Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, February 7,
1881.] In the great majority, at least, of investigations (experimental
or mathematical) connected with conduction of heat, it has been
assumed that the known changes of specific heat of metals do not
require to be taken into account. Thus Angstrom says, even in his
paper on the Change of Conductivity with temperature (Pogg. 118,
1863): — "Da indess diese Veranderungen, soweit man sie kennt,
wenigstens innerhalb der bei
 XLVIII.] THERMAL AND ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY. 389 den
Beobachtungen vorkommenden Temperaturgranzen, nicht
bedeutend sind, so mtissen dieselben den Werth des
Warmecoefficienten nur unbedeutend afficiren konnen." In my paper
on "Thermal and Electric Conductivity" [No. XLVIII. above, p. 380], I
said that " the change of specific heat with temperature would
increase the values of k at higher temperatures, and thus reduce the
change in conductivity in iron, and increase the small changes
indicated for the other substances." But I had not at hand the means
of applying these corrections. Recent discussions as to the
comparative merits of different experimental methods have led me
to investigate the amount of this effect, by the aid of the best data I
could procure. A comparison of these seems to leave no doubt that
the specific heat of iron increases by somewhere about 7^,j of its
amount for each degree of rise of temperature; at least from 0° to
300° C, between which limits the investigations of conductivity have
hitherto been carried on. Besides this result, which I have gathered
from various scientific journals, I may adduce from my Laboratory
Book for 1868 the following determinations : which were made with
great care by the late Mr J. P. Nichol, by means of the method of
mixtures. The nature of the process employed is such that the
results must all err in defect, and the more so the higher the
temperature. The iron was heated sometimes in oil, sometimes in
paraffin. Specific Heat of Iron. 15° to 100° C. 15° to 150° C. 15° to
200° C. 15° to 250° C. 15° to 300° C. 0'1154\ 01127 0-1158 0-
1168/ 0-1193) 0-1 189 1 01186J 0-1208] 012141 01218J 0-1234) 0-
1240] 0-1274) 0-1276) Mean. 0-1152 01189 01213 01237 01275 o
From the first two of these means we find that the specific heat at
15° is 0-109 nearly, and that it increases by ^th for each degree.
Now, Forbes' experiments on iron indicated that the quantity kjc, the
ratio of the conductivity to the thermal capacity, diminishes by about
^th part for each degree from 0°C. to 200° C. Hence it is clear that,
in this case at least, the alteration of specific
 390 THERMAL AND ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY. [XLVIII.
heat cannot be neglected in estimating that of conductivity. For it
follows from the numbers just given that the diminution per 1° in
the condu6tivity of iron is really only about ^^yth of the whole
amount. My own experiments with Forbes' bars gave an average
change of k/c less than that due to the increase of c alone, thus
indicating an increase of conductivity with rise of temperature.
Angstrom's result, on the other hand, is considerably greater than
that of Forbes. But the range of temperatures he employed was not
above forty degrees. For reasons pointed out in my paper above
referred to, I consider Forbes' estimate of the value of k/c, from 0°
to 150° C, to be probably very near the truth. In other metals the
change of specific heat is usually less than in iron. But so is also that
of kjc. It would thus appear that we cannot yet state positively that
there is any metal whose conductivity becomes less as its
temperature rises; and thus the long-sought analogy between
thermal and electric conductivity is not likely to be realised. In the
method devised and carried out by Forbes, the change of specific
heat must be attended to during the calculations. Thus we cannot,
without going over again the whole numerical work connected with
what he called the Statical Curve of Cooling, estimate accurately
what will be the effect of this element upon the values of the
conductivity. But we can easily show that its influence upon
Angstrom's results is to be calculated, at least approximately, by the
simple process above. To avoid the error introduced by supposing
rate of surface loss to be proportional to v, we take (instead of a
bar) a plane slab heated and cooled periodically over one surface.
