The Popular Science Monthly 1875 - 1878: Vol 7-12 Supplement

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CPF PSA AK BH HW -_ we ee ww! Ye ye POPULAR -- THE SCIENCE MONTHLY. SUPPLEMENT OBSERVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE.’ By ALEXIS DELAIRE. S the Count Molé ironically observed, on receiving into the French Academy the au- thor of “ Chatterton,” “ Every epoch has a litera- ture of its own; but among the writings which give brilliancy to an epoch we have to distinguish two classes. The one, possessing comparative merit, and being adapted to the greater number of readers, receives loud applause; this is con- temporaneous success. The other class, fed from the sources of undying truths, is at first less cor- dially received, and awaits the judgment of the élite of our race.” If the writings of Alfred de Vigny were scornfully classed by the great states- man in the first category, surely we must place in the second the work whose title is given be- low.2 This work, though it was written at the request of Frangois Arago, and under the stress of the disquietude produced in 1848 by the “Organisation du Travail;” and though it was crowned by the Academy of Sciences at its first publication, nevertheless has attracted hardly any attention save from a select few. And yet, inas- much as it abounds in well-established facts, and, above all, is sober and moderate in its conclu- sions, it offered valuable material for study to all parties, liberals, economists, or communists, alike. But, being too impartial in its deductions to please any party without qualification, it was rather slighted by all. Besides, a man does not readily give up a pet theory, nor is it an easy thing to throw off the yoke of preconceived opinions, and 1 Translated from the Rerue des Deux Mondes (with some abridgment), by J. Fitzgerald, A. M. * “ Les Ouvriers Européens : Etudes sur les Travaux, la Vie domestique et les Habitudes morales des Populations ouvriéres de l'Europe,” par M. F. Le Play. 2 édition, 1877, 1°¢ livraison: Les Ouvriers de [ Orient. 37 with docile mind to have recourse to the scien- tific observation of facts. Here, again, was veri- fied the old saying that no man is a prophet in his own country; but, on the other side of the ocean, the Americans, with their practical sense, have understood better the meaning of these studies on the private life, the moral habits, and the occupations, of the laboring population. Dur- ing the last two years several official commissions, instead of adopting the often misleading processes of bureaucratic statistics, have attempted, accord- ing to the method of “ family monographs,” the solution of those social problems which arise in the New World as in the Old. In these mono- graphs (which, however, do not equal the models given in the “ Ouvriers Européens "’) are described nearly four hundred households of working peo- ple living under various conditions. At last, too, the wish expressed by the Academy of Sciences in 1856 has been fulfilled. That learned body, adopting the conclusions of its commissioner, Baron Charles Dupin, characterized M. Le Play’s method as a model one, and expressed a desire that “ a low-priced edition of the whole work in small form might be published, so as to bring within the means of all purchasers a statistical work treating of interests so numerous and so important.” The first volume of this new edition, enriched with the results of the author’s contin- ued researches, is now at the disposition of the public. Hence it may be interesting briefly to consider, in its origin and its essence, the method which, in Europe as in America, has been fol- lowed in the compilation of such voluminous works. I Uriuity or Screntiric Metnop is Socrat Srupies.—One of the best notes of the present

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. age is the general effort at submitting to the or- deal of enlightened criticism and scientific meth- ods studies that before were wont to deal rather with sentiments or tastes, theoretic ideas, or the eaprices of art. This significant change may be seen in the researches which have for their end to unearth extinct civilizations, and to trace to its source the life of nations. Only the other day M. Villemain, in one of his most piquant lectures, while enumerating the qualities necessary for an historian, very coolly placed in the background truthfulness and exactitude, and gave prominence only to the art of literary composition. In his opinion, writing history means skillfully con- structing an emotional drama, attending to the stage perspectives, and so ordering the action of the piece as to produce the most striking effect. Great masters, no doubt, have been able by the inspiration of genius to divine, so to speak, the physiognomy of the past, and with exquisite skill to recall to life all unchanged worlds that have perished. Thus, in the narrative of Augus- tin Thierry, we have pictured the gloomy period of the Merovingians; in the romances of Walter Scott, the struggles of Saxon and Norman; in the sparkling pages of Michelet, one or another as- pect of the middle ages. Still, how dangerous a thing it is to blend fables with truth, and how faint is the distinction between the dramaturgist and the historian! One writer, sharpening his fine irony to gratity the wits, yields to the temp- tation of portraying the men of his time in the transparent colors of an antique picture, and thus more or less sacrifices to the enticing mirage of allusions either the likeness of the past or the exactitude of the present. Another excels as a composer of eloquent speeches, and in his eyes the annals of a people contain nothing but jousts of oratory: the fate of empires, according to him, depends on the harangue of a general on the battle-field, or of a tribune in the public place of | some little borough. They both forget the mass | of the people, and personify in a small number of | individuals the societies they describe. Besides, they look at these societies only from the outside, from the point of view of their public life; they are like travelers who judge of a strange country from their observations during a flying visit to a few of its seaports. In man, “fluctuating and variable” as he is, they observe only that which changes least—his virtues, his vices, his caprices ; and it is their delight to excite emotion by over and over again describing the strife of the self- same passions; but the inner life, the unambi- tious life, the homes of the past, they do not no- tice at all. They hardly ever step beyond the threshold of the palace, or halt before the arti. san’s workshop or the laboring-man’s but; stil] it is here that we get at the very conditions of national life—the organization of the family, the institution of property, the laws of labor, the private ethics and the moral habits of a people, Fortunately, we can restore sundry traits of the effaced picture, thanks to patient research. A monument turns up which, after much ingenious discussion, enables us to understand the sacred uses of fire in ancient states, or the importance of luxury in the ancient mother-cities of Asia ; again, some charter or some inventory gives plain evi- dence of the harmony and well-being of the rural classes in the middle ages ; or some livre de raison (book of accounts) gives us an insight into the inner life of some obscure family in the past. Still these are only the too rare pages of a damaged book, the leaves of which will never be all found. But if we must make up our minds to remain in ignorance of much of the past, can we not at least collect all needed information re- garding the present? Something more than vain curiosity should stimulate us here; indeed, may we not expect to find in this kind of researches the solution of the difficulties which weigh most heavily on modern civilization? Humanity, even on the privileged shores of Greece and Italy, is not intended for the luxurious indolence of a life of opulence, or for the fruitless agitations of the political world. Labor is its law; and for na- tions more truly even than for animal species is the “ struggle for life” decreed by Fate. Hence the true history of societies must embrace the history of the transformations undergone in time and space by the institution of property, whether collective or private, and by the conditions of industry, whether rural or manufacturing, under the influence of the natural environment and the increasing wants of the population. But the most attractive prizes of progress—as wealth, intellectual culture, political power—are perilous gifts ; nations, like individuals, seldom enjoy For. tune’s favors without being intoxicated thereby. It is too easy to abuse them ; and a nation’s pros- perity, however fair its exterior, is gravely com- promised when its moral is slower than its ma- terial progress. The West is in our time passing through a painful ordeal. Coal and steam have revolution- ized the world. Great inventions, machinery, steam-engines, and railroads, have turned topsy- turvy the usages of labor, and in part substituted manufacture on the large scale for home-industry ES2@isSeFEBSRSSBsAses= z 2PaRSg FES ES

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OBSERVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE. ff one result has been an energy of production that has created unheard-of wealth, another re- git is no less evident, namely, the infliction of evils that, owing to their continuity, are more formidable than the most cruel ravages ever wrought in times past by famines and other tem- porary scourges. Formerly, the working-popu- lation, simple in their desires and frugal in their lives, were contented with their lot. This is still the case in many regious of Europe, wherever the soil is not strictly measured out to them, and especially in the Mussulman countries of which we know so little. Not only is this fact estab- lished by the precise observations of travelers, but we daily see confirmation of it in the letters of newspaper correspondents. Indeed, no “ spe- cial correspondent,” however frivolous he may be, can fail being struck, in the East, by two plain tokens of the well-being and tranquillity of the people, viz., that every one, however humble, owns his home, and that no one, even the poor- est, is reduced to absolute destitution. But in the West, despite the augmentation of wealth, and the wonderful progress that has been made, the working-classes are restless under suffering, and utter only cries of hatred. In the manufacturing eentres of Great Britain this suffering manifests itself in a degree of wretchedness which, accord- ing to the official reports, reduces the working- people to the level of beasts. Incomparably bet- ter was the lot of the slave in ancient times, of the puer, the child of the family; or that of the medieval serf, the tranquil possessor of his lowly paternal cabin. True, our French factories are, in some respects, not so ill organized, but never- theless the evil exists among us under a different form, and in a greatly aggravated character, as social antagonism and political instability. As for the moral corruption, they who have seen what it is, in the low quarters of our cities, know that the most highly-drawn pictures of it fall far short of the hideous reality. Finally, in Ger- many, the self-same inquietude is causing society to rock upon its old feudal foundations, which are falling to ruin under the attacks of doctrina- rian socialism. It seems as though, by the in- vention of the “ fire-machine,” modern civiliza- tion had repeated the bold theft of Prometheus, with all its dread consequences : “ Post ignem «therea domo Subductum, macies et nova febrium Terris incubuit cohors ; Semotique prius tarda necessitas Leti corripuit gradum.” * 1 After fire was stolen from the celestial mansions, con- In France, more than in any other country, the people seem to have lost the secret of order which nations are wont to retain while gradually improving their social constitution—a certain agreement of ideas concerning religion, the fami- ly, property, labor, and the organization of the state. The progress of the physical sciences, though the way was prepared for it by long-con- tinued application to the experimental method, has of late been especially rapid, owing to certain discoveries unparalleled in the past. From an erroneously-assumed analogy between the mate- rial relations of things and the moral relations of men, it has been inferred that the social state might be suddenly bettered by means of certain new-fangled theories which should break with old traditions. So far from regarding as worthy of respect institutions that have received the “ con- secration of time,” men have come to consider those to be least commendable which have stood longest. According to Karl Marx, the accumula- tion of capital in the hands of a few will inevita- bly lead to that social liquidation so eagerly longed for by many, and which will make com- mon property of all the instrumentalities of pro- duction. In the opinion of Mr. Herbert Spencer, property and capital are nothing but historic cate- gories ; that is to say, transitory forms which will be swept away in the fatal evolution of progress. Some there are who hope, in spite of the experi- ences of 1848 and many more recent failures, that codperation will free them from the yoke of the employer, and de away with the oppression of capital. Others, like the Katheder-Socialisten, would fain see in state intervention a middle term between the laissez-faire doctrine and the most advanced tendencies. Again, moralists and positivists agree in maintaining that the benefi- cent influence of property is not so well assured under the constraint of laws of succession dic- tated by the Revolution as under the régime of - liberty which prevails in America and England. They who do not content themselves with mere words are asking whether the arts and trades corporations that were dissolved a century ago should not be resuscitated in such forms as might best suit our times. In view of opinions so conflicting, can we still, with a learned academician, hold economic principles to be the only firm basis of morality? Is not one rather prepared, with an eminent sumption and s new train of fevers settled upon the earth, and the slow-approaching necessity of death, which, till now, was remote, accelerated its pace —(Smart's “ Horace,” Ode III.)

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4 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. member of the Political Economy Club, on the oceasion of the centenary of Adam Smith, to hold that the rédle of the political economist is now ended? At the very least we must agree with Mr. Stanley Jevons, that never before were we so far from having clear ideas of political economy, and that the science has become utterly chaotic. In this new Babel one voice alone could make it- self heard amid the uproar raised by conflicting passions and systems—the voice of Experience. At the same time we must guard against attrib- uting to experience any conventional language, or making it subservient to our own precon- ceived ideas. When, under the influence of the extension of exchanges, increase of production, and development of the state, political economy was founded in France during the past century, it took color from the “ classical” spirit then in the ascendant. Like all other crude sciences, it has more than once yielded to the temptation of hastily generalizing an isolated fact, or of putting forward abstract principles, and then seeking at most merely an a posteriori verification of them in experience. Thus, for example, one distin- guished author, iustead of inquiring how things stand in countries where plenty and peace are the rule, sententiously declares that “ wealth must be consumed according to the principles of sound reason ;’’ never dreaming that he reminds us of the doctors in Mclitre who wished their patients to digest “according to the principles of sound reason.” The truly scientific method is very different from this. Science first clears the field of all prejudgment, and admits no a priori principle ; it interrogates the facts and al- lows them to answer with their own rude elo- quence. Thanks to this method, which of itself corrects errors of ratiocination and saves us from being led astray by the imagination, the sciences have in less than two centuries made enormous progress, and this instead of growing slower is being accelerated. From early times philosophers had no end of disputes about chemical and phys- ical theories, without ever being able to agree. Thus it was that during the whole of the eigh- teenth century chemists were divided into two camps and warred for or against phlogiston, the “inflammable earth” contained in bodies, which combustion alone could drive out. When minds of a more positive turn, instead of restricting themselves simply to the external appearances of facts, and considering only the qualitative aspect of phenomena, began to make note of all the observations, and to study the quantitative | relations, they were not long in finding out the baselessness of the notion of phlogiston. Soon, by means of precise measurements and exact analysis, a theory was established which is itself simply the expression of the facts. Then it was that chemistry, which before Lavoisier scarcely existed, became the wonderful science which it now is. We might almost say the same of geology and biology—to name only the last-comers—sciences which were founded only the other day, but which are already rich in positive results, All of these sciences have followed one and the same method— collecting a multitude of isolated facts, determin. ing the degree of generalization they are capable of, establishing the natural law, i. e., the formula which covers each group of facts, and, finally, subjecting these results to manifold tests. Social science, called by M. de Bonald the science of sciences, could attain this phase of evolution only after the others: it was of necessity the last to submit to the stern rule of exactitude. But now the time has come when it, too, must quit the region of vague hypotheses and hollow theories, elect for itself a certain method of observation, and lay its foundations in the solid ground of facts. II. Tue Metuop To Be cHoSEN—F amity Mon- oGcraPHs.—The methodical verification of social facts presents peculiar difficulties. In most of the physical sciences, if we gather the teachings of Nature by observation, we also elicit the same by experiment; and these two processes mutual. ly assist each other. In the study of social phe- nomena, on the other hand, there is clearly no room for scientific experimentation. No man can reproduce, under circumstances judiciously chosen and varied at will, the phenomena of hu- man society. It is not that venturesome spirits have hesitated to push society off the beaten paths, at the risk of leading it into a cul-de-sac, or over the face of a precipice. They would fain compare society to an ingenious piece of mechan- ism, and their purpose has been, not so much by their experiments to discover its springs as by their improvements to perfect the working of the mechanism. How many are the plans proposed by Utopians, and condemned by common-sense ; above all, what mischief and ruin have been caused by the awakening of illusory fancies and by repeated failures, without the credit of the system-makers being impaired! The best of men have paid tribute to this passion for innovation. In the last century, even Turgot, who executed so many beneficial reforms, gave himself up to this sort of enthusiasm, and set about insuring a’ mm itanesn 2 2 oO ee Se eS eS eS ee oprermMeaeecesteBseBeArstaBTeeEeBeeEetstet SF

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SSrPrlisseege « SS AE _ z he i ol ie el Sl SEER the happiness of the working-men ; but, instead of reconstructing established institutions, corpo- rations, or guilds, he broke them up violently without listening to the pleas of the parties in- terested. The result was, that the masters freed themselves from all obligations to their men, and the workmen lost the rights which had been theirs for centuries. About the same period Adam Smith, after ten years of solitary medita- tion in a place remote from workshops, explained better than any writer had ever explained before the part played by labor in the production of wealth, and formulated the famous law of supply and demand. This law, though valid with re- spect to prices of commodities, cannot be applied, except by a palpable fallacy, to the relations be- tween master and workman, since the labor of the workman, or, in other terms, the daily life of his family, is not capable of being accelerated or suspended according to the fluctuations of the market, and herein differs from merchandise. Sundry other writers have advocated an absolute laissez-faire: enamored of sounding phrases, and heeding little the stern reality of facts, they even in our own day proclaim “the individual freedom of labor” as the only solution possible. We hear much of the benefits to be derived from associa- tion, free competition, participation (sharing in the profits), from syndicates, and from codpera- tion. One cannot be too wary of such experi- ments. Being inspired by generosity, by Utopian- ism, or by ambition, rather than by experience, they always end in suffering where they fail, and sometimes even lead to bloodshed. It is not with the mutual relations subsisting between men as with the relations between man and the physical world. The latter, being modified by material progress, are ever assuming new forms; but the former, being closely connected with man’s moral nature, are hardly subject to change. The expe- rience of ages has firmly established the funda- mental principles of social life, and has passed judgment on the few combinations of which they are susceptible. In truth, there remain no dis- coveries to be made, whether as to the regulation of the family at home, or the usages of labor in the workshop. Nor is there anything novel in the much-lauded schemes of reform. Many of them were known long ago, tried, and abandoned ; and most of the difficulties which we ourselves are striving to overcome have been obviated or solved in divers ways, according to the time and the place. Why should we goon squandering our means on experiments that our predecessors or our rivals have already made at their own expense ? OBSERVATION IN SOOIAL SCIENCE. In a dialogue preserved for us by Xenophon, Pericles asks how might the Athenians regain their ancient virtues, and the reply of Socrates was: “There is nothing like mystery here; let them adopt the customs of their forefathers . . . . else let them at all events follow the example of the nations that are now dominant.” And Montes- quieu says the same thing. Thus, then, the coun- sel of the wisest thinkers, as well as the history of modern science, warns us against theoretical speculation and invites us to direct observation of facts; by these means only can we reach definite results, or conclusions that will stand. But hu- man society is a vast field, in which we shall be certain to lose our way, unless we have a guide. What guide can we trust, and what method shall we choose ? First of all, we have to reject that method, however plausible it may appear, which would fain discover in the anatomical constitution of tissues or in the embryogenic evolution of organs the cause of man’s moral faculties, or even the secret of the laws of society. We cannot but regret the waste of energy and of talent on the part of those ingenious philosophers who set up the principles of sociology on so questionable an experimental basis as this. We can understand the ground of their error: many of them are of opinion that “in order profitably to apply to so- cial science the habits of mind produced by study- ing all the other sciences, it suffices to master the main ideas furnished by each.” Considering how some of these writers handle scientific processes, one is tempted to say that they are easily satis- fied, like Figaro when he mastered the “main ideas” of government and of the English lan- guage. Does any one suppose that, by isolating the ganglia of an ant, or by placing under a micro- scope the nerve-cells of a bee, he is enabled to un- derstand in their causes and in their details the habits of ants or the structure of the honey- comb? Who would dream of preferring such work asthis to the wonderfully instructive, direct observations of such men as Réaumur or Huber ? And surely it were still more preposterous to sup- pose that, from anatomical dissection of the dead body, or even from a psychological analysis of the living subject, we could infer the laws of human societies—laws still more delicate and complex, inasmuch as here the fixity of instinct is super- seded by the free play of will. Nor would recourse to statistics alone be of any greater avail. How should we find, in the ab- stract units and behind the nameless totals, the man of flesh and blood who lives, loves, and suffers?

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6 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. And do not statistical tables oftentimes conceal from the observer the very things it concerns him to know—the thoughts and the inmost feel- ings, whereof manners and institutions are only the outer forms? True it is that in statistics we possess data of inestimable value, but their con- tents are not all of equal weight by any means. Even when they have been collected with the utmost care, such data are not etrictly comparable among themselves, inasmuch as they differ in their mode of collection, in the purposes for which they are brought together, and in the methods of their cal- culation. “There is no kind of information,” says the “ Sixth Annual Report of the Massachu- setts Bureau of Statistics of Labor,” “so valua- ble to the worker in problems of social science as the statistical, when it is derived from original investigation, honestly made by competent per- sons; but, when any of these requisites are want- ing, it is the most misleading and worthless.” The same “ Report ” points out the defects of the system too commonly employed, which consists in sending out blank tables to be filled up by differ- ent hands and then sent back to a central bureau. All that then remains for the bureau to do is to make additions of its own, to calculate averages which oftentimes are erroneous, and finally to publish documents whose authority is always ques- tionable. The Massachusetts Bureau, however, combining practice with precept, adopts the method of direct investigation and actual obser- vation. Its officers seem, like M. Le Play, to be inspired by the counsels of Descartes: “I aban- doned entirely,” writes the author of the “ Dis- cours sur la Méthode,” “ the study of letters. 1 devoted the remainder of my youthful years to traveling, and associating with people of differ- ent moods and conditions. . . . For it appeared to me that I should find far more truths in the reasonings of men concerning their own affairs, where mistakes carry their own penalties, than in the reasonings of a man of letters in his cabinet, upon speculations that produce no effect, and whose only consequence is, that perhaps they inflate their author’s vanity in proportion as they depart from common-sense, inasmuch as it needs art and skill to make such arguments plausible.” When, in a personal research like this, we abandon theoretical speculation and deal with facts, we quickly discover that, if we would gain correct ideas as to the status of a society, or even if we would understand the special cundition of a working-population, it is not enough to study in that organism the atom, that is to say, the indi- vidual isolated from his surroundings: we have to observe the living cell; in other words, the family, which is the true social unit. A people is not made up of citizens that were born foundlings and that will die celibates. Memory of interest in descendants, care of infancy, and pro. tection of old age, attachment to the home and domestic occupations, all conspire to make the © family a little world of sentiments and interests— the type and at the same time the groundwork of the nation. The families of working-people, and more especially of the rural population, would nat- urally be chosen by the observer as subjects for investigation; there, in fact,is to be found the very root of the nation. Being less exposed than the higher classes to social fluctuations, and more subordinated in their physical life and activity to the climate and the productions of the soil, the working-classes, by that very fact, present the best characteristics of the nationality and the plainest impress of the local genius. While the traditions of the past, ancient manners, superan- nuated usages, and forgotten patois, are here more persistent, at the same time the slightest changes produced by progress do not fail to mani- fest themselves in modifications of land-tenure, of factory-management, of family-customs, of class-relations, and of state-institutions. A thou- sand minute details of social relations, that would hardly be noticed even by an attentive observer, will be found reflected in the home-life of the family. Housing, food, clothing, rents, taxes, insurance, religion, education, sanitary police, recreation, revenues, salaries, commonage, poor- law relief—whatever concerns the moral needs or the economic interests of the household, has its corresponding debit or credit in money or in kind. Finally, the savings of a family furnish the best criterion for judging whether it is capa- ble of rising, by its virtues, in the social scale. Hence the main thing in the “family mono- graph”’ is to fix the annual budget: this is the distinguishing characteristic of the method set forth, both in theory and in practice, by the au- thor of “Les Ouvriers Européens.” Let us brief- ly examine this method : In the first place, a “ family monograph,” if it is to be of any use, must be inspired by a sincere love of science, which leads to investigation of truth and scrupulous exactitude in noting down facts. It is not to be denied that an author will oftentimes set about his work with the purpose of demonstrating an erroneous principle with which he is in sympathy; yet, even so, impartial application of the method will suffice to distin- guish for him the true from the false. Then we Qseersersatrtsegeagageae ~oeoemew eae Bes & we)

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tie Lae ee ee et OBSERVATION IN SOOIAL SCIENCE. gust know how to win the confidence of the modest households that we would describe. No remuneration could induce a family for eight or ten days to admit an outside observer to all the secrets of its home-life ; but, on the other hand, if it is understood that the only object of the inquiry is the improvement of the status of the working-classes by first getting at the actual facts of the case, the family will not object to answering the minutest questions. There is a farther difficulty, which can only be overcome by the most patient sagacity. Not only is the at- tention of the family wearied by a long process of questioning, but oftentimes these worthy peo- ple have never thought at all about how they live; and, when they have to reply to the questions touching the minutie of the housekeeping ac- count, we only get a repetition of the dialogue of “The Cobbler and the Financier” (“ Le Savetier et le Financier”): F.—Well, how much do you earn a day ? C.—Sometimes more, sometimes less. In the lives of these people, monotonous as they appear at the first glance, there are ever oc- curring a thousand events that disturb the uni- formity—sickness, a marriage, a baptism, a sea- son of idleness, a loss of cattle, the acquisition of abit of land. Hence it is a work of much diffi- culty to draw up the balance-sheet of an average year. Around each of the budgets thus made out will be grouped a multitude of observations showing the natural conditions of the climate and the soil; the occupations and industries of the family, its habits and mode of life, its history, and its moral wants. Next come more general ob- servations on the elements of the social consti- tution of the country, as exhibited in the mon- ographs—as spontaneous products of Nature; methods of husbandry ; mode of procuring labor- ers; civil and commercial legislation; ancient communities and modern associations, from the artels of Russia or the bergslags of Sweden to the trades-unions of England ; patriarchal rule, feudal institutions, serfdom, emigration, etc. The most interesting facts are precisely those of which the family itself is unconscious, and which statistics as usually collected do not touch. s illustrative of this sort of facts, we might name “ subven- tions” of all kinds, such as the free enjoyment of a house, a garden-plot, or a field; the allow- anees made by employer or landlord for doctors’ fees or schooling; free pasturage, fuel; the right to fish or to hunt. Then there comes the satis- fying of moral wants, very indefinitely expressed under the general term of “sundry expenses,” and embracing such subjects as support of churches, education of children, mutual-aid so- cieties, books, newspapers, and recreation, It would appear as though nothing could fail to be noted where this method isemployed. The plan of the “ family monograph,” as elaborated and improved by the labors of twenty years, and tested by many subsequent works, fixes in ad- vance the compartments to which the various re- sults of observation belong. Besides—and this is indispensable for documents that are designed to be of any scientific value—all monographs drawn up in this uniform shape are strictly com- parable one with another. III. GeneRaLizaTion OF THE METHOD, AND THE OBJECTIONS URGED AGAINST 1T.—He surely would make a notable discovery, who, in deciphering some forgotten palimpsest, should bring to light a monograph of this kind relating to life in ancient times ; who should make us acquainted with the lowly history of some boatman on the Nile, some fisher in the Zgean, some Etrurian potter, or Pheenician trader; some artisan of Herculaneum, or laborer in Latium ; some Cantabrian miner, or Gaulish goldsmith. If we could scrutinize in its minutest details the daily life of working-people in all times, we should be enabled thus better than by any other method to get at the centrum vitale of all societies, namely, the relations of the protecting classes to the protected. It would be interesting to sit by the fireside of the serf at- tached to the glebe, or to enter the shop of the burgher proud of his communal liberties, to live their life and think their thoughts. In the ab- sence of statistical documents, would that we possessed some little interior views painted by the hands of masters in olden time! Thus, when Froissart writes, “I awoke again and went into my smithy, there to work and forge away on the high and noble matter with which I had been busied aforetime,” one is disposed to regret that this incomparable story-teller finds room in his tales only for the feats of high and mighty barons, but concerns himself not about a less noble mat- ter to which his genius would have lent an in- comparable charm. One of the most prominent of M. Le Play's disciples has shown us how inter- esting successive studies of one and the same family may be. He has followed, step by step, in the varying fortunes of their period of decline, and in their last struggles, the Melagas, a family of peasants living in the Pyrenees, an instructive account of whose hixtory wes given some time ago in these pages.' No less interesting would be a 1 Rerue des Deux Mondes, 1572, 15 Avril, article “ La Famille et la Loi de Succession en France.”

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE series of monographies describing one and the same social type at different epochs. By thus observing in each walk of life the reflection of the transformation of society, we should gain much valuable instruction. Thus, for instance, we should find that in carrying on the sea-coast fishery, where but little capital is required, and hardly anything but physical strength is con- tributed to the common store, codperation has always been the rule, while in other occupations it has no place. On the other hand, we should find the system of rural communities has grad- ually declined, and that this form of communism, far from embodying the promise of the future, is but an antiquated relic of the past. We might find in the history of « family during several generations a firm experimental basis for many an interesting study. Thus, to quote one instance, Mr. R. L. Dugdale has based on a monography of a family of thieves, the Jukes, a very useful inquiry into the subject of crime and pauperism in the State of New York.'! The author of this essay on social pathology traces the genealogy and the history of this unfortunate family: he shows from facts what a fearful heritage of de- bauch and disease, of misery and crime, was theirs ever since the close of the last century; finally, he deduces from observation the reforms that are needed, laying special stress on the extension of the family system throughout all correctional in- stitutions for the young. Many other aspects of our social problems might be better understood, were it possible to make inquiries of this kind into the distant past. Fortunately, we can find in space what is de- nied us in time. As was remarked by M. Charles Dupin, in the “ Report ” already quoted, “ the si- multaneous study of the lot of the working-classes in countries lying in the east, the centre, and the west of Europe, is, in fact, equivalent to the study of three distinct epochs—the ancient, the tran. sition, and the modern states of those realms which to-day are most advanced in industry, arts, and sciences.” Hence we can, without much risk of error, discover in the present age most of the social systems of the past: the patriarchal con- stitution in Turkey, the régime of rural communi- ties in Russia, feudal institutions in Hungary, and so on. By analyzing the transformations going on before our eyes in different countries, we throw light on the origin and history of modern soci- ety. Sundry observers have described the “ work- ing people of two hemispheres,” thus enlarging '“The Jukes, a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity; also, Further Studies on Criminals.” MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. | on the plan of the monographies in the “ Ouvri ers Européens.” In this way many curious types —the miner of the placers of California, the Chi. nese peasant, the freedman muleteer of Réunion, the perfumer of Tunis, the Canadian farmer— have been brought together; but there is still much to be done. Even in Europe many a mo. nography will have to be written before we can be said to know certain regions; in particular Italy, a country so diversified in its natural char- acters. And a knowledge of the family-life of Slavs, Greeks, Latins, and Mussulmans, in the provinces of European Turkey, would throw light on the present situation and on the future lot of those countries in which the fortunes of the world are now undergoing the arbitrament of war. Still some writers of note have urged against the generalization of the monography method certain objections which we must notice. The objection most commonly raised has reference to the minuteness of the details of family ac- counts. “ Where is the use,” it is asked, “of | knowing just what quantity of worthless utensils is owned by each household? What good is it to know the exact weight of salad or of pepper consumed in a year? Why note down, one by one, each article belonging to a bride’s outfit ?” Perhaps it might suffice, and certainly it were easier, to be content with general statements and , to put down in one gross sum the total of each kind of receipts or expenditures. But the au- thor of “ Les Ouvriers Européens ” is not a man to be so easily satisfied. Asa mining engineer and professor of metallurgy, he has long been famil- iar with the precise methods of weighing em- ployed in chemical analyses, and he would im. port into the study of social phenomena a like precision. It must be admitted that in arith- metic there is no such thing as semi-exactness, and that a balance-sheet loses all its value if it is | based on approximations. Besides, this descend- | ing to the minutest details necessitates on the part of the observer scrupulous exactitude in his researches, saves him from many a mistake, and not unfrequently leads to unexpected discoveries. The make-up of the household furniture, the preparation of the national dish, the description of antiquated costumes, the ceremonies of be- trothal, and other like pictures of national man- ners and customs, serve to relieve the dullness and dryness of statistics, Then, too, the ccm- parative study of one and the same item of the family accounts through different monographies, while it awakens the attention of the observer, | brings to light many an instructive fact—as, for BR2aSSESESSEEE SBEFESERZSEEES FS

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OBSERVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE. instance, the considerable profits made from home- industries, the importance of woman’s domestic work, the improvidence of the working-classes. Popular recreations exhibit a curious aspect of local manners. Thus, on the steppes of Russia, when neighbors come together to assist one of their number in performing some extraordinary work, a liberal board is always spread, and the occasion becomes a regular festival. Such gath- erings are known among the Bashkirs as heum- min, and among the peasants of Orenburg as pomotch ; and they have their counterparts in the dévés-bras of the Brétons and the grandes- journées of the Béarnais peasants. Then we have the popular amusements of country-fairs, family anniversaries, fireside gatherings in win- ter for story-telling and courtship, the har- vest-home, and the like. These modest recrea- tions of rustics are a very different thing from the costly pleasures which in great cities too often absorb no small portion of the yearly earnings. In taking note of these and similar aspects of life among the laboring-populations, the author of “Les Ouvriers Européens ” does but follow the example set by Vauban, “who,” says Fon- tenelle, “ carefully informed himself about the value of soils, their products, the manner of cul- tivating them, the means possessed by the peas- ants, their ordinary diet, their daily earnings; details which, though apparently of no impor- tance, nevertheless form part of the art of gov- ernment.” In the next place, it is charged that the au- thor of “ Les Ouvriers Européens ” has chosen to wgite in an abstract, geometrical style, bristling with technicalities and formulas, and difficult to understand. This criticism, which, in our opin- ion, was hardly justified by the first edition of the work, will probably be passed also on the second, True, we have here nothing like that elegant and superficial language of the drawing- room in which Diderot used to discuss, currente calamo, the highest social problems, without dis- concerting even those whose studies had not gone beyond their prayer-books. But is not this a necessity? When we quit venturesome gen- eralizations for the firm ground of experience, it is clear that we must adapt the exactitude of our language to the precision of our thoughts. The sciences as they develop can hardly comply with Buffon’s precept of giving to things only the most generic names; they must have a nomenclature and a vocabulary of their own. The science of society, in proportion as it becomes more clearly formulated, must, without ceasing to be literary, restrict itself to the use of terms that are rigor- ously defined, as is the case with the physical sci- ences. Finally, it has often been said that, instead of devoting time and labor to family monographs, we should boldly face the burning questions of the day, and attack our most difficult problems. But while it seems as though by such a course we should more quickly gain a knowledge of gen- eral laws, the reverse is shown to be the fact by the history of the development of the sciences. Thus geology, for example, for a long time fluctu- ated between the systems of the philosophers and the fictions of the poets: the first researches which won for it a solid basis did not have for their object the solution of any general question, and were restricted to closely analyzing, in a cir- cumscribed locality, a small number of very definite facts. It was thus that, by his modest observations, a potter and a genius, Bernard Palissy, outstripped the savants, and in his “ Dis- cours Admirables” explained the laws which had regulated the formation of sedimentary terrains, and the circulation of subterraneous waters. In like manner, the fruitful conception of substitu- tion, which has opened such broad horizons in organic chemistry, suggested itself to Dumas while making a minute examination of the reac- tions of chlorine with hydrogen carburets. And the domain of knowledge is still daily being en- larged rather by painstaking analyses of details than by brilliant surveys of the whole field. It will be the same with social science: it will make real progress only in proportion as it fol- lows in the track of the sciences which have gone before. It is incumbent, especially on statistical con- gresses and geographical societies, to encourage the use of family monographs in the discussion of economic problems and in describing for- eign peoples, Already, as we have said, the Bos- ton Bureau of Statistics of Labor, while adopt- ing as its method of investigation personal ob- servations, at the same time borrowed from the monographies at least the principal divisions of their plan. The truth is that, instead of paint- ing with a firm hand a few complete pictures, the commissioners have chosen rather to present @ very large number of slight sketches, and hence have left out many details ; thus, under the head of “ Receipts,” neither “subventions” nor the fruits of home-industries are mentioned. But, defective though they are, these monographies, being accompanied with reports on the different sections of the family budgets, lead to important,

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, 10 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. conclusions. Thus, more than half of the house- holds studied were making savings ; the majority of them had comfortable homes, substantial food, and decent attire; in hardly a single instance was the mother of the family employed in any work outside of her house; while, on the contrary, the labor of the younger members contributed largely to the receipts. Geography is not less interested than statis- tics in developing the method of social research. Nothing could show more clearly than does the monograph the preponderant influence on the social constitution of a race of the extent of wild land at its disposal, and the amount of spontane- ous products offered by its territory. For the author of “‘ Les Ouvriers Européens ” these two elements, the importance of which is shown by figures in the family budgets, are decisive with respect to the organization of the family, the in- stitution of property, the labor-market, and emi- gration. Hence it is to be desired that the at- tention of travelers be directed toward a method- ical observation of social facts, so as constantly to test and to apply to new territories the results of prior researches; we thus meet one of the most urgent needs of our time. In England, and also in the United States, vigorous social-science associations are already concerning themselves with important researches, and by their publica- tions and annual meetings are making the people familiar with economic questions. In France, the Société d’Economie Politique and the Société d’Economie Sociale combine their efforts for a common object, but they enjoy neither the same means nor the same publicity as similar bodies in England ard the United States. IV. Appiication or THIS METHOD TO THE Srupy or OrientaL Workuen.—Inasmuch as the new edition of Le Play’s work offers for criticism only monographies of Eastern countries, it were as yet premature to discuss the general conclu- sions to which the author of “ Les Ouvriers Eu- ropéens” has been led by his long-continued studies, The scheme of social reform with which Le Play’s name is identified, though, according to him, it is firmly based on strict observation of facts, gives rise to considerable difference of opinion among the best minds. Hence to defend or to attack its principles would necessitate a thorough-going discussion. This task we cannot undertake, and must confine ourselves to a con- sideration of the actual developments of the method from the special point of view adopted by the Academy of Sciences when it labored to encourage the application of this system of in- vestigation. “ Are the researches original? Js their object an important one? Have facts been carefully observed ; are they set forth methodi. cally ; and, above all, are they stated fairly?” These are the only considerations which we have to take into account. If the method of invest. gation is rigorous, and employed with scientific impartiality, then the facts set down will their own logical conclusions. Still, in order to give a better idea of the value and interest of these family monographies, it will be well to in. dicate a few of the principal facts brought into relief by the methodical study of the workmen of the East. There exists, as one might say, a “home (patrie) of virtue,” or, in other words, an ensem. ble of natural conditions, which make it easier for a man to discharge his duty; whereas, in other regions, on the contrary, the manner of life increases the difficulty of well-doing, and requires of a man a higher and, in so far, a rarer degree of virtue. For M. Le Play this “ native land of virtue” is the great steppe—the vast region of grassy plains which constitutes Southern Russia, and which extends far into Asia. Devoid of trees, intersected by few streams, and they deep- ly embanked ; exposed to all meteorological in- fluences, this grassy region is hardly inhabitable during the droughts of summer or the colds of winter, with the exception of some few sheltered districts lying at the foot of hills. In spring, however, grasses and flowers grow there in abundance, and horses and oxen, camels and tents, disappear, buried in an ocean of verdure. From time immemorial this has been the home of nomads; the patriarchal life still subsists here in Biblical majesty, and with a serene moral ele- vation. The results yielded by the study of sun- dry families living on the Siberian slope of the Ural Mountains have been confirmed by inde- pendent and competent authors, as by the Abbé Hue in Mongolia, and by General Vlangaly in Peking. The simplicity of manners, the cor- rectness of relations, the haughtiness of charac- ter, which characterize the nomads, have been lauded by all the writers of ancient times—by poets, geographers, and historians, from Homer to Horace, from Herodotus to Strabo and Justin. When we leave the grassy plains and travel toward Europe through Russia, we observe the various phases of social transformation which have been brought about in the West by the clearing of woodland and the development of sed- entary life. M. Le Play selects for publication five monographies of Russian families. First, we SESEESSERELEEE 3

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SFRsai Paes tes a >a S FS 7 Fr hres ES ~~ _ Springing up, and the inferior nobility, especially OBSERVATION IN fave a family of Bashkirs, inhabiting a country that is renowned for the beauty of its vernal sea- gon: they are still half nomadic, spurn agricultu- nl labor, and live upon the milk of their young mares like the Hippomulgez and Galactophage of sotiquity. Then comes a family of laborers em- | ployed in the gold-washings and the iron-works of the Ural: these devote themselves to the work of making clearings and garden-patches in the midst of the woods. Next come regular cultiva- tors of the soil, peasants of the “black land” of Orenburg, who are attached to the seigniorial demesne by a system of corvées (husbandry-ser- vice). Still farther to the west, and especially in districts where, as in the basin of the Oka, the peasants are able to increase their little store by periodical emigrations of young laborers to the towns, the plan of rent (obrok) takes the place of busbandry-service. The social constitution which among nomads makes each head of a family a sort of petty sovereign has here been supplanted by the feudal system; still the patriarchal spirit has survived. Prior to the reforms of 1861, the landed proprietor exercised a paternal authority over his laborers, and the young were taught to respect the ancient traditions. Land-owners and factory-proprietors were held morally responsible for the well-being of their subordinates, and mas- ter and workman were united by feelings of soli- darity that resembled the ties of family. The transition from husbandry-service to rent was the prelude to emancipation, which would have come about spontaneously by the gradual evolution of interests, had it not been hastened by the gener- ous initiative of the sovereign. Among the good results of emancipation, M. Le Play enumerates | increased industry, increased savings, more ambi- | tion among the better class of laborers, less ab. | senteeism on the part of the rural proprietors, and an increase of comfort for both of these class- e3 in the fertile regions. But, on the other hand, weak or improvident families have parted with their traditional well-being; a pauper class is those of that class whose estates were encum- | bered with debt, have been reduced to penury. Then, too, the compulsory suppression of seign- | iorial authority has dealt a blow at Russian nation- ality by weakening the moral influences which were wont to uphold religious belief and respect | for authority. Finally, the trade in spirituous liquors has suddenly reached a considerable de- | velopment, the consequence being here, as else- | where,a degradation of the race. The best as- surance for the future of Russia is to be found in SOCIAL SCIENCE. 11 the rural communities, which have been wisely strengthened by the provisions of the emancipa- tion act. These institutions, while they do but little to stimulate the energies of the peasants, and oftentimes check the career of eminent indi- vidualities, nevertheless insure to the great ma- jority of the people a competency. At the same time they serve to prepare these populations for the enjoyment of the benefits of individual prop- erty. The monography of the Jobajjy family, living on the banks of the Theiss, presents in miniature the old feudal régime of Hungary. The con- cession of the seigniorial lands, at first only a usufruct, had become, by force of custom and under the influence of material progress, strict property almost. The peasant could freely trans- mit landed property, in accordance with the local usage; but he could not mortgage it, neither could he parcel it out beyond a certain fixed limit. When a family became extinct, its inher- itance did not go to increase the reserve of the proprietary, but was granted to other peasants. The rent was paid either in kind or in service. Some lands were held in fee by peasants, or even by day-laborers, thus showing the degree of fore- sight reached by the population. ll the taxes, except the church tithes, were collected gratui- tously with the rent of the estate by the pro- prietary, who also bore the expenses of police and of courts of justice; furthermore, he was required by self-interest still more than by cus- tom always to assist his tenants. The Revolution of 1848 put an end to these institutions, and now from among its manifold complicated and contra- dictory results there are a few that are easily recognized. As a rule, the redemption of the ' enforced husbandry-service and of the tithe | has benefited all classes, whether proprietaries or peasants: there is now more industry, agricult- ure is more prosperous, and wealth brings better returns. But some of the changes have been of benefit only to the proprietors: the taxes, which they used to collect without charge to the treas- ury, and in such a way as to cause the least pos- sible distress to the tax-payers, are now levied by the fiscal authorities with all the rigor of official- ism. Patrimonial justice is succeeded by public tribunals, which are oftentimes strangers to the local usages or are held in distant places, but are always costly, especially on account of the neces- ' sity of hiring lawyers. But what most seriously _ compromises the economic future of the middle ' classes is the endless division of small estates, resulting in social degradation of the peasantry,

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19 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. and the alarming progress of usury, which threat- ens the ruin of improvident landlords. Long ago, in France as also in England, the emancipation of the serfs was brought about by the same economic causes, but under circum- stances far more favorable than at present attend the transformation of the feudal system in Hun- gary and in Russia. Instead of occurring pre- maturely, as the result of social revolution or theoretic speculations, this change of social rela- tions was the gradual product of time, and its realization was due far less to the progress of the idea of freedom, the political efforts of legists, or the civilizing influence of the clergy, than to the free play of interests. Kings, no doubt, wishing to reduce the powers of the nobles and to enlarge those of the crown, issued many a decree of en- franchisement, but these had again and again to be renewed; and the serfs, far from looking on freedom as a deliverance, oftentimes shunned it as a burden and an expense. To cite one in- stance among many, consider how the serfs of Pierrefond, emancipated by Philip the Bold, straightway went and married serf-women, so that they might have ground for demanding of the Parliament a return to the glebe. Feudalism has always rested on the necessities of the weak, who offered their services in exchange for pro- tection. So long as the rich and the powerful possessed forests and other wild lands, it was to their interest to attach to themselves the peas- antry and their descendants. Thanks to these new relations between tenants and landlords, the latter saw the produce of their domains steadily augmenting, while the former, insured against untoward accidents, found ample resources in the cultivation of their patrimonial properties or in the enjoyment of the rights of usage. This condition of well-being everywhere underwent a change when disposable land began to be scarce. The proprietors, instead of insisting on their right of keeping their tenantry on their native soil, saw the advantage of being freed from the obligation of supporting them, which custom re- quired them to do, but which had now become more difficult, owing to the complete occupation of the land. Finally, the evolution of society, which by degrees substituted in lieu of hus- bandry-service payment first in kind and then in money, ultimately resulted in quit-rent leases. Long before the turmoil of the Revolution, the tenants had been gradually becoming actual pro- prietors, and the facts developed by the new school of history, from study of documents, have a flood of light thrown upon them by the anal- ysis of the conditions still existent in Russia and Hungary. As for Turkey, sundry monographies of work. ing-people’s families exhibit in their details 9 constitution of society as yet patriarchal. The Mussulmans have always rejected feudal institu. tions as a means of relieving the wants of the improvident families that multiply by the crowd. ing together of sedentary populations. Their religion teaches the equality of all Mussulmans, and they hold that, as compared with the poor man who practises the divine law, the rich man is but the steward of goods that belong to God. Hence the institution of the wakfi—lands form. ing a great part of Turkey, the revenues of which are saved for the benefit of the poor. A few examples will exhibit in a favorable light the relations between masters and servants, There is, for instance, the quasi-perpetual debt, without interest, contracted by the Christian Bulgarians of the iron-works in the Balkans tow- ard their Mussulman employers. So far from regarding this as a burdensome obligation, the workmen are rather inclined to be vain of the large amount of their debt, as showing the con- fidence reposed in them by their masters. Then we must note the sort of family relationship sub- sisting between slave and master. Stimulated by their religious sentiments to emancipate at least one slave in each generation, some be- lievers, even though they be not at all wealthy, willingly devote their first savings to the pur- chase of a slave, who soon becomes the com- panion and the equal in all respects of their own children. Without in the least cloaking the vices which have transformed the ancient man- ners of Turkey, the monographies do thus bring out clearly many a useful lesson in social har- mony, that other nations might study with profit. Facts like these might be multiplied, but the foregoing will suffice to show how the author has reached the conclusions which he now submits for criticism and correction. In his opinion, the well- being enjoyed undisturbed by the lower classes in the East—a state of things which offers so sharp a contrast to the sufferings and the com- plaints of the laboring-populations of the West— has hitherto been dependent on three causes, viz. : 1. The fact that both among the Mussulmans and the Christians, whether Orthodox or Catholic, the observance of the moral law is firmly based on religious belief ; 2. The institution of the patriar- chal family, which brings all the descendants un- der the strong authority of the father, and checks =a =a ew eo ne e- asf s&s &-& S&S Oe ee SllClCUCrlCUrrlCUr

