hell have rest." Indeod, the speculations of the Talmudists may fairly be said to have nothing in common with the Scriptures they pretend to illustrate. Their hierarchy of angels is drawn from Persian mythology. Platonism supplies some of their doctrine concerning the soul, which they held to be pre-existent-created once for all, and put away in a certain place until required. They declare that at the moment of birth an angel touches the mouth of the child, and causes the soul to forget all that has been know to it before. They consider that miracles too were created once for all on the evening of the sixth day, and, like the souls, produced when required. They teach immortality and the future resurrection, but disbelieve in eternal damnation. Repentance they held to be possible in hell, purification and restoration. They limit the number of the saved to no race, country, or time. If a man live uprightly, whether Gentile or Jew, he shall enter into rest. Churchman's Shilling Magazine. THE THE TALMUDIC LITERATURE OF THE JEWS. The common Jewish formula of "Peace be with you "became in the mouth of our blessed Lord and His Apostles the most solemn of priestly benedictions; so that not seldom it chanced, in the words of Bishop Taylor," that the doctrine of the old synagogue was confirmed by the words of Christ and the commentaries of the apostles. Nevertheless the very slight estimation in which our Lord held for the most both the lawyers and the oral law is expressed in many passages of the Gospels, where he rebukes them for their absurd glosses of simple laws, such as "swearing by the gold of the temple " and being a debtor, swearing by the temple and it is nothing; swearing by the gift on the altar and being guilty, swearing by the altar and being scatheless; tithing the mint, anise, and cummin, and omitting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith; cleaning the cup and the platter, the arm and the elbow, when the heart within was black with corruption and crime; lading men with burdens of precepts grievous to be borne; taking away the key of knowledge lest others might enter therein; summing up His denunciations in the fact that by their teaching the pure and true" word of God had become of none effect." So vast a body had these accretions assumed in the space of 800 years, that various attempts had been made, as we have said, to reduce them to form and shape. Hillel the Great, Akibae shepherd and also doctor of the law, and lastly Rabbi Jehudah the Holy, at length succeeded in editing and digesting its huge proportions with the joint and laborious aid of all the schools. These editions were of course long anterior to the luminous reduction of Maimonides in the twelfth century of our era. Mishna then, as epitomized by this “ painful” rabbi, is divided into six sections; these are subdivided into chapters and paragraphs. They consist of-1, Seeds; 2, Feasts; 3, Women; 4, Damages; 5, Sacred things; 6, Purifications. Laws, new and old; precepts, valuable and unimportant; statutes, great and small, are all contained therein with uncompendious exactness. The penal code is fairly humane. No sentence of THE BITTER PILL.-I suppose most persons death could be passed without the session of associate the word pill here with a familiar twenty-three judges in banco, and even then method of taking physic. But is it not rather every chance of remission was afforded to the the old spelling of peel, the rind of a fruit? Of culprit. On his road to death women were per- this spelling a well-known passage in the Mermitted, and availed themselves of that permis- chant of Venice contains an illustration :sion, as we read in the Gospels, to offer him" The skilful shepherd pilled me certain wine mingled with myrrh, to benumb his senses and alleviate his pain. Seven precepts were given to the human race, and "The first Adam was commanded concerning six things—1, idolatry: 2, blasphemy; 3, shedding of blood; 4, incest; 5, robbery; 6, justice." There are many absurd regulations about the Sabbatic rest. It was unlawful to wear shoes with nails in them on the Sabbath day. "The Sambation is a certain river of stones which rolls along all the days of the week; on the Sabbath is perfectly still." "On the Sabbath the sinners in THE MOVEMENT OF DEPRESSION OF ANDES.-The number of Ausland for May 13 gives a list of the altitudes of some of the more important points in the Andes, determined at distinct intervals of time. The heights were found to have diminished on each occasion that they were measured. Quito was found by La Condamine in 1745 to be 9596 feet above the sea; by Humboldt in 1803, 9R70 feet; by Boussingault in 1831, 9567 feet; by Orton in 1867, 9520 feet; and by Reiss and Stübel in 1870, 9350 feet. Quito has sunk 246 feet in 125 years, and Pichincha 218 feet in the same period. Its crater has sunk 425 feet during the last twenty-six years, and Antisana 165 feet in sixty-four years. Numbers are given in each case tracing their gradual descent. wands," and of the corresponding substantive, a line in Spenser's 26th sonnet "Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill ”— a line which is curiously paralleled in Touch stone's parody on Orlando's verses to Rosalind"Sweetest nut hath sourest rind." The contrast between the sweet fruit and its sour skin was perhaps proverbial. Notes and Queries. No. 1473.-August 31, 1872. CONTENTS. 4. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. By William Black, author of "A Daughter of QUESTION-DAY" IN THE HIGHLANDS, 576 FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers. the LIVING AGE will be punctually for- to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club THE LIVING AGE with another An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made From The Westminster Review. RECENT EXPERIMENTS WITH THE SENSES.* have taken them in hand. Of course the aim of the two would not be exactly the same. To the former mental element is THE phenomena of sensation constitute of secondary importance, being simply a in a peculiar manner the borderland of co-effect, easily ascertainable, by means Physiology and Psychology; for while all of which his inference to the real physiomental operations undoubtedly imply phys- logical effect may be corrected. To the iological conditions, the direct observation of these conditions is in most cases ren- factor is the essential part of the phenompsychologist, on the other hand, the mental dered impracticable by reason of their enon. It is this that he is studying, and great subtlety and inaccessibility. In the the exact conditions of which he seeks to case of the organs of sense, however, phy- determine. Yet while there is this apparsiological observation is specially favoured. ent difference in the claims of the two The cause to be observed being some ex-classes of inquirers, the method of inquiry ternal stimulus, as a pencil of rays of light, is really the same for both. The introor an adjusted series of weights, which is duction to the several organs of sense, of wholly in the experimenter's hand, and may be varied or circumscribed at his pleasure, there are presented the most favourable conditions of physical experimentation. Further, the comparative isolation and