His next publication of importance was his _Million of Facts and Correct Data and Elementary Constants in the entire Circle of the Sciences, and on all Subjects of Speculation and Practice_ (1832) 8vo. It is this work by which, perhaps, Phillips is now most known--an immense collection and, although many of the “Constants” may be open to criticism or have already become obsolete, it may still be examined with interest. The plan of the work is that of a classified collection of scraps of information on all the arts and sciences. It was so popular that five large editions were published in seven years. His preface to the stereotyped edition is dated 1839. He remarks that “his pretensions for such a task are a prolonged and uninterrupted intercourse with books and men of letters. He has, for forty-nine years, been occupied as the literary conductor of various public journals of reputation; he has superintended the press in the printing of many hundred books in every branch of human pursuit, and he has been intimately associated with men celebrated for their attainments in each of them.” In the facts concerning anatomy and physiology will be found references to scientific and other authorities upon the subject of flesh-eating. Occasionally we meet with biographical facts of special interest. Thus, he says that, early in 1825, he suggested the first idea of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to Dr. Birkbeck and then, by his advice, to Lord Brougham. His idea was the establishment of a fund for selling or giving away books and tracts, after the manner of the Religious Tract Society. As regards his astronomic paradoxes, his theory, in opposition to the Newtonian, that the phenomena attributed to gravitation are, in reality, the “proximate effects of the orbicular and rotatory motions of the earth” (for which he was severely criticised by Professor De Morgan), exhibits at least the various activity, if not the invariable infallibility, of his mental powers. A work of equal interest with a _Million of Facts_ is his next compilation--_A Dictionary of the Arts of Life and Civilisation_ (1833). Under the article _Diet_ he well remarks:-- “Some regard it as a purely _egotistical_ question whether men live on flesh or on vegetables. But others mix with it moral feelings towards animals. If theory prescribed _human_ flesh, the former party would lie in wait to devour their brethren; but the latter, regarding the value of life to all that breathe, consider that, even in a balance of argument, feelings of sympathy ought to turn the scale.... We see all the best animal and social qualities in mere vegetable-feeders.... Beasts of prey are necessarily solitary and fearful, even of one another. Physiologists, themselves carnivorous, differ on the subject, but they never take into account _moral_ considerations.