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DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL. the ambition of the more gifted members for the benefit of the greater number; 3. The free use of uncultivated land and of the spontaneous ucts of the earth, which is permitted to all. The first of these causes is not the exclusive priv- lege of any One age or country; the second is capable of being advantageously modified under the influence of economic and moral progress; the third alone is fated to disappear, as land is more and more completely occupied for culture. Now that the study of the working-people in the East har shown the social importance of this element of well-being, it is for other family monographies to exhibit the means whereby the ruling classes have at all times endeavored to fill its place and to maintain harmony by insuring to the lower classes 13 equivalent resources. It is not enough to show that societies have everywhere found, in the con- tinuous nature of the engagements between em- ployer and workman, strong guarantees against antegonism and suffering. It has still to be shown, with the clearness characteristic of the method of observation, how model workshops may, by harmonizing apparently conflicting inter- est, and without impairing any of the rights either of employer or employed, produce that stability of relations which formerly in the West, as still in the East, was based on a system of constraint. Knowl- edge of these processes is of the highest impor- tance for the solution of the problems which now vex all manufacturing nations, On this point we demand of the author full and definite information. DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL.’ By Proressorn W. ROBERTSON SMITH, or tue University or ABERDEEN. AVID, beloved son of Jesse, second King of Israel, and founder of the dynasty which continued to reign at Jerusalem until the Baby- lonian captivity. According to the usual chro- nology, he reigned 1055-1015 B. c., but the com- putations which produce this date by counting back from the destruction of Jerusalem, 588 B. c., or the fall of Samaria, 722 8. 4 contain nu- merous precarious elements. Ewald puts the date ten years earlier, but recent investigations, on the contrary, make it not improbable that Da- vid flourished as much as from thirty years to half a century later than is usually assumed. David is the greatest of the kings of Israel, and his reign changed the whole face of Hebrew history. During the period of the Judges, the Hebrews were weakened by an exaggerated love of personal independence, divided by tribal jeal- ousies, and oppressed by a succession of foreign enemies, of whom the latest and most dangerous were the Philistines, an immigrant people whose main settlements in the fruitful coast-land of South- ern Canaan appear to have taken place after the Hebrews were established in the land. Forcing their way inland, the Philistines struck a decisive blow in the battle of Ebenezer (1 Samuel iv.), when the collapse of the ancient hegemony of Ephraim, and the destruction of the sanctuary of the ark at Shilo, left the Hebrews without na- 1 From the new edition of the “ Encyclopedia Bri- tannica,” vol. vi, tional leaders and without a centre of national action. Then arose Samuel, whose prophetic ac- tivity rallied the Israelites around Jehovah God of hosts, and brought about a great national and religious revival. The struggle with the Philis- tines was. renewed with better success, though without decisive issue, and at length the election of Saul as king embodied in a permanent institu- tion the stronger sense of national unity which had grown up under Samuel. But Saul was not equal to the task set before him. He broke with the prophetic party, which was the mainstay of the national revival which the king was called to lead. He felt himself forsaken by Jehovah, and his last years were clouded by accesses of a furi- ous melancholy which destroyed his vigor and alienated his subjects. When at length he was defeated and slain at Gilboa, the Philistines ap- peared to be absolute masters of the position. They even moved forward and occupied the cities in the plain of Jezreel and on the Jordan, which the Israelites forsook in terror—a movement which cut the country as it were in two, and ap- parently made it impossible for the Hebrews again to unite under a single head. From this humilia- tion David in a few years raised his country. to the highest state of prosperity and glory, sub- duing his enemies on every side, and extending his suzerainty, as he expresses himself in Psalm xviii., even over nations that he had not known, To do this work, other qualities than mere mili-

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eee eee ee 14 THE POPULAR SOIENCE tary capacity were required. David was not only a great captain—he was a national hero, who united in his own person the noblest parts of Hebrew genius, and drew to himself by an unfail- ing personal attraction the best valor, patriotism, and piety of the nation ; while his political tact and inborn talent for rule enabled him to master the old tribal particularism, and to shape at Jeru- salem a kingdom which, so long as he lived, rep- resented the highest conception of national life that was possible under the rude social condi- tions then existing. The structure erected by David was, in truth, too much in advance of the times, and too wholly the creation of unique genius to be permanent. Under a successor whose wisdom lacked the qualities of personal force and sympathy with popular feeling, the kingdom of David began to decay, and in the next generation it fell asunder, and lived only in the hearts of the people as the proudest memory of past history, and the prophetic ideal of future glory. The books of Samuel, which are our principal source for the history of David, show how deep an impression the personality of the king, his character, his genius, and the romantic story of his early years, had left on the mind of the na- tion. Of no hero of antiquity do we possess so life-like a portrait. Minute details and traits of character are preserved with a fidelity which the most skeptical critics have not ventured to ques- tion, and with a vividness which bears all the marks of contemporary narrative. But the record is by no means all of one piece. The his- | tory, as we now have it, is extracted from various | sources of unequal value, which are fitted to- | gether in a way which offers considerable difficul- ties to the historical critic. In the history of David’s early adventures the narrative is not sel- dom disordered, and sometimes seems to repeat itself with puzzling variations of detail, which have led critics to the almost unanimous conclu- sion that the first book of Samuel is drawn from at least two parallel histories. It is indeed easy to understand that the romantic incidents of this period were much in the mouths of the people, and in course of time were written down in vari- ous forms which were not combined into perfect MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. books of Samuel incorporated narratives which other copies did not acknowledge. From the story of Goliath, the Septuagint omits many verses—1 Samuel xvii. 12-31, xvii. 55-xviii, 5, The omission makes the narrative consistent, and obviates serious difficulties involved in the He brew text. Hence some have supposed that the Greek translators arbitrarily removed passages that puzzled them. But this hypothesis does not meet the facts, and is inconsistent with what we know of the manner of this part of the Sep. tuagint. There can be little doubt that both here and in other cases the shorter text is origi- nal, and that the disturbing additions came in later from some other document, and were awk- | wardly patched on to the older text. So, too, the history of the gradual estrangement of Saul from David is certainly discontinuous, and in the _ opinion of most critics the two accounts of David | sparing Saul’s life are duplicate narratives of one | event. Even in the earlier part of the history | these minor difficulties do not affect the essential | excellence of the narrative preserved to us; and | for the period of David’s kingship the accounts | are still better. All that relates to personal and | family matters at the court of Jerusalem (2 Sam. uel xi.-xx.) seems to come from some writer who had personal cognizance of the events recorded. It does not appear that the plan of this author included the history of David's foreign campaigns. The scanty account of great wars in chapter viii. is plainly from another source, and in gen- eral our information is less adequate on public affairs than on things that touched the personal life of the king. The narrative is further en- riched with poetical pieces, of which one at least (2 Samuel i 19-27) is known to be extracted from an anthology entitled “‘ The Book of the Up- right.” Several brief lists of names and events seem also to have been taken from distinct sources, and sometimes interrupt the original context (e. g., | 2 Samuel iii. 2-5). Some important lists were | still accessible to the author of Chronicles in a separate form. 1 Chronicles xi. 10-47 is fuller | at the end than the corresponding list in 2 Sam- | uel xxiii, and 1 Chronicles xii. contains valuable | matter altogether wanting in Samuel. See also 1 | Chronicles xxvii. Besides the books of Samuel harmony by later editors, who gave excerpts from | (with 1 Kings i., ii.), and the parallel narrative of several sources rather than a new and indepen- the Chronicler, we have a few hints for the his- dent history. These excerpts, however, have tory of David in 1 Kings xi. and in the titles of been so pieced together that it is often impos- sible to separate them with precision, and to dis- tinguish accurately between earlier and later ele- ments. It even appears that some copies of the Psalms (especially Psalms vii. and Ix.); and, of "course, such psalms as can be made out to be really by David are invaluable additions to the Davidie poems incorporated in the books of Samuel. “wo 2. oc meek Bak Se & © & we —ee me FF Sa oe

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Tree eaPasaa me + es. fe —__—_ ox aEeEs Ft a Boaz from the ancient princes of Judah (Ruth iv. 18, seq.), but the family connection was not of note in Israel (1 Samuel xviii. 18). As the young- est son of the house David spent his youth in an occupation which the Hebrews as well as’ the Arabs seem to have held in low esteem. . He kept his father’s sheep in the desert steppes of Judah, and there developed the strength, agility, en- durance, and courage, which distinguished him throughout life, and are referred to in Psalm xviii, 32, seg. (compare 1 Samuel xvii. 34, xxiv. 2 ; 2 Samuel xvii. 9). There, too, he acquired that skill in music that led to his first introduction to Saul. Then he became Saul’s armor-bearer, and in this capacity, according to the shorter and more consistent form of the narrative, David took part in the campaign in which he slew the Philis- tine champion Goliath, and became by one exploit a popular hero, and an object of jealousy to Saul. According to the Massoretic text of 1 Samuel, Saul’s jealousy Jeaped at once to the conclusion that David’s ambition would not stop short of the kingship. Such a suspicion would be intelligible if we could suppose that the king had heard some- thing of the significant act of Samuel, which now stands at the head of the history of David in wit- ness of that divine election and unction with the spirit of Jehovah on which his whole career hung (1 Samuel xvi. 1-13). But there is not the least trace in the history that even David and David’s family understood at the time the meaning that underlay his unction by Samuel, which would nat- urally be taken as a special mark of favor and a part of the usual “ consecration” of the guests in a sacrificial feast. The shorter text of 1 Samuel xviii, represented by the Septuagint, gives an account of Saul’s jealousy, which is psychologi- cally more intelligible. According to this text Saul was simply possessed with such a personal dislike and dread of David as might easily occupy his disordered brain. To be quit of his hateful presence he gave him a military command. In this charge David increased his reputation as a soldier, and became a general favorite. Saul’s daughter, Michal, loved him; and her father, whose jealousy continued to increase, resolved to put the young captain on a perilous enterprise, promising him the hand of Michal as a reward of success, but secretly hoping that he would perish in the attempt. David's good fortune did not desert him ; he won his wife, and in this new advancement continued to grow in the popular | favor, and to gain fresh laurels in the field. Jesse, the father of David, was a substantial | i. citizen of Bethlehem. He claimed descent through DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL. : 15 At this point it is necessary to look back on | an episode which is found in the Hebrew text, but | not in the Greek—the proposed marriage of David | with Saul’s eldest daughter Merab, who at the time when the proposal was made was already the wife of a certain Adriel. What is said of this affair interrupts the original context of chapter xviii., to which the insertion has been clumsily fitted by an interpolation in v.21. We have here, therefore, a notice drawn from a distinct source, and of uncertain value. Merab and Michal are confounded in 2 Samuel xxi. 8, and perhaps the whole episode of Merab and David rests on a similar confusion of names. As the king’s son-in-law, David was necessari- ly again at court. He became chief of the body- guard, as Ewald rightly interprets 1 Samuel xxii. 14, and ranked next to Abner (1 Samuel xx. 25), so that Saul’s insane fears were constantly exas- perated by personal contact with him. On at least one occasion the king’s frenzy broke out in an attempt to murder David with his own hand. At another time Saul actually gave commands to assassinate his son-in-law, but the breach was made up by Jonathan, whose chivalrous spirit had united him to David in a covenant of closest friendship (1 Samuel xix. 1-7). The circum- stances of the final outburst of Saul’s hatred, which drove David into exile, are not easily dis- entangled. The narrative of 1 Samuel xx., whieh is the principal account of the matter, cannot originally have been preceded by chapter xix. 11-24, for in chapter xx. David appears to be | still at court, and Jonathan is even unaware that he is in any danger, while the preceding verses | Tepresent him as already a fugitive. It may also | be doubted whether the narrative of David’s es- cape from his own house by the aid of his wife Michal (chapter xix. 11-17) has any close connec- tion with verse 10, and does not rather belong to a later period. David’s daring spirit might very well lead him to visit his wife even after his first | fight. The danger of such an enterprise was diminished by the reluctance to violate the apart- ments of women and attack a sleeping foe, which appears also in Judges xvi. 2, and among the Arabs. In any case it is certain that chapter xx. must be taken by itself; and it seems safer to conclude that chapter xix. 11-24 are fragments which have been misplaced by an editor, than to accept the opinion of those critics who hold that we have two distinct and quite inconsistent ac- counts of the same events. According to chapter xx., David was still at court in his usual position, when he became cer-

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2 eh et le itt Dk kellie Ae a OO ee NR an tees a Te ee ee . , . 16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. tain that the king was aiming at-his life. He be- took himself to Jonathan, who thought his sus- picions groundless, but undertook to test them. A plan was arranged by which Jonathan should draw from the king an expression of his feelings, and a tremendous explosion revealed that Saul regarded David as the rival of his dynasty, and Jonathan as little better than a fellow-conspira- tor. The breach was plainly irreparable. Jon- athan sought out his friend, and after mutual pledges of unbroken friendship they parted, and David fled. His first impulse was, to seek the sanctuary at Nob, where he had been wont to consult the priestly oracle (chapter xxii. 15), and where, concealing his disgrace by a fictitious story, he also obtained bread from the conse- crated table, and the sword of Goliath. It was, perhaps, after this that David made a last attempt to find a place of refuge in the prophetic circle of Samuel at Ramah, where he was admitted into the prophetic coenobium, and was for a time pro- tected by the powerful and almost contagious influences which the religious exercises of the prophets exerted on Saul’s emissaries, and even on the king himself. The episode now stands in another connection (chapter xix. 18 ef seg.), where it is certainly out of place. It would, however, fit excellently into the break that plainly exists in the history at xxi. 10, after the affair at Nob. Deprived of the protection of religion as well as of justice, David tried his fortune among the Philistines at Gath. But he was recognized, and suspected as a redoubtable foe. Escaping by feigning madness, which in the East has inviola- ble privileges, he returned to the wilds of Judah, and was joined at Adullam by his father’s house and by a small band of outlaws, of which he be- came the head. Placing his parents under the charge of the King of Moab, he took up the life of a guerrilla-captain, cultivating friendly relations with the townships of Judah (1 Samuel xxx. 26), which were glad to have on their frontiers a pro- tector so valiant as David,even at the expense of the black-mail which he levied in return, A clear conception of his life at this time, and of the respect which he inspired by the discipline in which he held his men, and of the generosity which tempered his fiery nature, is given in 1 Samuel xxv. His force gradually swelled, and he was joined by the prophet Gad and by the priest Abiathar, the only survivor of a terrible massacre by which Saul took revenge for the favors which David had received at the sanctuary of Nob. He was even able to strike at the Philistines, and to rescue Keilah, in the low country of Judah, from their attack. Had he been willing to raise the standard of revolt against Saul, he might proba. bly have made good his position, for he was now openly pointed to as divinely designed for the kingship. But, though Saul was hot in- and though he lived in constant fear of being be. trayed, David refused to do this. His blameless conduct retained the confidence of Jonathan (1 Samuel xxiii. 16), and he deserved that confidence by sparing the life of Saul. But at length it be. came plain that he must either resist by force or seek foreign protection. He went to Achish of Gath, and was established in the outlying town of Ziklag, where his troops might be useful in chastising the Amalekites and other robber tribes who made forays on Philistia and Judah, without distinction. At Ziklag David continued to maintain amica- ble relations with his friends in Judah, and his little army received accessions even from Saul’s own tribe of Benjamin (1 Chronicles xii. 1). At length, in the second year, he was called\ to join his master in a great campaign against Saul. The Philistines directed their forces toward the rich valley of Jezreel; and Saul, forsaken by Jehovah, already gave himself up for lost. It may be doubted whether the men of Judah took part in this war; and on his march David was joined by influential deserters from Israel (1 Chronicles xii.). The prestige of Saul’s reign was gone; and the Hebrews were again breaking up into parties, each ready to act for itself. Under such circumstances, David might well feel that loyalty to his new master was his first duty. But he was providentially saved from the necessity of doing battle with his countrymen by the jeal- ousy of the Philistine lords, who demanded that he be sent back to Ziklag. He returned to find the town pillaged by the Amalekites; but, pursu- ing the foes, he inflicted upon them a signal chas- tisement, and took a great booty, part of which he spent in politic gifts to the leading men of the Judean towns. Meantime Saul had fallen, and Northern Is- rael was in a state of chaos. The Philistines took possession of the fertile lowlands of Jezreel and the Jordan; and the shattered forces of Is- rael were slowly rallied by Abner in the remote city of Mahanaim in Gilead, under the nominal sovereignty of Saul’s son Ishbaal. The tribe of Judah, always loosely attached to the northern Hebrews, was in these circumstances, compelled to act for itself. David saw his opportunity, and advanced to Hebron, where he was anointed King of Judah at the age of thirty, and continued SReAeS a Se ErREETeaeerreBSBeetaSeEBesewsaeseeREes ees F ee ee es ae! ee ee ae ae eee oe i a oe ee of ee oP

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aS eae eae OS Te BS OF woreign for seven years and a half. His noble elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan, and his , message of thanks to the men of Jabesh Gilead for their chivalrous rescue of the bodies of the fallen heroes, show how deeply he sympathized ith the disasters of his nation; avd even in Northern Israel many now looked to him as their | only helper (2 Samuel iii. 17). But David was not lacking in the caution and even craftiness | proper to an Oriental hero; and he appears to have been careful not to irritate the Philistines by any premature national movement. As he retained Ziklag, we must suppose that he had some agreement with his former suzerain Achish. Abner gradually consolidated the authority of Ishbaal in the north, and at length his forces met those of David at Gibeon. changed into a fatal fray by the treachery of Ish- baal’s men, and in the battle which ensued, Ab- ner was not only defeated, but, by slaying Asa- hel, drew upon himself a blood feud with Joab. The war continued. Ishbaal’s party waxed weak- erand weaker; and at length Abner quarreled with his nominal master, and offered the kingdom to David. The base murder of Abner by Joab | did not long defer the inevitable issue of events. Ishbaal was assassinated by two of his own fol- lowers, and all Israel sought David as king. The Biblical narrative is not so constructed as to enable us to describe in chronological order the thirty-three years of David’s reign over all Israel. Let us look at (1) his internal policy, (2) his relations to foreign nations, (3) other events. 1, Under the judges all authority was at bot- tom local or tribal, and the wider influence wielded by the more famous of these rulers took the form of a temporary preéminence or he- gemony of the judge’s own tribe. The kingdom of Saul was not radically different in character. There was no national centre. Saul ruled as a Benjamite from his paternal city of Gibeah (see 1 Samuel xxii. 7). At the risk of alienating the men of Judah, who in fact appear as the chief malcontents in subsequent civil disturbances, David resolved to break through these prece- dents, and to form a truly national kingdom in- dependent of tribal feeling. The success of so bold a conception was facilitated by the circum- stance that, unlike previous kings, he was sur- rounded by a small but thoroughly-disciplined standing army, having gradually shaped his troop of freebooters into an organized force of six hun- dred “mighty men” (Gibborim), always under arms, and absolutely attached to his person. The DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL. A sham contest was | king began the execution of his plan by a stroke 38 which at once provided a centre for future action, and gave the necessary prestige to his new king- | dom. He stormed the Jebusite fortress of Jerusa- lem, which its inhabitants deemed impregnable, and here, in the centre of the country, on the frontier between Judah and Benjamin, he fortified the “ city of David,” the stronghold of Zion, and gar- risoned it with his Gibborim. His next aim was to make Jerusalem the religious as well as the political centre of the kingdom, The ark of Je- hovah, the only sanctuary of national significance, had remained in obscurity since its return from the Philistines in the early youth of Samuel. David brought it up from Kirjath-Jearim with great pomp, and pitched a tent for it in Zion, amid national rejoicings. No action of David’s life displayed truer political insight than this. But the whole narrative (2 Samuel vi.) shows that the insight was that of a loyal and God- fearing heart, which knew that the true prin- ciple of Israel's unity and strength lay in na- tional adherence to Jehovah (compare Psalms xv. and xxiv., one or both of which may refer to this occasion). It was probably at a later period, when his kingdom was firmly established, that David proposed to erect a permanent temple to Jehovah. The prophet Nathan commanded the execution of this plan to be delayed for a gen- eration; but David received at the same time a prophetic assurance that his house and king- dom should be established forever before Jeho- vah. In civil and military affairs David was careful to combine necessary innovations with a due re- gard for the old habits and feelings of the people, which he thoroughly understood and turned to good account. The six hundred Gibborim, and a small body-guard of foreign troops from Philistia (the Cherethites and Pelethites), formed a central military organization, not large enough to excite popular jealousy, but sufficient to provide officers and furnish an example of discipline and endur- ance to the old national militia, exclusively com- posed of foot-soldiers. In civil matters the king looked heedfully to the execution of justice (2 Samuel viii. 15), and was always accessible to the people (2 Samuel xiv. 4). But he does not appear to have made any change in the old local adminis’ tration of justice, or to have appointed a central tribunal (2 Samuel xv. 2, where, however, Absa- lom’s complaint that the king was inaccessible is merely factious). A few great officers of state were appointed at the court of Jerusalem (2 Sam- uel viii.), which was not without a splendor hith- erto unknown in Israel. The palace was built

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ee ee A ee nls Nn Me el | a i TE 18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. by Tyrian artists. Royal pensioners, of whom Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth was one, were gathered round a princely table. The art of music was not neglected (2 Samuel xix. 35). A more dangerous piece of magnificence was the harem, which, though always deemed an indis- pensable part of Eastern state, did not befit a servant of Jehovah, and gave rise to public scan- dal as well as to fatal disorders in the king’s household. Except in this particular, David seems to have ventured on only one dangerous innovation, which was undertaken amid univer- sal remonstrances, and was checked by the re- bukes of the prophet Gad and the visitation of a pestilence. To us, the proposal to number the people seems innocent or laudable. But David's conscience accepted the prophetic rebuke, and he tacitly admitted that the people were not wrong in condemning his design as an attempt upon their liberties, and an act of presumptuous self-confidence (2 Samuel xxiv.). 2. David’s wars were always successful, and, so far as we can judge from the brief record, were never provoked by himself. His first enemies were the Philistines, who rose in arms as soon as he became king of all Israel. We read of two great battles in the valley of Rephaim, westward from Jerusalem (2 Samuel v.); and a record of individual exploits and of personal dangers run by David is preserved in 2 Samuel xxi. and xxiii. At length the Philistines were entirely humbled, and the “bridle” of sovereignty was wrested from their hands (chapter viii. 1, Heb.) But the long weakness of Israel had exposed the na- tion to wrongs from their neighbors on every side; and the Tyrians, whose commerce was benefited by a stable government in Canaan, were the only permanent allies of David. Moab, an ancient and bitter foe, was chastised by David with a severity for which no cause is assigned, but which may pass for a gentle reprisal if the Moabites of that day were not more humane than their descendants in the days of King Mesha. A deadly conflict with the Ammonites was provoked by a gross in- sult to friendly embassadors of Israel; and this war, of which we have pretty full details in 2 Samuel x. 1-xi. 1, xii. 26-31, assumed dimensions of unusual magnitude when the Ammonites pro- cured the aid of their Aramean neighbors, and especially of Hadadezer, whose kingdom of Zoba seems to have held at that time a preéminence in Syria at least equal to that which was afterward gained by Damascus. The defeat of Hadadezer in two great campaigns brought in the voluntary or forced submission of all the lesser kingdoms of Syria as far as the Orontes and the Euphrates The glory of this victory was increased by the simultaneous subjugation of Edom in a war ¢op. ducted by Joab with characteristic severity, ag. ter a great battle on the shores of the Dead Sea, the struggle was continued for six months. The Edomites contested every inch of ground, and all who bore arms perished (2 Samuel viii. 18; } Kings xi. 15-17; Psalm Ix, title). The war with Ammon was not ended till the following year, when the fall of Rabbah crowned David’s warlike exploits. But the true culminating point of his glory was his return from the great Syrian campaign, laden with treasures to enrich the sanctuary; and it is at this time that we may suppose him to have sung the great song of tri- umph preserved in 2 Samuel xxii.(Psalm xviii), Before the fall of Rabbah this glory was clouded with the shame of Bath-sheba, and the blood of Uriah, 8. As the birth of Solomon cannot have been earlier than the capture of Rabbah, it appears that David’s wars were ended within the first half of his reign at Jerusalem, and the tributary na- tions do not seem to have attempted any revolt while he and Joab lived (compare 1 Kings xi. 14-25). But when the nation was no longer knit together by the fear of danger from without, the internal difficulties of the new kingdom became more manifest. The inveterate jealousies of Judah and Israel reappeared; and, as has been already mentioned, the men of Judah were the chief malcontents. In this respect, and presuma- bly not in this alone, David suffered for the very excellence of his impartial rule. In truth, all in- novations are dangerous to an Eastern sovereign, and all Eastern revolutions are conservative. On the other hand, David continued to tolerate some ancient usages inconsistent with the interests of internalharmony. The practice of blood-revenge was not put down, and by allowing the Gibeon- ites to enforce it against the house of Saul, the king involved himself in a feud with the Benja- mites (compare 2 Samuel xxi. with chapter xvi. 8, which refers to a later date). Yet he might have braved all these dangers but for the disorders of his own family, and his deep fall in the matter of Bath-sheba, from which the prophet Nathan rightly foresaw fatal consequences, not to be averted even when divine forgiveness accepted the sincere contrition of the king. That the na- tion at large was not very sensitive to the moral enormities which flow from the system of the harem is clear from 2 Samuel xvi. 21. But the kingdom of David was strong by rising above the ee ae ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee” ee ee oe oe ee ee oe oe ee oe ee oe ee ae le le ee ee oe ee oe ee ee ee

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(EPS RS ER Sage RS EEE DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL. jevel of ordinary Oriental monarchy, and express- the ideal of a rule after Jehovah's own heart (1 Samuel xiii. 14), and in the spirit of the high- est teaching of the prophets. This ideal, shat- tered by a single grievous fall, could be restored by no repentance. Within the royal family the continued influence of Bath-sheba added a new clement to the jealousies of the harem. David's sons were eStranged from one another, and ac- quired all the vices of Oriental princes. The severe impartiality of the sacred historian has concealed no feature in this dark picture: the brutal passion of Amnon, the shameless counsel of the wily Jonadab, the black scowl that rested on the face of Absalom through two long years of meditated revenge, the panic of the court when the blow was struck and Amnon was assassinated jn the midst of his brethren. Three years of ex- ile, and two of further disgrace, estranged the heart of Absalom from his father. His personal advantages, and the princely lineage of his moth- er, gave him a preéminence among the king’s sons, to which he added emphasis by the splendor of his retinue, while he studiously cultivated per- sonal popularity by a pretended interest in the administration of kingly justice. Thus ingratiated with the mass, he raised the standard of revolt in Hebron, with the malcontent Judeans as his first supporters, and the crafty Ahithophel, a man of Southern Judah, as his chief adviser. Arrange- ments had been made for the simultaneous proc- lamation of Absalom in all parts of the land. The surprise was complete, and David was com- pelled to evacuate Jerusalem, where he might have been crushed before he had time to rally his faithful subjects. Ahithophel knew better than any one how artificial and unsubstantial was the enthusiasm for Absalom. He hoped to strike David before there was time for second thoughts ; and when Absalom rejected this plan, and acted on the assumption that he could count on the whole nation, he despaired of success and put an end to his own life. David, in fact, was warmly re- ceived by the Gileadites, and the first battle de- stroyed the party of Absalom, who was himself captured and slain by Joab. Then all the people, except the Judeans, saw that they had been be- fooled; but the latter were not conciliated with- out a virtual admission of that prerogative of kin- ship to the king which David’s previous policy had steadily ignored. This concession involved important consequences. The precedence claimed by Judah was challenged by the northern tribes | even on the day of David’s solemn return to his | capital, and a rupture ensued, which, but for the ‘ energy of Joab, might have led to a second and more dangerous rebellion. The remaining years of David’s life appear to have been untroubled, and according to the narrative of Chronicles the king was much occupied with schemes con- cerning the future temple. He was already de- crepit and bedridden under the fatigues of seventy years, when the last spark of his old energy was called forth to secure the succession of Solomon against the ambition of Adonijah. It is notewor- thy that, as in the case of Absalom, the preten- sions of the latter, though supported by Joab and Abiathar, found their chief stay among the men of Judah (1 Kings i. 9). The principles that guided David's reign are worthily summed up in his last words, 2 Samuel xxiii. 1, seg., with which must be compared his great song of triumph, 2 Samuel xxii. The foun- dation of national prosperity is a just rule based on the fear of Jehovah, strong in his help, and swift to chastise wrong-doers with inflexible se- verity. That the fear of Jehovah is viewed as receiving its chief practical expression in the maintenance of social righteousness is a necessary feature of the Old Testament faith, which regards the nation rather than the individual as the sub- ject of the religious life. Hence the influence upon his life of David’s religious convictions is not to be measured by the fact that they did not wholly subdue the sensuality which is the chief stain on his character, but rather by his habitual recognition of a generous standard of conduct, by the undoubted purity and lofty justice of an ad- ministration which was never stained by selfish considerations or motives of personal rancor, and was never accused of favoring evil-doers, and finally by the calm courage, rooted in faith in Jehovah's righteousness, which enabled him to hold an even and noble course in the face of dan- gers and treachery. That he was not able to re- form at a stroke all ancient abuses appears par- ticularly in relation to the practice of blood-re- venge; but even in this matter it is clear from 2 Samuel iii. 28, seg., xiv. 1-10, that his sympathies were against the barbarous usage. Nor is it just to accuse him of cruelty in his treatment of ene- mies. Every nation has a right to secure its frontiers from hostile raids; and as it was im- possible to establish a military cordon along the borders of Canaan, it was necessary absolutely to cripple the adjoining tribes. From the lust of conquest for its own sake David appears to have been wholly free. The generous elevation of David's character is seen most clearly in those parts of his life

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Ste Al lec teal ata a st tame. me Re 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. where an inferior nature would have been most at fault ; in his conduct toward Saul, in the blame- less reputation of himself and his band of outlaws in the wilderness of Judah, in his repentance un- der the rebuke of Nathan, and in his noble bear- ing on the revolt of Absalom, when calm faith in God and humble submission to his will appear in combination with masterly command over cir- cumstances, and swift wisdom in resolution and action. His unfailing insight into character, and his power of winning men’s hearts and touching their better impulses, appear in innumerable traits of the history (e. g., 2 Samuel xiv. 18-20; iii. 31-37 ; xxiii. 15-17). His knowledge of men was the divination of a poet rather than the ac- quired wisdom of a statesman, and his capacity for rule stood in harmonious unity with the lyri- cal genius that was already proverbial in the time of Amos (Amos vi. 5). To the later generations David was preéminently the Psalmist. The He- brew titles ascribe to him seventy-three psalms ; the Septuagint adds some fifteen more ; and later opinion, both Jewish and Christian, claimed for him the authorship of the whole Psalter (so the Talmud, Augustine, and others). That the tradi- tion of the titles requires careful sifting is no longer questionable, as is admitted in such cases as Psalms Ixxxvi., lxix., cxli., even by the cau- tious and conservative Delitzch. The biographer must, therefore, use the greatest circumspection

in drawing from the Psalter material for the of David's life and character. On the other hand, the tradition expressed in the titles could not have arisen unless David was really the father of He brew psalmody. As a psalmist, he appears in 9 Samuel xxii., xxiii., in two poems, which are either Davidic or artificial compositions written in his name. If we consider the excellent information as to David, which appears throughoat the books of Samuel, the intrinsic merits and fresh natural. ness of the poems, and the fact that Psalm xviii, is an independent recension of 2 Samuel xxii., the hypothesis that these pieces are spurious must appear very forced, though it has received the support of some respectable critics, especially Kuenen, who maintains that the religion of David is far below the level of the Psalter. If we reject this position, which can hardly be made good without doing great violence to the narrative of the books of Samuel, we cannot well stop short of the admission that the Psalter must contain Davidie psalms, some of which at least may be identified by judicious criticism, such as has been exercised. by Ewald with singular insight and tact in his “ Dichter des Alten Bundes.” Ewald claims for David Psalms iii., iv., vii., viii, xi, (xv.), xviii., xix., xxiv., xxix., xxxii., ci., and prob- ably this list should rather be extended than cur. tailed. (Compare Hitzig’s “ Psalmen,” Leipsic, 1863.)

A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” THE SOUL AND FUTURE LIFE. ORD SELBORNE.—I am too well satisfied with Lord Blachford’s paper, and with much that is in the other papers of the September number,’ to think that I can add anything of im- portance to them. The little I would say has reference to our actual knowledge of the soul during this life—meaning by the soul what Lord Blachford means, viz., the conscious being which each man calls “ himself.” It appears to me that what we know and can observe tends to confirm the testimony of our consciousness to the reality of the distinction be- tween the body and the soul. From the neces- sity of the case, we cannot observe any manifes- tations of the soul except during the time of its association with the body. This limit of our ex- 1 SuppLement No. VI.

perience applies, not to the “ego” of which alone each man has any direct knowledge, but to the perceptible indications of consciousness in others. It is impossible, in the nature of things, that any man can ever have had experience of the total cessation of his own consciousness ; and the idea of such a cessation is much less nat- ural and much more difficult to realize than that of its continuance.. We observe the phenomena of death in others, and infer, by irresistible in- duction, that the same thing will also happen to ourselves. But these phenomena carry us only to the dissociation of the “ego” from the body, not to its extinction. ' Nothing else can be credible if our conscious- ness is not; and I have said that this bears tes- timony to the reality of the distinction between

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Ty 7. goul and body. Each man is conscious of using his own body as an instrument, in the same sense jn which he would use any other machine. He passes @ different moral judgment on the me- chanical and involuntary actions of his body, from that which he feels to be due to its actions resulting from his own free-will. The unity and identity of the “ ego,” from the beginning to the end of life, is of the essence of his consciousness, In accordance with this testimony are such facts as the following: that the body has no proper unity, identity, or continuity, through the whole of life—all its constituent parts being in a constant state of flux and change; that many parts and organs of the body may be removed with no greater effect upon the “ego” than when we take off any article of clothing; and that those organs which cannot be removed or stopped in their action without death are distributed over different parts of the body, and are homogeneous in their material and structure with others which we can lose without the sense that any change has passed over our proper selves. If, on the one hand, a diseased state of some bodily organs interrupts the reasonable manifestations of the soul through the body, the cases are, on the oth- er, not rare in which the whole body decays and falls into extreme age, weakness, and even de- erepitude, while vigor, freshness, and youthful- ness, are still characteristics of the mind. The attempt, in Butler’s work, to reason from the indivisibility and indestructibility of the soul as ascertained facts, is less satisfactory than most of that great writer’s arguments, which are gen- erally rather intended to be destructive of objec- tions than demonstrative of positive truths. But the modern scientific doctrine, that all matter and all force are indestructible, is not without interest in relation to that argument. There must at least be a natural presumption from that doctrine that, if the soul during life has a real existence distinct from the body, it is not anni- hilated by death. If, indeed, it were a mere “force” (such as heat, light, etc., are supposed by modern philosophers to be—though men who are not philosophers may be excused if they find some difficulty in understanding exactly what is meant by the term when so used), it would be consistent with that doctrine that the soul might be transmuted after death into some other form of force. But the idea of “ force” in this sense (whatever may be its exact meaning) seems wholly inapplicable to the conscious being which @ man calls “ himself.” The resemblances in the nature and organiza- A MODERN “ SYMPOSIUM.” 21 tion of animal and vegetable bodies seem to me to confirm, instead of weakening, the impression that the body of man is a machine under the government of the soul, and quite distinct from it. Plants manifest no consciousness; all our knowledge of them tends irresistibly to the con- clusion that there is in them no intelligent, much less any reasonable, principle of life. Yet they are machines very like the human body ; not, indeed, in their formal development or their exact chemi- cal processes, but in the general scheme and fune- tions of their organism—in their laws of nutrition, digestion, assimilation, respiration, and especially reproduction. They are bodies without souls, liv- ing a physical life, and subject to a physical death. The inferior animals have bodies still more like our own; indeed, in their higher orders, resembling them very closely indeed; and they have also a principle of life quite different from that of plants, with various degrees of consciousness, intelli- gence, and volition. Even in their principle of life, arguments founded on observation and com- parison (though not on individual consciousness), , more or less similar to those which apply to man, tend to show that there is something distinct from, and more than, the body. But, of all these inferior animals, the intelligence differs from that of man, not in degree only, but in kind. Nature is their simple, uniform, and sufficient law; their very arts (which are often wonderful) come to them by Nature, except when they are trained by man; there is in them no sign of discourse of reason, of morality, or of the knowledge of good and evil. The very similarity of their bodily structure to that of man tends, when these dif- ferences are noted, to add weight to the other natural evidence of the distinctness of man’s soul from his body. The immortality of the soul seems to me to be one of those truths for the belief in which, when authoritatively declared, man is prepared by the very constitution of his nature. Canon BARRY.—Any one who from the an- cient positions of Christianity looks on the con- troversy between Mr. Harrison and Prof. Huxley on “The Soul and Future Life” (to which I pro- pose mainly to confine myself) will be tempted with Faulconbridge to observe, not without a touch of grim satisfaction, how, “from north to south, Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth.” The fight is fierce enough to make him ask, Tantene animis sapientibus ira? But he will see that each is far more effective in batter- ing the lines of the enemy than in strengthening his own. Nor will he be greatly concerned if

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22 both from time to time lodge a shot or two in the battlements on which he stands, with some beat- ing of that “drum scientific” which seems to me to be in these days always as resonant, sometimes with as much result of merely empty sound, as “the drum ecclesiastic,” against which Prof. Hux- ley is so fond of warning us. Those whom Mr. Harrison calls “theologians,” and whom Prof. Huxley less appropriately terms “ priests ” (for of priesthood there is here no question), may indeed think that, if the formidable character of an op- ponent’s position is to be measured by the scorn and fury with which it is assailed, their ground must be strong indeed; and they will possibly remember an old description of a basis less arti- ficial than “‘ pulpit-stairs,” from which men may look without much alarm, while “the floods come and the winds blow.” Gaining from this convic- tion courage to look more closely, they will per- ceive, as I have said, that each of the combatants is far stronger on the destructive than on the constructive side. Mr. Harrison’s earnest and eloquent plea against the materialism which virtually, if not theoretically, makes all that we call spirit a mere function of material organization (like the appovla of the “ Phedo”), and against the exclusive “ sci- entism” which, because it cannot find certain en- tities along its line of investigation, asserts loudly that they are either non-existent or “unknow- able,” is strong, and ( pace Prof. Huxley) needful ; not, indeed, against him (for he knows better than to despise the metaphysics in which he is 80 great an adept), but against many adherents, prominent rather than eminent, of the school in which he is a master. Nor is its force destroyed by exposing, however keenly and sarcastically, some inconsistencies of argument, not inaptly corresponding (as it seems to me) with similar inconsistencies in the popular exposition of the views which it attacks. If Prof. Huxley is right (as surely he is) in pleading for perfect freedom and boldness in the investigation of the phenom- ena of humanity from the physical side, the counter-plea is equally irresistible for the value of an independent philosophy of mind, start- ing from the metaphysical pole of thought, and reasoning positively on the phenomena which, though they may have many connections with physical laws, are utterly inexplicable by them. We might, indeed, demur to his inference that the discovery of “antecedence in the molecular fact” necessarily leads to a “ physical theory of moral phenomena,” and vice versa, as savoring a ‘little of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Insepa- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. rable connection it would imply ; but the ultimate causation might lie in something far deeper, uy. © derlying both “the molecular ” and “ the spiritual fact.” But still, to establish such antecedenge would be an important scientific step, and the attempt might be made from either side. On the other hand, Prof. Huxley’s trenchant attack on the unreality of the positivist assump. tion of a right to take names which in the old religion at least mean something firm and solid, and to sublime them into the cloudy forms of transcendental theory, and on the arbitrary ap. plication of the word “selfishness,” with all its degrading associations, to the consciousness of personality here and the hope of a nobler per- sonality in the future, leaves nothing to be de. sired. I fear that his friends the priests would be accused of the crowning sin of “ ecclesiasti- cism” (whatever that may be) if they used de. nunciations half so sharp. Except with a few sarcasms which he cannot resist the temptation of flinging at them by the way, they will have nothing with which to quarrel ; and possibly they may even learn from him to consider these as claps of “cheap thunder” from the “ pulpit,” in that old sense of the word in which it designates the professorial chair. The whole of Mr. Harrison’s two papers may be resolved into an attack on the true individu- ality of man, first on the speculative, then on the moral side; from the one point of view denounc- ing the belief in it as a delusion, from the other branding the desire of it as a moral degradation. The connection of the two arguments is instrue- tive and philosophical. For no argument mere- ly speculative, ignoring all moral considerations, will really be listened to. His view of the soul as “a consensus of human faculties” reminds us curiously of the Buddhist “groups;” his de- scription of a “perpetuity of sensation as the true hell” breathes the very spirit of the long: ing for Nirvana, Both he and his Asiatic pred- ecessors are certainly right in considering the “delusion of individual existence” as the chief delusion to be got rid of on the way to a perfect Agnosticism, in respect of all that is not merely phenomenal. It is true that he protests in terms against a naked materialism, ignoring all spirit- ual phenomena as having a distinctive character of their own; but yet, when be tells us that “to talk about a bodiless being thinking and loving is simply to talk of the thoughts and feelings of Nothing,” he certainly appears to assume sub- stantially the position of the materialism he de- nounces, which (as has been already said) holds

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8 of of these spiritual energies to be merely results of the bodily organization, as the excitation of an dectric current is the result of the juxtaposition of certain material substances. If a oodiless be- ing is Nothing, there can be no such thing as an intrinsic or independent spiritual life; and it is difficult for ordinary minds to attach any distinct meaning to the declaration that the soul is “a conscious unity of being,” if that being depends on an organization which is unquestionably dis- cerptible, and of which (as Butler remarks) large parts may be lost without affecting this conscious- ness of personality. Now this is, after all, the only point worth fighting about. Mr. Hutton has already said with perfect truth that by “the soul” we mean tbat “which lies at the bottom of the sense of personal identity—the thread of the continuity running through all our checkered life,” and which remains unbroken amid the constant flux of change both in our material body, and in the circumstances of our material life. This belief is wholly independent of any “ metaphysical hypoth- esis” of modern “ orthodoxy,” whether it is, or is not, rightly described as a “ juggle of ideas,” and of any examination of the question (on which Lord Blachford has touched) whether, if it seem such to “those trained in positive habits of thought,” the fault lies in it or in them. I may remark, in passing, that in this broud and simple sense it certainly runs through the whole Bible, and has much that is “akin to it in the Old Tes- tament.” For even in the darkest and most shadowy ideas of the Shedl of the other world, the belief in a true personal identity is taken ab- solutely for granted; and it is not a little curious to notice how in the Book of Job the substitu- tion for it of “an immortality in the race” (al- though there not in the whole of humanity, but simply in the tribe or family) is offered, and re- jected as utterly insufficient to satisfy either the speculation of the intellect or the moral demands of the conscience.' Now it is not worth while to protest against the caricature of this belief, as a belief in “man plus a heterogeneous entity” called the soul, which can be only intended as a sarcasm. But we cannot acquiesce in any state- ment which represents the belief in this imma- terial and indivisible personality as resting simply on the notion that it is needed to explain the acts of the human organism. For, as a matter of fact, those who believe in it conceive it to be declared by a direct consciousness, the most simple and ultimate of all acts of consciousness. A MODERN “ SYMPOSIUM,” They hold this consciousness of a personal iden- tity and individuality, unchanging amid mate- rial change, to be embodied in all the language and literature of man; and they point to the inconsistencies in the very words of those who argue against it, as proofs that man cannot di- vest himself of it. No doubt they believe that so the acts of the organism are best explained, but it is not on the necessity of such explanation that they base their belief: and this fact separates altogether their belief in the human soul, as an immaterial entity, from those conceptions of a soul, in animal, vegetable, even inorganic sub- stances, with which Mr. Harrison insists on con- founding it. Of the true character of animal nature we know nothing (although we may con- jecture much), just because we have not jn regard to it the direct consciousness which we have in regard of our own nature. Accordingly, we need not trouble our argument for a soul in man with any speculation as to a true soul in the brute creatures. In what relation this personality stands to the particles which at any moment compose the body, and which are certainly in a continual state of flux, or to the law of structure which in living beings, by some power to us unknown, assimilates these particles, is a totally different question. I fear that Mr. Harrison will be displeased with me if I call it “‘a mystery.” But, whatever future advances of science may do for us in the matter— and I hope they may do much—I am afraid I must still say that this relation is a mystery, which has been at different times imperfectly repre- sented, both by formal theories and by metaphors, all of which by the very nature of language are connected with original physical conceptions. Let it be granted freely that the progress of modern physiological science has rendered ob- solete the old idea that the various organs of the body stand to the true personal being in a purely instrumental relation, such «s (for ex- ample) is described by Butler in his “ Analogy,” in the celebrated chapter on “The Future Life.” The power of physical influences acting upon the body to affect the energies of thought and will is unquestionable. The belief that the action of all these energies is associated with the molecu- lar change is, to say the least, highly probable. And I may remark that Christianity bas no quar- rel with these discoveries of modern science ; for its doctrine is that for the perfection of man’s be- ing a bodily organization is necessary, and that the “‘ intermediate state” is a state of suspense 1 See Job xiv. 21, 22. and imperfection, out of which, at the word of

