THEOLOGY
THE SUPREME ADVENTURE. By Mercedes Macandrew. Chapman & Hall. 7s. 6d. net.
Certain Nonconformist ministers had a habit—it is now fast dying—of interspersing the reading of the Lesson in service-time with comment and illustration. Mrs. Macandrew has applied a similar method in this volume. Writing to satisfy the needs of an agnostic friend, Mrs. Macandrew retells the story of the four Gospels and supports the narrative with critical expositions of her own or, occasionally, of such authorities as Edersheim. It is not easy to see for whom the book is intended. Mrs. Macandrew is frankly uncritical. She not only ignores the whole body of "higher criticism," but she makes no reference to textual difficulties, and, in discussing such a passage as the Confession of Peter, does not even mention the fact that a considerable controversy has gathered for some years around the precise significance of the promise, "On this rock I will build my Church."
It will not be to everybody's taste to have the annunciation described in this way:
God the Father sent an angel called Gabriel to that city of flowers—Nazareth in Galilee—sent him to a sweet and good and lovely but quite poor girl called Mary who was soon to be married to a man much older than herself, called Joseph.
And when we tried to read Mrs. Macandrew's paraphrases of the parables we recalled with a sigh Mr. Birrell's complaint against Canon Farrar, "who elongated the Gospels." It no doubt gave Mrs. Macandrew some months of happiness to write the book, but we think she was ill-advised in submitting it to the public.
SCIENCE
CATALYSIS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. By Eric K. Rideal and Hugh S. Taylor. Macmillan & Co. 17s. net.
In spite of the difficulties which war-time placed in the way of publishers, the production of scientific books, both in England and Germany, has been astonishingly large during the past five years. The greater number of them have—naturally enough—been devoted either to technical subjects or to branches of science having an immediate technical application. The field of industrial chemistry, especially, has been well tended by the writers, and not only new books, but new series of books—such as Messrs. Longmans' Monographs on Industrial Chemistry, Messrs. Churchill's Textbooks of Chemical Research, and Messrs. Baillière, Tindall, and Cox's Industrial Chemistry series—have appeared to bear witness to the activity of the English chemists. Certain subjects in particular have been extensively treated; we may instance synthetic colouring matters, colloid chemistry, and catalysis, the last-named subject having books devoted to it in all the series just specified. In these the subject is handled from the industrial point of view, but it is frequently seen that the commercial and the theoretical developments of a science are mutually stimulating, discoveries made in the laboratory without any object but the wresting of knowledge from nature finding commercial application, and the commercial processes suggesting fresh theoretical problems. The great industrial importance of catalysis has led to a revived interest in the scientific theories of the process, and the latest book on the subject, by Drs. Eric Rideal and Hugh Taylor, deserves praise for having devoted considerable attention to the historical and theoretical aspect of the subject, which has been rather neglected of late.
There are many chemical reactions which are promoted or accelerated by the addition of a small quantity of some foreign substance which is not used up in the process and does not appear in the final products. Thus one of the romances of chemistry was the discovery, occasioned by the chance breaking of a thermometer in the vessel, that the presence of a small quantity of mercury greatly hastens the oxidation of naphthalene to phthalic acid, a process of great importance in the manufacture of synthetic indigo. Similarly the presence of finely divided metals accelerates many reactions, such as oxidations and hydrogenations—for example, asbestos impregnated with particles of platinum promotes the oxidation of sulphur dioxide to the trioxide in the manufacture of sulphuric acid. The researches of Baker and others, showing that certain gas reactions, which ordinarily take place rapidly, proceed very slowly indeed if the gases are thoroughly dried, point to a catalytic action of small traces of moisture. The enzymes of the human body which accelerate the chemical processes of digestion and assimilation constitute another class of catalysts, and Drs. Rideal and Taylor class under catalytic action the effect of radiant energy in promoting such combinations as that of hydrogen and chlorine, although it is perhaps rather extending the usual conception of the term to do so. These examples will indicate the wide range of the subject and help to make intelligible Ostwald's famous generalisation that "there is probably no kind of chemical reaction which cannot be influenced catalytically, and there is no substance, element, or compound which cannot act as a catalyser," which is no doubt true if very slight accelerations of reaction be taken into account. Of course a catalyst cannot affect the final state of equilibrium, but only quicken or institute (the discussion as to whether, in some cases, the catalyst initiates or merely accelerates a reaction already taking place imperceptibly slowly seems to us pointless) a reaction theoretically possible. Other, the so-called negative, catalysts hinder reactions; other substances "poison," or stop, the action of ordinarily activating materials; others again, the "promoters," increase the efficacy of the catalyst. The phenomenon is a complex one.