The equation for the consequent distribution of temperature is dv _
d I, dv\ dt dx \ dxl ' If we assume c = c0 (1 + ctv), k = k0(l-/3v),
where a and /3 are small positive constants; and put K = 7'> Co v =
u + co, where to depends upon first powers of a and /S only, higher
powers being neglected; the equation splits into two as follows: —
du d2u ,,,. St=Kd* (1)' dt d'co . „ d2u a(du\- /C)>
 XLVIII.J THEBMAL AND ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY. 391 For
our present purpose it is sufficient to take u = -Bx+ Ge-™* cos
(pcmH - mx), which satisfies (1), and shows the ultimate effect of a
persistent simple harmonic application of heat to one side of the
slab, whose temperature is taken as our temporary zero; the other
side being kept at the temperature — Bs, where s is the thickness of
the slab. Here s must be supposed so large that Ce~ms is
insensible; else the value of 11 would be so complicated that (2)
would become unmanageable. Substituting the above value of u in
(2), and integrating, we obtain the value of w. It consists of three
parts. We have, first, terms containing x only: — These terms show
how the mean temperature is altered throughout. Next, we have the
single term ""V^ C2e~inu' cos (4*m2< - 2mx). This is a small wave
of half period, which we need not farther consider. Finally we have,
as the modification of the original wave, C€-»>* \ fc?£ Bx + *?^? +
£) BsA cos (2KmH - mx) - H^L+J). Bx? sin (2«m* - mx) These
terms, when combined with the harmonic part of the assumed value
of u, may be put in the form Ce-™>x cos (2/cmH — rn^c), where
m, — ^m[1-^m~B--4TBx)' a + j3 i, m. « m 1 1 ~- Bx ! = m ( We
thus see the effects of the introduction of the quantities a and /8
upon the amplitude and phase of the wave ; and it is evident that
they are of the greater consequence the greater is the difference of
mean temperatures at the sides of the slab. ° Hence the only
legitimate mode of applying Angstrom's method is to keep the mean
temperature the same throughout the slab. This can easily be
effected. o It is obvious, moreover, from the values of m^ and m2
above, that Angstrom's method gives the value of k/c for the mean
of the mean temperatures indicated by the
 392 THERMAL AND ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY. [XLVIII. two
thermometers. Only, there is always the extraneous factor 4m which
is usually very nearly unity. I have worked out by the above method
the case of two harmonic waves (in the value of «), one of half the
period of the other. New terms are thus introduced into mj and «^.
They are such as to seriously affect the values of these quantities
when x is small, but they rapidly diminish by increase of x. If the
new term in u be De-mXy/i cos (faB* _ nix ^2 + E), the additional
terms in m^ are - ~+^ Dr*"*> sin X - B ,f , - e-^va Cos X. 4«i 2 v"
— 1 m Those in m^ are formed from these by making the first term
positive, and interchanging the sine and cosine of X = inxW2 + l)-E.
o It appears from this investigation that Angstrom's method, when
applied with proper precautions, is theoretically capable of giving
very good results. But it is probable that, in practice, the
thermometers will have to be supplanted by thermoelectric junctions
and a good dead-beat galvanometer. The best thermometers, when
employed for rapidly varying temperatures, work by sudden starts.
 xlix.] 393 XLIX. NOTE ON ELECTROLYTIC CONDUCTION.
[Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, April 15, 1878.] It is
commonly said that there is a resistance to a current at the surface
of contact of a solid conductor and an electrolyte. Some good
authorities, however, say that we have as yet no proof of this, as the
effects observed may be due to polarisation alone. It is obvious that,
if the reverse electromotive force due to polarisation contain a term
directly proportional to the strength of the current, the ordinary
methods of measurement would not enable us to distinguish this
from the surface resistance above mentioned. For, in the expression
2(E)' if the numerator contain a term of the form — el, it may be
expunged, provided e be added to the denominator. To clear up this
point I have recently made a number of experiments. These have
led me to some curious results bearing on the theory of electrolysis,
which I propose to bring before the Society on a future occasion. At
present I refer to them merely so far as to say that they seem to
establish the existence of the surface resistance above mentioned.