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eS inde ls Ci Nia a TOA Te SelM. 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the Creator, the indestructible personality of man shall rise, to assimilate to itself a glorified body. ~ The doctrine of the resurrection of the body boldly faces the perplexity as to the connection of a body with personality, which so greatly troubled ancient speculation on the immortality of the soul. In respect of the intermediate “ state,” it only extends (I grant immeasurably) the experience of those suspensions of the will and the full consciousness of personality which we have in life, in sleep, swoon, stupor, depend- ent on normal and abnormal conditions of the bodily organization ; and in respect of the resur- rection, it similarly extends the action of that mysterious creative will which moulds the human body of the present life slowly and gradually out of the mere germ, and forms, with marvelous ra- pidity and exuberance of prolific power, lower organisms of high perfection and beauty. But while modern science teaches us to recog- nize the influence of the bodily organization on mental energy, it has, with at least equal clear- ness, brought out in compensation the distinct power of that mental energy, acting by a process wholly different from the chain of physical causa- tion, to alter functionally, and even organically, the bodily frame itself. The Platonic Socrates (it will be remembered) dwells on the power of the spirit to control bodily appetite and even passion (7d Gvpoedés), as also on its having the power to assume qualities, as a proof that it is not a mere dpyovla. Surely modern science has greatly strengthened the former part of his argu- ment, by these discoveries of the power of mind over even the material of the body. This is strikingly illustrated (for example) to the physi- cian, both bythe morbid phenomena of what is called generally “hysteria,” in which the belief in the existence of physical disease actually pro- duces the most remarkable physical effects on the body ; and also by the more natural action of the mind on the body, when in sickness a resolution to get well masters the force of disease, or a de- sire to die slowly fulfills itself. Perhaps even more extraordinary is the fact (I believe suffi- ciently ascertained) that during pregnancy the presentation of ideas to the mind of the mother actually affects the physical organization of the offspring. Hence I cannot but think that, at least as distinctly as ever, our fuller experience discloses to us two different processes of causa- tion acting upon our complex humanity—the one wholly physical, acting sometimes by the coarser mechanical agencies, sometimes by the subtiler physiological agencies, and in both cases connect- ing man through the body with the great lanes! ruling the physical universe—the other wholly metaphysical, acting by the simple presentation of ideas to the mind (which may, indeed, be 80 purely subjective that they correspond to no objective reality whatever), and, through them, . secondarily acting upon the body, producing, no doubt, the molecular changes in the brain and the affections of the nervous tissue which ac. company and exhibit mental emotion. In the normal condition of the earthly life, these two powers act and react upon each other, neither being absolutely independent of the other. Ip the perfect state of the hereafter we believe that it shall be so still. But we do know of cases in - which the metaphysical power is apparently dor- mant or destroyed, in which accordingly all emo- tions can be produced automatically by physical processes only, as happens occasionally in dreams (whether of the day or night), and in morbid conditions, as of idiocy, which may themselves be produced either by physical injury or by mental shock. I cannot myself see any difficulty in con- ceiving that the metaphysical power might act, though no doubt in a way of which we have no present experience, and (according to the Chris- tian doctrine) in a condition of some imperfection, when the bodily organization is either suspended or removed. For to me it seems clear that there is something existent, which is neither material nor even dependent on material organization. Whether it be stigmatized as a “ heterogeneous entity,” or graciously designated by the “ good old word soul,” is a matter of great indifference. There it is; and, if it is, I cannot see why it is inconceivable that it should survive all material change. For here, as in other cases, there seems to be a frequent confusion between conceiving that a thing may be, and conceiving how it may be. Of course, we cannot figure te ourselves the method of the action of a spiritual energy apart from a bodily organization; in the attempt to do so the mind glides into quasi-corporeal conceptions and expressions, which are a fair mark for satire. But that there may be such action is to me far less inconceivable than that the mere fact of the dissolution of what is purely physical should draw with it the destruction of a soul that can think, love, and pray. I do not think it necessary to dwell at any length on the second of Mr. Harrison’s proposi- tions, denouncing the desire of personal and individual existence as “ selfishness,” with a vigor quite worthy of his royal Prussian model. But history, after all, has recognized that the an2sveeezecaemaeeeveureererPeeseeaeseetzasResarFeBeeseRgseasgeeassgaearak KBB cme ws

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—~Cmor Fr ome” = Ono EE F ™ @ + = = we. Va ] a a poor grenadiers had something to say for them- selves. Mr. Hutton has already suggested that, if Mr. Harrison had studied the Christian con- ception of the future life, he could not have written some of his most startling passages, and has protested against the misapplication of the word “selfishness,” which in this, as in other controversies, quietly begs the question proposed for discussion. The fact is, that this theory of “altruism,” so eloquently set forth by Mr. Harrison and others of his school, simply con- tradicts human nature, not in its weaknesses or sins, but in its essential characteristics. It is certainly not the weakest or ignoblest of human souls who have felt, at the times of deepest thought and feeling, conscious of but two existences— their own and the Supreme Existence, whether they call it Nature, Law, or God. Surely this humanity is a very unworthy deity, at once a : vague and shadowy abstraction, and, so far as it can be distinctly conceived, like some many-head- ed idol, magnifying the evil and hideousness, as well as the good and beauty, of the individual nature. But, if it were not so, still that individ- uality, as well as unity, is the law of human nature, is singularly indicated by the very nature of our mental operations. In the study and per ception of truth, each man, though he may be guided to it by others, stands absolutely alone ; in love, on the other hand, he loses all but the sense of unity; while the conscience holds the balance, recognizing at once individuality and unity. Indeed, the sacredness of individuality is so guarded by the darkness which hides each soul from all perfect knowledge of man, so deeply im- pressed on the mind by the consciousness of in- dependent thought and will, and on the soul by the sense of incommunicable responsibility, that it cannot merge itself in the life of the race. Self-sacrifice or unselfishness is the conscious sacrifice, not of our own individuality, but of that which seems to minister to it, for the sake of others. The law of human nature, moreover, is such that the very attempt at such sacrifice in. evitably strengthens the spiritual individuality in all that makes it worth having. To talk of “a perpetuity of sensation as a true hell” in a being supposed capable of indefinite growth in wisdom, righteousness, and love, is surely to use words which have no intelligible meaning. No doubt, if we are to take as our guiding principle either altruism or what is rightly desig- nated “ selfishness,” we must infinitely prefer the former. But where is the necessity? No doubt the task of harmonizing the two is difficult. But 4A MODERN “ SYMPOSIUM.” all things worth doing are difficult; and it might be worth while to consider whether there is not something in the old belief which finds the key to this difficult problem in the consciousness of the relation to One Supreme Beiug, and, recog- nizing both the love of man and the love of self, bids them both agree in conscious subordination to a higher love of God. What makes our life here will, we believe, make it up hereafter, only in a purer and nobler form. On earth we live at once in our own individuality and in the life of others. Our heaven is not the extinction of either element of that life—either of individual- ity, as Mr. Harrison would have it, or of the life in others, as in that idea of a selfish immortality which he has, I think, set up in order to denounce it—but the continued harmony of both under an infinitely increased power of that supreme prin- ciple. Mr. W. R. GREG.—It would seem impossible for Mr. Harrison to write anything that is not stamped with a vigor and racy eloquence pecul- iarly his own; and the paper which bas opened the present discussion is probably far the finest he has given to the world. There is a lofty tone in its imaginative passages which strikes us as unique among negationists, and a vein of what is almost tenderness pervading them, which was not observed in his previous writings. The two com- bined render the second portion one of the most touching and impressive speculations we have read. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Harrison’s innate energy is apt to boil over into a vehe- mence approaching the intemperate ; and the an- tagonistic atmosphere is so native to his spirit that he can scarcely enter the lists of controversy without an irresistible tendency to become ag- gressive ani unjust; and he is too inclined to forget the first duty of the chivalric militant logi- cian—namely, to select the adversary you assail from the nobler and not the lower form and rank of the doctrine in dispute. The inconsistencies and weaknesses into which this neglect has be- trayed him in the instance before us have, how- ever, been so severely dealt with by Mr. Hutton and Prof. Huxley, that I wish rather to direct attention to two or three points of his argument that might otherwise be in danger of escaping the appreciation and gratitude they may fairly claim. We owe him something, it appears to me, for having inaugurated a discussion which has stirred 80 many minds to give us on such a question so much interesting and profound, and more espe- cially so much suggestive, thought. We owe him

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et ll NE: Te mele TY “ a ee ee. I 26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. rouch, too, because, in dealing with a thesis which it is specially the temptation and the practice to handle as a theme for declamation, he has so written as to force his antagonists to treat it argumentatively and searchingly as well. Some grativude, moreover, is due to the man who had the moral courage boldly to avow his adhesion to the negative view, when that view is not only in the highest degree unpopular, but is regarded for the most part as condemnable into the bargain, and when, besides, it can scarcely fail to be pain- ful to every man of vivid imagination and of strong affections. It is to his credit also, I vent- ure to think, that, holding this view, he has put it forward, not as an opinion or speculation, but as a settled and deliberate conviction, maintain- able by distinct and reputable reasonings, and to be controverted only by pleas analogous in char- acter. For if there be a topic within the wide range of human questioning in reference to which tampering with mental integrity might seem at first sight pardonable, it is that of a future and continued existence. If belief be ever permis- sible—perhaps I ought to say, if belief be ever possible—on the ground that “ there is peace and joy in believing,” it is here, where the issues are so vast, where the conception in its highest form is so ennobling, where the practical influences of the Creed are, in appearance at least, so benefi- cent. But faith thus arrived at has ever clinging to it the curse belonging to all illegitimate pos. sessions. It is precarious, because the flaw in its title-deeds, barely suspected perhaps and never acknowledged, may any moment be discovered ; misgivings crop up most surely in those hard and gloomy crises of our lives when unflinching confi- dence is most essential to our peace; and the fairy fabric, built up not on grounded conviction but on craving need, crumbles into dust, and leaves the spirit with no solid sustenance to rest upon. Unconsciously, and by implication, Mr. Harri- son bears a testimony he little intended, not, in- deed, to the future existence he denies, but to the irresistible longing and necessity for the very be- lief he labors to destroy. Perhaps no writer has more undesignedly betrayed his conviction that men will not and cannot be expected to surrender their faith and hope without at least something like a compensation ; certainly no one has ever toiled with more noble rhetoric to gild and illumi- nate the substitute with which he would fain per- suade us to rest satisfied. The nearly universal craving for posthumous existence and enduring consciousness, which he depreciates with so harsh

a scorn, and which he will not accept as offering even the shadow or simulacrum of an argument for the Creed, he yet respects enough to that it has its foundation deep in the framework of our being, that it cannot be silenced, and may not be ignored. Having no precious metal to pay it with, he issues paper-money instead, sk engraved and gorgeously gilded to look as like the real coin as may be. It is in vain to deny that there is something touching and elevating in the glowing eloquence with which he paints the picture of lives devoted to efforts in the service of the race, spent in laboring, each of us in his own sphere, to bring about the grand ideal he fancies for humanity, and drawing strength and reward for long years of toil in the anticipation of what man will be when those noble dreams shall have been realized at last—even though we shall never see what we have wrought so hard to win. It is vain to deny, moreover, that these dreams appear more solid and less wild or vague when we remember how close an analogy we may detect in the labors of thousands around us who spend their whole career on earth in building up, by sacrifice and painful struggles, wealth, station, fame, and character, for their children, whose en- joyment of these possessions they will never live to witness, without their passionate zeal in the pursuit being in any way cooled by the discour- aging reflection. Does not this oblige us to con- fess that the posthumous existence Mr. Harrison describes is not altogether an airy fiction? Still, somehow, after a few moments spent in the thin atmosphere into which his brilliant language and unselfish imagination have combined to raise us, we—ninety-nine out of every hundred of us at the least—sink back breathless and wearied after the unaccustomed soaring amid light so dim, and craving, as of yore, after something more per. sonal, more solid, and more certain. To that more solid certainty I am obliged to confess, sorrowfully and with bitter disappoint. ment, that I can contribute nothing—nothing, I mean, that resembles evidence, that can preperly be called argument, or that I can hope will be re- ceived as even the barest confirmation. Alas! can the wisest and most sanguine of us all bring anything beyond our own personal sentiments to swell the common hope? We have aspirations to multiply, but who has any knowledge to enrich our store? I have of course read most of the pleadings in favor of the ordinary doctrine of the future state ; naturally also, in common with all graver natures, I have meditated yet more ; but these pleadings, for the most part, sound to anx- cepeermeaereeskcexsrerzrneweesenmee?ezrt<414 as maine weeeaetna#eF 8 ns f &

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SFEZEGEEE PFS sess 8 Fire A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” jous ears little else than the passionate outcries of souls that cannot endure to part with bopes on which they have been nurtured, and which are in- tertwined with their tenderest affections. Logi- cal reasons to compel conviction, I have met with none—even from the interlocutors in this actual Symposium. Yet few can have sought for such more yearningly. I may say I share in the an- ticipations of believers ; but I share them as aspi- rations, sometimes approaching almost to a faith, occasionally, and for a few moments, perhaps rising into something like a trust, but never able to settle into the consistency of a definite and en- during creed. Ido not know how far even this incomplete state of mind may not be merely the residuum of early upbringing and habitual asso- ciations. ‘But I must be true to my darkness as courageously as to my light. I cannot rest in comfort on arguments that to my spirit have no cogency, nor can I pretend to respect or be con- tent with reasons which carry no penetrating con- viction along with them. I will not make but- tresses do the work or assume the posture of foundations. I will not cry “‘ Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” I have said elsewhere, and at various epochs of life, why the ordinary “proofs” confidently put forward and gorgeously arrayed “have no help in them;” while, never- theless, the pictures which imagination depicts are so inexpressibly alluring. The more I think and question, the more do doubts and difficulties crowd around my horizon, and cloud over my sky. Thus it is that I am unable to bring aid or sustainment to minds as troubled as my own, and perhaps less willing to admit that the great enig- ma is, and must remain, insoluble. Of two things, however, I feel satisfied—that the negative doc- trine is no more susceptible of proof than the af- firmative, and that our opinion, be it only honest, can have no influence whatever on the issue, nor upon its bearing on ourselves. Two considerations that have been borne in upon my mind while following this controversy may be worth mentioning, though neither can be called exactly helpful. One is, that we find the most confident, unquestioning, dogmatic belief in heaven (and its correlative) in those whose heaven is the most unlikely and impossible, the most entirely made up of mundane and material ele- ments, of gorgeous glories and of fading splen- dors '—just such things as uncultured and un- 1“There may be crowns of material splendor, there may be trees of unfading loveliness, there may be pave- ments of emerald, and canopies of the brightest radiance, and gardens of deep and tranquil security, and palaces of proud and stately decoration and a city of lofty pinna- disciplined natures most envied or pined after on earth, such as the lower order of minds could best picture and would naturally be most dazzled by. The higher intelligences of our race, who need a spiritual heaven, find their imaginations fettered by the scientific training which, imper- fect though it be, clips their wings in all direc- tions, forbids their glowing fancy, and annuls— that gorgeous creation, and bars the way to each successive local habitation that is instinctively wanted to give reality to the ideal they aspire to; till, in the effort to frame a future existence without a future world, to build up a state of being that shall be worthy of its denizens, and from which everything material shall be excluded, they at last discover that in renouncing the “ physical” and inadmissible they have been forced to renounce the “ conceivable” as well; and a dimness and fluctuating uncertainty gathers round a scene from which all that is concrete and definable, and would therefore be incongru- ous, has been shut out. The next world cannot, it is felt, be a material one; and a truly “ spirit- ual” one even the saint cannot conceive so as to bring it home to natures stil] shrouded in the garments of the flesh. The other suggestion that has occurred to me is this: It must be conceded that the doctrine of a future life is by no means as universally diffused as it is the habit loosely to assert. It is not always discoverable among primitive and savage races. It existed among pagan nations in a form so vague and hazy as to be describable rather as a dream than a religious faith, It can scarcely be determined whether the Chinese, whose culti- vation is perhaps the most ancient existing in the world, can be ranked among distinct believers; while the conception of Nirvana, which prevails in the meditative minds of other Orientals, is more a sort of conscious non-existence than a future life. With the Jews, moreover, as is well known, the belief was not indigenous, but im- ported, and by no means an early importation. But what is not so generally recognized is that, even among ourselves in these days, the convic- tion of thoughtful natures varies curiously in strength and in features at different periods of life. In youth, when all our sentiments are most vivacious and dogmatic, most of us not only cles, through which there unceasingly flows a river of gladness, and where jubilee is ever sung by a concord | of seraphic voices.”—Dr. Chalmers's Sermons. | “ Poor fragments all of this low earth— Such as in dreams could hardly soothe A soul that once had tasted of immortal truth.” Christian Year.

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La Sela RE ls lk! el ne ee A a RL iat. OO a 28 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY—SUPPLEMENT. cling to it as an intellectual creed, but are accus- tomed to say and feel that, without it as a solace and a hope to rest upon, this world would be stripped of its deepest fascinations. It is from minds of this age, whose vigor is unimpaired and whose relish for the joys of earth is most expan- sive, that the most glowing delineations of heaven usually proceed, and on whom the thirst for fo- licity and knowledge, which can be slaked at no earthly fountains, has the most exciting power. Then comes the busy turmoil of our mid-career, when the present curtains off the future from our thoughts, and when a renewed existence in a different scene is recalled to our fancy chiefly in crises of bereavement. And, finally, is it not the case that in our fading years—when something of the languor and placidity of age is creeping over us, just when futurity is coming consciously and rapidly more near, and when one might nat- urally expect it to occupy us more incessantly and with more anxious and searching glances— we think of it less frequently, believe in it less confidently, desire it less eagerly, than in our youth? Such, at least, hes been my observation and experience, especially among the more re- flective and inquiring order of men. The life of the hour absorbs us most completely, as the hours grow fewer and less full; the pleasures, the exemptions, the modest interests, the after- noon peace, the gentle affections, of the present scene, obscure the future from our view, and ren- der it, curiously enough, even less interesting than the past. To-day, which may be our last, engrosses us far more than to-morrow, which may be our rorEver; and the grave into which we are just stepping down troubles us far less than in youth, when half a century lay between us and it. What is the explanation of this strange phe- nomenon? Is it a merciful dispensation arranged by the Ruler of our life to soften and to ease a crisis which would be too grand and awful to be faced with dignity or calm, if it were actually realized at all? Is it that thought—or that vague substitute for thought which we call time—has brought us, half unconsciously, to the conclusion that the whole question is insoluble, and that re- flection is wasted where reflection can bring us no nearer to an issue? Or, finally, as I know is true far oftener than we fancy, is it that three- score years and ten have quenched the passionate desire for life with which at first we stepped upon the scene? We are tired, some of us, with un- ending and unprofitable toil; we are satiated, others of us, with such ample pleasures as earth can yield us; we have had enough of am alike in its successes and its failures ; the joys and blessings of human affection on which, what. ever their crises and vicissitudes, no righteous or truthful man will cast a slur, are yet so blended with pains which partake of their intensity; the thirst for knowledge is not slaked, indeed, but the capacity for the labor by which alone it cay be gained has consciously died out ; the appetite for life, in short, is gone, the frame is worn and the faculties exhausted; and—possibly this is the key to the phenomenon we are examining— age CaNNot, from the very law of its nature, con. ceive itself endowed with the bounding energies of youth, and without that vigor, both of exertion and desire, renewed existence can offer no inspir. ing charms. Our being upon earth has been en. riched by vivid interests and precious joys, and we are deeply grateful for the gift; but we are wearied with one life, and feel scarcely qualified to enter on the claims, even though balanced by the felicities and glories, of another. It may be the fatigue which comes with age—fatigue of the fancy as well as of the frame; but, somehow, what we yearn for most instinctively at last is rest, and the peace which we can imagine the easiest because we know it best is that of sleep. Rev. BALDWIN BROWN.—The theologians appear to have fallen upon evil days. Like some of old, they are filled with rebuke from all sides. They are bidden to be silent, for their day is over. But some things, like Nature, are hard to get rid of. Expelled, they “recur” swiftly. Foremost among these is theology. It seems as if nothing could long restrain man from this, the loftiest exercise of his powers. The theologians and the Comtists have met in the sense which Mr. Huxley justly indicates ; he is himself work- ing at the foundations of a larger, nobler, and more complete theology. But, for the present, theology suffers affliction, and the theologians have in no small measure themselves to thank for it. The protest rises from all sides, clear and strong, against the narrow, formal, and, in these last days, selfish system of thought and expecta- tion, which they have presented as their kingdom of heaven to the world. I never read Mr. Harrison’s brilliant essays, full as they always are of high aspiration and of stimulus to noble endeavor, without finding the judgment which I cannot but pass in my own mind on his unbeliefs and denials, largely tem- pered by thankfulness. I rejoice in the passion- ate earnestness with which he lifts the hearts of his readers to ideals which it seems to me that

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Fag & ST sekFR TE 5S ¥ AFrgi2e8 x Ty Christianity—that Christianity which as a living force in the apostles’ days turned the world up- side down, that is, right side up, with its face toward heaven and God—alone can realize for man. I recall a noble passage written by Mr. Harri- gon some years ago: “A religion of action, a religion of social duty, devotion to an intelligible and sensible Head, a real sense of incorporation with a living and controlling force, the deliberate effort to serve an immortal Humanity—this, and this alone, can absorb the musings and the crav- ings of the spiritual man.” It seems to me that it would be difficult for any one to set forth in more weighty and eloquent words the kind of object which Christianity proposes, and the kind of help toward the attainment of the object which the Incarnation affords. And in the matter now under debate, behind the stern denunciation of the selfish striving toward a personal immortality which Mr. Harrison utters with his accustomed force, there seems to lie not only a yearning for, but a definite vision of, an immortality which shall not be selfish, but largely fruitful to pub- lic good. It is true that, as has been forcibly pointed out, the form which it wears is utterly vain and illusory, and wholly incapable, one would think, of accounting for the enthusiastic eagerness with which it appeurs to be sought. May not the eagerness be really kindled by a larger and more far-reaching vision—the Christian vision, which has become obscured to so many faithful servants of duty by the selfishness and vanity with which much that goes by the name of the Christian life in these days has enveloped it; but which has not ceased and will not cease, in ways which even consciousness cannot always trace, to cast its spell on human hearts ? Mr. Harrison seems to start in his argument with the conviction that there is a certain base- ness in this longing for immortality, and he falls on the belief with a fierceness which the sense of its baseness alone could justify. But surely he must stamp much more with the same brand. Each day's struggle to live is a bit of the base- ness, and there seems to be no answer to Mr. Hutton’s remark that the truly unselfish action under such conditions would be suicide. But, at any rate, it is clear from history that the men who formulated the doctrine and perfected the art of suicide in the early days of imperial Rome belonged to the most basely selfish and heartless generation that has ever cumbered this sorrow- ful world. The love of life is, on the whole, a 1 Fortnightly Review, vol. xii, p. 529. ‘A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” noble thing, for the staple of life is duty. The more I see of classes in which, at first sight, self- ishness seems to reign, the more am I struck with the measure in which duty, thought for others, and work for others, enters into their lives. The desire to live on, to those who catch the Christian idea, and would follow him who “came, not to be ministered unto, but to min- ister,” is a desire to work on, and by living to bless more richly a larger circle in a wider world. I can even cherish some thankfulness for the fling at the eternity of the tabor in which Mr. Harrison indulges, and which draws on him a rebuke from his critics the severity of which one can also well understand. It is a last fling at the laus perennis, which once seemed so beau- tiful to monastic hearts, and which, looked at ideally, to those who can enter into Mr. Hutton’s lofty view of adoration, means all that he de- scribes. But practically it was a very poor, nar- row, mechanical thing; and base even when it represented, as it did to multitudes, the loftiest form of a soul’s activity in such a sad, suffering world as this. I, for one, can understand, though I could not utter, the anathema which follows it as it vanishes from sight. And it bears closely on the matter in hand. It is no dead, medizval idea. It tinctures strongly the popular religious notions of heaven. The favorite hymns of the evangelical school are set in the same key. There is an easy, self-satisfied, self-indulgent temper in the popular way of thinking and pray- ing, and above all of singing, about heaven, which, sternly as the singers would denounce the cloister, is really caught from the monastic choir. There is a very favorite verse which rans thus; “ There, on a green and flowery mount, Our weary souls shall sit, And with transporting joys recount The labors of our feet.” It is a fair sample of the staple of much pious forecasting of the occupations and enjoyments of heaven. I cannot but welcome very heartily any such shock as Mr. Harrison administers to this restful and self-centred vision of immortality. Should he find himself at last endowed with the inheritance which he refuses, and be thrown in the way of these souls mooning on the mount, it is evident that he would feel tempted to give them a vigorous shake, and to set them with 1 Mr. Martin's picture of “ The Plains of Heaven” ex- actly presents it, and it is a picture greatly admired in the circles of which we speak.

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80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. some stinging words about some good work for God and for their world. And as many of us want the shaking now badly enough, I can thank him for it, although it is administered by an over-rough and contemptuous hand. I feel some hearty sympathy, too, with much which he says about the unity of the man. The passage to which I refer commences on page 242 with the words “The philosophy which treats man as man simply affirms that man loves, thinks, acts, not that the ganglia, the senses, or any organ of man, loves, thinks, and acts.” So far as Mr. Harrison’s language and line of thought are a protest against the vague, blood- less, bodiless notion of the life of the future, which has more affinity with Hades than with heaven, I heartily thank him for it. Man is an embodied spirit, and wherever his lot is cast he | will need and will have the means of a spirit’s | manifestation to and action on its surrounding world. But this is precisely what is substan-— tiated by the resurrection. The priceless value | of the truth of the resurrection lies in the close | interlacing and interlocking of the two worlds which it reveals. It is the life which is lived | here, the life of the embodied spirit, which is carried through the veil and lived there. The wonderful powers of the gospel of “ Jesus and the resurrection” lay in the homely human inter- est which it lent to the life of the immortals. The risen Lord took up life just where he left it. The things which he had taught his disci- ples to care about here, were the things which those who had passed on were caring about there, the reign of truth, righteousness, and love. I hold to the truth of the resurrection, not only because it appears to be firmly established on the most valid testimony, but because it alone seems to explain man’s constitution as a spirit embodied in flesh which he is sorely tempted to curse as aclog. It furnishes to man the key to the mystery of the flesh on the one hand, while on the other it justifies his aspiration and real- izes his hope. Belief in the risen and reigning Christ was at the heart of that wonderful uprising and outburst of human energy which marked the age of the Advent. The contrast is most striking between the sad and even despairing tone which breathes through the noblest heathen literature, which utters perhaps its deepest wail in the cry of Epictetus, “Show me a Stoic—by Heaven, I long to see a Stoic!” and the sense of victorious pow- er, of buoyant, exulting hope, which breathes through the word and shines from the life of the infant Church: “As dying, and behold we live; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; as poor, yet making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” The Gospel which brought life and immortality to light won its way just as dawn wins it way, when “jocund day stands tip. toe on the misty mountain-tops,” and flashes his rays over a sleeping world. Everywhere the radiance penetrates ; it shines into every nook of shade; and all living creatures stir, awake, and come forth to bask in its beams. Just thug the flood of kindling light streamed forth from the resurrection, and spread like the dawn in the morning sky ; it touched all forms of things in a dark, sad world with its splendor, and called man forth from the tomb in which his higher life seemed to be buried, to a new career of fruitful, sunlit activity; even as the Saviour prophesied, “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” The exceeding readiness and joyfulness with which the truth was welcomed, and the meas- ure in which Christendom—and that means all that is most powerful and progressive in human society—has been moulded by it, are the most notable facts of history. Be it truth, be it fiction, be it dream, one thing is clear: it was a baptism of new life to the world which was touched by it, and it has been near the heart of all the great movements of human so- ciety from that day until now. I do not even exclude “the Revolution,” whose current is un- der us still. Space is precious, or it would not be difficult to show how deeply the Revolution was indebted to the ideas which this gospel brought into the world. I entirely agree with Lord Blachford that revelation is the ground on which faith securely rests. But the history of the quickening and the growth of Christian society is a factor of enormous moment in the estimation of the arguments for the truth of im- mortality. We are assured that the idea had the dullest and even basest origin. Man has a shad- ow, it suggested the idea of a second self to him! he has memories of departed friends, he gave them a body and made them ghosts! Very won- derful, surely, that mere figments should be the strongest and most productive things in the whole sphere of human activity, and should have stirred the spirit and led the march of the strong- est, noblest, and most cultivated peoples; until now, in this nineteenth century, we think that we have discovered, as Miss Martineau tersely puts it, that “the theological belief of almost er L ci {) x h b r d tl si tl c li 1 e 0 h ¢ h h t I f I t ‘ 1 f 1 ‘ | | |

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ERS2,55 oF PBwVwearPRSsSSPSESCTSEA FASE RE everybody in the civilized world is baseless.” Let who will believe it, I cannot. It may be urged that the idea has strong fas- cination, that man naturally longs for immortali- ty, and gladly catches at any figment which seems to respond to his yearning and to justify his hope. But this belief is among the clearest, broadest, and strongest features of his experience and history. It must flow out of something very deeply imbedded in his constitution. If the force that is behind all the phenomena of life is respon- sible for all that is, it must be responsible for this also. Somehow man, the masterpiece of the Creation, has got himself wedded to the belief that all things here have relations to issues which lie in a world that is behind the shadow of death. This belief has been at the root of his highest endeavor and of his keenest pain; it is the secret of his chronic unrest. Now Nature, through all her orders, appears to have made all creatures contented with the conditions of their life. The brute seems fuily satisfied with the resources of his world. He shows no sign of being tormented by dreams; his life withers under no blight of regret, All things rest, and are glad and beauti- ful in their spheres. Violate the order of their nature, rob them of their fit surroundings, and they grow restless, sad, and poor. A plant shut out from light and moisture will twist itself into the most fantastic shapes, and strain itself to ghastly tenuity; nay, it will work its delicate tissues through stone-walls or hard rock, to find what its nature has made needful to its life. Having found it, it rests and is glad in its beauty once more. Living things, perverted by human intelligent effort, revert swiftly the moment that the pressure is removed. This marked tendency to reversion seems to be set in Nature as a sign that all things are at rest in their natural condi- tions, content with their life and its sphere. Only in ways of which they are wholly unconscious, and which rob them of no contentment with their present, do they prepare the way for the higher developments of life. What, then, means this restless longing in man for that which lies beyond the range of his visible world? Has Nature wantonly and cruelly made man, her masterpiece, alone of all the creat- ures, restless and sad? Of all beings in the Creation must he alone be made wretched by an unattainable longing, by futile dreams of a vi- sionary world? This were an utter breach of the method of Nature in all her operations. It is impossible to believe that the harmony that runs through all her spheres fails and falls into discord A MODERN “ SYMPOSIUM.” 81 in man. The very order of Nature presses us to the conviction that this insatiable longing which somehow she generates and sustains in man, and which is unquestionably the largest feature of his life, is not visionary and futile, but profoundly significant; pointing with firm finger to the real- ity of that sphere of being to which she has taught him to lift his thoughts and aspirations, and in which he will find, unless the prophetic order of the Creation has lied to him, the har- monious completeness of his life. And there seems to be no fair escape from the conclusion by giving up the order, and writ- ing Babel on the world and its life. Whatever it is, it is not confusion. Out of its disorder, order palpably grows; out of its confusion arises a grand and stately progress. Progress is a sa- cred word with Mr. Harrison. In the progress of humanity he finds his longed-for immortality. But, if I may repeat in other terms a remark which I offered in the first number of this review, while progress is the human law, the world, the sphere of the progress, is tending slowly but inevitably to dissolution. Is there discord again in this highest region? Mr. Harrison writes of an immortal humanity. How immortal, if the glorious progress is striving to accomplish itself in a world of wreck? Or is the progress that of a race born with sore but joyful travail from the highest level of the material creation into a higher region of being, whence it can watch with calmness the dissolution of all the perishable worlds ? The belief in immortality is so dear to man because he grasps through it the complement of his else unshaped and imperfect life. It seems to be equally the complement of this otherwise hopelessly jangled and disordered world. It is asked triumphantly, “ Why, of all the hosts of creatures, does man alone lay claim to this great inheritance?” Because in man alone we see the experiences, the strain, the anguish, that demand it, as the sole key to what he does and endures. There is to me something horrible in the thought of such a life as ours, in which for all of us, in some form or other, the cross must be the most. sacred symbol, lived out in that bare, heartless, hopeless world of the material, to which Prof. Clifford so lightly limits it. And I cannot but think that there are strong signs in many quar- ters of an almost fierce revulsion from the ghast- ly drearihood of such a vision of life. There seems to me to run through Mr. Harri- son’s utterances on these great subjects—I say it with honest diffidence of one whose large range

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a ee ie ee eee Se ec a ah em re ae sony 82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of power I so fully recognize, but one must speak frankly if this Symposium is to be worth any- thing—an instinctive yearning toward Chris- tian ideas, while that faith is denied which alone can vivify them and make them a living power in our world. There is everywhere a shadowy image of a Christian substance; but it reminds one of that formless form, wherein “ what seemed a head, the likeness of a kingly crown had on.” And it is characteristic of much of the finest thinking and writing of our times. The saviour Deronda, the prophet Mordecai, lack just that living heart of faith which would put blood into their pallid lineaments, and make them breathe and move among men. Again I say that we have largely ourselves to thank for this saddening feat- ure of the higher life of our times—we who have narrowed God’s great kingdom to the dimensions of our little theological sphere. I am no theolo- gian, though intensely interested in the themes with which the theologians occupy themselves. Urania, with darkened brow, may perhaps rebuke my prating. But I seem to see quite clearly that the sad strain and anguish of our life, social, in- tellectual, and spiritual, is but the pain by which great stages of growth accomplish themselves. We have quite outgrown our venerable, and in its time large and noble, theological shell. We must wait, not fearful, far less hopeless, while by the help of those who are working with such admi- rable energy, courage, and fidelity, outside the visible Christian sphere, that spirit in man which searches and cannot but search “the deep things of God,” creates for itself a new instrument of thought which will give to it the mastery of a wider, richer, and nobler world. Dr. W. G. WARD.—Mr. Harrison considers that the Christian's conception of a future life is “so gross, so sensual, so indolent, so selfish,” as to be unworthy of respectful consideration. He must necessarily be intending to speak of this conception in the shape in which we Christians entertain it; because otherwise his words of rep- rehension are unmeaning. But our belief as to the future life is intimately and indissolubly bound up with our belief as to the present; with our belief as to what is the true measure and stand- ard of human action in this world. And I would urge that no part of our doctrine can be rightly apprehended, unless it be viewed in its connection with all the rest. This is a fact which (I think) infidels often drop out of sight, and for that reason fail of meeting Christianity on its really relevant and critical issues. sively the one authoritative exhibition of revedial Christianity. I will set forth, therefore, the doe. ticular form in which Catholic teachers enounce it; though I am very far indeed from in to deny that there are multitudes of non-Catholig Christians who hold it also. What, then, accord. ing to Catholics, is the true measure and standard of human action? This is in effect the very first question propounded in our English elementary Catechism: “‘Why did God make you?” The prescribed answer is, “To know him, serve him, and love him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next.” And St. Ignatius’s “Spiritual Exercises "—a work of the very high. est authority among us—having laid down the very same “ foundation,” presently adds that “ we should not wish on our part for health rather than for sickness, wealth rather than poverty, honor rather than ignominy; desiring and choosing those things alone which are more expedient to what will be the course of a Christian’s life in proportion as he is profoundly imbued with such a principle as this, and vigorously aims at putting apply themselves to this task with reasonable consistency, is no doubt comparatively small, But in proportion as any given person does so, he will in the first place be deeply penetrated with a sense of his moral weakness; and (were it for that reason alone) his life will more and more be a life of prayer. Then he will necessarily give his mind with great earnestness and frequency to the consideration what it is which at this or that period God desires at his hands. On the whole (not to dwell with unnecessary detail on this part of my subject), he will be ever opening bis heart to Almighty God; turning to him for light and strength under emergencies, for comfort under affliction; pondering on his adorable attributes; animated toward him by intense love and tender- ness. Nor need I add how singularly—how be- yond words—this personal love of God is pro- moted and facilitated by the fact that a Divine Person has assumed human nature, and that God’s human acts and words are so largely offered to the loving contemplation of redeemed souls. In proportion, then, as a Christian is faithful to his creed, the thought of God becomes the chief joy of his life. “The thonght of God,” says F, Newman, “and nothing short of it, is the happiness of man; for though there is much be- sides to serve as subject of knowledge, or motive for Of course, I consider Catholicity to be exclu- action, or instrument of excitement, yet the affee- trine to which I would call attention, in that pan. us for the end for which we were created.” Now, , it into practice? The number of believers, who . eost-2radgaBeaweatenweew@weeaseentk ese eS a ee te ee ee eee ee le oe ee | he ee ae: he Oe

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fons require a something more vast and more en- during than anything created. He alone is suffi- dent for the heart who madeit. The contempla- tion of him, and nothing but it, is able fully to open and relieve the mind, to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections. We may indeed love things cre- ated with great intenseness; but such affection, when disjoined from the love of the Creator, is like a stream running in a narrow channel, im- petuous, vehement, turbid. The heart runs out, as it were, only at one door; it is not an expand- ing of the whole man. Created natures cannot to us, or elicit, the ten thousand mental senses which belong to us, and through which we really love. None but the presence of our Maker can enter us; for to none besides can the whole heart in all its thoughts and feelings be unlocked and subjected. It is this feeling of simple and absolute confidence and communion A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” | | | once admit that it is profoundly harmonious and consistent with their view of what should be man’s life on earth. To say that their anticipa- tion of the future, as it exists in them, is gross, sensual, indolent, and selfish, is so manifestly be- yond the mark that I am sure Mr. Harrison will, on reflection, retract his affirmation. Apart, how- ever, from this particular comment, my criticism of Mr. Harrison would be this: He was bound, I maintain, to consider the Christian theory of life as a whole ; and not to dissociate that part of it which concerns eternity from that part of it which concerns time. And now as to the merits of this Christian theory. For my own part, I am, of course, pro- foundly convinced that, as on the one hand it is guaranteed by revelation, so on the other hand it is that which alone harmonizes with the dicta of reason and the facts of experience, so far as it which soothes and satisfies those to whom it is | comes into contact with these. Yet I admit that vouchsa fed. friends enter into us but partially, and hold in- tercourse with us only at times; whereas the consciousness of a perfect and enduring presence, and it alone, keeps the heart open. Withdraw the object on which it rests, and it will relapse again into its state of confinement and constraint ; and in proportion as it is limited, either to cer- tain seasons or to certain affections, the heart is straitened and distressed.” Now, Christians hold that God’s faithful ser- vants will enjoy hereafter unspeakable bliss, through the most intimate imaginable contact with him whom they have here so tenderly loved. They will see face to face him whose beauty is dimly and faintly adumbrated by the most ex- quisitely transporting beauty which can be found on earth; him whose adorable perfections they have in this life imperfectly contemplated, and for the fuller apprehension of which they have so earnestly longed here below. I by no means in- tend to imply that the hope of this blessedness | | We know that even our nearest | various very plausible objections may be adduced against its truth. Objectors may allege very plausibly that by the mass of men it cannot be carried into practice ; that it disparages most un- duly the importance of things secular; that it is fatal to what they account genuine patriotism; that it has always been, and will always be, in- jurious to the progress of science; above all, that it puts men (as one may express it) on an entirely wrong scent, and leads them to neglect many pursuits which, as being sources of true enjoyment, would largely enhance the pleasura- bleness of life. All this, and much more, may be urged, I think, by antitheists with very great superficial plausibility ; and the Christian contro- versialist is bound on occasion steadily to con- * front it. But there is one accusation which has been brought against this Christian theory of life —and that the one mainly (as would seem) felt by Mr. Harrison—which to me seems so obvious- ly destitute of foundation that I find difficulty in understanding how any infidel can have per- is the sole or even the chief inducement which suaded himself of its truth: I mean the accusa- leads saintly men to be diligent in serving God. Their immediate reason for doing so is their keen | sense of his claim on their allegiance ; and, again, the misery which they would experience, through their love of him, at being guilty of any failure in that allegiance. Still the prospect of that fu- ture bliss, which I have so imperfectly sketched, is doubtless found by them at times of invaluable service in stimulating them to greater effort, and in cheering them under trial and desolation. Such is the view taken by Christians of life in heaven ; and, surely, any candid infidel will at 39 tion that this theory is a selfish one. There is no need of here attempting a philosophical discus- sion on the respective claims of what are now called “egoism” and “altruism:” a discussion in itself (no doubt) one of much interest and much importance, and one, moreover, in which I should be quite prepared (were it necessary) to engage. Here, however, I will appeal, not to philosophy, but to history. In the records of the past we find a certain series of men, who stand out from the mass of their brethren, as having preéminently concentrated their energy on the Jf

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what AR net Ses TE Sone 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. love and service of God, and preéminently looked away from earthly hopes to the prospect of their future reward. I refer to the saints of the Church. And it is a plain matter of fact, which no one will attempt to deny, that these very men stand out no less conspicuously from the rest in their self-sacrificing and (as we ordinary men re- gard it) astounding labors in behalf of what they believe to be the highest interests of mankind. Before I conclude, I must not omit a brief comment on one other point, because it is the only one on which I cannot concur with Lord Blachford’s masterly paper. I cannot agree with him that the doctrine of human immortality fails of being supported by “conclusive reasoning.” I do not, of course, mean that the dogma of the Beatific Vision is discoverable apart from revela- tion; but I do account it a truth cognizable with certitude by reason, that the human soul is natu- rally immortal, and that retribution of one kind or another will be awarded us hereafter, according to what our conduct has been in this our state of probation. Here, however, I must explain my- self. When theists make this statement, some- times they are thought to allege that human im- mortality is sufficiently proved by phenomena ; and sometimes they are thought to allege that it is almost intuitively evident. For myself, how- ever, I make neither of these allegations. I hold that the truth in question is conclusively estab- lished by help of certain premises; and that these premises themselves can previously be known with absolute certitude, on grounds of reason or experience. They are such as these: 1. There exists that Personal Being, infinite in all perfections, whom we call God. 2. He has implanted in his ra- tional creatures the sense of right and wrong; the knowledge that a deliberate perpetration of certain acts intrinsically merits penal retribution. 8. Correlatively, he has conferred freedom on the human will; or, in other words, has made acts of the human will exceptions to that law of uniform sequence which otherwise prevails throughout the phenomenal world.’ 4. By the habit of prayer to God we can obtain augmented strength for moral action, in a degree which would have been quite incredible antecedently to experience. 5. Various portions of our divinely given nature clearly point to an eternal destiny. 6. The conscious self or ego is entirely hetero- geneous to the material world: entirely hetero- 11 shall not, of course, be understood to deny the existence and frequency of miracles. geneous, therefore, to that palpable body of ourg which is dissolved at the period of death, I do not think any one will account it extray. agant to hold that the doctrine of human im. mortality is legitimately deducible from a com. bination of these and similar truths. The anti. theist will of course deny that they are truths, Mr. Greg, who has himself “ arrived at no con. viction” on the subject of immortality, yet says that considerations of the same kind as those which I have enumerated “ must be decisive” in favor of immortality “to all to whose spirits communion with their Father is the most abso. lute of verities.”! Nor have I any reason to think that even Mr. Huxley and Mr. Harrison, if they could concede my premises, would demur to my conclusion. Mr. FREDERIC HARRISON.—[I have now, not so much to close a symposium, or general dis. cussion, as to reply to the convergent fire of nine separate papers, extending over more than fifty pages. Neither time, nor space, nor the indul- gence of the reader, would enable me to do jus. tice to the weight of this array of criticism, which reaches me in fragments while I am other- wise occupied abroad. I will ask those critics whom I have not been able to notice to believe that I have duly considered the powerful ap- peals they have addressed to me. And I will ask those who are interested in this question to refer to the original papers in which my views were stated. And I will only add, by way of reply, the following remarks, which were, for the most part, written and printed, while I had noth- ing before me but the first three papers in this discussion. They contain what I have to say on the theological, the metaphysical, and the mate- rialist aspect of this question. For the rest, I could only repeat what I have already said in the two original essays. ] Whether the preceding discussion has given much new strength to the doctrine of man’s im- material soul and future existence I will not pre- tend to decide. But I cannot feel that it has shaken the reality of man’s posthumous influence, my chief and immediate theme. It seemed to me that the time had come, when, seeing how vague and hesitating were the prevalent beliefs on this subject, it was most important to remem- ber that, from a purely earthly point of view, man had a spiritual nature, and could look for- ward after death to something that marked him off from the beasts that perish. I cannot see 1 See his letter in the Spectator of August 25th.