accessibility of these organs and their nervous connexions, as compared with the deep-lying and intricate structures of the centres, very much facilitate the study of the precise changes to which they are liable under the operation of a given external stimulus. For these reasons the physiology of the senses has attained a very high degree of precision and certainty, and is fast becoming the most elaborate department of the science of organism. a large variety of well-ascertained stimuli, and the observation of their effects, while logical functions of the organs, are just necessary for studying the precise physiothe best means of learning the exact nature of sensation itself. Simple observation of our sensations by self-reflection, it should be remembered, tells us very little about them. By means and classify them according to their sevof this we learn to compare, discriminate, eral qualitative peculiarities. But there self-observation tells us scarcely anything are many other aspects of them which this about. When we wish, for example to ascertain the exact duration of a given sensation, or class of sensations, we find it With this increased attention of physionecessary to resort to some objective logists to the facts of sensation, psycholomeasure of time. Our mere unaided feelgists have every reason to be content. It! is perfectly true that much of this experi-is a very vague and feeble means of measing of the duration of a pain for instance, mentation might just as readily have been undertaken by the latter in the interests of their particular science as by the former; yet they will hardly regret that their omis sions have been made good by the labours of others. Investigations into the precise mode of sensation producible by a given variety of stimulus are just of that nature, that a student of nervous processes, or of mental operations, might equally well 1. Elemente der Psychophysik. Von G. T. FECHNER. Leipzig: 1860. 2. Handbuch der physiologischen Optik. Von H. HELMHOLTZ. Leipzig: 1867. 3. Physiologische Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Optik. Von A. W. VOLKMANN. Leipzig: 1863. 4. Beitrage zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmungen. Von W. WUNDT. Leipzig und Heidelberg: 1862. urement. We all know how commonly in daily life our individual and subjective impression has to be corrected by a reference to an objective standard. Now, it is just this want of precision in our subjecits systematic study in connexion with its objective causes a matter of such psycho tive estimate of sensation which renders logic moment. In these experiments the external cause, as the stimulus of light, is something non-individual, something determinate and uniform to all minds; consequently, it may be precisely measured. From this it follows that the resulting sensation receives a new mode of measurement. Variations in intensity, duration, &c., which could never have received pre cise estimation from the mere data of sub-ments to be noticed here has to do with jective feeling, may in this connexion with the measurement of sensation. We have nicely determinable causes assume the already remarked, that our unaided subshape of an exact law. No doubt the in- jective feeling tells us very little respectdefiniteness and oscillation of individual ing the exact quantity or duration of feeling will still tend to counteract any a sensation. It is only by observing such effort to quantify sensation. Yet by these phenomena in connexion with some varying the experiments and by taking fixed and nicely definable objective standdifferent states of the same individual, as ard, that we are able to determine their well as many different individuals, an various aspects of quantity. A number approximate estimate of these aspects of of physiologists, chiefly German, have occusensation, regarded as a mathematical | pied themselves with this method of measfunction of the exciting physical cause uring the sensibilities of our organism; may be arrived at. and although many of the results of these investigations appear to add little to our knowledge of the general relation between nervous stimulation and conscious sensation, they are perhaps worth recording as data by means of which such more general principles are to be arrived at. While these experiments of the physiologist thus directly contribute to the scientific study of sensation, they serve to illustrate very copiously the mental processes and laws previously arrived at by subjective observation. In order to understand this, it must be remembered that With respect to the duration of a sensathe mature sensations here dealt with are tion viewed as the effect of a nervous the product not only of the present exter-power, there are several points deserving nal stimulation, but of the individual's of attention. First of all, it is clear that past experiences. It is impossible to produce, and at the same time obtain an account of what may be called a virgin sensation, such as may be conceived as the impression of an infant's mind; that is, so far as it is capable of existing clearly at all, without an accretion of association. Inextricably interwoven with all our familiar sensations are ideas of connected experiences, so that it is a matter of extreme difficulty to separate the net amount of sensation from the rest of the momentary impression. The physiologist, it is clear, must seek to make this separation if he is to assign the precise character of the effect of the stimulation. Hence these experiments are of no little value in adding to our knowledge of the range of memory and inference in our most rudimentary mental life. the initiating process occupies an appreciable time. It has been estimated that when a muscle is made to contract by communicating a short electric stimulus to the motor nerve, about one-sixtieth of a second elapses before the effect of contraction becomes visible. Yet no method has as yet been discovered of estimating the interval between the application of the external stimulus and the commencement of the resulting feeling. There are two questions involved in this unknown interval. The first relates to the transmission of a nervous impulse from the periphery to the sentient centres. This point has but little psychological interest. The second refers to the minimum duration of the nervous process in the central regions in order that a distinct sensation may result. It is very probable that some limit of duration exIn the following account of some of the ists below which a nervous change fails to most interesting of recent physiological produce a sensation, and it is supposable experiments with the senses, we propose that at all times a vast number of such to select simply those which bear directly brief and feeble pulses are coursing, so to on one of these two results: either serv- speak, across the regions of the brain withing to render more clear and precise the out contributing to consciousness any of nature and laws of sensation, or help- its distinct elements. The number of ing to illustrate and confirm some mental law. The first class of physiological experi vague fugitive feelings which fill up the interstices of our definite conscious life may be conceived as the immature products |