But I was led to see that if a slip of platinum be inserted between
the electrodes of a decomposing cell it ought, except in extreme
cases, to produce almost precisely the same result as a similar and
equal slip of glass or mica. This was easily verified. Here we have
the singular result of a marked diminution of the current by the
insertion into the electrolyte of a substance which is in itself a much
superior conductor. Even when the platinum completely closes the
path from one electrode to the other, so as to form two
decomposing cells instead of one, a comparatively small hole made
in it at once modifies its function from that of common electrode to
each of two decomposing cells towards that of a mere obstruction in
one cell. It is an interesting experimental inquiry to trace the
intermediate stages between these two states, as a pinhole in the
platinum is gradually enlarged. Whatever, then, be the behaviour of
the particles of an electrolyte, they do not behave like little pieces of
platinum. [This question is treated in a later paper. 1898.] T. 50
 394 [L. L. NOTE ON A MODE OF PRODUCING SOUNDS OF
VERY GREAT INTENSITY. [Proceedings of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, July 1, 1878.] Two years ago I had an opportunity of
making from the deck of the steamer " Pharos " some observations
on the performance of the fog-siren at Sanda, off the Mull of
Cantire. The instrument is worked by air at about \\ atmospheres
pressure; and, though driven by a powerful air-engine, sounds for 7
seconds only per minute. One obvious defect of such an
arrangement I saw to be the waste of energy in producing a current
of air through the trumpet of the siren along with the oscillations. It
then occurred to me that a regular alternation of puffing and sucking
— exactly analogous to the air-disturbance produced by a drum —
must be a much less costly source of sound. I have since
constructed a siren on this double action principle, the air in the
trumpet, which acts as a resouator, being put alternately in
connection with reservoirs of compressed and rarefied air. The small
model has given very good results, and a larger one is in progress.
The only defect which my model showed was a waste of energy in
the form of pulsations in the tubes leading to the exhausted receiver
and to that containing compressed air. This can be very greatly
reduced, but I do not yet see how to get rid of it entirely, unless it
be possible to make both receivers so exactly as to act as additional
resonators to the siren. If this can be carried out in practice there
will be no energy spent except in sound. It is obvious that the
principle just described is approximated to in practice whenever
steam is employed in a siren: — the vacuum being produced by the
condensation of the steam. Another device of a somewhat different
character was suggested to me by the
 L.] NOTE ON A MODE OF PRODUCING SOUNDS OF VERY
GREAT INTENSITY. 395 experiments described in the preceding
paper*. After trying, without much success, to reduce the intensity
of the siren notes by filing the edges of the apertures, it occurred to
me that I might usefully intensify them. I therefore had copper
plates soldered perpendicularly to the revolving disc, so as to
increase instead of diminishing the virtual thickness of the edges of
the apertures. The result was very striking. Such a siren gives a
sound whose intensity is not sensibly increased by a powerful blast
from an organ bellows. It produces strong currents of air through
the holes in the fixed disc, whose direction in general depends upon
the direction in which the rotating disc is made to revolve ; and
especially does so when the copper plates are inclined to the surface
of that disc. When the discs are both furnished with these plates,
turned in opposite directions, the result is still more striking. Various
other modifications have occurred to me, and are now under trial,
especially one for producing currents alternately in opposite
directions through the holes. By bringing up a flat plate towards the
instrument, the quality of the sound is altered in a remarkable
manner, and to such an extent that it seems well adapted for rapid
Morse-signalling. As this instrument requires no work to be spent
except in turning it, a very large number may be kept continuously
at work at once by the same expenditure of power as is required for
the intermittent roaring of a single fog-siren. * [" On certain Effects
of Periodic Variation of Intensity of a Musical Note. By Professors
Crura Brown and Tait." The sound was admitted through apertures
pierced in a fixed plate and in another which rotated in close
contiguity to it ; and the experiments were interfered with, when
considerable angular speed was given to the latter, by its direct
action as a sort of siren. 1898.] 50—2
 396 . [li. LI. OBITUARY NOTICE OF JAMES CLERK-
MAXWELL. [Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,
December 1, 1879.] When I first made Clerk-Maxwell's acquaintance
about thirty-five years ago, at the Edinburgh Academy, he was a
year before me, being in the fifth class while I was in the fourth. At
school he was at first regarded as shy and rather dull; he made no
friendships, and he spent his occasional holidays in reading old
ballads, drawing curious diagrams, and making rude mechanical
models. His absorption in such pursuits, totally unintelligible to his
schoolfellows (who were then quite innocent of mathematics), of
course procured him a not very complimentary nickname, which I
know is still remembered by many Fellows of this Society. About the
middle of his school career, however, he surprised his companions by
suddenly becoming one of the most brilliant among them, gaining
high, and sometimes the highest, prizes for Scholarship,
Mathematics, and English verse composition. From this time forward
I became very intimate with him, and we discussed together, with
school-boy enthusiasm, numerous curious problems, among which I
remember particularly the various plane sections of a ring or tore,
and the form of a cylindrical mirror which should show one his own
image unperverted. I still possess some of the MSS. which we
exchanged in 1846 and early in 1847. Those by Maxwell are on "The
Conical Pendulum," "Descartes' Ovals," " Meloid and Apioid," and "
Trifocal Curves." All are drawn up in strict geometrical form and
divided into consecutive propositions. The three latter are connected
with his first published paper, communicated by Forbes to this
Society and printed in our Proceedings, vol. II., under the title "On
the Description of Oval Curves, and those having a plurality of foci"
(1846).