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that what I urged has been in substance dis- ; though much criticism (and some of it of a verbal kind) has been directed at the lan- guage which I used of others. My object was to try if this life could not be made richer; not to destroy the dreams of another. But has the old doctrine of a future life been in any way strengthened? Mr. Hutton, it is true, has a “personal wish” for a perpetuity of volition. Lord Blachford “believes because he is told.” And Prof. Huxley knows of no evidence that “such a soul and a future life exist;” and he seems not to believe in them at all. Philosophical discussion must languish a lit- tle, if, when we ask for the philosophical grounds for a certain belief, we find one philosopher be- lieving because he has a “ personal wish” for it, and another “believing because he is told.” Mr. Hutton says that, as fur as he knows, “the thoughts, affections, and volitions, are not likely to perish with his body.” Prof. Huxley seems te think it just as likely that they should. Argu- ments are called for to enable us to decide be- tween these two authorities. And the only argu- | A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” admitting these spiritual facts to have a relation with molecular and organic facts in the human organism—provided that we never forget how small and dependent is the part which the study of the molecular and organic phenomena must play in moral and social science. 5. Those whose minds have been trained in the modern philosophy of law cannot understand what is meant by sensation, thought, and energy, existing without any basis of molecular change; and to talk to them of sensation, thought, and energy, continuing in the absence of any mole- cules whatever, is precisely such a contradiction in terms as to suppose that civilization will con- tinue in the absence of any men whatever. 6. Yet man is so constituted as a social be- ing that the energies which he puts out in life mould the minds, characters, and habits, of his fellow-men ; so that each man’s life is, in effect, indefinitely prolonged in human society. This is a phenomenon quite peculiar to man and to hbu- man society, and of course depends on there be- ing men in active association with each other. Physics and biology can teach us nothing about ment we have hitherto got is Mr. Hutton’s “ per- it; and physicists and biologists may very easily sonal wish,” and Lord Blachford’s iéa scriptum | forget its importance. It can be learned only by est. I confess myself unable to continue an argu- | long and refined observations in moral and men- ment which runs into believing “ because I am | tal philosophy as a whole, and in the history of told.” Naples believes in the blood of St. Januarius. My original proposttions may be stated thus: 1. Philosophy as a whole (I do not say spe- cially biological science) has established a func- tional relation to exist between every fact of thinking, willing, or feeling, on the one side, and some molecular change in the body on the other side. 2. This relation is simply one of correspond- ence between moral and physical facts, not one of assimilation. The moral fact does not become a physical fact, is not adequately explained by it, and must be mainly studied as a moral fact, by | | ture state a selfish or personal hope. methods applicable to morals—not as a physical fact, by methods applicable to physics. 8. The moral facts of human life, the laws of man’s mental, moral, and affective nature, raust consequently be studied, as they have always been studied, by direct observation of these facts; yet the correspondences, specially discov- ered by biological science, between man’s mind and his body, must always be kept in view. They are an indispensable, inseparable, but sub- ordinate part of moral philosophy. 4. We do not diminish the supreme place of the spiritual facts in life and in philosophy by | It is for this reasun that the lazzarone at | civilization as a whole. 7. Lastly, as a corollary, it may be useful to retain the words soul and future life for their as- sociations ; provided we make it clear that we mean by soul the combined faculties of the liv- ing organism, and by future life the subjective effect of each man’s objective life on the actual lives of his fellow-men. I. Now, I find in Mr. Hutton’s paper hardly any attempt to disprove the first six of these propositions. He is employed for the most part in asserting that his hypothesis of a future state is a more agreeable one than mine, and in ear- nest complaints that I should call his view of a fu- As to the first, I will only remark that it is scarcely a ques- tion whether his notion of immortality is beauti- ful or not, but whether it is true. If there is no rational ground for expecting such immortality to be a solid fact, it is to little purpose to show us what a sublime idea it would be if there were anything in it. As to the second, I will only say that I do not call his notion of a future existence a selfish or personal hope. In the last paragraph of my second paper I speak with respect of the opinion of those who look forward to a future of moral development instead of to an idle eternity

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Nk AE le RR Bags UE we a ee Se re een ere Ae 36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE of psalm-singing. My language as to the selfish- ness of the vulgar ideas of salvation was directed to those who insist that, unless they are to feel a continuance of pleasure, they do not care for any continuance of their influence at all. The vulgar are apt to say that what they desire is the sense of personal satisfaction, and, if they cannot have this, they care for nothing else. This, I maintain, is a selfish and debasing idea. It is the common notion of the popular religion, and its tendency to concentrate the mind on a merely personal sal- vation does exert an evil effect on practical con- duct. I once heard a Scotch preacher, dilating on the narrowness of the gate, etc., exclaim, “O dear brethren, who would care to be saved ina crowd?” I do not say this of the life of grander activi- ty in which Mr. Hutton believes, and which Lord Blachford so eloquently describes. This is no doubt a fine ideal, and I will not say other than an elevating hope. But on what does it rest ? Why this ideal rather than any other? Each of us may imagine, as I said at the outset, his own Elysian fields, or his own mystic rose. But is this philosophy? Is it even religion? Besides, there is this other objection to it: It is not Christianity, but Neo-Christianity. It is a fanta- sia with variations on the orthodox creed. There is not a word of the kind in the Bible. Lord Blachford says he believes in it “because he is told.” But it so happens that he is not told this, at any rate in the creeds and formularies of or- thodox faith. If this view of future life is to rest entirely on revelation, it is a very singular thing that the Bible is silent on the matter. Whatever kind of future ecstasy may be suggested in some texts, certain it is that such a glorified energy as Lord Blachford paints in glowing colors is no- where described in the Bible. There is a con- stant practice nowadays, when the popular re- ligion is criticised, that earnest defenders of it come forward exclaiming: “Oh! that is only the vulgar notion of our religion. My idea of the doctrine is so and so,” something which the speaker has invented without countenance from official authority. For my part, I hold Christian- ity to be what is taught in average churches and chapels to the millions of professing Christians. And I say it is a very serious fact when philo- sophical defenders of religion begin by repudiat- ing that which is taught in average pulpits. Perhaps a little more attention to my actual words might have rendered unnecessary the com- plaints in all these papers as to my language MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ture. In the first place I freely admit that the hopes of a grander energy in heaven are not open to the charge of vulgar selfishness. I said that they are unintelligible, not that they are unwor. thy. They are unintelligible to those who are continually alive to the fact I have placed as my first proposition—that every moral phenomenon is in functional relation with some physical phenom. enon. To those who deny or ignore this truth, there is, doubtless, no incoherence in all the ide. als so eloquently described in the papers of Mr. Hutton and Lord Blachford. But, once get this conception as the substratum of your entire men. tal and moral philosophy, and it is as incoherent to talk to us of your immaterial development as it would be to talk of obtaining redness without any red thing. I will try to explain more fully why this idea of a glorified activity implies a contradiction in terms to those who are imbued with the sense of correspondence between physical and moral facts. When we conceive any process of think. ing, we call up before us a complex train of con- ditions: objective facts outside of us, or the re- vived impression of such facts; the molecular effect of these facts upon certain parts of our organism, the association of these with similar facts recalled by memory, an elaborate mechan- ism to correlate these impressions, an unknown to be made known, and a difficulty to be over- come. All systematic thought implies relations with the external world present or recalled, and it also implies some shortcoming in our powers of perfecting those relations. When we medi- tate, it is on a basis of facts which we are ob- serving, or have observed and are now recalling, and with a view to get at some result which baf- practical purpose. The same holds good of our moral energy. Ecstasy and mere adoration exclude energy of action. Moral development implies difficulties to be overcome, qualities balanced against one an- other under opposing conditions, this or that ap- petite tempted, this or that instinct tested by proof. Moral development does not grow like a fungus ; it is a continual struggle in surrounding conditions of a specific kind, and an active put- ting forth of a variety of practical faculties in the midst of real obstacles. So, too, of the affections: they equally im- ply conditions. Sympathy does not spurt up like a fountain in the air; it implies beings in need of help, evils to be alleviated, a fellowship about the hopes which men cherish for the fu- of giving and taking, the sense of protecting and des our direct observation and hinders some — Qgcesbsnsk J eueoeeto ke fF ao eo ft ae - «= tnitin Gh «4 2 nn ese GO ope wa OeelUtlUt.lhCUDlCUD

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10ut idea . in nse ral Be? & bur om s }- = ae ee tion of power, goodness, and truth. All of these imply an external world to act in, buman beings as objects, and human life under human condi- tions. Now, all these conditions are eliminated from the orthodox ideal of a future state. There are to be no physical impressions, no material diffi- culties, no evil, no toil, no struggle, no human beings, and no human objects. The only condi- tion is a complete absence of all conditions, or all conditions of which we have any experience. And we say, we cannot imagine what you mean by your intensified sympathy, your broader thought, your infinitely varied activity, when you begin by postulating the absence of all that makes sympathy, thought, and activity possible, all that makes life really noble. A mystical and inane ecstasy is an appropri- ate ideal for this paradise of negations, and this is the orthodox view ; but it is not a high view. A glorified existence of greater activity and de- velopment may be a high view, but it is a con- tradiction in terms; exactly, I say, as if you were to talk of a higher civilization without any human beings. But this is simply a metaphysi- cal after-thought to escape from 2 moral dilemma. Mr. Hutton is surely mistaken in saying that Positivists have forgotten that Christians ever had any meaning in their hopes of a “ beatific vision.” He must know that Dante and Thomas 4 Kempis form the religious books of Positivists, and they are, with some other manuals of Catho- lic theology, among the small number of volumes which Comte recommended for constant use. We can see in the celestial “ visions ” of a mys- tical and unscientific age much that was beauti- ful in its time, though not the highest product even of theology. But in our day these visions of paradise have lost what moral value they had, while the progress of philosophy has made them incompatible with our modern canons of thought. Mr. Hutton supposes me to object to any con- tinuance of sensation as an evil in itself. My objection was not that consciousness should be prolonged in immortality, but that nothing else but consciousness should be prolonged. All real human life, energy, thought, and active af- fection, are to be made impossible in your celes- tial paradise, but you insist on retaining con- sciousness, To retain the power of feeling, while all means and objects are taken away from thinking, all power of acting, all opportunity of cultivating the faculties of sympathy are stifled : this seems to me something else than a good. A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” being protected, a pity for suffering, an admira- ' It would seem to me that simply to be conscious, and yet to lie thoughtless, inactive, irresponsive, with every faculty of a man paralyzed within you, as if by that villainous drug which produces torpor while it intensifies sensation—such a con- sciousness as this must be a very place of tor- ment. I think some contradictions, which Mr. Hut- ton supposes he detects in my paper, are not very hard to reconcile. I admitted that death is an evil, it seems; but I spoke of our posthumous activity as a higher kind of influence. We might imagine, of course, a Utopia, with neither suffer- ing, waste, nor loss; and compared with such a world, the world, as we know it, is full of evils, of which death is obviously one. But relatively, in such a world as alone we know, death be- comes simply a law of organized Nature, from which we draw some of our guiding motives of conduct. In precisely the same way the neces- sity of toil is an evil in itself; but, with man and his life as we know them, we draw from it some of our highest moral energies. The grandest qualities of human nature, such as we know it at least, would become forever impossible if Labor and Death were not the law of life. Mr. Hutton again takes but a pessimist view of life when he insists how much of our activity is evil, and how questionable is the future of the race. I am no pessimist, and I believe in a prov- idential control over all human actions by the great Power of Humanity, which indeed brings good out of evil, and assures, at least for some thousands of centuries, a certain progress toward the higher state. Pessimism, as to the essential dignity of man and the steady development of his race, is one of the surest marks of the enervating influence of this dream of a celestial glory. If I called it as wild a desire as to go roving through space in a comet, it is because I can attach no meaning to a human life to be prolonged without a human frame and a human world ; and it seems to me as rational to talk of becoming an angel as to talk of becoming an ellipse. By “ duties ” of the world beyond the grave, I meant the duties which are imposed on us in life, by the certainty that our action must continue to have an indefinite effect. The phrase may be in- elegant, but I do not think the meaning is ob- scure. II. I cannot agree with Lord Blachford that I have fallen into any confusion between a sub- stance and an attribute. I am quite aware that the word “soul” has been hitherto used for some centuries as an entity. And I proposed to

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PRR NS oe Oh Rs —— ame cial Mi Set MRE Fe Fe ee ee eens 38 retain the term for an attribute. It is a very common process in the history of thought. Elec- tricity, life, heat, were once supposed to be sub- stances. We now very usefully retain these words for a set of observed conditions or quali- ties. I agree with Mr. Spencer that the unity of the social organism is quite as complete as that of the individual organism. I do not confuse the two kinds of unity; but I say that man is in no important sense a unit that society is not also a unit. With regard to the “percipient” and the ‘perceptible’ I cannot follow Lord Blachford. He speaks a tongue that I do not understand. I have no means of dividing the universe into “ percipients ” and “ perceptibles.” I know no reason why a “ percipient ” should not bea “ per- ceptible,” none why I should not be “ percepti- ble,” and none why beings about me should not be “ perceptible.” I think we are all perfectly “perceptible”— indeed, some of us are more “ perceptible ” than “ percipient ’—though I can- not say that Lord Blachford is always “ percepti- ble” tome. And how does my being “ percepti- ble,” or not being “perceptible,” prove that I have an immortal soul? Is a dog “ perceptible,” is he “percipient?” Has he not some of the qualities of a “‘ percipient,” and, if so, has he an immortal soul? Is an ant, a tree, a bacterium, “ percipient,” and has any of these an immortal soul: for I find Lord Blachford declaring there is an “ineradicable difference between the mo- tions of a material and the sensations of a living being,” as if the animal world were “ percipient,” and the inorganic “perceptible?” But surely in the sensations of a living being the animal world must be included. Where does the vegetable world come in ? I used the word “ organism ” advisedly, when T said that will, thought, and affection, are func- tions of a living organism. I decline exactly to localize the organ of any function of mind or will. When I am asked, What are we? I reply we are men. When I am asked, Are we our bodies? I say no, nor are we our minds. Have we no sense of personality, of unity ? Iam asked. I say cer- tainly ; it is an acquired result of our nervous or- ganization, liable to be interrupted by derange- ments of that nervous organization. What is it that makes us think and feel? The facts of our human nature; I cannot get behind this, and I need no further explanation. We are men, and can do what men can do. I say the tangible col- lection of organs known as a “man” (not the THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. consensus or the condition, but the man) wills, and feels, just as much as that visible op. ganism lives and grows. We do not say that this or that ganglion in particular lives and grows; we say the man grows. It is as easy to me to imagine that we shall grow fifteen feet high, when we have no body, as that we shall grow in knowl. edge, goodness, activity, etc., etc., ete., when we have no organs. And the absence of all molecu. lar attributes would be, I should think, particu. larly awkward in that life of cometary motion ip the interstellar spaces with which Lord Blachford threatens us. But, as the poet says: “ Trasumanar significar per verba Non si porria "— “ Tf,” says he, “ practical duties are necessary for the perfection of life,” we can take a little inter. stellar exercise. Why, practical duties are the sum and substance of life; and life whieh does not centre in practical duties is not life, but a trance. Lord Blachford, who is somewhat punctilious in terms, asks me what I consider myself to un- derstand “by the incorporation of a consensus of faculties with a glorious future.” Well, it so happens that I did not use that phrase. I have never spoken of an immortal soul anywhere, nor do I use the word soul of any but the living man, I said a man might look forward to incorporation with the future of his race, explaining that to mean his “ posthumous activity.” And I think at any rate the phrase is quite as reasonable as to say that I look forward, as Mr. Hutton does, to a “union with God.” What does Mr. Hntton, or Lord Blachford, understand himself to mean by that? Surely Lord Blachford’s epigram about the fid- dle and the tune is hardly fortunate. Indeed, that exactly expresses what I find faulty in the view of himself and the theologians. He thinks the tune will go on playing when the fiddle is broken up and burned. I say nothing of the kind. I do not say the man will continue to exist after death. I simply say that his influence will ; that other men will do and think what he taught them to do or to think. Just so, a general would be said to win a battle which he planned and directed, even if he had been killed in an early part of it. What is there of fiddle and tune about this? I certainly think that when Mozart and Beethoven have left us great pieces of music, it signifies lit- tle to art if the actual fiddle or even the actual composer continue to exist or not. I never said the tune would exist. I said that men would remember it and repeat it. I must thank Lord

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thinks, ble or. at this it- Blachford for a happy illustration of my own meaning. But it is he who expects the tune to exist without the fiddle. J say, you can’t have a tune without a fiddle, nor a fiddle without wood. III. I have reserved the criticism of Prof. Huxley, because it lies apart from the principal discussion, and turns mainly on some incidental remarks of mine on “ biological reasoning about spiritual things.” I note three points at the outset. Prof. Hux- ley does not himself pretend to any evidence for a theological soul and future life. Again, he does not dispute the account I give of the func- tional relation of physical and moral facts. He seems surprised that I should understand it, not being a biologist ; but he is kind enough to say that my statement may pass. Lastly, he does not deny the reality of man’s posthumous activ- ity. Now, these three are the main purposes of my argument ; and in these I have Prof. Huxley with me. He is no more of a theologian than I am. Indeed, he is only scandalized that I should see any good in priests at all. He might have said more plainly that, when the man is dead, there is an end of the matter. But this clearly is his opinion, and he intimates as much in his paper. Only he would say no more about it, bury the carcass, and end the tale, leaving all thoughts about the future to those whose faith is more robust and whose hopes are richer; by which I understand him to mean persons weak ‘enough to listen to the priests. Now, this does not satiefy me. I call it ma- terialism, for it exaggerates the importance of the physical facts, and ignores that of the spir- itual facts. And the object of my paper was simply this: that as the physical facts are daily growing quite irresistible, it is of urgent impor- tance to place the spiritual facts on a sound sci- entific basis at once. Prof. Huxley implies that his business is with the physical facts, and the spiritual facts must take care of themselves. I cannot agree with him. That is precisely the difference between us. The spiritual facts of man’s nature are the business of all who under- take to denounce priestcraft, and especially of those who preach “ Lay Sermons.” Prof. Huxley complains that I should join in the view-halloo against biological science. Now, [ never have supposed that biological science was in the position of the hunted fox. I thought it was the hunter, booted and spurred and riding over us all, with Prof. Huxley leaping the most terrific gates and cracking his whip with intense gusto As to biological science, it is the last A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” thing that I should try to run down; and I must protest, with all sincerity, that 1 wrote without a thought of Prof. Huxley at all. He insists on knowing, in the most peremptory way, of whom, I was thinking, as if I were thinking of him. Of whom else could I be thinking, forsooth, when I spoke of biology? Well! I did not bite my thumb at him, but I bit my thumb. Seriously, I was not writing at Prof. Huxley, or I should have named him. I have a very great admiration for his work in biology ; I have learned much from him; I have followed his courses of lectures years and years ago, and have carefully studied his books. If, in ques- tions which belong to sociology, morals, and to general philosophy, he seems to me hardly an authority, why need we dispute? Dog should not bite dog; and he and I have many a wolf that we both would keep from the fold. But, if I did not mean Prof. Huxley, whom did I mean? Now, my paper, I think clearly enough, alluded to two very different kinds of materialism. There is systematic materialism, and there is the vague materialism, The emi- nent example of the first is the unlucky remark of Cabanis that the brain secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile; and there is much of the same sort in many foreign theories—in the tone of Moleschott, Biichner, and the like. The most distinct examples of it in this country are found among phrenologists, spiritualists, some mental pathologists, and a few communist visionaries. The far wider, vaguer, and more dangerous school of materialism is found in a multitude of quar- ters—in all those who insist exclusively on the physical side of moral phenomena—all, in short, who, to use Prof. Huxley’s phrase, are employed in “ building up a physical theory of moral phe- nomena.” Those who confuse moral and physical phenomena are indeed few. Those who exag- gerate the physical side of phenomena are many. Now, though I did not allude to Prof. Huxley in what I wrote, his criticism convinces me that he is sometimes at least found among these last. His paper is an excellent illustration of the very error which I condemned. The issue between us is this: We both agree that every mental and moral fact is in functional relation with some molecular fact. So far we are entirely on the same side, as against all forms of theological and metaphysical doctrine which conceive the possi- bility of human feeling without a human body. But, then, says Prof. Huxley, if I can trace the molecular facts which are the antecedents of the mental and moral facts, I have explained

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these mental and moral facts. That I deny; just as much as I should deny that a chem- ical analysis of the body could ever lead to an explanation of the physical organism. Then, says the professor, when I have traced out the molecular facts, I have built up a physical theory of moral phenomena. That againI deny. I say there is no such thing, or no rational thing, that can be called a physical theory of moral phenom- ena, any more than there is a moral theory of physical phenomena. What sort of a thing would be a physical theory of history—history explained by the influence of climate or the like ? The issue between us centres in this: I say that the physical side of moral phenomena bears about the same part in the moral sciences that the facts about climate bear in the sum of human civilization. And that to look to the physical facts as an explanation of the moral, or even as an independent branch of the study of moral facts, is perfectly idle; just as it would be if a mere physical geographer pretended to give us, out of his geography, a climatic philosophy of history. Yet, Prof. Huxley has not been deterred from the astounding paradox of proposing to us a physiological theory of religion. He tells us how “the religious feelings may be brought within the range of physiological inquiry.” And he proposes as a problem—“ What diseased viscus ' may have been responsible for the ‘priest in ab- solution?’” Iwill drop all epithets ; but I must say that I call that materialism, and materialism not very nice of its kind. One might as reason- ably propose as a problem—What barometrical readings are responsible for the British Constitu- tion ? and suggest a congress of meteorologists to do the work of Hallam, Stubbs, and Freeman. No doubt there is some connection between the House of Commons and the English climate, and so there is no doubt some connection between religious theories and physical organs. But to talk of “bringing religion within the range of physiological inquiry” is sim=ly to stare through the wrong end of the telescope, and to turn phi- losophy and science upside down. Ah! Prof. Huxley, this is a bad day’s work for scientific progress— % Kev ynOhow MMolauos, Mpiduod re waides. Pope Pius and his people will be glad when they read that fatal sentence of yours. When I com- plained of the “ attempt to dispose of the deep- est moral truths of human nature on a bare physi- eal or physiological basis,” I could not have ex- pected to read such an illustration of my mean- ing by Prof. Huxley. 40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Perhaps he will permit me to inform hin (since that is the style which he affects) that there once was—and, indeed, we may say still ig —an institution called the Catholic Church; that it has had a long and strange history, and subtile influences of all kinds; and I venture to think that Prof. Huxley may learn more about the priest in absolution by a few weeks’ study of the Catholic system than by inspecting the diseased viscera of the whole human race. When Prof. Huxley’s historical and religious studies “ have advanced so far as to enable him to explain” the history of Catholicism, I think he will admit that “ priestcraft” cannot well be made a chap. ter in a physiological manual. It may be cheap pulpit thunder, but this idea of his of inspecting a “diseased viscus” is precisely what I meant by “ biological reasoning about spiritual things.” And I stand by it, that it is just as false in science as it is deleterious in morals. It is an attempt (I will not say arrogant, I am inclined to use an- other epithet) to explain, by physical observa- tions, what can only be explained by the most subtile moral, sociological, and historical observa- tions. It is to think you can find the golden eggs by cutting up the goose, instead of watching the goose to see where she lays the eggs. I am quite aware that Prof. Huxley has else. where formulated his belief that biology is the science which “includes man and all his ways and works.” If history, law, politics, morals, and political economy, are merely branches of biology, we shall want new dictionaries indeed ; and biology will embrace about fovr-fifths of hu- man knowledge. But this is not a question of language; for we here have Prof. Huxley actual- ly bringing religion within the range of physio- logical inquiry, and settling its problems by ref- erences to “diseased viscus.” But the differences between us are a long story; and since Prof. Huxley has sought me out, and in somewhat monitorial tone has proposed to set me right, I will take an early occasion to try and set forth what I find paradoxical in his notions of the rela- tions of biology and philosophy. I note a few special points between us, and I have done. Prof. Huxley is so well satisfied with his idea of a “physical theory of moral phenomena,” that he constantly attributes that sense to my words, though I carefully guarded my language from such a construction. Thus he quotes from me a passage beginning, “ Man is one, however compound,” but he breaks off the quotation just as I go on to speak of the direct analysis of mental and moral faculties by mental BSBEBEE EEE 2; ese QBaewmenmeseopeseeseteaeseo#gzsse

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A MODERN “SYMPOSIUM.” and moral science, not by physiological science. I say: “ philosophy and science” have accom- plished explanations ; I do not say biology ; and the biological part of the explanation is a small and subordinate part of the whole. I do not say that the correspondence between physical and moral phenomena is an explanation of the buman organism. Prof. Huxley says that, and I call it materialism. Nor doI say that “spiritual sen- sibility is a bodily function.” I say, it is a moral function ; and I complain that Prof. Huxley ig- nores the distinction between moral and physical functions of the human organism. As to the distinction between anatomy and physiology, if he will look at my words again, he will see that I use these terms with perfect accu- racy. Six lines below the passage he quotes, I speak of the human mechanism being only ex- plained by a “complete anatomy and biology,” showing that anatomy is merely one of the in- struments of biology. He might be surprised to hear that he does not himself give an accurate definition of physi- ology. But so itis. He says, “ Physiology is the science which treats of the functions of the living organism.” Not so, for the finest spiritual sensibility is, as Prof. Huxley admits, a function of a living organism ; and physiology is not the science which treats of the spiritual sensibilities. They belong to moral science. There are mental, moral, affective functions of the living organism ; and they are not within the province of physiol- ogy. Physiology is the science which treats of the bodily functions of the living organism; as Prof. Huxley says in his admirable “ Elementary Lessons,” it deals with the facts “ concerning the action of the body.” I complain of the pseudo- science which drops that distinction for a min- ute. He says, “ The explanation of a physio- logical function is the demonstration of the con- nection of that function with the molecular state of the organ which exerts the function.” That I dispute. It is only a small part of the explana- tion. The explanation substantially is the dem- onstration of the laws and all the conditions of the function. The explanation of the circulation of the blood is the demonstration of all its laws, modes, and conditions; and the molecular ante- cedents of it are but a small part of the explana- tion. The principal part relates to the molar (and not the molecular) action of the heart and other organs. “The function of motion is ex- plained,” he says, “when the movements of the living body are found to have certain molecular changes for their invariable antecedents.” Noth- ing of the kind. The function of bodily motion is explained when the laws, modes, and condi- tions, of that motion are demonstrated ; and mo- lecular antecedents are but a part of these condi- tions. The main part of the explanation, again, deals with molar, not molecular, states of certain organs. “ The function of sensation is explained,” says Prof. Huxley, ‘‘ when the molecular changes, which are the invariable antecedents of sensa- tions, are discovered.” Not a bit of it. The function of sensation is only explained when the laws and conditions of sensation are demonstrated. And the main part of this demonstration will come from direct observation of the sensitive or- ganism organically, and by no molecular discov- ery whatever. All this is precisely the material. ism which I condemn ; the fancying that one sci- ence can do the work of another, and that any molecular discovery can dispense with direct study of organisms in their organic, social, mental, and moral aspects. Will Prof. Huxley say that the function of this Symposium is explained, when we have chemically analyzed the solids and liquids which are now effecting molecular change in our respective digestive apparatus? If so, let us ask the butler if he cannot produce us a less heady and more mellow vintage. What irritated viscus is responsible for the materialist in philos- ophy? We shall all philosophize aright, if our friend Tyndall can hit for us the exact chemical formula for our drinks. ‘ It does not surprise me, so much as it might, to find Prof. Huxley slipping into really inaccu- rate definitions in physiology, when I remember that hallucination of his about questions of sci- ence all becoming questions of molecular physics. The molecular facts are valuable enough ; but we are getting molecular-mad, if we forget that molec- ular facts have only a special partin physiology, and hardly any part at all in sociology, history, morals, and politics; though I quite agree that there is no single fact in social, moral, or mental philosophy, that has not its correspondence in some molecular fact, if we only could know it. All human things undoubtedly depend on, and are certainly connected with, the general laws of the solar system. . And to say that questions of human organisms, much less of human society, tend to become questions of molecular physics, is exactly the kind of confusion it wauld be, if I said that questions of history tend to become questions of astronomy, and that the more refined calculations of planetary movements in the future will explain to us the causes of the English Rebel- lion and the French Revolution.

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42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. There is an odd instance of this confusion of thought at the close of Prof. Huxley’s paper, which still more oddly Lord Blachford, who is so strict in his logic, cites with approval. ‘ Has a stone a future life,” says Prof. Huxley, ‘‘ because the wavelets it may cause in the sea persist through space and time?” Well! has a stone a life at all? because, if it has no present life, I cannot see why it should have a future life. How is any reasoning about the inorganic world to help us here in reasoning about the organic world? Prof. Huxley and Lord Blachford might as well ask if a stone is capable of civilization because I said that man was. I think that man is wholly different from a stone; and from a fiddle; and even from a dog; and that to say that a man cannot exert any influence on other men after his death, because a dog cannot, or because a fiddle, or because a stone cannot, may be to reproduce with rather needless affectation the verbal quib- bles and pitfalls which Socrates and the sophists prepared for each other in some wordy sympo- sium of old. Lastly, Prof. Huxley seems to think that he has disposed of me altogether, so soon as he can point to a sympathy between theologians and myself. I trust there are great affinity and great sympathy between us ; and pray let him not think that I am in the least ashanied of that common ground. Positivism has quite as much sympathy with the genuine theologian as it has with the scientific specialist. The former may be working on a wrong intellectual basis, and often it may be by most perverted methods; but, in the best types, he has a high social aim and a great moral cause to maintain among men. The latter is usually right in his intellectual basis as far as it goes; but it does not go very far, and in the great moral cause of the spiritual destinies of men he is often content with utter indifference and simple nihilism. Mere raving at priestcraft, and beadles, and outward investments, is indeed a poor solution of the mighty problems of the hu- man soul and of social organization. And the instinct of the mass of mankind will long reject a biology which has nothing for these but a sneer. It will not do for Prof. Huxley to say that he is only a poor biologist and careth for none of these things. His biology, however, “includes man and all his ways and works,” Besides, he is a leader in Israel ; he has preached an entire vol- phy? He says that he knows no scientific men who “ neglect all philosophical and religious syp. thesis.” In that he is fortunate in his circle of acquaintance. But since he is so earnest in ask. ing me questions, let me ask him to tell the world what is his own synthesis of philosophy, what is his own idea of religion? He can laugh at the worship of priests and positivists: whom, or what, does he worship? If he dislikes the word soul, does he think man has anything that can be called a spiritual nature? If he derides my idea of a future life, does he think that there is any. thing which can be said of a man, when his car. cass is laid beneath the sod, beyond a simple final vale? P. S.—And now space fails me to reply to the appeals of so many critics. I cannot enter with Mr. Roden Noel on that great question of the ma- terialization of the spirits of the dead; I know not whether we shall be “ made one with the great Elohim, or angels of Nature, or if we shall grovel in dead material bodily life.” I know nothing of this high matter: I do not comprehend this lan. guage. Nor can I add anything to what I have | said on that sense of personality which Lord Sel- borne and Canon Barry so eloquently press on me. To me that sense of personality is a thing | of somewhat slow growth, resulting from our en- tire nervous organization and our composite men- tal constitution. It seems to me that we can often trace it building up and trace it again decay- ing away. We feel ourselves to be men, because we have human bodies and human minds. Is that not enough? Has the baby of an hour this sense of personality? Are you sure that a dog or an elephant has not got it? Then has the baby no soul; has the dog a soul? Do you know more of your neighbor, apart from inference, than you know of the dog? Again, I cannot enter upon Mr. Greg’s beautiful reflections, save to point out how largely he supports me. He shows, I think with masterly logic, how difficult it is to fit this new notion of a glorified activity on to the old orthodoxy of beatific ecstasy. Canon Barry re- minds us how this orthodoxy involved the resur- rection of the body, and the same difficulty has driven Mr. Roden Noel to suggest that the mate- rial world itself may be the débris of the just made perfect. But Dr. Ward, as might be ex- pected, falls back on the beatific ecstasy as con- ume of “ Lay Sermons ;” and he has waged many | ceived by the mystics of the thirteenth century. a war with theologians and philosophers on reli- | No word here about moral activity and the social gious and philosophic problems. What, if I may | ask him, are his own religion and his own philoso- converse, as in the Elysian fields, imagined by philosophers of less orthodox severity. ; SwWwFTB Beet ese ew aA ee aens tft oeonoranrmeesesa

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this OW iter . One word more. If my language has given any believer pain, I regret it sincerely. It may have been somewhat obscure, since it has been so widely arraigned, and I think misconceived. My position is this: The idea of a glorified energy jn an ampler life is an idea utterly incompati- ble with exact thought, one which evaporates in contradictions, in phrases which when pressed have no meaning. The idea of beatific evstasy is the old and orthodox idea ; it does not involve so many contradictions as the former idea, but then it does not satisfy our moral judgment. I say plainly that the hope of such an infinite ecstasy isan inane and unworthy crown of a human life. THE COLORS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. And when Dr. Ward assures me that it is merely the prolongation of the saintly life, then I say the saintly life is an inane and unworthy life. The words I used about the “ selfish ” view of futurity, I applied only to those who say they care for nothing but personal enjoyment, and to those whose only aim is “to save their own souls,” Mr. Baldwin Brown has nobly condemned this creed in words far stronger than mine. And here let us close with the reflection that the lan- guage of controversy must always be held to apply not to the character of our opponents, but to the logical consequences of their doctrines, if uncor- rected and if forced to their extreme. —Nineteenth Century. THE COLORS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS.’ Br ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. hes coloring of plants is neither so varied nor so complex as that of animals, and its explanation, accordingly, offers fewer difficulties. The colors of foliage are, comparatively, little varied, and can be traced in almost all cases to a special pigment termed chlorophyl, to which is due the general green color of leaves; but the recent investigations of Mr. Sorby and others have shown that chlorophy] is not a simple green pigment, but that it really consists of at least seven distinct substances, varying in color from blue to yellow and orange. These differ in their proportions in the chlorophyl of different plants ; they have different chemical reactions ; they are differently affected by light; and they give dis- tinct spectra. Mr. Sorby further states that scores of different coloring-matters are found in the leaves and flowers of plants, to some of which appropriate names have been given, as erythro- phyl, which is red, and phaiophyl, which is 1 In the first part of this paper I used the term “ vol- untary sexual selection” to indicate the theory that many of the ornaments of male animals have been produced by the choice of the females, and to distinguish it from that form of sexual selection which explains the acquisition of weapons peculiar to male animals as due to the selective influence of their combats and struggles for the possession of the females. I find that Mr. Darwin thinks the term “voluntary” not strictly applicable, and I therefore pro- pose to alter it to “conscious” or “ perceptive,” which seem free from any ambiguity, and make not the least difference to my argument. IL—THE COLORS OF PLANTS. brown; and many of these differ greatly from each other in their chemical composition. These inquiriesare at present in their infancy, but, as the original term chlorophyl seems scarcely ap- plicable under the present aspect of the subject, it would perhaps be better to introduce the anal- ogous word chromophy] as a general term for the coloring-matters of the vegetable kingdom. Light has a much more decided action on plants than on animals. The green color of leaves is almost wholly dependent on it; and although some flowers will become fully colored in the dark, others are decidedly affected by the absence of light, even when the foliage is fully exposed to it. Looking, therefore, at the numerous colored substances which are developed in the tissues of plants—the sensitiveness of these pigments to light, the changes they undergo during growth and development, and the facility with which new chemical combinations are effected by the physio- logical processes of plants, as shown by the end- less variety in the chemical constitution of vege- table products—we have no difficulty in compre- hending the general causes which aid in produc- ing the colors of the vegetable world, or the extreme variability of those colors. We may, therefore, here confine ourselves to an inquiry into the various uses of color in the economy of plants; and this will generally enable us to un- derstand how it has become fixed and specialized

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. in the several genera and species of the vegetable kingdom. In animals, as we have seen, color is greatly influenced by the need of protection from, or of warning to, their numerous enemies, and to the necessity for identification and easy recognition. Plants rarely need to be concealed, and obtain protection either by their spines, their hardness, their hairy covering, or their poisonous secretions. A very few cases of what seem to be true protec- tive coloring do, however, exist, the most remark- able being that of the “stone mesembryanthe- mum,” of the Cape of Good Hope, which in form and color closely resembles the stones among which it grows; and Dr. Burchell, who first dis- covered it, believes that the juicy little plant thus generally escapes the notice of cattle and wild herbivorous animals. Mr. J. P. Mansel Weale also noticed that many plants growing in the stony Karoo have their tuberous roots above the soil, and these so perfectly resemble the stones among which they grow that, when not in leaf, it is almost impossible to distinguish them (Nature, vol. iii., p. 507). A few cases of what seem to be protective mimicry have also been noted, the most curious being that of three very rare British fungi, found by Mr. Worthington Smith, each in com- pany with common species, which they so closely resembled that only a minute examination could detect the difference. One of the common species is stated in botanical works to be “bitter and nauseous,” so that it is not improbable that the rare kind may escape being eaten by being mis- taken for an uneatable species, though itself pal- atable. Mr. Mansel Weale also mentions a labi- ate plant, the Ajuga ophrydis, of South Africa, as strikingly resembling an orchid. This may be a means of attracting insects to fertilize the flower in the absence of sufficient nectar or other attrac- tion in the flower itself; and the supposition is rendered more probable by this being the only species of the genus Ajuga in South Africa. Many other cases of resemblances between very distinct plants have been noticed—as that of some Euphorbias to Cacti; but these very rarely inhabit the same country or locality, and it has not proved that there is in any of these cases the amount of inter-relation between the species which is the essential feature of the protective “ mimicry” that occurs in the animal world. The different colors exhibited by the foliage of plants, and the changes it undergoes during growth and decay, appear to be due to the gen- eral laws already sketched out, and to have little, if any, relation to the special requirements of each species. But flowers and fruits exhibit definite and well-pronounced tints, often varying from species to species, and more or less clearly related to the habits and functions of the plant. With the few exceptions already pointed out, these may be generally classed as atiractive colors. The seeds of plants require to be dispersed, so as to reach places favorable for germination and growth, Some are very minute, and are carried abroad by the wind, or they are violently expelled and scat. tered by the bursting of the containing capsules, Others are downy or winged, and are carried long distances by the gentlest breeze. But there is a large class of seeds which cannot be dispersed in either of these ways, and are mostly contained in eatable fruits. These fruits are devoured by birds or beasts, and the hard seeds pass through their stomachs undigested, and, owing probably to the gentle heat and moisture to which they have been subjected, in a condition highly favor. able for germination. containing the first two classes of seeds are rare- ly, if ever, conspicuously colored, whereas the eatable fruits almost invariably acquire a bright color as they ripen, while at the same time they become soft and often full of agreeable juices, Our red haws and nips, our black elderberries, our blue sloes and whortleberries, our white mis- tletoe and snowberry, and our orange sea-buck- thorn, are examples of the color-sign of edibility ; and in every part of the world the same phenome- non is found. The fruits of large forest-trees, such as the pines, oaks, and beeches, are not colored, perhaps because their size and abundance render them sufficiently conspicuous, and also be- cause they provide such a quantity of food to such a number of different animals that there is no danger of their being unnoticed. The colors of flowers serve to render them visible and recognizable by insects which are at- tracted by secretions of nectar or pollen. During their visits for the purpose of obtaining these ~ products, insects involuntarily carry the pollen of one flower to the stigma of another, and thus effect cross-fertilization, which, as Mr. Darwin was the first to demonstrate, immensely increases the vigor and fertility of the next generation of plants. This discovery has led to the careful examination of great numbers of flowers, and the result has been that the most wonderful and com- plex arrangements have been found to exist, all having for their object to secure that flowers shall not be self-fertilized perpetually, but that pollen shall be carried, either constantly or occa- sionally, from the flowers of one plant to those of ~ The dry fruits or capsules — ‘ SeePrerEesaere SBPEBS BER TB FB PSrsEs tresses 3 — NSaPpeB3 Fee Ses Tes

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gnother. Mr. Darwin himself first worked out the details in orchids, primulas, and some other groups; and hardly less curious phenomena have since been found to occur, even among some of the most regularly-formed flowers. The arrange- ment, length, and position, of all the parts of the flower are now found to have a purpose, and not the least remarkable portion of the phenomenon js the great variety of ways in which the same result is obtained. After the discoveries with re- gard to orchids, it was to be expected that the irregular, tubular, and spurred flowers, should present various curious adaptations for fertiliza- tion by insect-agency. But even among the open, cup-shaped, and quite regular flowers, in which it seemed inevitable that the pollen must fall on the stigma, and produce constant self-fertilization, it has been found that this is often prevented by a physiological variation—the anthers constantly emitting their pollen either a little earlier or a fittle later than the stigmas of the same flower, or of other flowers on the same plant, were in the best state to receive it; and as individual plants in different stations, soils, and aspects, differ somewhat in the time of flowering, the pollen of one plant would often be conveyed by insects to the stigmas of some other plant in a condition to be fertilized by it. This mode of securing cross- fertilization seems so simple and easy, that we ean hardly help wondering why it did not always come into action, and so obviate the necessity for those elaborate, varied, and highly-complex con- trivances found in perhaps the majority of col- ored flowers. The answer to this of course is, that variation sometimes occurred most freely in one part of a plant’s organization, and sometimes in another, and that the benefit of cross-fertiliza- tion was so great that any variation that favored it was preserved, and then formed the starting- point of a whole series of further variations, re- sulting in those marvelous adaptations for insect fertilization, which have given much of their va- riety, elegance, and beauty, to the floral world. For details of these adaptations we must refer the reader to the works of Darwin, Lubbock, Herman Miiller, and others. We have here only to deal with the part played by color, and by those floral structures in which color is most dis- played. The sweet odors of flowers, like their colors, seem often to have been developed as an attrac- tion or guide to insect fertilizers, and the two phenomena are often complementary to each other. Thus, many inconspicuous flowers—like the mignonette and the sweet-violet-—can be dis- fertilization. a’ THE COLORS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 45 tinguished by their odors before they attract the eye, and this may often prevent their be- ing passed unnoticed; while very showy flowers, and especially those with variegated or spotted petals, are seldom sweet, White, or very pale flowers, on the other hand, are often exces- sively sweet, as exemplified by the jasmine and clematis; and many of these are only scented at night, as is strikingly the case with the night smelling stock, our butterfly orchis (Ha- benaria chlorantha), the greenish-yellow Daphne pontica, and many others, These white flowers are mostly fertilized by night-flying moths, and those which reserve their odors for the evening probably escape the visits of diurnal insects which would consume their nectar without effecting The absence of odor in showy flowers and its preponderance among those that are white may be shown to be a fact by an ex- amination of the lists in Mr. Mongredien’s work on hardy trees and shrubs.' He gives a list of about one hundred and sixty species with showy flowers, and another list of sixty species with fragrant flowers; but only twenty of these latter are included among the showy species, and these are almost all white-flowered. Of the sixty spe- cies with fragrant flowers, more than forty are white, and a number of others have greenish, yellowish, or dusky and inconspicuous flowers. The relation of white flowers to nocturnal insects is also well shown by those which, like the even- ing primroses, only open their large white blos- soms after sunset. The red Martagon lily has been obgeerved by Mr. Herman Miiller to be fer- tilized by the humming-bird hawk-moth, which flies in the morning and afternoon when the colors of this flower, exposed to the nearly hori- zontal rays of the sun, glow with brilliancy, and when it also becomes very sweet-scented. To the same need of conspicuousness the com- bination of so many individually small flowers into heads and bunches is probably due, pro- ducing such broad masses as those of the elder, the guelder-rose, and most of the Umbellifers, or such elegant bunches at those of the lilac, labur- num, horse-chestnut, and wistaria. In other cases minute flowers are gathered into dense heads, as with Globularia, Jasione, clover, and all the Com- posite; and among the latter the outer flowers are often developed into a ray, as in the sunflow- ers, the daisies, and the asters, forming a starlike compound flower, which is itself often produced in immense profusion. 1“Trees and Shrubs for English Plantations,” by Augustus Mongredien. Murray, 1870.

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>. 46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. The beauty of Alpine flowérs is almost prover- bial. It consists either in the increased size of the individual flowers as compared with the whole plant, in increased intensity of color, or in the massing of small flowers into dense cushions of bright color; and it is only in the higher Alps, above the limit of forests and upward toward the perpetual snow-line that these characteristics are fully exhibited. This effort at conspicuousness under adverse circumstances may be traced to the comparative scarcity of winged insects in the higher regions, and to the necessity for attracting them from a distance. Amid the vast slopes of débris and the huge masses of rock so prevalent in higher mountain-regions, patches of intense color can alone make themselves visible and serve to attract the wandering butterfly from the val-. leys. Mr. Herman Miiller’s careful observations have shown that in the higher Alps bees and most other groups of winged insects are almost wanting, while butterflies are tolerably abundant ; and he has discovered that in a number of cases where a lowland flower is adapted to be fertilized by bees, its Alpine ally has had its structure so modified as to be adapted for fertilization only by butterflies.'_ But bees are always (in the tem- perate zone) far more abundant than butterflies, and this will be another reason why flowers spe- cially adapted to be fertilized by the latter should be rendered unusually conspicuous. We find, accordingly, the yellow primrose of the plains re- placed by pink and magenta-colored Alpine spe- cies; the straggling wild-pinks of the lowlands by the masses of large flowers in such mountain species as Dianthus alpinus and D. glacialis ; the saxifrages of the high Alps with bunches of flow- ers a foot long, as in Sazifraga longifolia and 8. cotyledon, or forming spreading masses of flow- ers, as in S. oppositifolia ; while the soapworts, silenes, and louseworts, are equally superior to the allied species of the plains. Again, Dr. Miiller has discovered that when there are showy and inconspicuous species in the same genus of plants, there is often a correspond- ing difference of structure, those with large and showy flowers being quite incapable of self-fer- tilization, and thus depending for their very exist- ence on the visits of insects ; while the others are able to fertilize themselves should insects fail to visit them. We have examples of this difference in Malwva sylvestris, Epilobium angustifolium, Poly- gonum bistorta, and Geranium pratense—which have all large or showy flowers and must be fer- tilized by insects—as compared with Malva ro- 1 Nature, vol. xi., pp. 82, 110. tundifolia, Epilobium parviflorum, Polygonum avi. culare, and Geranium pusillum, which have smal} or inconspicuous flowers, and are so constructed that if insects should not visit them they are able to fertilize themselves.' As supplementing these curious facts showing ° the relation of color in flowers to the need of the visits of insects to fertilize them, we have the remarkable, and on any other theory utterly in- explicable circumstance, that in all the numerous cases in which plants are fertilized by the agency of the wind they never have specially colored floral envelopes. Such are our pines, oaks, pop- lars, willows, beeches, and hazel; our nettles, grasses, sedges, and many others. In some of these the male flowers are, it is true, conspicuous, as in the catkins of the willows and the hazel, but this arises incidentally from the masses of pollen necessary to secure fertilization, as shown by the entire absence of a corolla or of those colored bracts which so often add to the beauty and conspicuousness of true flowers. The adaptation of flowers to be fertilized by insects—often to such an extent that the very existence of the species depends upon it—has had wide-spread influence on the distribution of plants and the general aspects of vegetation. The seeds of a particular species may be carried to another country, may find there a suitable soil and climate, may grow and produce flowers, but if the insect Which alone can fertilize it should not inhabit that country, the plant cannot maintain itself, however frequently it may be introduced or how- ever vigorously it may grow. Thus may probably be explained the poverty in flowering plants and the great preponderance of ferns that distin- guishes many océanic islands, as well as the de- ficiency of gayly-colored flowers in others. This branch of the subject is discussed at some length in my address to the Biological Section of the British Association,? but I may here just allude to two of the most striking cases. New Zealand is, in proportion to its total number of flowering plants, exceedingly poor in handsome flowers, and it is correspondingly poor in insects, espe- cially in bees and butterflies, the two groups which so greatly aid in fertilization. In both these aspects it contrasts strongly with Southern Australia and Tasmania in the same latitudes, where there are a profusion of gayly-colored flow- ers and an exceedingly rich insect-fauna. The other case is presented by the Galapagos Islands, which, though situated on the equator off the 1 Nature, vol. ix., p. 164. 3 See Nature, September 6, 1876. 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2. PF aSPERGEF $8325 Bag FEE FRE west coast of South America, and with a tolera- bly luxuriant vegetation in the damp mountain- gone, yet produce hardly a single conspicuously- colored flower; and this is correlated with, and po doubt dependent on, an extreme poverty of insect-life, not one bee and only a single butter- fly having been found there, Again, there is reason to believe that some portion of the large size and corresponding show- jness of tropical flowers is due to their being fer- tilized by very large insects and even by birds. Tropical sphinx-moths often have their probosces nine or ten inches long, and we find flowers whose tubes or spurs reach about the same length; while the giant bees, and the numerous flower-sucking birds, aid in the fertilization of flowers whose corollas or stamens are proportionately large. I have now concluded this sketch of the gen- eral phenomena of color in the organic world. I have shown reasons for believing that its pres- ence, in some of its infinitely-varied hues, is more probable than its absence, and that variation of color is an almost necessary concomitant of vari- ation of structure, of development, and of growth. It has also been shown how color has been ap- propriated and modified both in the animal and vegetable world, for the advantage of the species ina great variety of ways, and that there is no need to call in the aid of any other laws than those of organic development and “ natural selec- tion ” to explain its countless modifications. From the point of view here taken, it seems at once improbable and unnecessary that the lower ani- mals should have the same delicate appreciation of the infinite variety and beauty—of the deli- cate contrasts and subtile harmonies of color— which are possessed by the more intellectual races of mankind, since even the lower human races do not possess it. All that seems required in the case of animals is a perception of distinct- ness or contrast of colors; and the dislike of so many creatures to scarlet may, perhaps, be due to the rarity of that color in Nature, and to the glaring contrast it offers to the sober greens and browns which form the general clothing of the earth's surface. The general view of the subject now given must convince us that, so far from color being— as it has sometimes been thought to be—unim- portant, it is intimately connected with the very existence of a large proportion of the species of the animal and vegetable worlds. The gay col- ors of the butterfly and of the Alpine flower which it unconsciously fertilizes while seeking THE COLORS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. for its secreted honey, are each beneficial to its possessor, and have been shown to be dependent on the same class of general laws as those which have determined the form, the structure, and the habits of every living thing. The complex laws and unexpected relations which we have seen to be involved in the production of the special col- ors of flower, bird, and insect, must give them an additional interest for every thoughtful mind ; while the knowledge that, in all probability, each style of coloration, and sometimes the smallest details have a meaning and a use, must add a new charm to the study of Nature. Throughout the preceding discussion we have accepted the subjective phenomena of color— that is, our perception of varied hues, and the mental emotions excited by them—as ultimate facts needing no explanation. Yet they present certain features well worthy of attention, a brief consideration of which will form a fitting sequel _ to the present essay. The perception of color seems, to the present writer, the most wonderful and the most myste- rious of our sensations, Its extreme diversities and exquisite beauties seem out of proportion to the causes that are supposed to have produced them, or the physical needs to which they minis- ter. If we look at pure tints of red, green, blue, and yellow, they appear so absolutely contrasted and unlike each other that it is almost impossible to believe (what we nevertheless know to be the fact) that the rays of light producing these very distinct sensations differ only in wave-length and rate of vibration; and that there are from one to the other a continuous series and gradation of such vibrating waves. The positive diversity we see in them must, then, depend upon special adaptations in ourselves ; and the question arises, For what purpose have our visual organs and mental perceptions become so highly specialized in this respect? When the sense of sight was first developed in the animal kingdom we can hardly doubt that what was perceived was light only, and its more or less complete withdrawal. As the sense became perfected, more delicate gradations of light and shade would be perceived ; and there seems no reason why a visual capacity might not have been developed as perfect as our own, or even more so, in respect of light and shade, but entirely insensible to differences of color, except in so far as these implied a differ- ence in the quantity of light. The world would in that case appear somewhat as we see it in good stereoscopic photographs ; and we all know how

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THE POPULAR 48 exquisitely beautiful such pictures are, and how | perception ; and it is quite possible that at first SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ~~ @ * “est t> *, S Pye ea >, completely they give us all requisite information | these were the only kinds of light-vibrations ~ as to form, surface-texture, solidity, and distance, | which could be perceived at all. When the need and even to some extent as to color—for almost | for differentiation of color arose, rays of greater all colors are distinguishable in a photograph by some differences of tint, and it is quite conceiv- able that visual organs might exist which would differentiate what we term color by delicate gra- dations of some one characteristic neutral tint. Now, such a capacity of vision would be simple as compared with that which we actually possess —which, besides distinguishing infinite grada- tions of the quantity of light, distinguishes also, by a totally distinct set of sensations, gradations of quality, as determined by differences of wave- lengths or rate of vibration. At what grade in animal development this new and more complex sense first began to appear we have no means of determining. The fact that the higher verte- brates, and even some insects, distinguish what are to us diversities of color, by no means proves ‘that their sensations of color bear any resem- blance to ours. An insect’s capacity to distin- guish red from blue or yellow may be (and prob- ably is) due to perceptions of a totally distinct nature, and quite unaccompanied by any of that sense of enjoyment or even of radical distinctness which pure colors excite in us. Mammalia and birds, whose structure and emotions are so simi- lar to our own, do probably receive somewhat similar impressions of color ; but we have no evi- dence to show that they experience pleasurable emotions from color itself when not associated with the satisfaction of their wants or the gratifi- cation of their passions. The primary necessity which led to the devel- | opment of the sense of color was probably the need of distinguishing objects much alike in form and size, but differing in important properties— such as ripe and unripe, or eatable and poisonous fruits ; flowers with honey or without ; the sexes of the same or of closely-allied species. In most cases the strongest contrast would be the most useful, especially as the colors of the objects to be distinguished would form but minute spots or points when compared with the broad masses of tint of sky, earth, or foliage, against which they would be set. Throughout the long epochs in which the sense of sight was being gradually de- veloped in the higher animals, their visual organs would be mainly subjected to two groups of rays —the green from vegetation and the blue from the sky. The immense preponderance of these over all other groups of rays would naturally | “violet-colored.” lead the eye to become specially adapted for their | eral advance inmental activity. and of smaller wave-lengths would necessarily be made use of to excite the new sensations re. quired ; and we can thus understand why green and blue form the central portion of the visible spectrum, and are the colors which are most agreeable to us in large surfaces; while, at its two extremities, we find yellow, red, and violet colors, which we best appreciate in smaller umasses, and when contrasted with the other two or with light neutral tints. We have here probably the foundations of a natural theory of harmonious coloring, derived from the order in which our color-sensations have arisen, and the nature of the emotions with which the several tints have been always associated. The agreeable and soothing influence of green light may be in part due to the green rays hav- 1 There is reason to believe that our capacity of dis- tinguishing colors has increased even in historical times, The subject has attracted the attention of German philol- ogists, and I have been furnished by a friend with some notes from a work of the late Lazarus Geiger, entitled “Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit” (Stutt- gart, 1871). According to this writer it appears that tho color of grass and foliage is never alluded to as a beauty in the Vedas or the Zenda-vesta, though these produc- tions are continually extolled for other properties. Blue is described by terms denoting sometimes green, some- times black, showing that it was hardly recognized as a distinct color. The color of the sky is never mentioned in the Bible, the Vedas, the Homeric poems, or even in the Koran. The first distinct allusion to it known to Geiger is in an Arabic work of the ninth century. “ Hya- cinthine locks” are black locks, and Homer calls iron Yellow was often confounded with green, but, along with red, it was one of the earliest colors to receive a distinct name. Aristotle names three colors in the rainbow—red, yellow, and green. Two centuries earlier Xenophanes had described the rainbow as purple, reddish, and yellow. The Pythagoreans admitted four primary colors—white, black, red, and yellow; the Chi- nese the same, with the addition of green. If these state- ments fairly represent the early condition of color-sensa- tion, they well accord with the view here maintained, that green and blue were first alone perceived, and that the other colors were successively separated from them. These latter would be the first to receive names ; hence we find purple, reddish, and yellow, first noticed in tho rainbow as the tints to be separated from the wide-spread blue and green of the visible world which required no dis- tinctive color-appellation. If the capacity of distinguish- ing colors has increased in historic times, we may, per- haps, look upon color-blindness as a survival of a condi- tion once almost universal; while the fact that it is still so prevalent is in harmony with the view that our present | high perception and appreciation of color is a comparative- ly recent acquisition, and may be correlated with a gen- SQeeaBSEAERPSOERBE EE PAB SER HS

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SPrERER sesh EET Bea PUP geet fn hae FTO FFF FMS ew ing little heating power; but this can hardly be the chief cause, for the blue and violet, though they contain less heat, are not generally felt to be so cool and sedative. But when we consider how dependent are all the higher animals on vegetation, and that man himself has been de- veloped in the closest relation to it, we shall find, probably, a sufficient explanation. The green mantle with which the carth is overspread caused this one color to predominate over all others that meet our sight, and to be almost always asso- ciated with the satisfaction of human wants. Where the grass is greenest, and vegetation most abundant and varied, there has man always found his most suitable dwelling-place. In such spots hunger and thirst are unknown, and the choicest productions of Nature gratify the appetite and please the eye. In the greatest heats of summer, coolness, shade, and moisture, are found in the green forest-glades ; and we can thus understand how our visual apparatus has become especially adapted to receive pleasurable and soothing sen- sations from this class of rays. THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 49 The preceding considerations enable us to comprehend, both why a perception of difference of color has become developed in the higher animals, and also why colors require to be pre- sented or combined in varying proportions in order to be agreeable to us. But they hardly seem to afford a sufficient explanation, either of the wonderful contrasts and total unlikeness of the sensations produced in us by the chief pri- mary colors, or of the exquisite charm and pleas- ure we derive from color itself, as distinguished from variously-colored objects, in the case of which association of ideas comes into play. It — is hardly conceivable that the material uses of color to animals and to ourselves required such very distinct and powerfully-contrasted sensa- tions; and it is still less conceivable that a sense of delight in color per se should have been neces- sary for our utilization of it. The emotions excited by color and by music alike seem to rise above the level of a world de- veloped on purely utilitarian principles.—Mac- millan’s Magazine. LTHOUGH the strange figures which as- tronomers stil] allow to straggle over their star-maps no longer have any real scientific in- terest, they still possess a certain charm not only for the student of astronomy, but for many who care little or nothing about astronomy as a science. When I was giving a course of twelve lectures in Boston, America, a person of considerable cult- ure said tome: “I wish you would lecture about the constellations; I care little about the sun and moon and the planets, and not much more about comets; but I have always felt great in- terest in the Bears and Lions, the Chained and Chaired Ladies, King Cepheus and the Rescuer, Perseus, Orion, Ophiucus, Hercules, and the rest of the mythical and fanciful beings with which the old astronomers peopled the heavens. I say with Carlyle, ‘Why does not some one teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don’t half know to this day.”” We may notice, too, that the poets by almost unanimous consent have recognized the poetical aspect of the constellations, while they have found little to 40 THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. By RICHARD A. PROCTOR. say about subjects which belong especially to as- tronomy asa science. Milton has indeed made an archangel reason (not unskillfully for Milton’s day) about the Ptolemaic and Copernican sys- tems, while Tennyson makes frequent reference to astronomical theories. “ There sinks the neb- ulous star we call the Sun, if that hypothesis of theirs be sound,” said Ida; but she said no more, save “let us down and rest,” as though the sub- ject was wearisome to her. Again, in “The Palace of Art,” the soul of the poet having built herself that “ great house so royal rich and wide,” thither— “... When all the deep unsounded skies Shuddered with silent stars, she clomb, And as with optic glasses her keen eyes Pierced through the mystic dome, Regions of lucid matter taking forms, Brushes of fire, hazy gleams, Clusters and beds of worlds and beelike swarms, Of suns, and starry streams: She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars, That marvelous round of milky light Below Orion, and those double stars Whereof the one more bright Is circled by the other.” td

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50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. But the poet’s soul so wearied of these astro- nomical researches that the beautiful lines I have quoted disappeared (more’s the pity) from the second and all later editions. Such exceptions, indeed, prove the rule. Poets have been chary in referring to astronomical researches and re- sults, full though these have been of unspeakable poetry; while, from the days of Homer to those of Tennyson, the constellations which garland the heavens have always been favorite subjects of poetic imagery. It is not my present purpose, however, to dis- cuss the poetic aspect of the constellations. I propose to inquire how these singular figures first found their way to the heavens, and, so far as facts are available for the purpose, to determine the history and antiquity of some of the more celebrated constellations. Long before astronomy had any existence as a science, men watched the stars with wonder and reverence. Those orbs, seemingly countless —which bespangle the dark robe of night—have a charm and beauty of their own apart from the significance with which the science of astronomy has invested them. The least fanciful mind is led to recognize on the celestial concave the em- blems of terrestrial objects, pictured with more or less distinctness among the mysterious star- groupings. We can imagine that, long before the importance of the study of the stars was rec- ognized, men had begun to associate with certain star-groups the names of familiar objects animate or inanimate. The flocks and herds which the earliest observers of the heavens tended would suggest names for certain sets of stars, and thus the Bull, the Ram, the Kids, would appear in the heavens. Other groups would remind those early observers of the animals from whom they had to guard their flocks, or of those animals to whose vigilance they trusted for protection; and thus the Bear, and the Lion, and the Dogs, would find their place among the stars. The figures of men and horses, of birds and fishes, would naturally enough be recognized, nor would either the im- plements of husbandry or the weapons by which the huntsman secured his prey remain unrepre- sented among the star-groupings. And lastly, the altar on which the first-fruits of harvest and vintage were presented, or the flesh of lambs and goats consumed, would be figured among the in- numerable combinations which a fanciful eye can recognize among the orbs of heaven. In thus suggesting that the first observers of the heavens were shepherds, huntsmen, and hus- bandmen, I am not advancing a theory on the \ \ difficult questions connected with the origin of exact astronomy. The first observations of the heavens were of necessity made by men who de. pended for their subsistence on a familiarity with the progress and vicissitudes of the seasons, and doubtless preceded by many ages the study of astronomy as a science. And yet the observa. tions made by those early shepherds and hunters, unscientific though they must bave been in them- selves, are full of interest to the student of mod- ern exact astronomy. The assertion may seem strange at first sight, but is nevertheless strictly true, that, if we could but learn with certainty the names assigned to certain star-groups before as- tronomy had any real existence, we could deduce lessons of extreme importance from the rough ob- servations which suggested those old names. In these days, when observations of such marvel- ous exactness are daily and nightly made, when instruments capable of revealing the actual con- stitution of the stars are employed, and thousands of observers are at work, it may seem strange to attach any interest to the question whether half- savage races recognized in such and such a star- group the likeness of a bear, or in another group the semblance of a ship. But though we could learn more, of course, from exacter observations, yet even such rough and imperfect records would have their value. If we could be certain that in long-past ages a star-group really resembled some known object, we should have in the present re- semblance of that group to the same object evi- dence of the general constancy of stellar lustre, or, if no resemblance could be recognized, we should have reason to doubt whether other suns (and, therefore, our own sun) may not be liable to great changes. The subject of the constellation-figures as first known is interesting in other ways. For instance, it is full of interest to the antiquary (and most of us are to some degree antiquaries) as relating to the most ancient of all human sciences. The same mental quality which causes us to look with interest on the buildings raised in long-past ages, or on the implements and weapons of antiquity, renders the thought impressive that the stars which we see were gazed on perhaps not less wonderingly in the very infancy of the human race. It is, again, a subject full of interest to the chronologist to inquire in what era of the world’s history exact astronomy began, when the moon was assigned her twenty-eight zodiacal mansions, the sun his twelve zodiacal signs. It is well known, indeed, that Newton himself did not disdain to study the questions thus suggested ; ¥ “

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ld =—eoemeereort & & } -- and the speculations of the ingenious Dupuis found favor with the great mathematician La- Unfortunately, the evidence is not sufficiently exact to be very trustworthy. In considering, for instance, the chronological inquiries of New- | ton, one cannot but feel that the reliance placed | by him on the statements made by different writ- ers is not justified by the nature of these state- ments, which are for the most part vague in the extreme. We owe many of them to poets who, knowing little of astronomy, mixed up the phe- nomena of their own time with those which they gound recorded in the writings of astronomers. Some of the statements left by ancient writers are, indeed, ludicrously incongruous ; insomuch that Grotius not unjustly said of the account of the constellations given by the poet Aratus, that it could be assigned to no fixed epoch and to no fixed place. However, this could not be the place to discuss details such as are involved in exact inquiries. I have indicated some of these in an appendix to my treatise on “ Saturn,” and others in the preface to my “ Gnomonic Star At- las ;”’ but, for the most part, they do not admit very readily of familiar description. Let us turn to less technical considerations, which, fortunate- ly, are in this case fully as much to the point as exact inquiries, seeing that there is no real foundation for such inquiries in any of the avail. able evidence. The first obvious feature of the old constella- tions is one which somehow has not received the attention itdeserves. It is as instructive as any of those which have been made the subject of profound research. There is a great space in the heavens over which none of the old constellations extend—ex- cept the River Eridanus as now pictured, but we do not know where this winding stream of stars was supposed by the old observers to come to anend. This great space surrounds the southern pole of the heavens, and this shows that the first observers of the stars were not acquainted with tae constellations which can be seen only from places far south of Chaldea, Persia, Egypt, India, China, and indeed of all the regions to which the invention of astronomy has been assigned. What- ever the first astronomers were, however profound their knowledge of astronomy may have been (as some imagine), they had certainly not traveled far enough toward the south to know the constella- tions around the southern pole. If they had been as well acquainted with geography as some assert, if even any astronomer had traveled as THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 51 far south as the equator, we should certainly have had pictured in the old star-charts some constella- tions in that region of the heavens wherein modern astronomers have placed the Octant, the Bird-of- Paradise, the Sword-fish, the Flying-fish, the Tou- can, the Net, and other uncelestial objects. In passing I may note that this fact disposes most completely of a theory lately advanced—that the constellations were invented in the southern hemisphere, and that thus is to be explained the an- cient tradition that the sun and stars have changed their courses. For though all the northern con- stellations would have been more or less visible from parts of the southern hemisphere near the equator, it it absurd to suppose that a southern observer would leave untenanted a full fourth of the heavens round the southern or visible pole, while carefully filling up the space around the northern or unseen pole with incomplete constel- lations whose northern unknown portions would include that pole. Supposing it for a moment to be true, as a modern advocate of the southern theory remarks, that “one of a race migrating from one side to the other of the equator would take his position from the sun, and fancy he was facing the same way when he looked at it at noon, and so would think the motion of the stars to have altered instead of his having turned round,” the theory that astronomy was brought us from south of the equator cannot possibly be admitted in presence of that enormous vacant region around the southern pole. I think, however, that, apart from this, a race so profoundly ignorant as to suppose any such thing, to imagine they were looking north when in reality they were looking south, can hardly be regarded as the first founders of the science of astronomy. The great gap I have spoken of has long been recognized. But one remarkable feature in ita position has not, to the best of my remembrance, been considered. The vacant space is eccentric with regard to the southern pole of the ‘heavens. The old constellations, the Altar, and the Centaur, and the ship Argo, extend within twenty degrees of the pole, while the Southern Fish and the great sea-monster Cetus, which are the southern. most constellations on the other side, do not reach within some sixty degrees of the pole. Of course, in saying that this peculiarity has not been considered, I am not suggesting that it has not been noticed, or that its cause is in any way doubtful or unknown. We know that the earth, besides whirling once a day on its axis, and rush- ing on its mighty orbit around the sun (spanning some 184,000,000 miles), reels like a gigantic top,

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THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. 52 with a motion so slow that 25,868 years are re- | pole of the star-sphere, when the old constella. quired for a single circuit of the swaying axis tions, or at least the southern ones, were in. around an imaginary line upright to the plane in | vented; and, if there had been astronomers in which the earth travels. And we know that in the southern hemisphere, Eta Hydri would cer. consequence of this reeling motion the points of tainly have been their pole-star. the heavens opposite the earth’s poles necessarily Now, it is a matter of no difficulty whateve- change. So that the southern pole, now eccen- to determine the epoch when the southern pole trically placed amid the region where there were no | of the beavens was thus placed.! Between 2,100 constellations in old times, was once differently sit- | and 2,200 years before the Christian era, the uated. But the circumstance which seems to have | southern constellations had the position de. been overlooked is this, that, by calculating back- seribed, the invisible southern pole lying at the ward to the time when the southern pole was in the centre of that vacant region, we have a much bet- ter chance of finding the date (let us rather say the century) when the older constellations were formed than by any other process. We may be sure not to be led very far astray, for we are not guided by one constellation but by several, whereas all the other indications which have been followed depend on the supposed ancient position of sin- gle constellations. And then most of the other indications are such as might very well have be- longed to periods following long after the inven- tion of the constellations themselves. An as- tronomer might have ascertained, for instance, that the sun in spring was in some particular part of the Ram or of the Fishes, and later a poet like Aratus might describe that relation (erroneously for his own epoch) as characteristic of one or other constellation; but who is to as. sure us that the astronomer who noted the rela- tion correctly may not have made his observation many hundreds of years after those constellations were invented? Whereas, there was one period, and only one period, when the most southern- most of the old constellations could have marked the limits of the region of sky visible from some northern region. Thus, too, may we form some idea of the latitude in which the first observers lived. For in high latitudes the southernmost of the old constellations would not have been visi- ble at all, and in latitudes much lower than a certain latitude presently to be noted these con- | centre of the vacant space of the star-sphere— or rather of the space free from constellations, It is noteworthy that, for other reasons, this period, or rather a definite epoch within it, is indicated as that to which must be referred the beginning of exact astronomy. Among others must be mentioned this—that in the year 2170 B. C., guam prozimé, the Pleiades rose to their highest above the horizon at noon (or technically made their noon culmination) at the spring equi- nox. We can readily understand that, to minds possessed with full faith in the influence of the stars on the earth, this fact would have great significance. The changes which are brought about at that season of the year, in reality, of course, because of the gradual increase in the effect of the sun’s rays as he rises higher and higher above the celestial equator, would be at- tributed, in part at least, to the remarkable star- cluster coming then close by the sun on the heavens, though unseen. Thus we can readily understand the reference in Job to the “sweet influences of the Pleiades.” Again, at that same time, 2170 B. c., when the sun and the Pleiades opened the year (with commencing spring) to- gether, the star Alpha of the Dragon, which was the pole-star of the period, had that precise posi- tion with respect to the true pole of the heavens which is indicated by the slope of the long pas- sage extending downward aslant from the north- ern face of the Great Pyramid; that is to say, when due north below the pole (or at what is stellations would have ridden high above the | technically called its sub-polar meridional pas- southern horizon, other star-groups showing be- sage), the pole-star of the period shone directly low them which were not included among the | down that long passage, and I doubt not could old constellations. I have before me, as I write, a picture of the southern heavens, drawn by myself, in which this vacant space—eccentric in position, but circular in shape—is shown. The centre lies close by | the Lesser Magellanic cloud, between the stars Kappa Toucani and Eta Hydri of our modern maps, but much nearer to the Jast named. Near this spot, then, we may be sure, lay the southern | be seen not only when it came to that position ! during the night, but also when it came there during the daytime. But some other singular relations are to be 1 It is, by-the-way, somewhat amusing to find Baron Humboldt referring a question of this sort to the great | mathematician Gauss, and describing the problem as though it involved the most profound calculations. Ten minutes should suffice to deal with any problem of the kind.

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noted in connection with the particular epoch I have indicated. It is tolerably clear that, in imagining figures of certain objects in the heavens, the early ob- servers would not be apt to picture these objects jn unusual positions. A group of stars may form a figure so closely resembling that of a familiar object, that even a wrong position would not prevent the resemblance from being noticed, as for instance the “‘ Chair,” the “ Plough,” and so forth. But such cases are not numerous; in- deed, to say the truth, one must “make believe a good deal” to see resemblance between the star-groups and most of the constellation-figures, even under the most favorable conditions. When there is no very close resemblance, as is the case with all the large constellations, position must have counted for something in determining the association between a star-group and a known object. Now, the constellations north of the equator assume so many and such various positions that this special vonsideration does not apply very forcibly to them. But those south of the equator _ are only seen above the southern horizon, and change little in position during their progress from east to west of the south point. The lower down they are, the less they change in position. And the very lowest—such as those were, for instance, which I have been considering in de- termining the position of the southern pole—are only fully visible when due south. They must, then, in all probability, have stood upright or in their natural position when so placed, for, if they were not rightly placed then, they only were so when below the horizon, and consequently in- visible. Let us, then, inquire what was the position of the southernmost constellations when fully seen above the southern horizon at midnight. The Centaur stood then as he does now, up- right, only—whereas now in Egypt, Chaldea, In- dia, Persia, and China, only the upper portions of his figure rise above the horizon, he then stood, the noblest save Orion of all the constella- tions, with his feet (marked by the bright Alpha and Beta still belonging to the constellation, and by the stars of the Southern Cross which have been taken from it) upon the horizon itself. In latitude 20° or so north he may still be seen thus placed when due south, The Centaur was represented in old times as placing an offering upon the altar, which was pict- ured, says Manilius, as bearing a fire of incense, represented by stars. This to a student of our THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSIELLATION-FIGURES. 53 modern charts seems altogether perplexing. The Centaur carries the wolf on the end of his spear; but, instead of placing the wolf (not a very accept- able meat-offering, one would suppose) upon the altar, he is directing this animal toward the base of the altar, whose top is downward, the flames represented there tending naturally downward also. It is quite certain the ancient observers did not imagine anything of this sort. As I have said, Aratus tells us that the celestial Centaur was placing an offering upon the altar, which was therefore upright; and Manilius describes the altar as “ Ferens thuris, stellis imitantibus, ignem,” so that the fire was where it should be, on the top of an upright altar, where also on the sky itself were stars looking like the smoke from in- cense-fires. Now, that was precisely the appear- ance presented by the stars forming the constel- lation at the time I have indicated, some 2170 years B.C. Setting the altar upright above the southern horizon (that is, inverting the absurd picture at present given of it), we see it just where it should be placed to receive the Centaur’s offering, and a most remarkable portion of the Milky-Way is then seen to be directly above the altar in such a way as to form a very good imita- tion of smoke ascending from it. This part of the Milky-Way is described by Sir J. Herschel, who studied it carefully during his stay at the Cape of Good Hope, as forming a complicated system of interlaced streaks and masses which covers the tail of Scorpio (extending from the altar which lies immediately south of the Scor- pion’s Tail). The Milky-Way divides, in fact, just above the altar, as the constellation was seen 4,000 years ago above the southern horizon, one branch being that just described, the other (like another stream of smoke) “ passing,” says Her- schel, “over the stars Iota of the Altar, Theta and Iota of the Scorpion, etc., to Gamma of the Archer, where it suddenly collects into a vivid oval mass, so very rich in stars that a very mod- erate calculation makes their number exceed 100,000.” Nothing could accord better with the descriptions of Aratus and Manilius. But there is another constellation which shows in a more marked way than either the Centaur or the Altar that the date when the con- stellations were invented must have been near that which I have named. Both Ara and Cen- taurus look now, in suitable latitudes (about 20° north), as they looked in higher latitudes (about 40° north) 4,000 years ago. For the

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54 reeling motion of our earth has changed the ; place of the celestial pole in such a way as only to depress these constellations southward with- out much changing their position ; they are near- ly upright when due south now as they were 4,000 years ago, only lower down. But the great ship Argo has suffered a much more serious dis- placement. One cannot now see this ship like a ship at any time or from any place on the earth’s surface. If we travel south till the whole con- stellation comes into visibility above the southern horizon at the proper season (January and Feb- ruary for the midnight hours) the keel of the ship is aslant, the stern being high above the waist (the fore-part is wanting). If we travel still far- ther south, we can indeed reach places where the course of the ship is so widened, and the changes of position so increased, that she appears along part of her journey on an even keel, but then she is high above the horizon. Now, 4,000 years ago she stood on the horizon itself at her south- ern culmination, with level keel and upright mast. In passing, I may note that there are those who imagine that this great ship represented the ark, its fore-part formerly being the portion of the Centaur now forming the horse, so that the Centaur was represented as a man (not as a man- horse) offering a gift on the altar. Thus, in this group of constellations men recognized the ark, and Noah going up from the ark toward the altar “ which he builded unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar.” One here- tic has even imagined that the constellation-fig- ures of the ship, the man with an offering, and the altar, painted or sculptured in some ancient astro- logical temple, came at a later time to be under- stood as picturing a series of events, interpreted and expanded by a poetical writer into a com- plete narrative. Without venturing to advocate here so heterodox a notion, I may remark as an odd coincidence that probably such a pict- ure or sculpture would have shown the smoke ascending from the altar which I have already described, and in this smoke there would be shown the bow of Sagittarius. This, interpreted and expanded in the way I have mentioned, | might have accounted for the “ bow set in the clouds, for a token of a covenant.” It is note- ‘THE POPULAR SCIEN CE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. toward which in turn flow the streams of the River Eridanus. The equator, too, was then oc along a great part of its length by the great sea-serpent Hydra, which reared its head above the equator, very probably indicated then bya water horizon, for nearly all the signs below it were chen watery. At any rate, as the length of Hydra then lay horizontally above the ship, whose masts reached it, we may well believe that this part of the picture of the heavens showed a sea-horizon and a ship, the great sea- serpent lying along the horizon. On the back of Hydra is the raven, which again may be sup- posed by those who accept the theory men- tioned above to have suggested the raven which went forth to and fro from the ark. He is close enough to the rigging of Argo to make an easy journey of it. The dove, however, must not be confounded with the modern constellation Co lumba, though this is placed (suitably enough) near the ark. We must suppose the idea of the dove was suggested by a bird pietured in the rigging of the celestial ship. The sequence in which the constellations came above the horizon as the year went round corresponded very satis- factorily with the theory, fanciful though this may be. First Aquarius pouring streams of water, the three fishes (Pisces and Piscis Aus- tralis), and the great sea-monster Cetus, show- ing how the waters prevailed over the highest hills, then the ark sailing on the waters, a lit- tle later the raven (Corvus), the man descending from the ark and offering a gift on the altar; and last, the bow set amid the clouds. The theory just described may have little in its favor. But wilder theories of the story of the deluge have been adopted and advocated with considerable confidence. One of the wildest, I fear, is the Astronomer Royal’s, that the deluge was simply a great rising of the Nile. Sir G. Airy is so confident respecting this that he says, “T cannot entertain the smallest doubt that the flood of Noah was a flood of the Nile,” precise- ly as he might say, “I cannot entertain the smallest doubt that the earth moves round the sun.” On one point we can entertain very little doubt indeed. If it ever rained before the flood, which seems probable, and if the sun ever shone on falling rain, which again seems likely, nothing short of a miracle could have prevented the worthy that all the remaining constellations form- | rainbow from making its appearance before the ing the southern limit of the old star-domes or | flood. The wildest theory that can be invented charts, were watery ones—the Southern Fish, over which Aquarius is pouring a quite unnec- essary stream of water, the great sea-monster, | to explain the story of the deluge cannot be wild- er than the supposition that the rays of sunlight shining on falling rain-drops could have ever

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failed to show the prismatic colors. The theory [have suggested above, without going so far as to advocate it, is free at any rate from objection on this particular score, which cannot be said of the ordinary theory. I am not yet able, how- ever, to say that “I cannot entertain the smallest doubt ” about that theory. We may feel tolerably sure that the period when the old southern constellations were formed must have been between 2,400 and 2,000 years before the present era. This, period, by-the- way, includes the date usually assigned to the deluge, which, however, must really occupy our attention no further. In fact, let us leave the watery constellations below the equator of those remote times, and seek at once the highest heav- ens above them. ; Here, at the northern pole of those days, we find the great Dragon, which in any astrological temple of the time must have formed the highest or crowning constellation, surrounding the very key-stone of the dome. He has fallen away from that proud position since. In fact, even 4,000 years ago he only held to the pole, so to speak, by his tail, and we have to travel farther back 2,000 years or so to find the pole situate ina portion of the length of the Dragon which can be regarded as central. One might almost, if fancifully disposed, recognize the gradual dis- placement of the Dragon from his old place of honor, in certain traditions of the downfall of the great Dragon whose “ tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven.” The central position of the Dragon—for even when the pole-star had drawn near to the Drag- on’s tail the constellation was still central—will remind the classical reader of Homer’s descrip- tion of the shield of Hercules: “The scaly horror of a dragon, coiled Full in the central field, unspeakable, With eyes oblique retorted, that askant Shot gleaming fire.” Elton’s translation. I say Homer’s description, for I cannot un- derstand how any one, who compares together the description of the shield of Achilles in the “Tliad” and that of the shield of Hercules in the fragmentary form in which we have it, can doubt for a moment that both descriptions came from the same hand. (The theory that Hesiod com. posed the latter poem can scarcely be enter- tained by any scholar.) As I long since pointed out in my essay, “A New Theory of Achilles’s Shield” (“‘ Light Science,” first series), no poet, THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. in part of the description of the shield of Her- cules, could have written the other parts not found in the shield of Achilles. “I cannot, for my own part, entertain the smallest doubt ”— that is to say, I think it altogether probable— that Homer composed the lines supposed to de- scribe the shield of Hercules long before he intro- duced the description, pruned and strengthened, into that particular part of the “ Iliad” where it served his purpose best. And I have as little doubt that the original description, of which we only get fragments in either poem, related to something far more important than a shield. The constellations are not suitable adornments for the shield of a fighting-man, even though he was under the special care of a celestial mother, and had armor made for him by a celestial smith. Yet we learn that Achilles’s shield displayed— “The starry lights that heaven’s high convex crowned, The Pleiads, Hyads, and the northern beam, And great Orion’s more refulgent beam, To which, around the cycle of the sky, The Bear revolving, points his golden eye, Still shines exalted on th’ ethereal plain,” and so forth. The shield of Hercules displayed at its centre the polar constellation, the Dragon. We read also that— “There was the knight of fair-haired Danie born, Perseus.” Orion is not specially mentioned, but Orion, Le- pus, and the Dogs, seem referred to : “ ..... Men of chase Were taking the fleet hares; two keen-toothed dogs Bounded beside.” Homer would find no difficulty in pluralizing the mighty hunter and the hare into huntsmen and hares when utilizing a description originally re- ferring to the constellation. I conceive that the original description related to one of those zodiac temples whose remains are still found in Egypt, though the Egyptian temples of this kind were probably only copies of more ancient Chaldean temples. We know from Assyrian sculptures that representations of the constellations (and especially the zodiacal constellations) were com- mon among the Babylonians; and, as I point out in the essay above referred to, “it seems prob- able that in a country where Sabianism or star- worship was the prevailing form of religion, yet more imposing proportions would be given to zodiac temples than in Egypt.” My theory, 80 inferior as actually to borrow Homer’s words then, respecting the two famous “ shields ” is, that

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56 Homer in his Eastern travels visited imposing temples devoted to astronomical observation and star-worship, and that nearly every line in both descriptions is borrowed from a poem in which he described a temple of this sort, its domed zodiac, and those illustrations of the labors of different seasons and of military or judicial pro- cedures which the astrological proclivities of star-worshipers led them to associate with the different constellations. For the arguments on which this theory is based I have not here space. They are dealt with in the essay from which I have quoted. One point only I need touch upon here, besides those I have mentioned already. It may be objected that the description of a zodiac temple has nothing to connect it with the subject of the “Iliad.” This is certainly true; but no one who is familiar with Homer’s man- ner can doubt that he would work in, if he saw the opportunity, a poem on some subject outside that of the “ Iliad,” so modifying the language that the description would correspond with the sub- ject in hand, There are many passages, though none of such length, in both the “ Iliad ” and the “ Odyssey,” which seem thus to have been brought into the poem; and other passages not exactly of this kind yet show that Homer was not insen- sible to the advantage of occasionally using mem- ory instead of invention. Any one who considers attentively the aspect of the constellation Draco in the heavens, will per- ceive that the drawing of the head in the maps is not correct ; the head is no longer pictured as it must have been conceived by those who first formed the constellation. The two bright stars, Beta and Gamma, are now placed on a head in profile. Formerly they marked the two eyes. I would not lay stress on the description of the Dragon in the shield of Hercules, “ with eyes oblique retorted, that askant shot gleaming fire;” for the reader may not be prepared to accept my opinion that the description related to the con- stellation Draco. But the description of the constellation itself by Aratus suffices to show that the two bright stars I have named marked the eyes of the imagined monster—in fact, Aratus’s account singularly resembles that given in the shield of Hercules. ‘“Swol'n is his neck,” saye Aratus of the Dragon— “ . . . . Eyes charged with sparkling fire His crested head illume. As if in ire To Helice he turns his foaming jaw, And darts his tongue, barbed with a blazing star.” And the Dragon’s head with sparkling eyes can be recognized to this day, so soon as this change | 1HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. is made in its configuration, whereas no one can recognize the remotest resemblance to a dragon’s head in profile. The star barbing the Dragon’s tongue would be Xi of the Dragon according to Aratus’s account, for so only would the eyes be turned toward Helice the Bear. But, when Ara. tus wrote, the practice of separating the constella. tions from each other had been adopted ; in fact, he derived his knowledge of them chiefly from Eudoxus the astronomer and mathematician, who certainly would not have allowed the constellations to be intermixed. In the beginning there are rea. sons for believing it was different ; and if a group of stars resembled any known object it would be called after that object, even though some of the stars necessary to make up the figure belonged already to some other figure. This being remem- bered, we can have no difficulty in retorting the Dragon’s head more naturally—not to the star Xi of the Dragon, but to the star Iota of Her- cules, The four stars are situated thus, * * the larger ones representing the eyes, and so far as the head is concerned it is a matter of indiffer- ence whether the lower or the upper small star be taken to represent the tongue. But, as any one will see who looks at these stars when the Dragon is best placed for (ordinary non-telescop- ic) observation, the attitude of the animal is far more natural when the star Iota of Hercules marks the tongue, for then the creature is situ- ated like a winged serpent hovering above the horizon and looking downward; whereas, when the star Xi marks the tongue, the hovering Dragon is looking upward and is in an unnatu- rally constrained position. (I would not, indeed, claim to understand perfectly all the ways of dragons; still it may be assumed that a dragon hovering above the horizon would rather look downward in a natural position than upward in an awkward one.) The star Iota of Hercules marks the heel of this giant, called the Kneeler (Engonasin) from time immemorial. He must have been an im- portant figure on the old zodiac temples, and not improbably his presence there as one of the largest and highest of the human figures may have caused a zodiac dome to be named after Her- cules. The Dome of Hercules would come near enough to the title, “‘ The Shield of Hercules,” borne by the fragmentary poem dealt with above. The foot of the kneeling man was represented on the head of the dragon, the dragon having hold of the heel. And here, again, some imagine that