 LI.] OBITUARY NOTICE OF JAMES CLERK-MAXWELL. 397 At
the time when these papers were written he had received no
instruction in Mathematics beyond a few books of Euclid, and the
merest elements of Algebra. The winter of 1847 found us together in
the classes of Forbes and Kelland, where he highly distinguished
himself. With the former he was a particular favourite, being
admitted to the free use of the class apparatus for original
experiments. He lingered here behind most of his former associates,
having spent three years at the University of Edinburgh, working
(without any assistance or supervision) with physical and chemical
apparatus, and devouring all sorts of scientific works in the library*.
During this period he wrote two valuable papers, which are
published in our Transactions, on " The Theory of Rolling Curves,"
and " On the Equilibrium of Elastic Solids." Thus he brought to
Cambridge in the autumn of 1850 a mass of knowledge which was
really immense for so young a man, but in a state of disorder
appalling to his methodical private tutor. Though that tutor was
William Hopkins, the pupil to a great extent took his own way; and it
may safely be said that no high wrangler of recent years ever
entered the Senate-House more imperfectly trained to produce "
paying " work than did Clerk- Maxwell. But by sheer strength of
intellect, though with the very minimum of knowledge how to use it
to advantage under the conditions of the examination, he obtained
the position of Second Wrangler, and was bracketed equal with the
Senior Wrangler in the higher ordeal of the Smith's Prizes. His name
appears in the Cambridge " Calendar " as Maxwell of Trinity, but he
was originally entered at Peterhouse, and kept his first term there, in
that small but most ancient foundation which has of late furnished
Scotland with the majority of the Professors of Mathematics and
Natural Philosophy in her four Universities. In 1856 he became
Professor of Natural Philosophy in Marischal College, Aberdeen ; in
1860, Professor of Physics and Astronomy in King's College, London.
He was successively Scholar and Fellow of Trinity ; and was elected
an Honorary Fellow of Trinity when he finally became, in 1871,
Professor of Experimental Physics in the University of Cambridge.
There can be no doubt that the post to which he was ultimately
called was one for which he was in every way pre-eminently
qualified ; and the Cavendish Laboratory, erected and furnished
under his supervision, remains as remarkable a monument to his
wide-ranging practical knowledge and theoretical skill as it is to the
well-directed munificence of its noble founder. If the title of
mathematician be restricted (as it too commonly is) to those who
possess peculiarly ready mastery over symbols, whether they try to
understand the significance of each step or no, Maxwell was not,
and certainly never attempted to be, in the foremost rank of
mathematicians. He was slow in "writing out," and avoided as far as
he could the intricacies of analysis. He preferred always to have
before him a geometrical or physical representation of the problem
in which he was engaged, and to take all his steps with the aid of
this: afterwards, when necessary, * From the University Library lists
for this period it appears that Maxwell perused at home Fourier's
Theorie de la Chaleur, Monge's Geometrie Descriptive, Newton's
Optics, Willis's Principles of Mechanism, Cauohy's Calcul Diffirentiel,
Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, and many other works of a high order.
Unfortunately no record is kept of books consulted in the reading-
room.