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, sculptured representation of these imagined in the heavens may have been interpreted gd expanded into the narrative of a contest jetween the man and the old serpent the dragon, Ophiuchus the serpent-bearer being supposed to typify the eventual defeat of the dragon. This fancy might be followed out like that relating to the deluge ; but the reader has possibly no de- sire for further inquiries in that particular direc- tion. Some interest attaches to the constellation Ophiuchus, to my mind, in the evidence it affords respecting the way in which the constellations were at first intermixed. I have mentioned one instance in which, as I think, the later astrono- mers separated two constellations which had once been conjoined. Many others can be rec- ognized when we compare the actual star-groups with the constellation-figures as at present de- picted. No one can recognize the poop of a ship in the group of stars now assigned to the stern of Argo; but if we include the stars of the Greater Dog, and others close by, a well-shaped poop can be clearly seen. The head of the Lion of our maps is as the head of a dog, so far as stars are concerned ; but, if stars from the Crab on one side and from Virgo on the other be in- cluded in the figure, and especially Berenice’s Hair to form the tuft of the lion’s tail, a very fine lion with waving mane can be discerned, with a slight effort of the imagination. So with Bodtes the herdsman. He was of old “a fine figure of a man,” waving aloft his arms, and, as his name implies, shouting lustily at the retreating bear. Now, and from some time certainly preceding that of Eudoxus, one arm has been lopped off to fashion the northern crown, and the herdsman holds his club as close to his side as a soldier holds his shouldered musket. The constellation of the Great Bear, once I conceive the only bear (though the lesser bear is a very old constella- tion), has suffered woft.'v. Originally it must have been a much larger bear, the stars now forming the tail marking part of the outline of the back; but first some folks who were unac- quainted with the nature of bears turned the tail, abstracting from the animal all the corre- sponding portion of his body, and then modern astronomers, finding a great vacant space where formerly the bear’s large frame extended, incon- tigently formed the stars of this space into a new constellation, the Hunting Dogs. No one can recognize a bear in the constellation as at present shaped; but any one who looks attentively at THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLA TION-FIGURES. 57 the part of the skies occupied by the constella- tion will recognize (always “making believe a good deal”) a monstrous bear, with the proper small head of creatures of the bear family, and with exceedingly well-developed plantigrade feet. Of course, this figure cannot at all times be recognized with equal facility; but before midnight during the last four or five months in the year, the bear occupies positions favoring his recognition, being either upright on his feet, or as if descending a slope, or squatting on his great haunches. As a long-tailed animal the creature is more like one of those wooden toy- monkeys which used to be made for children (and may be now), in which the sliding motion of a ringed rod carried the monkey over the top of a stick. The Little Bear has I think been borrowed from the dragon, which was certainly a winged monster originally. Now, the astronomers who separated from each other (and in so doing spoiled) the old con- stellation-figures seem to have despaired of free- ing Ophiuchus from his entanglements. The Ser- pent is twined around his body, the Scorpion is clawing at one leg. The constellation-makers have per fas et nefas separated Scorpio from the Serpent-Holder, spoiling both figures. But the Serpent has been too much for them, insomuch that they have been reduced to the abject neces- sity of leaving one part of the Serpent on one side of the region they allow to Ophiuchus, and the other part of the Serpent on the other. A group of constellations whose origin and meaning are little understood remains to be men- tioned. Close by the Dragon is King Cepheus ; beside him his wife Cassiopeia (the Seated Lady), near whom is Andromeda, the Chained Lady. The Sea Monster Cetus is not far away, though not near enough to threaten her safety, the Ram and Triangle being between the monster’s head and her feet, the Fishes intervening between the body of the monster and her fair form. Close at hand is Perseus, the Rescuer, with a sword (look- ing very much like a reaping-hook in all the old pictures) in his right hand, and bearing in his left the head of Medusa. The general way of ac- three stars (the horses of the plough) into a long | counting for the figures thus associated has been by supposing that, having a certain tradition about Cepheus and his family, men imagined in the heavens the pictorial repsesentation of the | events of the tradition. I have long believed that the actual order in this and other cases was the reverse of this—that men imagined certain figures in the heavens, pictured these fignres in their as- tronomical temples or observatories, and made

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58 stories afterward to fit the pictures, probably many generations afterward. Be this as it may, we can at present give no satisfactory account of the group of constellations. Wilford describes, in his “ Asiatic Research- es,” a conversation with a pundit or astronomer respecting the names of the Indian constellations. “ Asking him,” he says, “to show me in the heavens the constellation Antarmada, he imme- diately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given him any information about it beforehand. He afterward brought me a very rare and curious work in Sanskrit, which contained a chapter de- voted to Upanachatras, or extra-zodiacal constel- lations, with drawings of Capuja (Cepheus) and of Casyapi (Cassiopeia) seated and holding a lotus-flower in her hand, of Antarmada chained with the Fish beside her, and last of Parascia (Perseus), who, according to the explanation of the book, held the head of a monster which he had slain in combat ; blood was dripping from it, and for hair it had snakes.” Some have inferred, from the circumstance that the Indian charts thus showed the Cassiopeian set of constellations, that the origin of these figures is to be sought in India. But probably both the Indian and the Greek constellation-figures were derived from a much older source. The zodiacal twelve are in some respects the most important and interesting of all the ancient constellations. If we could determine the origin of these figures, their exact configuration as at first devised, and the precise influences assigned to them in the old astrological systems, we should have obtained important evidence as to the origin of astronomy itself. Not, indeed, that the tweive signs of the zodiac were formed at the beginning or even in the early infancy of astronomy. It seems abundantly clear that the division of the zodiac (which includes the moon’s track as well as the sun’s) had reference originally to the moon’s motions. She circuits the star-sphere in about twenty-seven and a third days, while the lunation or interval from new moon to new moon is, as we all know, about twenty-nine and a half days in length. It would appear that the ear- liest astronomers, who were of course astrologers also, of all nations—the Indian, Egyptian, Chi- nese, Persian, and Chaldean astronomers—adopt- ed twenty-eight days (probably as a rough mean between the two periods just named) as their chief lunar period, and divided the moon’s track round the ecliptic into twenty-eight portions or man- sions. How they managed about the fractions of days outstanding—whether the common lunation THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. was considered or the moon’s motion round the star-sphere—is not known. The very circum. stance, however, that they were for a long time content with their twenty-eight lunar mansions shows that they did not seek great precision at first. Doubtless they employed some rough sys. tem of “leap-months” by which, as occasion re. quired, the progress of the month was reconciled with the progress of the moon, just as by our leap-years the progress of the year is reconciled with the progress of the sun or seasons. The use of the twenty-eight-day period nat- urally suggested the division of time into weeks of seven days each. The ordinary lunar month is divided in a very obvious manner into four equal parts by the lunar aspects. Every one can recognize roughly the time of full moon and the times of half-moon before and after full, while the time of new moon is recognized from these last two epochs. Thus the four quarters of the month, or roughly the four weeks of the month, would be the first time measure thought of, after the day, which is the necessary foundation of all time measures. The nearest approach which can be made to a quarter-month in days is the week of seven days; and although some little awkward- ness arose from tbe fact that four weeks differ appreciably from a lunar month, this would not long prevent the adoption of the week as a meas- ure of time. In fact, just as our years begin on different days of the week without causing any inconvenience, so the ancient months might be made to begin with different week-days. All that would be necessary to make the week measure fairly well the quarters of the month, would be to start each month on the proper or nearest week-day. To inform people about this some ceremony could he appointed for the day of the new moon, and some signal employed to indicate the time when this ceremony was to take place. This—the natural and obvious course—we find, was the means actually adopted, the festival of the new moon and the blowing of trumpets in the new moon being an essential part of the ar- rangements adopted by nations who adopted the week as a chief measure of time. The seven days were not affected by the new moons so far as the nomenclature of these days, or special duties connected with any one of them, might be con- cerned. Originally the idea may have been to have festivals and sacrifices at the time of new moon, first quarter, full moon, and third quarter; but this arrangement would naturally (and did, as we know, actually) give way before long toa new- moon festival regulating the month, and seven

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daily festivals, each class of festival having its appropriate sacrifices and duties. This, I say, was the natural cause. Its adop- tion may have been sided by the recognition of the fact that the seven planets of the old sys- tem of astronomy might conveniently be taken to rule the days and the hours in the way described in my essay on astrology. That that nomen- clature and that system of association between the planets and the hours, days, and weeks of time measurement were eventually adopted, is cer- tain; but whether the convenience and apparent mystical fitness of this arrangement led at all to the use of weekly festivals in conjunction with monthly ones, or whether those weekly festivals were first adopted in the way described above, or whether (which seems altogether more likely) both sets of considerations led to the arrange- ment, we cannot certainly tell. The arrangement was in every way a natural one, and one may say, considering all the circumstances, that it was al- most an inevitable one. There was, however, an- other possible arrangement, viz., the division of time into ten daily periods, three to each month, with corresponding new-moon festivals. But as the arrival of the moon at the thirds of her prog- ress are not at all so well marked as her arrival at the quarters, and, as there is no connection be- tween the number ten and the planets, this ar- rangement was far less likely to be adopted than the other. Accordingly, we find that only one or two nations adopted it. Six sets of five days would be practically the same arrangement ; five sets of six for each month would scarcely be thought of, as with that division the use of sim- ple direct observations of the moon for time measurement, which was the real aim of all such divisions, would not be convenient or indeed even possible for the generality of persons. Few could tell easily when the moon is two-fifths or four- fifths full, whereas every one can tell when she is half full or quite full (the requisite for weekly measurement); and it would be possible to guess pretty nearly when she is one-third or two-thirds full, the requisite for the tridecennial division. My object in the above discussion of the ori- gin of the week (as distinguished from the origin of the Sabbath, which I considered in my paper on astrology), has been to show that the use of the twelve zodiacal signs was in every case pre- ceded by the use of the twenty-eight lunar man- sions. It has been supposed that those nations in whose astronomy the twenty-eight mansions still appear adopted one system, while the use of the twelve signs implies that another system had THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATION- FIGURES. 59 been adopted. Thus the following passage occurs in Mr. Blake's version of Flammarion’s “ History of the Heavens:” “The Chinese have twenty- eight constellations, though the word sion does not mean a group of stars, but simply a mansion or hotel. In the Coptic and ancient Egyptian the word for constellation has the same meaning. They also had twenty-eight, and the same num. ber is found among the Arabians, Persians, and Indians. Among the Chaldeans or Accadians we find no sign of the number twenty-eight. The ecliptic, or ‘yoke of the sky,’ with them, as we see in the newly-discovered tablets, was divided into twelve divisions, as now; and the only con- nection that can be imagined between this and the twenty-eight is the opinion of M. Biot, who thinks that the Chinese had originally only twen- ty-four mansions, four more being added by Chen- kung, 1100 8. c., and that they corresponded with the twenty-four stars, twelve to the north and twelve to the south, that marked the twelve signs of the zodiac among the Chaldeans. But under this supposition the twenty-eight has no reference to the moon, whereas we have every reason to believe it has.” The last observation is undoubt- edly correct—the twenty-eight mansions have been mansions of the moon from the beginning. But in this very circumstance, ‘as also in the very tablets referred to in the preceding passage, we find all the evidence needed to show that origi- nally the Chaldeans divided the zodiac into twenty- eight parts. For we find from the tablets that, like the other nations who had twenty-eight zodi- acal mansions, the Chaldeans used a seven-day period, derived from the moon’s motions, every seventh day being called sabbatu, and held as a day of rest. We may safely infer that the Chal- dean astronomers, advancing beyond those of other nations, recognized the necessity of divid- ing the zodiac with reference to the sun’s mo- tions instead of the moon’s. They therefore dis- carded the twenty-eight lunar mansions, and adopted instead twelve solar signs; this number twelve, like the number twenty-eight itself, being selected merely as the most convenient approxi- mation to the number of parts into which the zodiac was naturally divided by another period. Thus the twenty-eighth part of the zodiac corre- sponds roughly with the moon’s daily motion, and the twelfth part of the zodiac corresponds roughly with the moon’s monthly motion; and both the numbers twenty-eight and twelve admit of being subdivided, whereas twenty-nine (a near- er approach than twenty-eight to the number of days in a lunation) and thirteen (almost as near

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an approach as twelve to the number of months in a year) do not. It seems to me highly probable that the date to which all inquiries into the origin of the con- stellations and the zodiacal signs seems to point —viz., 2170 B, c.—was the date at which the Chaldean astronomers definitely adopted the new system, the luni-solar instead of the lunar divi- sion of the zodiac and of time. One of the ob- jects which the architects of the Great Pyramid (not the king who built it) may have had, was not improbably this—the erection of a building indi- cating the epoch when the new system was en- tered upon, and defining in its proportions, its interior passages, and other features, the funda- mental elements of the new system. The great difficulty, an overwhelming difficulty it has always seemed to me, in accepting the belief that the year 2170 . c. defined the beginning of exact as- tronomy, has been this—that several of the cir- cumstances insisted upon as determining that date imply a considerable knowledge of astron- omy. Thus astronomers must have made great progress in their science before they could select, as a date for counting from, the epoch when the slow reeling motion of the earth (the so-called precessional motion) brought the Pleiades cen- trally south at the time of the vernal equinox, The construction of the Great Pyramid, again, in all its astronomical features, implies considerable proficiency in astronomical observation. Thus the year 2170 B. c. may very well be regarded as defining the introduction of a new system of as- tronomy, but certainly not the beginning of as- tronomy itself. Of course, we may cut the knot of this difficulty, as Prof. Smythe and Abbé Moigno do, by saying that astronomy began 2170 B. c., the first astronomers being instructed su- pernaturally, so that the astronomical Minerva came full-grown into being. But I apprehend that argument against such a belief is as unneces- sary as it would certainly be useless. ? And now let us consider how this theory ac- cords with the result to which we were led by the position of the great vacant space around the southern pole. So far as the date is concerned, we have already seen that the epoch 2170 B. c. accords excellently with the evidence of the va- cant space. But this evidence, as I mentioned at the outset, establishes more than the date; it indicates the latitude of the place where the most ancient of Ptolemy's forty-eight constellations were first definitely adopted by astronomers. If we assume that at this place the southernmost constellations were just fully seen when due south, 60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ' we find for the latitude about 38° north. (The student of astronomy who may care to test my results may be reminded here that it is not enough to show that every star of a constella. tion would when due south be above the ho. rizon of the place: what is wanted is, that the whole constellation when toward the south should be visible at a single view. However, the whole constellation may not have included all the stars now belonging to it.) The station of the astrono- mers who founded the new system can scarcely have been more than a degree or two north of this latitude. On the other side, we may go a lit- tle farther, for by so doing we only raise the con- stellations somewhat higher above the southern horizon, to which there is less objection than to a change thrusting part of the constellations below the horizon. Still, it may be doubted whether the place where the constellations were first formed was less than 32° or 33° north of the equator. The Great Pyramid, as we know, is about 30° north of the equator; but we also know that its architects traveled southward to find a suitable place for it. One of their objects may well have been to obtain a fuller view of the star-sphere south of their constellations. I think from 35° to 39° north would be about the most probable limits, and from 32° to 41° north the certain limits of the station of the first founders of solar zodiacal astronomy. What their actual station may have been is not so easily estab- lished. Some think the region lay between the sources of the Oxus (Amoor) and Indus ; others think that the station of these astronomers was not very far from Mount Ararat—a view to which I was led long ago by other considerations, dis- cussed in the first appendix to my treatise on ‘*Saturn and its System.” At the epoch indicated, the first constellation of the zodiac was not, as now, the Fishes, nor, as when a fresh departure was made by Hipparchus, the Ram, but the Bull, a trace of which is found in Virgil’s words, “* Candidus auratis aperit cum cornibus annum Taurus.” The Bull then was the spring sign, the Pleiades and ruddy Aldebaran joining their rays with the sun’s at the time of the vernal equinox. The midsummer sign was the Lion (the bright Cor Leonis nearly marking the sun’s highest place). The autumn sign was the Scorpion, the ruddy Antares and the stars clustering in the head of the Scorpion joining their rays with the sun’s at the time of the autumnal equinox. And, lastly,

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= Mae. the winter sign was the Water-Bearer, the bright Fomalhant conjoining his rays with the sun’s at mid-winter. It is noteworthy that all these four constellations really present some resemblance to the objects after which they are named. The Scorpion is in the best drawing; but the Bull’s head is well marked, and, as already mentioned, a leaping Lion can be recognized. The streams of stars from the urn of Aquarius and the urn itself are much better defined than the Urn- Bearer. I have not left myself much space to speak of the finest of all the constellations, the glorious Orion—the giant in his might, as he was called of old. In this noble asterism the figure of a giant ascending a slope can be readily discerned when the constellation is due south. At the time to which I have referred the constellation Orion was considerably below the equator, and instead of standing nearly upright when due south high above the horizon, as now in our northern latitudes, he rose upright above the southeastern horizon. The resemblance to a giant figure must then have been more striking than it is at present (except in high northern latitudes, where Orion, when due south, is just fully above the horizon). The giant Orion has long been identified by nations with Nimrod; and those who recognize the antetypes of the Ark in Argo, of the old dragon in Draco, and of the first and second Adams in the kneeling Her- cules defeated by the serpent, and the upright Ophiuchus triumphant over the serpent, may, if they so please, find in the giant Orion, the Two Dogs, the Hare, and the Bull (whom Orion is more directly dealing with) the representations

THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. 61 of Nimrod, “that mighty hunter before the Lord,” his hunting dogs, and the animals he hunted. Pegasus, formerly called the Horse, was regarded in very ancient times as the steed of Nimrod. In modern astronomy the constellations no longer have the importance which once attached to them. They afford convenient means of num- ing the stars, though I think many observers would prefer the less attractive but more busi- ness-like methods adopted by Piazzi and others, by which a star rejoices in no more striking title than Piazzi XIIh. 273, or Struve 2819. They still serve, however, to teach beginners the stars, and probably many years will pass before even exact astronomy dismisses them altogether to the limbo of discarded symbolisms. It is, indeed, somewhat singular that astronomers find it easier to introduce new absurdities among the constel- lations than to get rid of these old ones. The new and utterly absurd figures introduced by Bode still remain in many charts despite such inconvenient names as Honores Frederici, Glo- bum <Aerostalicum, and Machina Pneumatica ; and I have very little doubt that a new constel- lation, if it only had a specially inconvenient title, would be willingly accepted. But, when Francis Baily tried to simplify the heavens by removing many of Bode’s absurd constellations, he was abused by many as violently as though he had proposed the rejection of the Newtonian sys- tem. I myself tried a small measure of reform in the first three editions of my “ Library Atlas,” but have found it desirable to return to the old nomenclature in the fourth. — Belgravia.

IL—THE ROMAN TRIAL. HE trial of their Messiah by the Sanhedrim, had it stood alone, would have no doubt been the most interesting judicial transaction in history. The law of Moses, perpetuated though modified by Christianity, has perhaps been more influential than any other code of the world. Yet that law has had one rival, in the mighty jurisprudence of Rome. “The written reason of the Roman law has been silently or studiously THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. By ALEXANDER

TAYLOR INNES. transfused ” into all our modern life, and lawyers of every nation look back with filial reverence to the great jurisconsults of the great age of the Imperial Republic. But between the two influ- ences there is one important point of contrast. In the Hebrew commonwealth, law was the prod- uct of religion. It was received, as Christendom has been content to receive it, as a divine rule. There is no evidence whatever that the Jewish race was remarkable for an innate passion for justice, or for any such “tendency to righteous-

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62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE ness” as might have originally led it to religion. Their whole history and literature indicate, on the contrary, that it was the intense sense of the Divine which moulded the nation originally, and which afterward led to a wide-spread though im- perfect cultivation of the ars boni et aqui. Even that Rabbinic cultivation, as we have seen, was marred by continual exaggerations and artifices which reveal the original inaptitude of the race for high judicial excellence. Accordingly, down to the time with which we are dealing, it remained a small, isolated Asiatic tribe, filled through and through with national and religious prejudices. It is not to such that men look fora model of the administration of equal laws. But there have been races in the world who reflected, as there are races who do reflect, in an eminent degree, that deep sense of righteousness which lies at the root of all law. And of all such races, ancient and modern, the greatest was that which at this time ruled over Palestine and over the world. MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. | was the relation of the emperor himself to the inhabitants of Judea and to the world? The answer is important. The emperor was neither , more nor less than the representative of Rome, | In modern times men associate the imperial title with absolutism and a more than royal power, | To Romans, even in the days of Tiberius, the name of a king was intolerable, and absolutism, except under republican forms, distasteful. Ac. | cordingly, when Augustus became the undisputed | chief of the republic, and determined so to con- tinue, he remained nominally a mere private nobleman or citizen. The saviour of society did not dare to attack the constitution of the state, He effected his object in another way. He gathered into his own hands the whole powers and functions, and accumulated upon his own head the whole honors and privileges, which the state had for centuries distributed among its | great magistrates and representatives. He be- | came perpetual Princeps Senatiis, or leader of When the sceptre departed from Judah, it passed | the legislative house. He became perpetual Pon- into the strong, smiting hands of Rome; and al- | tifex Maximus, or chief of the national religion. ready all the nations had begun to exchange their | He became perpetual tribune, or guardian of the terror of its warlike might for that admiration people, with his person thereby made sacred and of its administrative wisdom which has grown inviolable. He became perpetual consul, or su- upon the world ever since. And already, too, | preme magistrate over the whole Roman world, that admiration was mingled with confidence and with the control of its revenues, the disposal of trust. Those Eastern races felt, what we two its armies, and the execution of its laws. And, thousand years after can historically trace, that | lastly, he became perpetual imperator, or military the better part of the unequaled authority of the | chief, to whom every legionary throughout the Roman law was due to the stern, hard virtues of | world took the sacramentum, and whose sword the early race and early republic. Its influence swept the globe from Indus and Gibraltar to the was dimly recognized then, and it is clearly trace- | pole. And yet in all he was a simple citizen—a able now, as having sprung from the instinct of | mere magistrate of the republic. Only, in this righteousness which guided pretor and proconsul | one man was now visibly accumulated and con- in every subject land, long before Ulpian or Gaius centrated al] that for centuries had broadened had written out that instinct into immortal law. and expanded under the magnificent abstraction Pontius Pilate was at this time the represent- of Rome. Tiberius, therefore, the first inheritor ative of Rome in Judea; the governor, as he is called in the Gospels. But it will be found in- structive to note more carefully what his exact position was. He was the procurator Cesaris ; the procurator, deputy, or attorney, of Tiberius in that province. And he was no procurator fisca- lis,’ with functions equivalent to those of ques- tor. Pilate’s was no such subordinate or finan- cial office. He was a procurator cum potestate ; a governor with civil, criminal, and military ju- risdiction ; subordinated no doub‘ in rank to the adjacent Governor of Syria, but directly respon- sible to his great master at Rome. And what 1 Tbe name is still used in Scotland, having had there originally its old sense of “the deputy of a provincial jadge appointed by him to look after money-matters,” of this constitution of Cesar Augustus, was in the strictest sense the representative of that great city that ruled over the kings of the earth. And the Roman knight who now governed in Judea was his representative in his public capa- city. For Augustus, as is well known, had divided the provinces into two classes. To the more _ peaceful and central, he allowed the Senate to | send proconsuls, while even over these he re- | served his own consular and military power. But some provinces, like Judea, he retained in his own hands as their proconsul or governor. | Strictly and constitutionally, the governor of the | Jewish nation, at the time of which we write, | was not Pilate at Cesarea or Vitellius at Antioch, | but Tiberius at Rome. He was the Proconsul or eo wpweweeeoess3Tr as SH

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ower, wers h- > its the the his Governor of Judea under the still-existing re- a republic now almost identified with himself. And Pilate, whom the Jews popularly called their governor, was strictly the procurator of the great proconsul, holding civil and military authority by delegation from him in whom was now concentrated the boundless authority of Rome. Such was the tribunal before which the council of the Sanhedrim is now to lead a pris- oner. Pilate sat in his pretorium on the morning of that “ preparation-day,” to transact business and administer justice as usual. In what spot in Jerusalem his judgment-seat was on this occasion set up, cannot certainly be known, It may have been within the fortress and under the tower of Antonia, the visible symbol of Roman predomi- nance which frowned beside the temple. Much more probably it was “‘ Herod’s pratorium,” that magnificent palace to the north of the temple which Josephus describes, and which had been recently built by the Idumean kings. Their for- mer palace was also still in existence, and the visit of the Roman procurator and the Tetrarch of Galilee to the same feast, while it raises the question which of them occupied the new and more splendid residence, suggests the inevitable rivalry and possible “enmity” of their relation. If we suppose that Pilate, like Florus, asserted his right to occupy the new palace, we may re- member that its white marble semicircle in- closed an open place which looked out on the sacred city, and was almost as public as the space between Antonia and the temple. In the open space in front of this or any other preto- rium the movable Bema or tribunal could at once be set up. But on this morning Pilate was still sitting in the judgment-hall. Outside was the roar of the Eastern city awakening on a passover dawn ; within, the clash of Roman steel, the al- tars of the Roman gods, and perhaps the sculpt- ured frown of the distant demi-god Tiberius. Into that heathen chamber the priests and doc- tors of the separated nation would not enter during their sacred week ; and the Roman, with his Roman smile, willingly removed their diffi- ‘ culty by coming with his soldier-lictors to the gate. But his first words there, as his eyes fell upon the prisoner, who stood with his hands bound before him, were, “‘ What accusation bring ye against this man?” We recognize instantly the spontaneous voice of Roman justice. It was no doubt meant to suggest his own authority and power of review, and in that respect we must presently consider it. But it was before every- THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. thing else the instinctive utterance of a judge, and it at once recalls that singularly noble dic- tum of Pilate’s successor in the same seat, “ It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die, until that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have license to answer for himsef concerning the crime laid against him.” So ever spoke the worst of the Roman governors —and neither Pilate nor Festus was among the best—out of the mere instinct and tradition of justice which clung to their great office among the treacherous tribes around. The chief priests and scribes on this occasion avoided the demand to know the accusation. “ If he were not a male- factor, we would not have delivered him to thee.” The insolent evasion of his question was not likely to propitiate Pilate, who instantly puts the mat- ter on its true footing by the calm but somewhat contemptuous reply, “Take ye him, and judge him according to your law.” Sullenly came the answer, “It is not lawful for us (it is not permis- sible—obx teorw) to put any man to death.” The answer revealed (what the word “ malefac- tor” had perhaps already implied, and what may have been involved in their bringing their pris- oner to Pilate at all) that it was a capital charge which they had come to make. But it closed this important opening dialogue. The conversa- tion just narrated is only found in the Gospel of John ; and it is remarkable that a narrative ap- parently very much later than the others should record words which not only have the strongest internal evidence of truth, but to which subse- quent investigation has given immensely increased historical value. For at this point of the story comes in the question of conflict of jurisdiction. Why did the Jews go to Pilate at all? We have seen that their council condemned Jesus “ to be guilty of death.” Had they no right to pass such a sen- tence? or, having the right to pass it, had they merely no power to execute it? How far did the authority of the governor trench upon, or super- sede, the authority of the Sanhedrim? Which of them had the jus vite aut necis? What was the relation of the two powers, the Jewish and the Roman, to each other at this time? This broad historical question lies at the root of the views which may be taken of the legal point— views which have sometimes been extremely con- trasted. In the controversy between Salvador and Dupin, the former (true in this to the sad claim of some of his nation of old, “ His blood be on us”) urged that the Sanhedrim had full authority to try even for capital crimes, and that

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64 - their sentence of death required only the counter- sign or indorsement of the Roman governor. His opponent held that the Jewish court had no right to try for grave, or at least capital, crimes at all; that their whole procedure was a usurpation ; and that the only real or competent trial was that which we are about to consider. I have no inten- tion of going into the great mass of historical in- vestigation which has been undertaken on this confessedly difficult point. There seems no one consideration which is quite conclusive upon it. Thus it would be rash to ascribe to the assertion of the Talmud, that “forty years before the de- struction of the temple the judgment of capital causes was taken away from Israel,” the praise of exact chronological accuracy. Yet it is very striking as showing the time about which the doc- tors of the Jewish law were willing to hold that their power of life and death (no doubt already restricted or suspended under the despotism of Herod) had finally passed away. But on the gen- eral subject of the relation of the two powers in that age, there are some considerations which reasoners on either side do not seem to have al- ways keptin view: 1. There was no concordat on this subject between the Romans and the Jews. The latter were the conquered nation ; their juris- diction, including the power of life and death, was wrested from them de facto, and they were obliged to submit. But de jure they never did. To them, at least to the great mass of the nation, the Sanhedrim was still the national authority, especially in accusations relating to religious matters. 2. On the Roman side, the matter was of course precisely otherwise. Their view of the jurisdiction of subject races generally, and of the Jews in particular, was (I suspect) that it was just so much as they chose to leave them. In most cases that formed a very large field. The Roman governor sanctioned, or even himself ad- ministered, the old law of the region ; but the pol- icy of the ruling power was to concede to local self-government as much as possible. The conces- sion was of course all the larger where there was no disposition on the part of the province to provoke a contest. In Roman law as in Roman campaigns, in questions of jurisdiction as in questions of politics, the maxim of the haughty and wise rul- ers of the world was parcere subjectis et debel- lare superbos. 3. It is evident that a large lati- tude was allowed on this subject to the great Roman officers—proconsuls or procurators—who administered la haute justice. The republic and the emperor permitted, and indeed demanded, that they should stretch or relax their author- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ity as the particular case or exigency required, ’ In ordinary matters brought before their tribg: nals, the rule on which they acted is perfectly expressed, a few years after this, by Annens Gallio, the humane Proconsul of Achaia and brother of the philosopher Seneca: “If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, 0 ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: but if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; I will be no judge of such matters.” But, while they drove such questions from the judgment-seat, so long as they did not affect the rights of the sovereign power, the least hint that one of these words or names or questions of another law could preju- dice the supreme power of Rome was enough to authorize the governor to plunge his axe into the offending part of the body politic with prompt and savage severity.—These general considera- tions should never be forgotten in reading the scattered and often inconsistent historical no- tices on the subject. They show that the ex- treme views, which critics in our own time have maintained, were probably held even then by the opposing powers whose jurisdictions were in poise. But the balance of evidence is very strong that, at this time, all questions of life and death in Judea were by Roman law and practice reserved for the final decision of the Roman governor. In such cases the Jews had, at the most, only the cognitio cause. Nor can there be much doubt that the governor’s final power in these cases was not a merely ministe- rial right of indorsement and ezecutio ; it was also a power of cognitio, or review, in so far at least as he chose to exercise it. Whether this reservation to the governor was such as to de- prive the Jewish courts of their rights as tribu- nals of first instance—whether any previous trial of a capital cause before the Sanhedrim was necessarily a usurpation—is another and a more difficult question. With regard to ordinary civil crimes—robberies or assassinations—the Jewish rulers may have been content not to interfere further than to bring the perpetrators to the Ro- man tribunal for judgment. The Roman govern- or, on the other hand, may have been quite will ing to send to the cross without much inquiry any ordinary malefactors against whom the au- thorities of their country, having already inquired into the case, were willing to appear as accusers. But obviously a more serious question arose when the alleged crime was a religious one—a claim, as prophet or Messiah, to change the ec- clesiastical-institutions. In such a case the San-

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ave and re Sor ara PPC aes \ ' » a THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. pedrim itself no doubt maintained, as the Jews! king.” Had the accusation retained the form in ly did on its behalf, an exclusive right to | which it was brought before the Sanhedrim—had jndge in the first instance; and its tendency | it been a merely religious or ecclesiastical crime would be very strong to deny any re-cognitio by | | which was now named—a different question the Roman power, and either not to call in that | would have arisen. Had the chief priests, when power at all, or to limit it toa mere right of | they “began to accuse ” Jesus, said at once what countersign. What view the Roman governor | _ they passionately exclaimed at a later stage of the might take, in the very unusual case of such a | | cause, “ We have a law, and by our law he ought charge being brought to his tribunal, was an- | to die, because be made himself the Son of God,” other matter. But in truth, while the dialogue-narrative of the fourth Gospel admirably illustrates the his- torical relations of the parties at the time, the narrative, in that Gospel and in the others, su- persedes the necessity for referring to these more general relations. Whether it was legitimate or not for the Jews to condemn for a capital crime, | on this occasion they did so. Whether it was legitimate or not for Pilate to try over again an accused whom they had condemned, on this oc- casion he did so. There were certainly two tri- als. And the dialogue already narrated expresses with the most admirable terseness the struggle which we should have expected between the ef- fort of the Jews to get a mere countersign of their sentence and the determination of Pilate to assume his full judicial responsibility, whether of first instance or of review. The reluctance of the Jews on the present occasion was no doubt prompted not so much by their usual ec- clesiastical independence as by their dread lest inquiry by Pilate should prevent his carrying out their scheme. But as matters actually turned out, the collision which the procurator’s first words provoked had the effect of binding him publicly, before the men of both nations who surrounded his judgment-seat, to deal with this capital case in his judicial capacity. It was henceforth no mere matter of administration ; no incident of summary police jurisdiction or mili- tary court-martial: it was a deliberate judgment of life and death by the supreme civil ruler who had interposed his jurisdiction between an ac- cused man and the chief authorities of the sub- | ject nation. | The accusation demanded by Pilate neces- | sarily followed, now that he had insisted on be- | ing judge in the cause. We have this given | it may be doubtful what Pilate would have done. He was authorized as governor to administer their law, or to preside over and control its administra- tion; and while his leaning would be, like that of Gallio, to consider this question a matter of words, he might have been induced to see that these words covered grave consequénces to the state. But such questions are superseded by the deliberate change in the form of the accusation —or, rather, the reverting to that accusation which had been originally intended, and for which the ecclesiastical procedure of the night before was a pretext or preliminary. If we accept the sen- tenve of Luke as equivalent to the nominis delatio of the Roman law, or to the affidavit of the prose- cutor-witness of the Hebrew law already consid- ered—and it has resemblances to both—it throws a flood of light before as well as behind. The charge of “ perverting ” (8:aerpépovra), including perhaps “revolutionizing ” as well as “ seducing ” the nation,. was fairly true, and was distinctly in- cluded in the Jewish procedure of the night be- fore. No doubt to Roman ears it was ambiguous, but the ambiguity recalls that very real doubt which bad governed his mind who said, “If we let him alone, all men will believe on him, and the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation.” The culminating charge, that Jesus called himself “Christ a king,” was also true, and had just been acknowledged to be true, though scarcely in the sense in which the accusers expected that the ears of the governor would re- ceive it. But if we are to take Luke’s narrative, | we must believe that the charge was not left in this doubtful and ineffective form. The managers of the impeachment had no doubt not intended to make a deliberately untrue statement before the heathen judgment-seat. They wished, at as small an expense of falsehood as possible, to with considerable formality in the Gospel of | throw upon the foreign power the odium of a Luke; and, though it is omitted in the three | prophet’s death. But the prompt utterances of others, the first question of Pilate to Jesus, | Pilate seem to have forced them into the vil- which they all record, implies a previous charge. lainy they would rather have avoided, and, be- Luke gives it thus: “ We found this man per- | tween the more ambiguous charges of seducing verting the nation, and forbidding to give trib the nation and claiming a royal Messiahship, they ute to Cesar, saying that he himself is Christ a ' add, by way of illustration, “forbidding to give 41

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66 tribute to Cesar.” It was a sheer falsehood, and some of the accusers must have known it to be the converse of the fact as recently ascertained. But it was a suggestion which, as they must also have known, would give the most deadly signifi- cence to the other vaguer and truer heads of the indictment, and would make it impossible for the governor to waive the capital charge. For there is no mistake as to what the crime here imputed is. It is majestas—the greatest crime known in the Roman law, the greatest crime conceivable by the Roman imagination—an attack upon the sovereignty or supreme majesty of the Roman state.' In the early days of the republic the name perduellio was applied to trea- son and rebellion, and the eitizen condemned by the people for that crime was interdicted from fire and water, or hanged upon an arbor infeliz. As the rule of the city spread over the world, treason came to be known as an attack upon its majesty ; and various laws were passed to define this crime and the treatment of it, the chief en- actment being the Lex Julia. According to this law every accusation of treason against a Roman citizen must be made by a written libel. A Jew- ish provincial had, of course, no such protection. He stood before the procurator of the Casar, with no defense against the summary exercise of absolute power but the plea of justice. We come now to the defense, All the nar- ratives bear that Pilate put the same question to Jesus, in the same words, “ Art thou the King of the Jews?” but that, on his answering in-the affirmative, the Roman came to the paradoxical conclusion that there was “no faultinhim.” The fourth Gospel contains the explanatory conversa- tion which these facts almost necessarily imply. The statement of Jesus is unusually impressive. It is couched, no doubt, in that involved, allusive, and aphoristic style of utterance which we find in this Gospel from end to end. But we must re- member that all the biographies represent this very style as occasionally used by Jesus, and as characteristic of him in critical circumstances. It comes out in all the histories when he touches on the esoteric “ mysteries of the kingdom” he preached, or where his own claims are brought in question; and it manifestly grew more and more his manner of utterance toward the close 1“ Crimen adversus populum Romanum vel adversus securitatem ejus.”—Ulpian, “ Digest,” xlviii., 4, 1. The origin of the name is plain. Cicero defines majestas as “magnitudo populi Romani,” and the full name of the crime is “crimen lese aut imminute majestatis.” It is very adequately expressed by our word treason. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of his career. We hold, therefore, that a state. ment which, though only recorded in the latest Gospel, must, according to all the others, have been substantially made, and which as reported ig at once startlingly original and intensely character. istic, has every internal evidence of being histori. cal, This dialogue took place in the pretorium, where Jesus may have possibly been detained while the question of jurisdiction was settled with his accusers. (It rather appears, however, that he must have been present while the accusation was made; the first two evangelists state that either then or at a later stage his silence extorted the marvel of the governor, who said, “ Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee?”) He now, however, brings his prisoner within, and puts the sudden question, “ Art thou the King of the Jews?” Jesus’s answer, “Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?” does not seem to have been a request to know what had been uttered by the Jews in his absence. The words evidently have a deeper reference. They are equivalent to—“In what sense dost thou use the expression? If thou sayest it of thyself, in the sense in which a Ro. man would naturally use the word, then I am not the King of the Jews. But if others told thee this of me, if thou art using the words of Hebrew prophecy, or of the world’s hope, that may need further explanation.” Pilate strives to reply as a Roman should: “ Am Ia Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee to me; what hast thou done?” It was throwing back, and not unfairly, the burden of explanation upon the accused; and he who had kept silence before the midnight Sanhedrim,.and who made no answer even now to their dissimu- lated accusation, at once frankly responded to the heathen magistrate who desired himself to know the truth of the case: “ My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, but now is In considering my kingdom not from hence.” words so memorable we must avoid as much as possible the theological and ecclesiastical, and look only from the historical, and in particular the forensic and judicial, point of view. What- ever else these words import, they are in sub- stance, and almost in form, a defense. If they imply a confession of kingship, they express an avoidance of the particular kind of kingship charged. They do not set up a plea in bar of the jurisdiction. They seem to acknowledge that a kingdom of this world would be a legitimate object of attack by the deputy of Cesar, but

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uyest e of juest rs in eper what and THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. 67 they deny that the kingship of Jesus could be so | self to the cross, and that the next few hours described. The most important commentary on | might close that fateful life. And the thought the words is of course the recent and famous | was in his mind when he deliberately added, scene of the tribute-money, where Jesus being ' “To this end was I born, and for this cause came demanded as a Jewish patriot and prophet, “Is | I into the world, that I might bear witness unto it lawful to give anaes to Cesar, “ aor” an- | the truth.” Whatever else is included in words swered, “Show me a penny,” and, having asked , so great, this “witness to the truth” certainly the significant question as to Cesar’s image and embraces the testimony which a moment before superscription engraved i, —- the dis- mers —— pe Aeeehs ore wd more for cussion with the words, “Render therefore unto | “who before Pontius Pilate witn e Cesar the things that are Cesar’s, and unto God | confession” —to the existence of a kingdom, true the things that are God’s.” The two incidents, | and real, though not of this cosmos. But this jn common with the whole of the history, make | supreme utterance struck a deeper note than it certain that it was no part of his plan of king- | even the assertion of a spiritual and separate dom, as it was no part of the plan of Christianity | kingdom. It proclaimed that which is the basis historically, to attack the Roman power. But | of all human veracity and virtue, but which in this critical utterance to Pilate (like that former | those later ages was becoming strange to Roman one) seems to go further. On the face of it, it | ears—the existence of an eternal world of truth indicates that there was no necessary collision , outside of man—a universal divine system of between the kingdom which Jesus was prepared | things, high above all local or national tradition, to assert as his own and that great “kingdom | and indeed above all human beliefs and desires. of this world” which his judge represented. An Over that objective truth men have no power: actual collision there too probably might be. | their highest privilege is to recognize “ to a But the words are meaningless unless they are | fess it. And those do recognize it who have taken as asserting separate spheres within which | already a certain kinship and relation to that it was possible for each power to confine itself, | central truth—who are “ of the truth.” For the and by confining themselves within which it was | last words of him who now claimed to be both possible for them to escape collision. Only one | the witness ond the king of that greater world of these kingdoms is described, and it is defined | were, “ He that is of the truth heareth my voice.” generally as “ of this world,” the definition being Pilate answered, “‘ Whatis truth?” The blank illustrated by the suggestion that in every such yea oe ene half rye rs ingdom the monarch may suitably be defended | skeptical, will claim notice at a later stage. In oe armed force of mr subjects. The other | the meen Gene we follow the course of the judge," is as yet only defined by the negation of these who, thus waiving the personal question presented characteristics. Pilate, as the result indicates, | to him, goes on to deal with the accusation and was-already impressed by the statement, and | the accused. The narratives all bear that Pilate perhaps convinced by it of the innocence of the | reached and expressed the conclusion that the accused of all conspiracy against Rome. And | crime charged had not been proved—that indeed yet Jesus still spoke of a kingdom—a kingdom | he found in the accused “no fault at all.” And too in this world, though not of it;' and his | the last Gospel distinctly refers the first public words of renunciation were more royal than all | utterance of this conviction to the exact point in the Roman had ever listened to of greatness. | the conversation and defense at which we have With true judicial tact, the governor lays his | now arrived. It was the only defense which the finger on the exact point which required to be accused is at any time stated to have offered; brought from negative implication into express ; The apocryphal “Acts of Pilate,” afte: this statement, “Art thou a king then?” he asked | onversstion with much p mee 2 papa the prisoner whose kingdom was not of this | which, while they rather vulgarize the previous utter- world. And as before, to the adjuration of God’s ances, indicate a special application of the words of Jesus * : . ' which may have occurred to the mind of the governor as High-Priest, so now, to the representative of all | an gemell Bees Ghats Wiidine eunnetiien to enaanentl the greatness of earth, the answer came back, judgment in the cause: making a crisis in the world’s history, “Thou “Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? Jesus said, sayest it: I am a king.” He who spoke so to a , Truth is from heaven. Pilate said, Therefore truth is not : : on earth. Jesus said to Pilate, Believe that trath is on Roman governor knew that he was offering him east emtichiy Cad Chas Wadd Gal bat tb eae ae 1 “My kingdom is not of this world.” The word used . judgment, are governed by truth and form right jadg- is kégmos, not aiwy, | ment.”