 398 OBITUARY NOTICE OF JAMES CLERK-MAXWELL. [LI.
translating them into symbols. In the comparative paucity of symbols
in many of his great papei*s, and in the way in which, when wanted,
they seem to grow fullblown from pages of ordinary text, his writings
resemble much those of Sir William Thomson, which in early life he
had with great wisdom chosen as a model. There can be no doubt
that in this habit, of constructing a mental representation of every
problem, lay one of the chief secrets of his wonderful success as an
investigator. To this were added an extraordinary power of
penetration, and an altogether unusual amount of patient
determination. The clearness of his mental vision was quite on a par
with that of Faraday ; and in this (the true) sense of the word he
was a mathematician of the highest order. But the rapidity of his
thinking, which he could not control, was such as to destroy, except
for the very highest class of students, the value of his lectures. His
books and his written addresses (always gone over twice in MS.) are
models of clear and precise exposition ; but his extempore lectures
exhibited, in a manner most aggravating to the listener, the
extraordinary fertility of his imagination. During his
undergraduateship in Cambridge he developed the germs of his
future great work on " Electricity and Magnetism " (1873) in the
form of a paper " On Faraday's Lines of Force," which was ultimately
printed in 1856 in the Trans, of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
He showed me the MS. of the greater part of it in 1853. It is a paper
of great interest in itself, but extremely important as indicating the
first steps to such a splendid result. His idea of a fluid,
incompressible and without mass, but subject to a species of friction
in space, was confessedly adopted from the analogy pointed out by
Thomson in 1843 between the steady flow of heat and the
phenomena of statical electricity. In recent years he came to the
conclusion that all such analogies, depending as they do on
Laplace's equation, were best symbolised by the quaternion notation
with Hamilton's V operator; and in consequence, in his work on
electricity, he gives the expressions for all the more important
physical quantities in their quaternion form, though without
employing the calculus itself in their establishment. I have discussed
in another place (Nature, vol. vu. p. 478) the various important
discoveries in this remarkable work, which of itself is sufficient to
secure for its author a foremost place among natural philosophers. I
may here state that the main object of the work is to do away with "
action at a distance," so far at least as electrical and magnetic forces
are concerned, and to explain these by means of stresses and
motions of the medium which is required to account for the
phenomena of light. Maxwell has shown that, on this hypothesis, the
speed of light is the ratio of the electromagnetic and electro-static
units. Since this ratio, and the actual speed of light, can be
determined by absolutely independent experiments, the theory can
be put at once to an exceedingly severe preliminary test. Neither
quantity is yet fairly known within about 2 or 3 per cent., and the
most probable values of both certainly agree more closely than do
the separate determinations of either. There can now be little doubt
that Maxwell's theory of electrical phenomena rests upon
foundations as secure
 LI.] OBITUARY NOTICE OF JAMES CLERK-MAXWELL. 399 as
those of the undulatory theory of light. But the life-long work of its
creator has left it still in its infancy, and it will probably require for its
proper development the services of whole generations of
mathematicians. The next in point of date of Maxwell's greatest
works is his "Essay on the Stability of Saturn's Rings," which
obtained the Adams' Prize in 1859. In this admirable investigation he
shows that it is dynamically impossible that these rings can be either
solids or continuous liquid masses; the only other available
hypothesis, viz., that they consist of a multitude of discrete parts,
each a satellite, must therefore be the correct one. Another question
which he treated with great success, as well from the experimental
as from the theoretical point of view, was the Perception of Colour,
the Primary Colour sensations, and the Nature of Colour Blindness.
His earliest paper on these subjects bears date 1855, and the
seventh has the date 1872. He received the Rumford Medal from the
Royal Society in 1860, " For his Researches on the Composition of
Colours, and other optical papers." Though a triplicity about colour
had long been known or suspected, which Young had (most
probably correctly) attributed to the existence of three sensations,
and Brewster had erroneously* supposed to be objective, Maxwell
was the first to make colour-sensation the subject of actual
measurement. He proved experimentally that any colour C (given in
intensity of illumination as well as in character) may be expressed in
terms of three arbitrarily chosen standard colours, X, Y, Z, by the
formula C = aX + bY + cZ. Here a, b, c are numerical coefficients,
which may be positive or negative ; the sign = means " matches," +
means " superposed," and — directs the term to be taken to the
other side of the equation. The last of his greatest investigations
bore on the Kinetic Theory of Gases. Originating with [Hooke and]
D. Bernoulli, this theory was advanced by the successive labours of
Herapath, Joule, and particularly of Clausius, to such an extent as to
put its general accuracy beyond a doubt. But by far the greatest
developments it has received are due to Maxwell, part of whose
mathematical work has recently been still further extended in some
directions by Boltzmann. In this field Maxwell appears as an
experimenter (on the laws of gaseous friction) as well as a
mathematician. His two latest papers deal with this branch of
physics ; one is an extension and simplification of some of
Boltzmann's chief results, the other treats of the kinetic theory as
applied to the motion of the radiometer. He has written an admirable
text-book of the " Theory of Heat," which has already gone through
several editions, and a very excellent elementary treatise on "Matter
and Motion." (See, again, Nature, vol. xvi. p. 119.) Even this, like his
other and larger works, is full of valuable matter, worthy of the most
attentive perusal not of students alone but of the very foremost
scientific men. * All we can positively say to be erroneous is some of
the principal arguments by which Brewster's view was maintained,
for the subjective character of the triplicity has not been absolutely
demonstrated.