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68 and Pilate now went straight out from the pre- torium, and announced his verdict, perhaps from the judgment-seat. Yet was this utterance, as it turned out, only the first step in that downward course of weakness the world knows so well: a course which, beginning with indecision and com- plaisance, passed through all the phases of al- ternate bluster and subserviency; persuasion, evasion, protest, and compromise; superstitious dread, conscientious reluctance, cautious duplici- ty, and sheer moral cowardice at last; until this Roman remains photographed forever as the perfect feature of the unjust judge, deciding “against his better knowledge, not deceived.” Upon some of the points in the evangelic narra- tive we need not dwell. The graphic incident of the judge catching at an allusion to Galilee, and, on ascertaining that the man was a Galilean, sending him to Herod, may be just noticed in passing. The word used is dyéweyev (remisit), which seems the proper technical term for re- storing an accused to his proper jurisdiction, as here in sending him from a forum apprehensionis to a forum originis. Herod's declinature was prudent as well as courteous, when we remember the terms of the accusation. A man, even a pro- vincial, accused of majestas, “stood at Cesar’s judgment-seat, where he ought to be judged;” and the Idumean “fox” may have dreaded the lion’s paw, while very willing to exchange cour- tesies with the lion’s deputy. The second ap- pearance at the tribunal of the governor shows a distinct accession of weakness on the part of the judge, and of pressure upon him by the accus- ers. His wife’s' morning message troubles his conscience, but does not purify his heart. Pilate is now willing to “chastise him and let him go,” 1, e., to mangle an innocent man with the savage Roman scourge. The Jewish accusers refuse the compromise ; and Pilate, characteristically, seems to have left them under the impression that he had finally sent him to the cross, while he still intended to make a postponed appeal to their compassion. But before taking his first step in actual guilt, the judge washes his hands with the memorably vain words, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.” After the scourging, the three evangelists record noth- ing but the insults of the fierce soldiery to one who was given up to them as a Jewish traitor to their emperor. But the later evangelist inter- 1 There is a curious historical question whether the wives of governors were at this time permitted to go down to the province with their husbands, which turns out in favor of Claudia Procula. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. poses a series of incidents which are now as be. fore noted with the finest characterization and the most delicate verisimilitude. He alone records the “ Behold the man!” with which the stru procurator, whose “faith unfaithful” still made him “falsely true,” sought to move the multi. tude. He alone records the response, “ We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God ”»—an utterance in exact accordance with that narrative of the Hebrew trial which is given by all the Synoptics, but which John has omitted. It is he who no. tices the unexpected but most natural effect of this claim upon the governor, whom the former utterances of the king “come into the world” had deeply impressed. “ Whence art thou?” he almost tremulously demands. But from the first moment of his vacillation Jesus had given him no answer, Pilate, accordingly, at the very time when he is described as inwardly “ more afraid,” flashes out in that insolent tone which less discriminating secular historians regard as the only one characteristic of him: “Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and power to release thee?” Jesus breaks the silence by a final word of answer, which is of high importance for our subject: “Thou couldest have no power at all over me, unless it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee had the greater sin.” Some writers who hold that Pilate alone had “jurisdiction” in this case, and that the proceedings of the Sanhedrim were a usurpa- tion, have appealed to this text, as containing in its first clause an acknowledgment of the exclu- sive right of the Roman tribunal, and in its last a denunciation of the illegality, as well as treach- ery, of Caiaphas. This is unwarranted, and in the circumstances grotesque. Yet while we no- tice here first of all the extreme consideration and almost tenderness with which the sufferer judges his judge,' we must confess that the words, “‘ Thy power (éfovela) is given thee from above,” do relate themselves to the previous acknowledgment of a “ kingdom of this world,” a cosmos in which men are to give to Cesar the things that are Cesar’s; while they add to that former acknowledgment the explicit idea (after- ward enforced by the apostles) that this earthly kingdom with its earthly aims is also from above. The powers that be are ordained of God; Pilate, who knew this not, was abusing a great and le- gitimate office partly through a heathen’s igno- rance; and in so far he was less guilty than the 1“ Judex judicantium.”—Goesius. -_ tm 4 te fee A) oe. 4 o oe oe lCUuklUm CO. Or Oe O. 2. Bee Gee eee ae eee

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clu- ee? eh false accusers who sat in Moses’s seat. It was not strange that the words should have prompted one last effort on the judge’s part to save himself from his weakness; but it was too late. The Jewish hierarchs had now taken the full measure of the man, and their final argument was one fit- ted to bear down in him all of conscience that remained. “If thou let this man go, thou art not Cesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cwsar.” Few utterances are more valuable historically than this last gen- eral statement. To feel the full force of it we must recall how, as already explained, the Caesar bad gathered up in himself all the public offices of the republic, so that treason against the state and treason against him had become almost the same. The old Roman watchfulness to crush out attempts against Rome was now intensified by being absorbed into the jealous personal suspi- cion of a despot. It was no anti-climax when the shrewd Jewish politicians, instead of saying, “Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against the majesty of the state,” preferred to say, “Whosoever maketh himself a king speak- eth against Cesar.” Long before this period of the reign of Tiberius the latter had become the deadlier form of the crime. Some of the ac- eusers must have remembered the early days of the dynasty, when Julius and Octavius perpe- trated their own successful lése-majesté, and the nation of the Jews, adhering to them in the great convulsion, merited the name which came after- ward to be known as a title of honor, of “Ca- sar’s friends.” And all of them must have been aware that while the first emperor had extended the law of treason to punish libels against his own person, Tiberius, still more watchful in his jealousy, used the leges majestatis continually against all who failed in respect to the majesty of Cesar, even if they did not speak against him (riAéyew) in the sense of favoring counter- claims by themselves or others. The great his- torian records how, even before the date when Pilate was sent to Judea, when the provinces ap- peared before Tiberius with complaints against their proconsuls, they took care to throw in along with the usual accusations of rapacity the added charge of treason—“ Addito majestatis crimine, quod tum omnium accusationum complementum erat!”! To Pilate, as a personal dependent on the favor of the emperor (a favor seemingly ori- ginally procured through Sejanus, about this time hurled from power), all this must have been con- tinually and urgently present, the more as he had 1 Tacitus, “ Annales,” fil, 89. THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. | already earned the hatred of his province, and | dreaded its revenge. His fears were not ground- less. Tiberius was still upon the throne when, a few years later, Pilate was superseded, and em- bassadors from Palestine, relying on the heredi- tary attachment of the nation to the imperial house, were sent to Rome to witness against the recalled and degraded governor. The shadow of that distant day paralyzed Pilate on this morning. What if he were to be accused before Cesar of spoliation and bloodshed, and, too well knowing himself to be guilty of those wrongs, should read also in the eyes of his gloomy master that other charge, he complement and the crown of every lesser crime? He who had so long per- sisted against all other arguments now succumbed at once before the well-chosen words: “If thou let this man go, thou art not Cesar’s friend: who- soever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cesar.” He ascended the tribunal, from which alone a final sentence could be legally pronounced by a Roman judge—in the present case, apparent- ly, a portable seat carried out from the preto- rium, and placed in front upon a lithostréton or tesselated pavement. Yet even here he relieved his bitter feelings by the words to the accusers, “Shall I crucify your king?” But on the chief priests making the historical answer, ‘We have no king but Cesar,” the judge turned to him who had clainied another kingdom, and, in such words as “Ibis ad crucem,” delivered him to be cruci- fied. “ Was Pilate right in crucifying Christ?” The question has recently been asked in a book of extraordinary ability, which opens with the most powerful attack in our language on what has been known in modern times as the right of “liberty of conscience.” If you deny that right, argued John Stuart Mill and others, you must approve of Marcus Aurelius and the other persecutors of Christianity—nay, you must go further, and find “a principle which will justify Pontius Pilate.” A keen critic has accepted the challenge; and his argument, while in the first instance it rather departs from the question of principle so raised, ultimately returns to it, and, I think, justifies the selection of so memorable an illustration. The discussion will be found to lead directly to the only legal question which remains for me to take up—the relation of the Roman state and the Ro- man law to the sentence of the Roman governor: 1. The suggestion, however, which is first , made,' that Pilate may have “believed in good | 1Was Pilate right in crucifying Christ? I reply;

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70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. faith that what he did was-necessary for the pres- ervation of the peace of Palestine,” is purely gra- tuitous. Whether that would have justified him in condemning a man he believed to be innocent, we may touch upon hereafter. But, in the mean time, there is not the slightest ground for the suggestion itself. The narratives are uniform in asserting his expressed convittion of his prisoner’s innocence, his knowledge that Jesus bad been delivered “for envy,” his scoffing incredulity in speaking to the Jews of their king, and his final yielding, as a judge, to those vane voces populi against which his own law warned him, only when his personal and private interests were menaced. And the Christian narratives which have handed this down are, strange to say, in no respect hos- tile to Pilate. Jewish and other writers who ex- pressly treat of the character of this governor give us his portrait as rapacious, cruel, and un- just. The Christian historians give no portrait, | and have occasion to refer to him incidentally | only where his actions are fitted to excite the keenest exasperation. Yet these few historical | side-touches represent the man within the gov- ernor with a delicacy, and even tenderness, which | make the accusing portrait of Philo and Josephus look like a hard, revengeful daub.’ Is there, in the Tito or Bulstrode of modern delineation, any- thing more true to Nature, more provocative of | sudden sympathy from men who know the press- ure of public life, than that morning’s mental | history of the sixth Procurator of Judea, as given | by the friends of the man whom he crucified ? | The motives for Pilate’s vacillation are only too ° intelligible. But that at any point of it he be- | lieved his sentence was called for to preserve | the peace of the province is an unhistorical sug- ' gestion. 2. Had the history run at all in that direction, there are various situations which might be fig- | Pilate’s paramount duty was to preserve the peace in Palestine, to form the best judgment he could as to the means required for that purpose, and to act upon it when it was formed. Therefore, if and in so far as he believed in good faith and on reasonable grounds that what he did was necessary for the preservation of the peace of Palestine, he was right.""—“ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ by J. Frrzzames Stepuen, Q. C., p. 87. 1 My view of his true character scarcely varies from that so tersely given by Dr. Ellicott: “ A thorough and complete type of the later-Roman man of the world : stern, but not relentless shrewd and world-worn, prompt and practical, haughtily just, and yet, as the early writers correctly perceived, self-seeking and cowardly ; able to perceive what was right, but with- out moral strength to follow it out.”"—“* Historical Lect- ures,” sixth edition, p. 350. Compare with Philo, in his letter on ‘* Ambassadors.” ured. That a judge, even if he were not a mi. tary governor with merum imperium delegated from Rome, should slay a man who was overtly and in intent seditious, raises no question. Nej. ther Mr. Mill, nor any other advocate of liberty,. questions the duty of government to preserve the peace. That a governor, sitting or not sitting ag a judge, should deliver to death a man whom he believed to have no intentions against the peace, because he was in point of fact dangerous to it, might raise a serious question.’ In particular, 1“ Tf this should appear harsh [the assertion that Pilate’s duty was simply to maintain the Romar power], I would appeal again to Indian experience, Suppose that some great religious reformer—say, for instance, some one claiming to be the Guru of the Sikhs, or the Imam in whose advent many Moham- medans devoutly believe—were to make his appear- ance in the Punjaub or the Northwest Provinces, Suppose that there was good reason to believe—and nothing is more probable—that, whatever might be the preacher's own personal intentions, his preaching was calculated to disturb the public peace and produce mutiny and rebellion; and suppose, further (though the supposition is one which it is hardly possible to | make even in imagination), that a British officer, in- stead of doing whatever might be neceseary, or ex- ecating whatever orders he might receive, for the’ maintenance of British authority, were to consider whether he ought not to become a disciple of the Gura or Imam: what course would be taken toward him? He would be instantly dismissed with ignominy from the service which he would disgrace ; and, if he acted up to his convictions, and preferred his religion to his queen and country. he would be hanged as a rebel and a traitor.”—‘ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,”’ p. 94. Of course, the true parallel would rather be: Sup pose that the Guru or Imam were delivered to a British officer by his coreligionists on a charge of erecting a nationa) sysiem against the English raj, and refusing to pay an English tax ; that the officer, on personal examination, came to be satisfied that the man was innocent and the charge was false ; that, to pacify the other prieste, he proposed an intermediate punishment of one in whom he found no fault; that, | under great pressure brought against him to act con- trary to his view, he vacillated half a day; and that, at last, on being threatened with a complaint to his official superiors, which might endanger his place or promotion, he ordered his prisoner to torture or to death. Suppose all this, and suppose that the story came out fully on his arrival in London, in how many drawing-rooms would he be received ? But take it even that the case were not eo bad, Assume that a British officer thought himself com. pelled to order for execution a native preacher whore “personal intentions ” were not in the least hostile or seditious, because his preaching might in point of fact be, or had in point of fact been, dangerous to the English power, and because the example would have a good effect. This is about the best case made for Pilate. If done judicially, it would be a judicial mur- der. If done administratively, what onght it to be called? I believe ihere are few circles which would

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ir- it raises the distinction between the judicial and the administrative. What Pilate, as administra- tor of the province, might do in the way of de- porting or even killing an innocent man for the sake of its peace, is one question. What he might do sitting as a judge and inquiring whether there was “fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him,” is another matter ; and it is the one with which we have to deal. The distinction, kept sacred in aJl jurisprudences, is beginning to be confused in the minds of Eng- lish lawyers by the powerful but provincial theory of utility which they are taught, but the spread of which from the professor’s chair to the judg- ment-seat will, I think, be prevented by both the scientific traditions of Europe and the moral sense of mankind. In saying so, I do not forget the story of the English judge who told a pris- oner, “I sentence you to die, not at all because you have robbed this house, but in order that other people may not rob other houses in future.” That judge, if he existed and pronounced such a sentence, simply committed murder. But it was Caiaphas, not Pilate, who thought it expedient that one man should die for the people. And ‘ neither the one nor the other grounded the ex- pediency on any immediately apprehended out- break or on any danger to the peace. There was, indeed, no such immediate danger. How far there might be ultimate danger to the Roman state from the spread of convictions and the ac- ceptance of claims like those of Jesus, was an- other matter, and it was the really important one. The true question, as the critic of the “ Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” watchword soon dis- cerns, is between the universal supremacy of a government whose functions extended to some- thing much higher than keeping the peace on the one hand, and the claims of a kingdom not of this world on the other. 8. Accordingly, the final defense made for the Roman governor—the only one which can be of any weight in consistency with the history, and the only one also which bears on the great ques- tion of liberty of conscience or repression of opinion—is contained in the following passage of very general theory, illustrated in the quotation in my note on the previous page: hold that mere hesitation by a British officer to do such an act would infer ignominy or disgrace to the service. As to the further step of becoming personally a disciple of a “ higher form of morals than any pre- viously known (the immediate peace of the region being first cared for), there does not seem any other difficulty than what is dealt with in the text, in next THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. “ Pilate’s duty was to maintain peace and order in Judea, and to maintain the Roman power. It is surely impossible to contend seriously that it was his duty, or that it could be the duty of any one in his position, to recognize in the person brought to his judgment-seat, I do not say God incarnate, but the teacher and preacher of a higher form of morals and a more enduring form of social order than that of which he was himself the representative. Toa man in Pilate’s position, the morals and the social order which he represents are for all practical pur- poses absolute standards.” —P. 93. Whether this was the theory of Roman law, we may afterward see. But it is here presented as the universal and true theory, against which it is difficult to contend seriously. It may be so. This at all events is not the place to deal directly with it, further than by recording a fundamental dissent and implacable opposition.’ But it is ex- actly the place to point out that this was the theory which the defense of the accused seems directed to meet. The doctrine of the powerful book from which we quote is that “skeptical ar- guments in favor of moderation about religion are the only conclusive ones.” To suggest such arguments to the governor, or at least to leave his mind to the skeptical poise of the average educated Roman of the day, might have seemed the prudent part in a prophet accused of treason. His words take very much the opposite course. The assertion of a kingdom—a higher and ruling “form of morals and social order” —set up in the earth, but in a different plane and cosmos from the secular power of Rome, might of itself have implied the assertion of a duty to recognize that kingdom. But when its assertion was backed by an immediate appeal to the truth, as that which men are born into the world to confess, the de- fense plainly resolved into a claim that this truth, and not any social order or traditional belief, should be the “final and absolute standard.” And the last words addressed to Pilate clinch “the duty of any one in his position to recognize the teacher” of that higher order and extra- mundane truth; for “every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” Besides, even if we should prefer to disbelieve this conversation, we cannot escape from the fact that this was precise- 1 It is the same thecry, mutatis mutandis, with Ultra- montanism, and that not merely because in both the indi- vidual conscience is crushed under authority. “ It appears to me,” says the author, “ that the Ultramontane view of the relation between church and state is the true one ™ (p. 109), because, as is explained, Ultramontanes correctly hold that of the two powers one must be supreme and the other must obey, and that there is no real distinction of a colamn, spiritual and a secular province in human life.

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. a eee - ek rm oe > < | . AS A i a ES eT ONAL I Pt NE Ra lH a . 7 ‘ . _ : ly the attitude taken up historically by Christian- ity. It did not claim merely to be one higher form of morals or religion among others, It claimed to be the true religion—in the sense of being both universal and obligatory. And the empire, which would have been content to ignore it while it presented itself as simply a higher form of morals or even of social order, could not ignore it when it appeared as the universal and obligatory form. When it claimed to be the truth, Rome first answered, “‘ What is truth ?”’ and when it insisted on the right of truth to be obeyed, Rome answered again with persecution. And Christianity responded by the constant reiteration of the duty of every member of the state, whether an Official or not, to recognize this truth, to bear witness to it, and, if need be, to die for it. Hence the immense interest which has always attached to Pilate’s answering inquiry. It was the utter- ance of one who was neither a philosopher nor a statesman, but simply a typical Roman gentle- man, in a position where he represented his state. And precisely because it was so, the question, “What is truth?” lays bare the hinge upon which the mghty Roman world was then smooth- ly revolving into the abyss. The republic, we must never forget, had already ceased to believe in its own morals and social order. The fact is certain, but the pathos of it has too seldom been acknowledged. Again and again in the past we have mused and mourned over Greece, and its search of truth intellectual—its keen and fruit- less search, never ending, ever beginning, across wastes of doubt and seas of speculation, lighted by uncertain stars. But to-day let us for once remember that greater race, the greatest this 72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT.

earth has known; called and trained through long centuries to the work of governing a world, | and, when at last that mighty inheritance came | into its hands, stricken with inward paralysis for want of a motive and a hope. Too well has our own poet drawn the picture : “In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, The Roman noble lay ; He drove abroad. in furious guise, Along the Appian Way ; “ He made a feast. drank fierce and fast, And crowned his hair with flowers : No easier and no quicker passed The impracticable hours.” And so there crept upon men that moral languor and satiety of life which underlay the whole time of the empire, hardening often into cruel apathy or reckless despair. But have we always reflected

how certainly this cynical moral mood of the dominant race was the result of the new circum. stances into which it was thrown? In early days the Roman believed in himself, in his gods, in hig institutions, and, above all, in his state. It wag for him theatrum satis magnum—his standard, his rule, his righteousness. And so he was righteous, in bis stern, relentless way. But now the world had grown wider. And what had sufficed for vir- tue in former times did not suffice for virtue now, A provincial belief, a national religion, was too narrow for a world: it necessarily collapsed, and left the lords of earth, with strong hands and empty hearts, skeptical as to truth, and so laps. ing from righteousness. That this had become largely the result, even in the reign of Tiberius, is admitted. And it was plainly a position of matters very unfortunate for the application of the general rule suggested. That Pilate or Pliny, or any Roman official, should have to refuse a higher order of morals which his conscience approved, simply because his state believed in a lower, was hard enough. But that such an official should have to refuse that higher morality or religion, after both he and his state had ceased to believe in the lower, was harder still. And that in such circumstances a judge should have to use systematic persecu- tion against the confessedly higher convictions, simply to prevent their making head against a legal standard of faith which he and all men had begun to disbelieve, was the most unfortunate thing of all. There is probably nothing which so excites the loathing of mankind as when the state persecutes for a faith which it is already be- ginning to lose. And yet, obviously, that is pre- cisely the time when it is most likely to happen, and on the theory with which we are dealing it is what ought to happen. That theory we are not to discuss, but in answering the question by which its author so courageously illustrates it, “Was Pilate right in crucifying Christ?” we must for a moment shred away all circumstances of aggravation. Suppose that Pilate and the Ro- mans of his time still believed in the old religion of the little Tiber city, that Jesus had been a na- tive subject of that city, and that the law of the city demanded persecution of all religious convic- tions hostile to its old faith. What, in such cir- eumstances, was the “duty of a man in Pilate’s position?” I answer that his duty was (having first cared for the immediate peace of his district) to refuse to obey the law, and to resign his posi- tion rather than outrage a principle of conscience, which lies deeper than all social superstructures

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of either the church or the state. There are laws which are invalid because they strike against the basis of all law. But this brings us to the final question, What was the law of Rome in the mat- ter of the trial of Jesus Christ ? My space warns me to give a general answer to this question, and to avoid references to sources. It is well known that the policy of Rome as a conquering power toward the religions of subject states was one of toleration. But that meant lit- tle more than toleration of existing religions in their local seats. Because the worship of Serapis or Isis was tolerated on the Nile, as a monothe- istic worship was in Judea, it by no means fol- lowed that either of them became a religio licita on the banks of the Tiber. Even if such a re- ligion was tolerated on the Tiber, exclusive devo- tion to it was tolerated only in natives of the country from which it came, and was at no time permitted to Roman citizens. For them all over the world the old religion was imperative; and for the world the religion of the Tiber, though not imperative, was dominant. The concessions made to the provinces for their religions were strictly concessions, not concordats. According- ly, the concession was generally limited.by the idea, Cujus regio, ejus religio. Outside the re- gion or province where the local cult ruled, it was denied the rights of publicity and of prose- lytism, and was restricted to a passive and a private existence. These general considerations explain some of the variations in the Roman treatment of the Jewish and Christian faiths. The old Jewish religion had the paradoxical quality of being national or local on the one hand, while on the other it claimed to be exclu- sive truth. The union of the two qualities went far to explain that hostility to the human race which the Romans were fond of ascribing to it. A faith which attacked that of all other men, without inviting them to share in it, invited this misconstruction, But its very want of aggres- siveness saved it from collisions. When Chris- tianity appeared, a different problem had to be dealt with. Here was a faith which not only claimed to be the absolute truth, but which re- fused to be confined within local limits. It was essentially proselytizing, and therefore essentially public; and it demanded universal individual ac- ceptance—acceptance by the Roman as by the Greek and the Jew. What was the result? “The substance of what the Romans did was to treat Christianity by fits and starts as a crime.” ! 1 “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” p. 90. THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. That occasional persecution was not founded upon any specialties in the nature of Christian- ity, or excited by any great dislike to it as a form of worship or belief. It was persecuted gener- ally as a form of atheism, or of opposition to the established and tolerated institutions. And the opposition to it on this ground was set in motion and regulated by some of the greatest and wisest, and even, in a sense, most tolerant emperors. Trajan and the Antonines were wise and large- hearted monarchs. There was little in Christian- ity to repel, and there was much in it to attract, such men. They were not bigots, and those around them were generally skeptics. They did not believe in absolute or universa] truth in mat- ters of religion, and they did believe in the sover- eignty and supremacy of the Roman state. The consequence was, that while they protected in Egypt, and Palestine and Italy, all religiones lici- te which would live in peace with each other and claim no universal dominion, they bent the whole force of the state against the one religion which said, “For this cause are men born, that they should bear witness unto the truth,” and “Every one that is of the truth heareth His voice.” There is no way of explaining the history except by ac- knowledging that the constitutional law of Rome reserved to the state the right on the one hand to approve the license, or on the other to repress and forbid, the expression of new religious convic- tions, the public existence of a new faith. And this prerogative was held to form part of the majestas or supremacy of the state. It was so in the days of Tiberius as truly as in the Terreur juridique of Domitian. Pilate, as his deputy, seems to have been convinced that the claim of Jesus to be “Christ a king” was not a claim to temporal sovereignty. He ac- cepted in some sense his own assurance that it was a kingdom not of this world. Yet this meant, at the least, that his kingdom was a reli- gion, which he was about to found. It meant more. A religion which takes the form of a king- dom, with a king and his non-combatant servants, however little of “ of this cosmos” it may be, must be not only religion but a church. A uni- versa] religion, starting with individual faith, but adding immediately an obligation to confess that faith and to proselytize, is already (according to the Protestant definition) achurch. The defense of Jesus gave at least as much prominence to this as his disciples did during the early ages; and it gave additional seriousness to the charge of trea- son. A great student of history of our time has perhaps gone too far in holding that the Roman -

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74 laws againt unlicensed association or combina- tion were the unhappy root of all the persecu- tions,' too far even in holding that they were the instrument by which all these persecutions were carried on. These laws were the branches rather than the root, but they were in living union with it. There can be no doubt that the laws regu- lating collegia, and repressing all unlicensed asso- ciations, had from the beginning'a close connec- tion with the majesias of the state, and especially with its right to institute and enforce religion.* The two things worked together, and they did so in theory and practice. A claim of Jesus merely to found a universal religion might, no doubt, in practice, have come into collision with the laws of Rome. But his claim to found it as a king- dom, though not of this world—“ une association dans |’état en dehors de |’état,” as it is happily expressed—seems to me to have been essentially inconsistent with the public principle of that law. Christianity, in short, was incompatible with the Roman public law, and that not merely be- cause its contents were different from those of the old religion of Rome, but because its claim to universal individual acceptance and public con- fession conflicted with the unlimited and un- balanced sovereignty of the Roman state. And on these very points that law came into conflict with the Author of Christianity. It does not, perhaps, follow that Pilate, as its administrator— supposing him to have apprehended the existence of this religious conflict, as he apprehended the non-existence of any civil conspiracy—was bound THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. to condemn Jesus. As Trajan explains in his f- mous letter to the Governor of Bithynia, it was the duty of the higher magistrate to use his own discretion in dealing with those who had trang. gressed the law on religion. Pilate seems, in. deed, to have believed Jesus to be both just and harmless ; and, so believing, he sinned in swaying from his first judgment, and betrayed the inno. cent blood. But when he ultimately sent him to the cross it was as claiming to be a king, and on the original charge of acting adversus majestatem populi Romani. And in point of fact, whatever his judge may have thought, the claim of Christ was truly inconsistent with the claim of the state which Pilate represented; and the world must judge between the two. In considering the most famous of all trials from a merely legal and, indeed, formal point of view, we have come to some conclusions. We have found that it was a double trial, and that both parts of it were conducted with a certain regard to the forms of the two most famous juris- prudences of the world. In both the judges were unjust, and the trial was unfair; yet in both the right issue was substantially raised. And in both that issue was the same. Jesus Christ was truly condemned on a double charge of treason. He died because in the ecclesiastical council he claimed to be the Son of God and the Messiah of Israel, and because before the world-wide tribunal he claimed to be Christ a king.— Contemporary Review. ~~ > Y a cosmic emotion—the phrase is Mr. Henry Sidgwick’s—I mean an emotion which is felt in regard to the universe or sum of things, 1 “Ta seule chose & laquelle 'empire Romain ait dé- claré la guerre, en fait de religion, c'est la théocratie. Son principe était celui de I’était laique ; il n’admettait pas qu'une religion efit des conséquences civiles ou politiques & aucun degré; il n’admettait surtout aucune association dans l'état en dehors de l'état. Ce dernier point est essen- tiel; il est, 4 vrai dire, la racine de toutes les persécutions. La loi sur les confréries, bien plus que lintolérance reli- gieuse, fut la cause fatale des violences qui deshonorérent jes régnes des meilleurs souverains.”"—Renan’s “ Les Apé- tres,” p. 851. 2 “Ta prétexte de religion ou d’accomplissement de yeux ep commun est prévu et formellement indiqué parini les circonstances qui donnent 4 une réunion le caractére de délit; et ce délit n’était autre que celui de lése-majesté, au moins pour Vindividu qui avait provoqué la réunion.”— P. 362. COSMIC EMOTION. By W. KINGDON CLIFFORD. viewed as a cosmos or order. There are two kinds of cosmic emotion—one having reference to the Macrocosm or universe surrounding and containing us, the other relating to the Microcosm or universe of our own souls. When we try to put together the most general conceptions that we can form about the great aggregate of events that are always going on, to strike a sort of bal- ance among the feelings which these events pro- duce in us, and to add to these the feeling of vastness associated with an attempt to represent the whole of existence, then we experience a cos- mic emotion of the first kind. It may have the character of awe, veneration, resignation, sub- mission ; or it may be an overpowering stimulus to action, like the effect of the surrounding or- chestra upon a musician who is thereby caught - Ones a . 2 @& 4A BS & & a

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t was id on _ up and driven to play his proper part with force and exactness of time and tune. If, on the other hand, we consider the totality of our own actions and of the feelings that go with them or spring out of them, if we frame the highest possible gen- eralization to express the character of those which we call good, and if we contemplate this with the feeling of vastness which belongs to that which concerns all things that all men do, we shall ex- perience a cosmic emotion of the secod kind. Such an emotion finds voice in Wordsworth’s “Qde to Duty:” “ Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty, if that name thou love, Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove ; Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe ; From vain temptations dost set free And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!” - A special form of each of these kinds of cos- mic emotion has been expressed in a sentence by Immahuel Kant, which has been perfectly trans- lated by Lord Houghton : “Two things I contemplate with ceaseless awe: The stars of heaven, and man's sense of law.” For the star-full sky on a clear night is the most direct presentation of the sum of things that we can find, and from the nature of the circumstances is fitted to produce a cosmic emotion of the first Lind. And the moral faculty of man was thought of by Kant as possessing universality in a pe- culiar sense ; for the form of all right maxims, ac- cording to him, is that they are fit for universal law, applicable to all intelligent beings whatever. This mode of viewing the faculty is clearly well adapted for producing cosmic emotion of the sec- ond kind. The character of the emotion with which men contemplate the world, the temper in which they stand in the presence of the immensities and the eternities, must depend first of all on what they think the world is. The theory of the universe, the view of things, prevalent at any time and place, will rouse appropriate feelings in those who contemplate it ; not the same in all, for tem- perament varies with the individual, and the same facts stir differently different souls, yet so that, on the whole, the character of cosmic emotion depends on the nature of cosmic ideas. When, therefore, the inevitable progress of knowledge has changed the prevalent cosmic ideas, so that the world as we know it is not the world which our fathers knew, the old cosmic emotions are no longer found to fit. Knowledge | dria. Here he lectured on various topics, fore- COSMIC EMOTION. 15 must have been in men’s possession for a long time before it has acquired the certainty, the precision, the familiarity, the wide diffusion and comprehension which make it fit to rouse feelings strong enough and general enough for true poetic expression. For the true poetry is that which expresses our feelings, and not my feelings only— that which appeals to the universal in the heart of each one of us. So it comes about that the world of the poet, the world in its emotional as- pect, always lags a little behind the world of sci- ence, not merely as it appears to the few who are able to assist at the birth of its conceptions, but even as it is roughly and in broad strokes revealed to the many. We always know alittle more than our imaginations have thoroughly pictured. To some minds there is hope and renewing of youth in the sense that the last word is not yet spoken, that greater mysteries yet lie behind the veil. The prophet himself may say with gladness, “ He that cometh after me shal] be preferred before me.” But others see in the clearer and wider vision that approaches them the end of all beauty and joy in the earth; because their old feelings are not suited to the new learning, they think that learning can stir no feelings at all. Even the great poet already quoted, whom no science will put out of date, complained of the prosaic effects of explanation, and said, “ We murder to dissect.” I propose to consider and compare an ancient and a modern system of cosmic ideas, and to show how the emotions suited to the latter have already in part received poetic expression. In the early part of the fifth century of our era, the Neoplatonic philosopher Hierokles was teaching at Alexandria. He was an Alexandrian by birth, and had studied with Proklos, or a lit- tle before him, under Plutarch at Athens. He was a man of great eloquence, and of better Greek than most of his contemporaries. He astonished his hearers everywhere, says Suidas, by the calm, the magnificence, the width of his superlative in- tellect, and by the sweetness of his speech, full of the most beautiful words and things. A man of manly spirit and courage; for being once at By- zantium he came into collision with the ecclesias- tical authorities (rots xparote:) and was scourged in court; then, streaming with blood, he caught some of it in his hand and threw it at the magis- trate, with this verse of the Odyssey: “ Here, Cyclops, drink wine, since you eat human flesh !” For which contempt of court he was banished, but subsequently made his way back to Alexan-

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knowledge, will, and fate, expounding also some of the dialogues of Plato and other philosophical writings. But the matter of one course of lectures is preserved to us. It is a commentary on a docu- ment in hexameter verse belonging to the Pythago- rear_ scriptures, dating apparently from the third century B.c. These lines were called by Jam- blichus the “Golden Verses;” but Gregory of Nazianzum did them the honor to say they were rather made of lead. They are not elegant as poetry; the form of verse seems to have been adopted as an aid to the memory. More than half of them consist of a sort of versified “duty to God and my neighbor,” except that it is not designed by the rich to be obeyed by the poor, that it lays stress on the laws of health, and that it is just such sensible counsel for the good and right conduct of life as an English gentleman might nowadays give to his son. We need not be as- tonished that the step from the Mediterranean to Great Britain, over two thousand years of time, should make no great difference in the validity of maxims like these. We might go back four thousand years farther, and find the same pre- cepts handed down at Memphis as the wisdom of a hoar antiquity. “There’s some things as I’ve never felt i’ the dark about,” says Mrs. Winthrop, “and they’re mostly what comes i’ the day’s work.” There are curious indications that the point of view of the commentator is not that of the verses themselves. “Before all things honor the im- mortal gods, as they are ordained by law,” begin the verses, with the frank Erastianism of the Greeks, who held that every man should worship the gods in the manner belonging to his city and country; that matter being settled for themselves by the oracle of the Delphian Apollo. But this did not suit the Neoplatonist of the fifth century, whom the “law” of his country required to wor- ship images of Mary and her son (to be sure, they might be adapted figures of Isis and Horus) and the miraculous toe-nails of some filthy and igno- rant monk. The law named in the verses could not be that which had scourged and banished a philosopher ; so it is explained to mean the demi- urgic law, which assigns to the gods their several orders, the law of the divine nature. We are to honor the immortal gods, says the commentator, in the order which is assigned to them by the law of their being. For Hierokles there is one supreme deity and three orders of angels—the immortal gods, the illustrious heroes, and the ter- restrial demons or partially deified souls of men. 76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. The bishops, as we all know, multiplied these numbers by three. As to the kind of woiship, our commentator quotes some old Pythagorean maxims: “ You shall honor the god best, by becoming godlike in your thoughts. Whoso giveth God honor as to one that needeth it, that man in his folly hath made himself greater than God. The wise man only is a priest, is a lover of God, is skilled to pray.” “For,” he says, “that man only knows how to worship who does not confound the relative dignity of worshipful things, who begins by offering himself as the victim, fashions his own soul into a divine image, and furnishes his mind as a temple for the reception of the divine light.” “The whole force of worship,” he says in another place, “lies in knowledge of the nature of that which is wor. shiped.” [It is interesting to compare this last maxim with the proposition of Spinoza:! “He who clear- ly and distinctly understands bimself and what affects him, loves God, and that the more, the more he understands himself and what affects him.” For to understand clearly and distinctly is to contemplate in relation to God, to the cos- mic idea. When the mind contemplates itself in relation to God, it necessarily rises from a lower to a higher grade of perfection. Now joy is the passage from a lower to a higher grade of perfection, and Jove is joy associated with the idea of an external cause. He, then, that rises to higher perfection in the presence of the idea of God, loves God.] But it is in the latter portion of the “Golden Verses” that we find a general view of life and of Nature assigned as the ground of the’ precepts which have gone before. There are in all seventy- one lines ; of the last thirty-two I venture to sub- join a translation as nearly literal as is consistent with intelligibility : * ‘Let not soft sleep come upon thine eyelids, till thou hast pondered thy deeds of the day: ‘* Wherein have I sinned? What work havel done? What left undone that I was bound to do? “Beginning at the first, go through even unto the last; and then let thy heart smite thee for the evil deed, but rejoice in the good work. “ Work at these commandments, and think upon them ; these commandments shalt thou love. 1“ Qui se suosque affectus clare et distincte intelli- git, Deum amat, et eo magis, quo se suosque affectus magis intelligit."—2Zth. v., prop.xv, Cf. Affectuum definitiones ad fin. part. iii. 2 The text followed is that of Mullach, in the “Frag- menta Philosophorum Grecorum,” Paris, 1860, from the prolegomena to which my information is derived.

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wor- Axim lear. ty- ‘ “ They shall surely set thee in the way of divine righteousness ; yea, by him who gave into our soul the Tetrad, well-spring of Nature everlasting. “Set to thy work with a will, beseeching the for the end thereof. “And when thou hast mastered these command- ments, thou shalt know the being of the gods that die not, and of men that die; thou shalt know of things, wherein they are diverse, and the kinship that binds them in one. “ Know, so far as is permitted thee, that Nature in all things is like unto herself, “ That thou mayst not hope that of which there is no hope, nor be ignorant of that which may be. “ Know thou also that the woes of men are the work of their own hands. “ Miserable are they, because they see not and hear not the good that is very nigh them; and the way of escape from evil, few there be that under- stand it. “ Like rollers they roll to and fro, having end- less trouble; so hath Fate broken the wits! of mortal man. ‘A baneful strife lurketh inborn in us, and goeth on the way with us to hurt us; this let not a man stir up, but avoid and flee. “Verily, Father Zeus, thou wouldst free all men from much evil, if thou wouldst teach all men what manner of spirit they are of. “ But do thou be of good cheer; for they are gods’ kindred whom holy Nature leadeth onward, and in due order showeth them all things. “ And if thou hast any part with them, and keepest these commandments, thou shalt utterly heal thy soul, and save it from travail. “ Keep from the meats aforesaid, using judgment both in cleansing and in setting free thy soul. “ Give heed to every matter, and set Reason on high, who best holdeth the reins of guidance. “ Then, when thou leavest the body, and comest into the free ether, thou shalt be a god undying, everlasting, neither shall death have any more dominion over thee.” It is worth while to notice the comment of Hierokles on the self-judgment enjoined in the first of these lines : “The judge herein appointed,” he says, “is the most just of all, and the one which is most at home with us; namely, conscience itself, and right reason. And each man is to be judged by him- self, before whom our bringing-up has taught us to be more shamefast than before any other. (As & previous verse commands; of all men be most shamefast before thyself : wdvtwv 8¢ udder’ aicxiveo vavrév.) For what is there of which one man can so admonish another, as he can himself? For the free will, misusing the liberty of its nature, turns away from the counsels of others, when it does not 1 “My brains are broken."—Siz Watrer Rauziau. COSMIC EMOTION. wish to be led by them; but a man’s own reason must needs obey itself.” Whether the clear statement of this doctrine of the conscience, dominans ille deus in nobis, as Cicero calls it, is originally Stoic or Pythagorean, must be left for the learned to decide. Hierokles, however, says expressly that the image of Reason guiding the lower faculties as the charioteer guides his chariot was derived by Plato from the Pytha- goreans. Very remarkable indeed is the view of Nature set forth in the subsequent verses. “Know, so far as is permitted thee, that Nature is in all things uniform ” (péow wep wavrds dyolny). This conception of the world as a great cosmos or order is the primary condition of human prog- ress. In the earliest steps of primitive men in the simplest arts of life there is involved a dim recognition and practical use of it to the extent of its application in that stage. Every step for- ward is an increase in the range of its applica- tion. In the industrial arts, in the rules of health, the methods of healing, the preparation of food, in morals and politics, every advance is an application of past experience to new circum- stances, in accordance with an observed order of Nature. Philosophy consists in the conscious recognition of this method, and in the systematic use of it for the complete guidance of life. Aber- ration from it is the death of the rational soul; not, says Hierokles, that it ceases thereby to exist, but that it falls away from harmony with divine Nature and with reason. This fatal fall- ing away brings about endless waste and perver- sion of strenuous effort; a hoping for things of which there is no hope, an ignorance of what may be; a perpetual striving to clamber up the back stairs of a universe that has no back stairs. The Neoplatonists were not wholly spotless in this regard. They had learned evil things of the Egyptians: magic, astrology, converse with spir- its, theurgy, and the endeavor by trances and ecstasies to arrive at feelings and ideas which are alien to the healthy and wakeful mind. And so the uniformity of Nature gives our commentator some little trouble, and requires to be interpreted. ** Know 80 far as is permitted thee (4 @¢urs éori),” says the verses. ‘“ For we ought not to yield to unreasoning prejudice, and accommodate the order and dignity of things to our fancies; but to keep within the bounds of truth, and know all things as it is permitted, namely, as the Demiurgic law has assigned to every one its place.”’ So the commentator, reading into the verses

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73 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. more than the writer put there, not without edi- fication. We, then, on our part, may read into them this—that it is not “permitted” to regard the uniformity of Nature as a dogma known with certainty, or exactness, or universality ; but only within the range of human conduct, as a practi- cal rule for the guidance of the same, and as the only source of beliefs that will not lead astray. For to affirm any general proposition of this kind | to be certainly, or exactly, or universally true, is to make a mistake about the nature and limits of human knowledge. But at present it is a venial mistake, because the doctrine of the na- ture of human knowledge, Erkenntniss- Theorie, Ken-lore, is only now being thoroughly worked out, so that our children will know a great deal more about it than we do, and have what they know much better and more simply expressed. It is almost infinitely more important to keep in view that the uniformity of Nature is practically | certain, practically exact, practically universal, | and to make this conception the guide of our | lives, than to remember that this certainty, exact- | ness, and universality, are only .known practically, not in a theoretical or absolute way. How far away is the doctrine of uniformity from fatalism ! It begins directly to remind us that men suffer from preventable evils, that the people perisheth for lack of knowledge. ‘“ Miserable are they, because they see not and hear not the good that is very nigh them; and the way of escape from evil, few there be that understand it.” The practical lesson is not that of the pessimist, that we should give up the contest, recognize that life is an evil, and get out of it as best we may ; but, on the contrary, that, having found anything wrong, we should set to work to mend it: for the woes of men are the work of their own hands. “*But be thou of good cheer, for they are of gods’ kindred whom holy Nature leadeth onward, and in due order showeth them all things.” The expression (iepa rpopépovea . . . . Seixvvow éxaora) belongs to the right of initiation into the mysteries. Nature 1s represented as the hiero- phant, the guiding priest by whom the faithful were initiated into the divine secrets one by one. The history of mankind is conceived as such a mystic progress under the guidance of divine Na- ture. It has been sometimes said that the ancient world was entirely devoid of the conception of progress. But like most sweeping antitheses be- tween ancient and modern, Hast and West, and the like, when we come to look a little closely into this assertion it becomes difficult to believe that any definite meaning can ever have been ag. signed toit. Certainly in the matter of physical science there is no case of firmer faith in progress than that of Hipparchus, who having made the great step of determining the solar and lunar mo. tions, and having failed to extend the same meth. ods to the planets, stored up observations in the sure and certain hope that a more fortunate sue. cessor would accomplish that work; which in. deed was done by Ptolemy. And it is very im. portant to notice that the exact sciences were re. garded as the standard to which the others should endeavor to attain, as appears by the commentary on a subsequent passage in these very verses, On the phrase “ using judgment both in cleansing and in setting free thy soul,” Hierokles explains that the cleansing or lustration of the rational soul means the mathematical sciences, and that the upward-leading liberation (a4vaywyds Avors), the freedom that is progress, is scientific inguiry, or a scientific view of things (Siadrextixh Tar ivrey éxorrela), the clear and exact vision of one who has attained the highest grade of initiation. Ac- cordingly, the medical sciences never lost the tra- dition of progress by continuous observation, im- pressed on them by Hippocrates; and in the Alexandrian Museum were training that galaxy of famous physicians and naturalists which kept the school illustrious until the claims of culture were restored by the Arab conquest. Nor is it possible to deny the conception and practice of political progress to the great jurists of Rome, any more than that of ethical progress to the Stoic moralists. To the best minds, with what- ever subject occupied, there was present this con- ception of divine Nature patiently educating the human race, ready to bring out of her store-house good things without number in the proper time. Nor was this hope of continued progress alto- gether a vain one, if we will only look in the right place for the fulfillment of it. Greek polity and culture had been planted in the East by Alexan- der’s conquests from the Nile to the Indus, there to suck up and gather together the wisdom of centuries and of continents. Wher the light and the right were driven out of Europe by the Church, they found in the far East a home with the Ommi- yade and Abbasside caliphs, whose reign gave peace and breathing-time to the old and young civ- ilization that was ready to grow. Acrossthe north of Africa came again the progressive culture of Greece and Rome, enriched with precious jewels of old-world lore; it took firm ground in Spain, and the light and the right were flashed back into Europe from the blades of Saracen swords. From ESE?So 23s tPF rs &

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Bagdad to Cordova, in the great days of the caliphate, the best minds had faith in human progress to be made by observation of the order of Nature. Here, again, the true culture was overridden and destroyed by the development of the Mohammedan religion; but not until the sa- ered torch had been safely handed on to the new nations of convalescent Europe. _If the singer of the “ Golden Verses ” could have contemplated on these lines the history of the two thousand years that were to succeed him, he would have seen an uninterrupted succession of naturalists and physicians, philosophers and statesmen, all steadily reaching forward to the good things that were before, never losing hold of what had already been attained. And we, looking back, may see that through overwhelm- ing difficulties, and dangers, and diseases, holy Nature has indeed been leading onward the kin- dred of the gods, slowly but surely unfolding to them the roll of the heavenly mysteries. Of course, if we restrict our view to Europe itself, we meet with a far more complex and dif- ficult preblem—a problem of pathology as op- posed to one of healthy growth. We have to ex- plain the apparent anomaly of two epochs of com- parative sanity and civilization separated by the disease and delirium of the Catholic episode. Just as the traveler, who has been worn to the bone by years of weary striving among men of another skin, suddenly gazes with doubting eyes upon the white face of a brother, so, if we travel backward in thought over the darker ages of the history of Europe, we at length reach back with such bounding of heart to men who had like hopes with ourselves; and shake hands across that vast with the singers of the “ Golden Verses,” our own true spiritual ancestors. Well may Greece sing to the earth her mother, in the “ Litany of Nations:” “Tam she that made thee lovely with my beauty From north to south: Mine, the fairest lips, took first the fire of duty From thine own mouth. Mine, the fairest eyes, sought first thy laws and knew them Truths undefiled ; Mine, the fairest hands, took freedom first into them, A weanling child.” ! Let us now put together the view of Nature and of life which is presented to us by the “Gol- den Verses,” with a view to considering its fitness for cosmic emotion. We are taught therein to look upon Nature as a divine order or cosmos, ? Swinburne, “ Songs before Sunrise.” COSMIC EMOTION. 79 acting uniformly in all of its diverse parts ; which order, by means of its uniformity, is continually educating us and teaching us to act rightly. The ideal character, that which is best fitted to re- ceive the teaching of Nature, is one which has conscience for its motive power and reason for its guide. The main point to be observed is that the two kinds of cosmic emotion run together and become one. The macrocosm is viewed only in relation to human action: Nature is presented to the emotions as the guide and teacher of hu- manity. And the microcosm is viewed only as tending to complete correspondence with the ex- - ternal: human conduct is subject for reverence only in so far as it is consonant to the demiurgic law, in harmony with the teaching of divine Nature. This union of the two sides of cosmic emotion belongs to the essence of the philosophic life, as the corresponding intellectual conception is of the essence of the scientific view of things. There were other parts of the Pythagorean conception of Nature and man which we cannot at present so easily accept. And even so much as is here suggested we cannot hold as the Py- thagoreans held it, because there are the thoughts and the deeds of two thousand years between. These ideas fall in very well with the furniture of our minds; but a great deal of the furniture is new since their time, and changes their place and importance. Of the detailed machinery of the Pythagorean creed these verses say nothing. Of the sacred fire, the hearth of the universe, with sun and planets and the earth’s double antich- thon revolving round it, the whole inclosed in a crystal globe with nothing outside—of the “Great Age” of the world, after which everything occurs over again in exactly the same order—of the mystic numbers, and so forth, we find no men- tion in these verses, and they do not lose much by it, though on that account Zeller calls them “colorless.” But a remembrance of these doc- trines will help us to appreciate the change that has come over our view of the world. First, then, the cosmos that we have to do with is no longer a definite whole including ab- solutely all existence. The old cosmos had a boundary in space, a finite extent in time; for the great age might be regarded as a circle, on which you return to the same point after going once round. Beyond the crystal sphere of the fixed stars was nothing; outside that circle of time no history. But now, the real universe ex- tends at least far beyond the cosmos, the order that we actually know of. The sum total of our experience and of the inferences that can fairly