 400 OBITUARY NOTICE OF JAMES CLERK-MAXWELL. [LI.
Of his other scientific work, which extended over the whole range of
physics, I may specially mention the following papers : — On the
transformation of surfaces by bending, Camb. Phil. Trans., 1854. The
discovery of the production of double refraction in viscous liquids
(Proc. R.S., 1873), a late consequence of some of the results of his
early paper of 1850. A general theory of optical instruments, Quart.
Journ. of Math., 1858. On reciprocal figures, frames, and diagrams
of forces, Trans. R.S.E., 1872. For this paper he obtained the Keith
Prize. His share in the construction of the British Association units of
electric resistance, and in the admirable reports of the Committee.
Also his experimental verification of Ohm's law. For further
particulars recourse must be had to the Royal Society's Catalogue of
Scientific Papers. To these may now be added his numerous
contributions to the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica —
Atom, Attraction, Capillarity, &c. ; and the laborious task of preparing
for the press, with copious and very valuable original notes, the
Electrical Researches of the Hon. Henry Cavendish. This work has
appeared only within a month or two, and contains many singular
and most unexpected revelations as to the early progress of the
science of electricity. The works which we have mentioned would of
themselves indicate extraordinary activity on the part of their author,
but they form only a fragment of what he has published; and when
we add to this the further statement, that Maxwell was always ready
to assist those who sought advice or instruction from him, and that
he has read over the proof-sheets of many works by his more
intimate friends (enriching them by notes, always valuable and often
of the quaintest character), we may well wonder how he found time
to do so much. Maxwell's early skill in versification developed itself in
later years into real poetic talent. But it always had an object, and
often veiled the keenest satire under an air of charming innocence
and naive admiration. No living man has shown a greater power of
condensing the whole substance of a question into a few clear and
compact sentences than Maxwell exhibits in his verses. As an
exceedingly good example of his style we may qupte the lines
written for the portrait of Cayley, now in Trinity College, Cambridge.
" 0 wretched race of men, to space confined ! What honour shall ye
pay to him whose mind To that which lies beyond hath penetrated ?
The symbols he hath formed shall sound his praise, And lead him on
through unimagined ways To conquests new in worlds not yet
created.
 LI-] OBITUARY NOTICE OF JAMES CLERK-MAXWELL. 401
"First ye determinants, in ordered row And massive column ranged,
before him go, To form a phalanx for his safe protection. Ye powers
of the nth roots of - 1, Around his head in endless cycles run, As
disembodied spirits of direction. "And you ye undevelopable scrolls,
Above the host wave your emblazoned rolls, Ruled for the record of
his bright inventions. Ye cubic surfaces, by threes and nines, Draw
round his camp your seven-and-twenty lines, The seal of Solomon in
three dimensions. "March on, symbolic host, with step sublime, Up
to the naming bounds of space and time ; There halt, until, by
Dickenson depicted In two dimensions, we the form may trace Of
him whose mind, too large for vulgar space, In n dimensions
flourished unrestricted." Other exquisite specimens are given in
Nature : especially good is his " Lecture to a Lady on Thomson's
Reflecting Galvanometer." One of the few others which have been
printed was secured by John Blackwood for his Magazine, where it
appeared under the title " British Association, 1874," in November of
that year. It is to be hoped that these scattered gems may be
collected and published, for they are of the very highest interest, as
the work during leisure hours of one of the most piercing intellects
of modern times. Every one of them contains evidence of close and
accurate thought, and many are in the happiest form of epigram. I
cannot adequately express in words the extent of the loss which his
early death has inflicted not merely on his personal friends, on this
Society, on the University of Cambridge, on the whole scientific
world, but also, and most especially, on the cause of common sense,
of true science, and of religion itself, in these days of much vain-
babbling, pseudo-science, and materialism. But men of his stamp
never live in vain ; and in one sense at least they cannot die. The
spirit of ClerkMaxwell still lives with us in his imperishable writings,
and will speak to the next generation by the lips of those who have
caught inspiration from his teachings and example. Scotland may
well be proud of the galaxy of grand scientific men whom she
numbers among her own recently lost ones ; yet even in a company
which includes Brewster, Forbes, Graham, Rowan Hamilton, Rankine,
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookname.com