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE be drawn from it is only, after all, a part of some- thing larger. So sings one whom great poets revere as a poet, but to whom writers of excel- lent prose, and even of leading articles, refuse the name: “T open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprin- kled systems, ~ “ And all I eee, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther syatems. “ Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, * Outward and outward, and forever outward. * There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage ; “If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or apon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long-run ; * We should surely bring up again where we now stand, “And as surely go as much farther—and then farther and farther. “ A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span, or make it im- patient ; “ They are but parts—anything is but a part. “ See ever so far, there is limitiess space outside of that ; “Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.”’* Whatever conception, then, we can form of the external cosmos must be regarded as only provi- sional and not final, as waiting revision when we shall have pushed the bounds of:our knowledge farther away in time and space. It must always, therefore, have a character of incompleteness about it, a want, a stretching out for something better to come, the expectation of a further les- son from the universal teacher, Experience. And this not only by way of extension of space and time, but by increase of our kvowledge even about this part that we know of. Our concep- tion of the universe is for us, and not for our children, any more than it was for our fathers. But, again, this incompleteness does not be- long to our conception of the external cosmos alone, but to that of the internal cosmos also. Human nature is fluent, it is constantly, though slowly, changing, and the universe of human ac- | tion is changing also. Whatever general concep- tion we may form of good actions and bad ones, we must regard it as quite valid only for our- selves; the next generation will have a slightly modified form of it, but not the same thing. The Kantian universality is no longer possible. No | maxim can be valid at all times and places for all rational beings; a maxim valid for us can only be valid for such portions of the human race MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Here, then, we have two limitations to keep in mind when we form our cosmic conceptions, On both sides they are provisional: instead of picturing to ourselves a universe, we represent only a changing part; instead of contemplating an eternal order, an absolute right, we find only a changing property of a shifting organism. Are we, then, to be disappointed? I think not; for, if we consider these limitations a little more closely, we shall perceive an advantage in each of them. First, of the external cosmos. Our concep. tion is limited to a part of things. But to what part? Why, precisely to the part that concerns us. The universe we have to consider is the whole of that knowledge which can rightly in. fluence human action. For, wherever there is a question of guiding human action, there is a possibility of profiting by experience on the as- sumption that Nature is uniform; that is, there is room for the application of science. All practical questions, therefore, are within the domain of science. And we may show converse- ly that all questions in the domain of science, all questions, that is, which have a real intelligi- ble meaning, and which may be answered either now or at some future time by inferences founded on the uniformity of Nature, are practical ques- tions in a very real and important sense. For the interrogation of Nature, without and within him, is a most momentous part of the work of man on this earth, seeing how all his progress has depended upon conscious or unconscious la- bor at this task. And, although the end of all knowledge is action, and it is only for the sake of action that knowledge is sought by the hu- man race, yet, in order that it may be gained in sufficient breadth and depth, it is necessary that the individual should seek knowledge for its own sake. The seeking of knowledge for its own sake is a practical pursuit of incalculable value to humanity. The pretensions of those who would presume to clothe genius in a strait-waist- coat, who would forbid it to attempt this task because Descartes failed in it, and that one be- cause Comte knew nothing about it, would be fatally mischievous if they could be seriously considered by those whom they might affect. No good work in science has ever been done un- der such conditions; and no good worker can fail to see the utter futility and short-sightedness of those who advocate them. For there is no field of inquiry, however apparently insignificant, as are practically identical with ourselves. t Whitman, “ Leaves of Grass." that does not teach the worker in it to distrust his own powers of prevision as to what he is ee ee ae ae ee lll lll

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likely to find ; to expect the unexpected ; to be suspicious of his own accuracy if everything comes out quite as it “ought to;” but not to hazard the shadow of a guess about the degree of “ utility” that may result from his investiga- tions. Man’s creative energy may be checked and hindered, or perverted from the truth ; but it js not to be regulated by a pedantic schoolmaster who thought he could whip the centuries with his birch-broom. The cosmos, then, which science now pre- sents to our minds, is only a part of something larger which includes it. But at the same time it is the whole of what concerns us, and no more than what concerns us. Wherever human knowledge establishes itself, that point becomes thenceforward a centre of practical human inter- est. It, and whatever valid inference can con- nect with it, is the business of all mankind. So also, if we consider the limitation imposed on our idea of the internal cosmos by the chang- ing character of human nature, we shall find that we have gained more than we have lost by it. It is true that we can no longer think of conscience and reason as testifying to us of things eternal and immutable. Human nature is no longer there, a definite thing from age to age, persisting unaltered through the vicissitudes of cities and~peoples. Very nearly constant it is, practically constant for so many centuries ; but not constant through that range of time which it practically concerns us to know about and to ponder. But, on the other side, what a flood of light is let in by this very fact, not only on hu- man nature, but on the whole world! It is im- possible to exaggerate the effect of the doctrine of evolution on our conception of man and of Nature. Suppose all moving things to be sud- denly stopped at some instant, and that we could be brought fresh, without any previous knowledgé, to look at this petrified scene. The spectacle would be intensely absurd. Crowds of people would be senselessly standing on one leg in the street, looking at one another's backs ; others would be wasting their time by sitting in a train in a place difficult to get at, nearly all with their mouths open and their bodies in some contorted, unrestful posture. Clocks would stand with their pendulums on one side. Every thing would be disorderly, conflicting, in its wrong place. But once remember that the world is in motion, is going somewhere, and everything will be accounted for and found just as it should be. Just so great a change of view, COSMIC EMOTION. just so complete an explanation, is given to us 42 when we recognize that the nature of man and beast and of all the world is changing, is going somewhere. The silly maladaptations in organic Nature are seen to be steps toward the improve- ment or discarding of imperfect organs. The baneful strife which lurketh inborn in us, and goeth on the way with us to hurt us, is found to be the relic of a time of savage or even lower con- dition. It is probable that the doctrine of evolution fills a somewhat larger space in our attention than belongs to its ultimate influence. In the next century, perhaps, men will not think so much about it ; they will be paying a new atten- tion to some new thing. But it will have seized upon their minds, and will dominate all their thoughts to an extent that we cannot as yet con- ceive. When the sun is rising we pay special attention to him and admire his glories; but when he is well risen we forget him, because we are busy walking about in his light. Meanwhile, the doctrine of evolution may be made to compensate us for the loss of the immu- table and eternal verities by supplying us with a general conception of a good action, in a wider sense than the ethical one. If I have evolved myself out of something like an amphioxus, it is clear to me that I have become better by the change—I have risen in the organic scale; I have become more organic. Of all the changes that I have undergone, the great- er part must have been changes in the organic direction ; some in the opposite direction, some perhaps neutral. But if I could only find out which, I should say that those changes which have tended in the direction of greater organiza- tion were good, and those which tended in the opposite direction bad. Here there is no room for proof; the words “good” and “bad” be- long to the practical reason, and if they are de- fined it is by pure choice. I choose that defini- tion of them which must, on the whole, cause those people who act upon it to be selected for survival. The good action, then, is a mode of action which distinguishes organic from inorganic things, and which makes an organic thing more organic, or raises it in the scale. Sere try presently to determine more precisely what is the nature of this action; we must now merely remember that my actions are to be regarded as good or bad according as they tend to improve me as an organism—to make me move farther away from those intermediate forms through which my race has passed, or to make me re- trace these upward steps and go down again.

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Here we have our general principle for the inter- nal cosmos, the world of our own actions. What, now, is our principle for the external cosmos? We consider here again not a statical thing, but a vast series of events, We want to coatemplate, not the nature of the external uni- verse as it now is, but the history of its changes ; not a perpetual cycle of similar events, with nothing new under the sun, but a drama whose beginning is different from its middle, and the middle from the end. For practical purposes, which are what concern us, the solar system is a quite sufficient cosmos. We have certainly a history of it furnished to us by the nebular hy- pothesis ; and the truth of this hypothesis is a matter of practical interest, because the failure of the inferences on which it is founded would modify our actions very considerably. Still the great use of it is to show that the life upon the earth must have been evolved from inorganic matter ; for the evolution of life is that part of the history of the cosmos which directly concerns us. Now here we have the enormous series of events which bridges over the gulf between the smallest of colloid matter and the human organ- ism ; this is our external cosmos. Must we leave it as a series of events ? or can we find a genera] principle by which the series shall be represented as a single event constantly going on? Clearly we can, for the single event is a mode of ac- tion which distinguishes organic from inorganic things, and makes organic things more organic. We may regard this mode of action as the gen- erating principle which has produced all the life upon the earth. We arrive thus at a common principle, which at once distinguishes good actions from bad in the internal world, and which has created the external world so far as it is living. This prin- ciple is, then, a fit object for cosmic emotion if we can only get rid of the vagueness of its defi- nition. And it has this great advantage, that it does not need to be personified for poetical pur- poses. For we may regard the result of this mode of action, extended over a great length of time, as in some way an embodiment of the action it- self. In this way the human race embodies in itself all the ages of organic action that have gone to its evolution. The nature of organic action, then, is to personify itself, and it has personified itself most in the human race. But before we go further two things must be remarked : First, the very great influence of life in modifying the surface of the earth, so great as in many cases to be comparable to the effects of 82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. far ruder changes. Thus, we have rocks com. posed entirely of organic remains, and climate changed by the presence or absence of foreste, Secondly, although we have restricted our cosmos to the earth in space, and to the history of life upon it in time, there is no necessity to maintain the restriction. For we must suppose that or- ganic action will always take place when the ele. ments which are capable of it are present under the requisite physical conditions of temperature, light, and environment. It is, therefore, in the last degree improbable that it is confined to our own planet. In this principle, therefore, we must recognize the mother of life, and especially of human life, powerful enough to subdue the elements, and yet always working gently against them ; biding her time in the whole expanse of heaven, to make the highest cosmos out of inorganic chaos ; the actor, not of all the actions of living things, but only of the good actions ; for a bad action is one by which the organism tends to become less or. ganic, and acts for the time as if inorganic. To this mother of life, personifying herself in the good works of humanity, it seems to me that we may fitly address a splendid hymn of Mr. Swinburne’s, whose meaning if I mar or mistake by such application, let the innocency of my in- tent plead for pardon with one into whose work it is impossible to read more or more fruitful meaning than be meant in the writing of it : “Mother of man’s time-traveling generations, Breath of his nostrils, heart-blood of his heart, God above all gods worshiped of all nations, Light above light, law beyond law, thou art. “Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder Shadows, and chains, and dreams, and iron things; The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings. “ All old gray histories hiding thy clear features, O secret spirit and sovereign, all men’s tales, Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures, They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils. “Thine hands, without election or exemption, Feed ali men fainting from false peace or strife, O thou, the resurrection and redemption, . The godhead and the manhood and the life.” } Still our conception is very vague. We have only said, “‘ Good action has created the life of the world, and in so doing has personified itself in humanity ; so we call it the mother of life and of man.” And we have defined good action to be that which makes an organism more organic. 1 “Songs before Sunrise.” sy -_ as «4A oS aC Ores lUcelCc _—_ -_”. —- 2 ae me eee he ee ee

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bu gs or- om = &® ® -

We want, therefore, to know something more definite about the kind of action which makes an organism more organic. | This we can find, and of a nature suitable for cosmic emotion, by paying attention to the difference between molar and molecular move- ment. We know that the particles, even of bodies which appear to be at rest, are really in a state of very rapid agitation, called molecular motion, and that heat and nerve-discharge are cases of such motion. But molar motion is the movement in one piece of masses large enough to be seen. Now, the peculiarity of living matter is, that it is capable of combining together molecular motions, which are invisible, into molar motions, which can be seen. It, therefore, appears to have the property of moving spontaneously, without help from anything else. So it can for a little while; but it is then obliged to take molecular motion from the surrounding things if it is to go on moving. So that there is no real spontaneity in the case. But still its changes of shape, due to aggregation of molecular mo- tion, may fairly be called action from within, be- cause the energy of the motion is supplied by the substance itself, and not by any external thing. If we suppose the same thing to be true for a complex organism that is true for a small speck of living matter—that those changes in it | which are directly initiated by the living part of | the organism are the ones which distinguish it from inorganic things, and tend to make it more organic—then we shall have here the nearer definition of organic action. It is probable that the definition, as I have stated it, is rather too precise—that the nature of the action, in fact, varies with circumstances in the complex organ- ism, but it is always nearly as stated. Let us consider what this means from the in- ternal point of view. WhenI act from within, or in an organic manner, what seems to me to happen? I must appear to be perfectly free, for, if I did not, I must be made to act by something outside of me. “ We think ourselves free,” says Spinoza, “being conscious of our actions, and not of the causes which determine them.” But we have seen reason to believe that, although there is no physical spontaneity, yet the energy for such an action is taken out of myself—i. e., out of the living matter in my body. As, there- fore, the immediate origin of my action is in my- self, I really am free in the only useful sense of the word. ‘Freedom is such a property of the will,” says Kant, “as enables living agents to |

COSMIC EMOTION.

originate events independently of foreign deter- mining causes.” The character of an organic action, then, is freedom—that is to say, action from within. The action which has its immediate antecedents with- in the organism has a tendency, in so far as it alters the organism, to make it more organic, or to raise it in the scale. The action which is de- termined by foreign causes is one in regard to which the organism acts as if inorganic, and, in so far as the action tends to alter it, it tends also to lower it in the scale. It is important to remember that only a part of the body of a complex organism is actually living matter. This living matter carries about a quantity of formed or dead stuff; as Epictetus says, Yuxdpiov <I Bdoraloy vexpdyv— a little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.” ! Only actions originating in the living part of the organism are to be regarded as actions from within ; the dead part is, for our purposes, a por- tion of the external world. And so, from the internal point of view, there are rudiments and survivals in the mind which are to be excluded from that me, whose free action tends to prog- ress; that baneful strife which lurketh inborn in us is the foe of freedom—this let nota man stir up, but avoid and flee, The way in which freedom, or action from within, lias effected the evolution of organisms, is clearly brought out by the theory of natural selection. For the improvement of a breed de- pends upon the selection of sports—that is to say, of modifications due to the overflowing energy of the organism, which happen to be use- ful to it in its special circumstances. Modifica- tions may take place by direct pressure of ex- ternal circumstances; the whole organism, or any organ, may lose in size or strength from failure of the proper food, but such modifications are in the downward, not in the upward, direc- tion. Indirectly external circumstances may, of course, produce upward changes ; thus the drying up of axolotl ponds caused the survival of indi- viduals which had “sported” in the direction of ° lungs. But the immediate cause of change in the direction of higher organization is always the in- ternal and quasi-spontaneous action of the or- ganism. 1 Swinburne, “Poems and Ballads.” I am aware of the difficulties which beset Dr. Beale’s theory of germinal matter, as they are stated by Mr. G. H. Lewes; but, how- | ever hard it may be to decide what és living matter, and what is formed stuff, the distinction appears to me to be a real one, to the extent, at least, of the use here made of it,

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “ Freedom we call it, for holier Name of the soul's there is none; Surelier it labors, if slowlier, Than the metres of star or of sun ; Slowlier than life into breath, Surelier than time into death, It moves till its labor be done.” ! The highest of organisms is the social organ- ism. To Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has done so much for the whole doctrine of evolution, and for all that is connected with it, we owe the first clear and rational statement of the analogy be- tween the individual and the social organism, which, indeed, is more than an analogy, being in many respects a true identity of process, and structure, and function. Our main business is with one property which the social organism has in common with the individual—namely, this, that it aggregates molecular motions into molar ones. The molecules of a social organism are the individual men, women, and children, of which it is composed. By means of it, actions which, as individual, are insignificant, are massed together into the important movements of a society. Co- operation, or band-work, is the life of it. Thus it is able to “ originate events independently of for- eign determining causes,” or to act with freedom. Freedom in a society, then, is a very different thing from anarchy. It is the organic action of the society as such ; the union of its elements in a@ common work. As Mr. Spencer points out, society does not resemble those organisms which are so higbly centralized that the unity of the whole is the important thing, and every part must die if separated from the rest, but rather those which will bear separation and reunion, because, although there is a certain union and organiza- tion of the parts in regard to one another, yet the far more important fact is the life of the parts separately. The true health of society depends upon the communes, the villages and townships, infinitely more than on the form and pageantry of an imperial government. If in them there is band-work, union for a common effort, converse in the working out of a common thought, then «the Republic is, and needs not to be made with hands, though Cesar have his guns in every cita- del. None the less it will be part of the business of the Republic, as she grows in strength, to re- move him. So long as two or three are gathered together, freedom is there in the midst of them, and it is not until society is utterly divided into its elements that she departs : “Courage yet! my brother or my sister! Keep on! Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs; 1 Swinburne, “ Songs before Sunrise.” That is nothing, that is quelled by one or two failures, or any number of failures, Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness, | Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes. Revolt! and still revolt! revolt! What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagos of te 6ea 5 What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement, Waiting patiently, waiting its time. When liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go, It waits for all the rest to go—it is the last. When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life, and all the souls of men and women, are discharged from any part of the earth, Then only shall liberty, or the idea of liberty, be discharged from that part of the earth, And the infidel come into full possession.” ! So far our cosmic conception is external, Starting with organic action, as that which has effected the evolution of life, and all the works of life, we have found it to have the character of freedom, or action from within, and in the case of the social organism we have seen that freedom is the organic action of society as such, which is what we call the Republic. The Republic is the visible embodiment and personification of free- dom in its highest external type. But the Republic is itself still further personi- fied, in a way that leads us back with new light to the conception of the internal cosmos. The practice of band-work, or comradeship, the or- ganic action of society, has so moulded the nature of man as to create in it two specially human faculties—the conscience and the intellect. Con- science is an instinctive desire for those things which conduce to the welfare of society ; intellect is an apparatus for connecting sensation and ac- tion, by means of a symbolic representation of the external world, framed in common, and for common purposes, by the social intercourse of men. Conscience and reason form an inner core in the human mind, having an origin and a nature distinct from the merely animal passions and per- ceptions ; they constitute the soul or spirit of man, the universal part in every one of us. In these are bound up, embalmed and embodied, all the struggles and searchings of spirit of the count- less generations which have made us what we are. Action which arises out of that inner core, which is prompted by conscience and guided by reason, is free in the highest sense of all; this at least is 1 Whitman, “ Leaves of Grass,” p. 363.

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Il the of the B, sits ows 0 go, ni- ht METEORITES AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. good in the ethical sense, And yet, when we act | administrative machinery, the education of the with this most perfect freedom, it may be said that it is not we that act, but Man that worketh in us. He whose life is habitually governed by reason and conscience is the free and wise man of the philosophers of all ages. The highest free- dom, then, is identical with the Spirit of Man— *“ The earth-god Freedom, the lonely Face lightening, the footprint unshod, Not as one man crucified only Nor scourged with but one life’s rod ; The soul that is substance of nations, Reincarnate with fresh generations ; The great god Man, which is God.” # The social organism itself is but a part of the universal cosmos, and like all else is subject to the uniformity of Nature. The production and distribution of wealth, the growth and effect of race, these are cases of general laws which con- stitute the science of sociology. The discovery of exact laws has only one purpose—the guidance of conduct by means of them. The laws of politi- cal economy are as rigid as those of gravitation ; wealth distributes itself as surely as water finds its level. But the use we have to make of the laws of gravitation is not to sit down and cry “ Kismet ! ” to the flowing stream, but to construet irrigation-works. And the use which the Repub- lic must make of the laws of sociology is to rationally organize society for the training of the best citizens. Much patient practice of comrade- ship is necessary before society will be qualified to organize itself in accordance with reason. But those who can read the signs of the times read in them that the kingdom of Man is at hand.—T7he Nineteenth Century. HE question which has so often been raised, How did life originate on our earth? has again been brought before the consideration of the scientific world by Prof. Allen Thomson, in the presidential address delivered at the Plymouth meeting of the British Association during the present autumn. One explanation to which he refers is that which formed a prominent feature in the address of a former occupant of the pres- idential chair, Sir William Thomson, who six years ago suggested as a possible solution of this great question that the germs of life might have been borne to our globe by the meteorites which are scattered through space, and which from time to time fall upon the surface of our planet. If, he maintained, we trace back the physical history of our earth, we are brought to a red-hot, melted globe on which no life could exist. The earth was first fit for life, and there was no living thing upon it. Can any probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of Nature, be found to explain the problem of its first appearance ? When a lava-stream flows down the side of Vesu- vius or Etna it quickly cools and becomes solid, and after a few weeks or years it teems with vegetable and animal life, which life originated by 1 Swinburne, “ Songs before Sunrise.” METEORITES AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. By WALTER FLIGHT, D.S8c., F. G. 8. the transport of seed and ova and by the migra- tion of individual living creatures. When a vol- canic island emerges from the sea, and after a few years is clothed with vegetation, we do not hesi- tate to assume that seed has been wafted to it through the air, or floated to it on rafts. It is not possible—and if possible, is it not probable— that the beginning of vegetable life on the earth may be similarly explained? Every year thou- sands, probably millions, of fragments of solid matter fall upon the earth, Whence came they? What is the previous history of any one of them? Was it created in the beginning of time an amorphous mass? The idea is so un. acceptable that, tacitly or explicitly, all men dis- card it. It is often assumed that all, and it is certain that some, meteorites are fragments sev- ered from larger masses and launched free into space. It is as sure that collisions must occur between great masses moving through space as it is that ships, steered without intelligence di- rected to prevent collisions, could not cross and recross the Atlantic for thousands of years with immunity from such catastrophes. When two great masses come into collision in space it is certain that a large part of each of them is melted; but it appears equally certain that in

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86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. many cases a large quantity of débris must be have been exposed to no greater violence than individual pieces of rock experience in a land-slip or in blasting by gunpowder. Should the time when this earth comes into collision with another body, comparable in dimensions to itself, be when it is still clothed, as at present, with vegetation, many great and small fragments carrying seed and living plants and animals would undoubtedly be scattered through space. Hence and because we all confidently believe that there are at pres- ent, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own, we must regard it as probable in the highest degree that there are countless seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through space. If at the present instant no life existed upon this earth, one such stone falling upon it might lead to its becoming covered with vegetation. “I am fully conscious,” he con- cludes, “ of the many scientific objections which may be urged against this hypothesis, but I be- lieve them to be all answerable. . . . The hy- pothesis that life originated on this earth through moss-grown fragments from the ruins of another world may seem wild and visionary; all I main- tain is that it is not unscientific.” ! Sir William Thomson’s views, thus plainly set forth, did not fail to attract adverse criticism. Before we proceed to consider the comments which his hypothesis called forth, we may call the reader’s attention for a short time to specu- lations in the same direction which have appeared in the writings of scientific men in France and Germany. First, we must refer to a remarkable passage in the great work of Count A. de Bylandt Palster- camp, on the “ Theory of Volcanoes.”* He wrote in 1835, at a time when Laplace’s theory that me- teorites were hurled at us from lunar volcanoes was still generally received, and this will account to some extent for the source of the cosmical masses of which he treats. What is mainly worthy of notice is their character, of carriers of the fac- ulty of organization, which he attributes to them. In the chapter intituled “ Principe d’aprés lequel le premier Développement de rotre Globe peut s’étre effectué,” he writes: “It may be amat- ter of curiosity, but it is in no wise necessary, what organized body the great mass of our globe shot forth in all directions, much of which may that we should know on what principle or from | 1 “Address of Sir William Thomson, Knt., LL.D., | F. B.8., President.” London: Taylor & Francis, 1871, p. 27. 2“ Théorie des Volcans. Par le Comte A. de Bylandt | Palstercamp.” Paris: Levrault, 1838, tome i., p. 95. has been derived ; it is sufficient for us that we exist ina manner where everything is perfectly organized, at least in so far as the aim of our ex. istence is concerned. Many scientific men have exercised their imagination on this problem with. out being able to come to any definite decision, Some maintain that the nucleus of our globe wag a fragment of a body which in its cosmical path had dashed itself into fragments against the sun, which the very close proximity of some comet to that star gives grounds for believing. Others suppose us to be a vast aérolite thrown off from the sun himself! with a force proportional to its maass, to a zone where the motion is determined in accordance with the laws of reciprocal attrac. tion, and that this fragment carried in itself the germ of all that organization which we see around us, and of which we form a part. (Que cet éclat portait enlui le germe de toute cette or. ganisation que nous observons ici et dont nous fai- sons partie.) They suppose the satellites to be small parts or fragments detached from the chief mass by the violence of the rotation at the time it is hurled forth, or by the excessively high orig- inal temperature, increased by the fall, which produced a very violent dilatation of the matter, and severed some portions from it. These aéro- lites, it is said, by way of comparison, contain within them the principle common to the body whence they have been derived, just as a grain of seed carried by the wind is able to produce at a remote distance a tree like its prototype, with such modifications only as are due to soil or cli- mate.” In the spring of 1871 Prof. Helmholtz de- livered at Heidelberg and at Cologne a discourse on the origin of the solar system, which he printed in the third collection of his interesting “ Po- pulire wissenschaftliche V ortriige,” published last ~ year.* He directed attention on that occasion to the facts that meteorites sometimes contain compounds of carbon and hydrogen, and that the light emitted by the head of a comet gives a spec- trum which bears the closest resemblance to that of the electric light when the arc is surrounded by a gaseous hydrocarbon. Carbon is the char- acteristic element of the organic compounds of which all things living are built up. “ Who can say,” he asks, “ whether these bodies which wan- 1 He alludes here in a note to the theory held by La- place and others. 2“ Populfre wissenschaftliche Vortrige. Von H Helmholtz.” Braunschweig: Vieweg und Sohn, 1876. Drittes Heft, p. 185.

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der about through space may not also strew of life where a new heavenly body has be- come fitted to offer a habitat to organized creat- ures?” The hypothesis, in the form set forth in 1871 by Prof. Helmholtz and Sir William Thomson, was vigorously handled by Zollner, of Leipsic, whose work, “‘ Ueber die Natur der Cometen,” appeared in the following year. In the Vorrede of his book he passes his countryman by unmentioned, but declares Sir William Thom- son’s proposition to be unscientific, and that in a twofold sense. In the first place he maintains it is unscientific in a formal or logical sense, in that it changes the original simple question, Why has our earth become covered with organisms? into a second, Why had that heavenly body the frag- ment of which fell upon our planet become cov- ered with vegetation, and not our earth itself? “If, however,” he adds, “bearing in mind an earlier dictum,' we regard inorganic and organic matter as two substances from all eternity di- verse, just as in accordance with our present views we consider two chemical elements to be diverse, such an hypothesis as that now advanced must be at variance with the destructibility of organisms by heat which experience has taught us.” “ Again,” contends Zéllner, “the hypothesis in its material bearing is unscientific. When a meteorite plunges with planetary velocity into our atmosphere, the loss of vis viva arising from friction is converted into heat, which raises the temperature of the stone to a point where incan- descence and combustion take place. This, at all events, is the theory at present generally held to explain the phenomena of star-showers and fire- balls. A meteorite, then, laden with organisms, even if it could withstand the sundering of the parent mass unscathed, and should take no part in the general rise of temperature resulting from this disruption, must of necessity traverse the earth’s atmosphere before it could deliver at the earth’s surface organisms to stock our planet with living forms.” * Helmholtz did not long delay in replying to Zollner’s criticism on this question. An oppor- tunity occurred during the publication, in the fol- lowing year, 1873, of the second part of the Ger- man translation of Thomson and Tait’s “ Hand- book of Theoretical Physics.” The preface con- tains Helmholtz’s answer.* He points to the fact, 1“ Dead matter cannot become living matter unless it be subject to the influence of matter already living.” 2“ Ueber die Natur der Cometen. Von J. C. F. Zéll- ner.” Leipzig: Engelmann, 1872, p. 24. *“Handbuch der theoretischen Physik. Von W. METEORITES AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 87 confirmed by numerous observers, that the larger meteoric stones, during their transit through our atmosphere, become heated only on the outer surface, the interior remaining cold—often very cold. Germs which may happen to lie in the crevices of such stones would be protected from scorching while traveling through the air. Those, moreover, which lie on or near the surface of the aérolite would, as soon as it entered the upper and most attenuated strata of our atmosphere, be blown off by the swift and violent current of air long ere the stone can rend those denser layers of our gaseous envelope where compres- sion is sufficiently great to cause a perceptible rise of temperature. As regards that other point of debate, referred to by Thomson only, the col- lision of two cosmical masses, Helmholtz shows that the first result of contact would be violent mechanical movement, and that it is only when they begin to be worn down and destroyed by friction that heat would be developed. It is not known whether this may not continue for hours or days, or even weeks. Such portions as at the first moment of contact are hurled away with planetary velocity may consequently be driven from the scene of action before any rise of tem- perature may have taken place. “It is not im- possible,” he adds, “that a meteorite or a swarm of meteorites, in traversing the upper layers of the atmosphere of a heavenly body, may either scatter from them or carry with them a quantity of air containing unscorched germs. These are possibilities which are not yet to be taken as probabilities; they are questions which, from the fact of their existence and range, are to be kept in sight, so that, should a case arise, they may receive an answer either by actual obser- vations or by some conclusive deduction.” It should be mentioned here that these views of Helmholtz’s are also to be met with in a supple- ment to his lecture on the origin of the solar sys- tem. In tracing the gradual development of this important controversy, we now arrive at the pres- ent year, and proceed to discuss the allusion made to it by Prof. Allen Thomson in his ad- dress at Plymouth. The difficulty regarding the origin of life is, he considers, not abolished, but only removed to a more remote period, by the supposition of the transport of germs from an- other planet, or their introduction by means of meteorites or meteoric dust ; for, besides the ob- Thomson und P. G. Tait.” Uebersetzung von H. Helm- holtz und G. Wertheim. Braunschweig: Vieweg und Sohn, 1874. Erster Band. Zweiter Theil. 11.

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jection arising from the circumstance that these bodies must have been subjected to a very high temperature, we should still have everything to learn as to the way in which the germs arose in the far-distant regions of space from which they heve been conveyed. At one of the sectional meetings, a few days later, Sir William Thomson made these observations the text of a further communication on the now well-worn subject. He desired to limit the discussion to the bare, dry question, Was life possible on a meteorite ? The hypothesis which was to explain the bring- ing of life to our earth did not pretend to explain the origin of life, and he would not attempt to offer an explanation of the origin of life. The three questions which presented themseives were these: Was life possible on a meteorite moving in space? Was life possible on a meteorite while falling to the earth’s surface? and, Could any germs live after the meteorite had become imbedded in the earth? A meteorite may be exposed to great heat before it reaches the earth; whether or not life on that meteorite would be destroyed by that heat was dependent on the duration of exposure. If a meteorite traversed space with the same side always exposed to the sun, that side would be strongly heated, the oth- er would be cold; if it spun round at a uniform rate all its surface would be of one uniform tem- perature ; and if it rotated once per hour it would have a high temperature on one side and be as cold as ice on the other. The whole or part of the surface of 4 meteorite might afford a climate suitable to some living forms, destructive to oth- ers. When the moss-covered stone enters the atmosphere the germs upon its surface would be torn off long before the stone became heated, and in a few years they may settle down on the earth, take root and grow. But were the germs of the exterior destroyed by heat, there might still be vegetable life in the interior. The time occupied by a stone in its passage through the air would not be more than twenty or thirty sec- onds at the outside, so that the crust might be fused, while the interior might have a moderate temperature, and anything alive in it would fall to the earth alive. Sir William Thomson con- cluded by remarking that after the collision of cosmical masses fragments must be shot off, some of which must certainly carry away living things not destroyed by the shock of the collision, and he did not hesitate to maintain, as a not improb- able supposition, that at some time or other we should have growing on this earth a plant of meteoric origin. At this particular stage of the 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. debate (so we are informed by The Western Morning News) some one attending the meet ing of the section introduced the Colorado bee tle, and this was held to be irresistibly funny; then some one else got up and said he was an Irishman, which was judged to be even funnier still. At length another speaker arose to breathe the hope that when Papa Colorado Beetle dropped down on a meteorite he would leave Mamma Col. orado Beetle behind, which was felt to be far and away the funniest thing of all. Some of the As. sociates, however—men who had not yet learned to know tbe length and depth of scientific “ wit” —began to feel uneasy; and although a gallant effort appears at this juncture to have been made to win back their confidence by assuring them that meteorites really do not contain organic matter of any kind, the section was not to be comforted till the telephone was set a-going. But to return. Nothing bearing the semblance of a plant or even of its seed has as yet been met with ina meteorite ; nor have any of the masses which have fallen on our planet shown anything ap- proaching the structure which distinguishes sed. imentary rocks from those of a purely plutonic character. The occurrence, however, in them, or with them, of organic compounds, of com- pounds of carbon and hydrogen, which it is hard to suppose could owe their existence to any oth- er agency than that of life itself, and which rep- resent the final stage previous to their final de- struction, has now been so frequently noticed that I have put together in chronological order what information in this direction from a “ world ayont ” the meteorites have brought to us. 1806. March 15th, 5 p. m—Two stones, weigh- ing together six kilogrammes, fell at Alais, départe- ment du Gard, France. They have the appearanee of an earthy variety of coal ; the color of the crust is a dull brownish-black, so is that of the interior. The structure is very soft and friable. When heated it emits a faint bituminous odor. It was examined at the time of its fall by Thénard and a commission appointed by the Institute of France. The French observers found it to contain 2.5 per cent. of carbon ; while Berzelius, in 1834, esti- mated the amount of carbon present to be 3.05 per cent. In 1862 Roscoe submitted this mete- orite to a very thorough investigation. He found the carbon present to amount to 3.36 per cent. Ether dissolved 1.94 per cent. of the stone; the solution on evaporation left crystals which have an aromatic odor, and a fusing-point of 114 C., and which sublime on the application of heat, se fe eFfdqdgdaeeeerFreeerFesesenfes — emmeooet ae 66klC le lCUlU ee lull lCUmeeelCUmlCUDlUlCO

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llant nade leaving a slight carbonaceous residue. The crys- -gls really appear to be of two kinds: aciewlar erystals, which are sparingly soluble in absolute alcohol, but are readily taken up by ether, car- bon disulphide, turpentine, and cold nitric acid, and dissolve in cold sulphuric acid, striking a brown color; and rhombic crystals, which dis- solve in ether and carbon disulphide, but are unaffected by colfi nitric acid, sulphuric acid, or turpentine. An analysis of 0.0078 gramme of the crystals soluble iv alcohol gave the following numbers : Sulphurous acid . 0.010 Sulphur . . 0005 Carbonic acid. . 0.008 Carbon . . 0.0022 Water. ...-. 0.008 Hydrogen . 0.0003 The atomic ratio of carbon to hydrogen, then, is nearly 1: 1, or that of the reddish-brown and colorless mineral resin kénleinite, which occurs in crystalline plates and grains in the lignite of Umach, in Switzerland. Kraus makes the fus- ing-point of kénleinite 114°C. ; it is slightly solu- ble in alcohol, but much more soluble in ether. Dr. Lawrence Smith, who has recently examined the Alais meteorite, arrives at the same results as Roscoe ; and, also, that the carbonaceous in- gredient of this meteorite resembles, in all its physical characters, those of a substance which he obtained from the graphite of the Sevier Coun- ty meteoric iron, to which I shall presently refer. 1838. October 13th, 9 a.m.—At the hour mentioned a great number of large stones fell over a considerable area at Kold-Bokkeveld, seventy miles from Cape Town. Those which fell near Tulbagh are estimated to have weighed many hundred-weights. It is said that they were soft when they fell, but became hard after atime. This material has a dull, black color, and is very porous and friable. Harris, who analyzed it in 1859, determined the presence of 1.67 per cent. of carbon, and somewhat more than 0.25 per cent. of an organic substance solu- ble in alcohol. This compound is described as possessing a yellow color, and a soft, resinous, or waxy, aspect. It readily fused with a slight rise of temperature, and when heated in a tube it was decomposed, emitting a strong bituminous odor, and leaving a carbonaceous residue. Some four years ago I was considering what should be done with a trace of this substance, so small in amount that it could not be removed from the vessel con- taining it. I was unwilling to throw away even 80 small a quantity of so precious a substance, 80 I drew off the neck of the flask and placed it in a dark cupboard of a room, the temperature of which, during the greater part of the year, is | METEORITES AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. unusually high. In the interval this organic com- pound has sublimed, and is deposited on the higher parts of the vessel in colorless and well- defined crystalline plates. 1840.—During this year a large mass of mete- _ oric iron was discovered in Sevier County, Ten- nessee, inclosing a large nodule of graphite. “It is,” writes Dr. Lawrence Smith, “ the largest mass of graphite which has come under my observa- tion, and is perhaps the largest known.” Its di- mensions are 60™™ by 20™™ and 35™™, and it weighs ninety-two grammes. Two grammes of this nodule were reduced to powder and treated with ether, and the liquid on evaporation left a residue weighing fifteen milligrammes, and pos- sessing an aromatic, somewhat alliaceous, odor. It consisted of long, colorless. acicular crystals, others which were shorter, as well as some rhom- boidal crystals and rounded particles. This ex- tracted substance melted at about 120°C. When heated in a tube closed at one end it melts and then volatilizes, condensing in yellow drops, and leaving a carbonaceous residue. Dr. Lawrence Smith believes that the three elements, carbon, hydrogen, and sulphur, which they contain, may be in combination, and he has named the mete- oric sulphohydrocarbon “ celestialite.” 1857. April 15th, 10.11 v.u.—A brilliant detonating meteor was observed at this hour over Kaba, southwest of Debreczin, Hungary, and a meteorite weighing four kilogrammes was found on the following morning imbedded in the hard surface of a road close by. The crust is black, and the mass of the stone dark gray ; throughout the structure black portions of the size of peas lie scattered, giving the stone a por- phyritic character. Wobler treated the stone with alcohol, which removed a white, apparently crystalline, substance possessing a peculiar aro- matic odor. With ether it broke up into oily drops, and appeared to be decomposed into an insoluble fluid body and a soluble solid portion. The solid substance was obtained in a distinctly crystalline condition on driving off the ether. It volatilizes in air, fuses in a close tube, and is de- composed when greater heat is applied, a fatty odor being observed, and a black residue left. The hydrocarbon is believed by Wohler to be allied to ozocerite or scheererite. When the powdered stone is heated in oxygen it turns of a cinnamon-brown color. This meteorite contains 0.58 per cent. of carbon. 1861.—The huge mass of meteoric iron dis- covered at Cranboune, near Melbourne, Australia, in 1861, incloses more or less rounded masses of

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90 ©». THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. carbon. They are pronounced by Berthelot, who has submitted some of the material to the most powerful oxidizing reagents, to resemble the form of carbon which separates from cast-iron on cool- ing rather than native graphite. 1864. May 14th, 8 Pp. u.—On this occasion more than twenty stones fell at Montauban, Tarn- et-Garonne, France, some of them being as large as a human head, and most of them smaller than a fist. The appearance which this meteorite ex- hibits closely resembles that of a dull-colored earthy lignite. The masses are black and very friable, and fall to powder when placed in water ; this is due to the removal of the soluble salts which cement the ingredients together. A shower of rain would have destroyed them. One hundred parts of this stone contain 5.92 parts of carbon itself, partly as a constituent of one organic com- pound, which Cloéz found to possess the follow- ing composition : Carbon o «© © © « OS Hydrogen ac. « © * 5.98 Oxygen ° - 30.57 100.00 Berthelot endeavored to reconstruct the body of which this is a decomposed product by means of hydriodic acid, and obtained a considerable quantity of the hydrocarbon Cz,H,+3 analogous to rock-oil. The reduction takes place less readi- ly in this case than in that of coal. Dr. Lawrence Smith finds the combustible portion of the ma- terial to amount to about 4.5 per cent. 1867.—This Indian meteorite, which fell at Goalpara about the year 1867 (the exact date is not known), was examined by Tschermak, who found it to contain 0.85 per cent. of a hydrocar- bon. The quantity, though small, materially affects the general appearance of the stone; it can be recognized under the microscope as a smoky-brown, lustreless ingredient accompanying the fragments of nickel-iron. Of the 0.85 per cent. 0.72 is carbon and 0.13 hydrogen. Tscher- mak suggests that the luminous phenomena so often attending the fall of an aérolite and the “tail” left by many meteors and shooting-stars may be due to the combustion of compounds of which carbon forms an important constituent. 1868, July 11th.—The curious meteorite of dull gray hue and loose structure which fell on this day at Ornans, Doubs, France, partly owes its dark color to the presence of a hydrocarbon. 1869. January 1st, 12.20 p.u—A most re- markable fall of stones took place on New-Year’s- day, 1869, at Hessle, near Upsala; it is the first aérolitic shower recorded to have taken place in Sweden. The meteorites have so loose a structup that they break in pieces when thrown with ¢he hand against the floor or frozen ground. The most interesting feature of the Hessle fall is the asso ciation, with the stones referred to, of matter mainly composed of carbon. The peasants of Hessle noticed that some of the meteorites which fell on the snow near Ar.6 soon crumbled to 5 blackish-brown powder resembling coffee-grounde, Similar powder was found on the ice at Hafslayi. ken in masses as large as the hand, which float ed on water like foam, and could not be held between the fingers. A small amount secured for examination was found under the microscope to be composed of small spherules ; it contained particles extractible by the magnet, and when ignited left a reddish-brown ash. Heated ina closed tube it gave a small brown distillate. A quantity dried at 110° C. possessed the following composition : ees: eh et? ef ot el Te acs 6. eo | 4. er fe 38 Oxygen (calculated) . . . « « 15.7 Silicic acid ~6© oc * «© « = Iron protoxide . . . . . «. &4 Magnesia. . . © «© e« -« 1.5 a ee ee ee ee Sodaandlithia. . . . . . 15 100.0 The combustible ingredient appears to have the composition nC,H,0.. It was noticed on this occasion that the stones found in the same district with the carbonaceous substance were, as a rule, quite round and covered on all sides with a black, dull, and often almost sponge-like crust. The iron particles on the surface of the smaller stones were usually quite bright and un- oxidized, as though the stone had been heated in a reducing atmosphere. Nordenskjéld, who ex- amined them, expresses the belief that this car- bon compound frequently, perhaps invariably, occurs in association with the meteorites, and he attributes its preservation in this case to the fall of the stones on snow-covered ground. 1870.—During this year the Swedish Arctic Expedition discovered in the basalt of Ovifak, near Godhavn, island of Disko, Greenland, some enormous metallic masses which are generally regarded as blocks of meteoric iron. Like me teoric iron, they contain nickel and cobalt, but, unlike that iron, they are but slightly attacked by hydrochloric acid. The metal, moreover, when heated, evolves more than one hundred times its volume of a gas which burns with a pale-blue flame and is carbonic oxide mixed with a little carbonic acid ; after this treatment the substance asgvzae

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vere, sides dissolves in acid, leaving a carbonaceous residue. The composition of this remarkable “iron,” if we may call it by that name, has been found by Wahler to be as follows : aa . 80. 64 Nickel . 1.19 * Cobalt ; 0.49 Phosphorus. . . + «+ . 0.15 Sulphur . . ° .* ° ° 2.82 Carbon . 3.67 Oxygen 11.09 100.05 It appears to be a mixture of about forty per cent, of magnetite with metallic iron, its carbide, sulphide, and phosphide, and its alloys of nickel and cobalt, as well as some pure carbon in iso- lated particles. From all this we see, though there is not a particle of evidence to prove the persistence of living germs on meteorites during their passage through our atmosphere, it is quite clear that the cosmical bodies, whatever they may have been, from which our meteorites were derived, may very probably have borne on their surface some forms of organized beings. One objection which appears to have been raised to Sir William Thomson’s theory was to the effect that germs could not exist without air; THE LIVINGSTONIA MISSION. 91 another that the low temperature to which they would be exposed before entering our atmosphere would suffice to destroy life. Micheli, in his valu- able “ Coup d’cil sur les principales Publications de Physiologie végétale,” refers to the researches of Uloth,' who found that twenty-four species of plants which had been placed in a cave in the centre of a glacier germinated after the lapse of six weeks. Lepidium ruderale and sativum, Si- napis alba, and Brassica Napus, had germinated ; and at the close of four months other crucifers and some grasses and leguminous plants had germinated also. Haberlandt found that of a number of seeds which had been exposed for four months to a temperature of 0° to 10°, the following species flourished: rye, hemp, vetch, pea, mustard, camelina, two species of clover, and lucerne. The influence of the withdrawal of air from seeds on their power of germina- tion has also been studied by Haberlandt. He found that seeds after they had been placed in vacuo germinated as usual. A slight retardation was noticed in the case of the seeds of the oat, the beet-root, and a bean, which appear to re- quire the air contained in their tissues. In three experiments fifty-eight, thirty-two, and forty per cent. of the seeds germinated. —FPopular Science Review. HE following interesting letters from Dr. J. Thornton Macklin and Dr. Stewart, of the Livingstonia Mission, have been forwarded to us from the Cape by Sir Bartle Frere : “The site on which Blantyre Mission Station rests is an admirable one in every way, and re- flects great credit on Mr. Henderson, who, it must be remembered, went out with the Free- Church party, under Mr. Young, of the Royal Navy, in 1875, for the purpose of looking round the country and finding out a suitable place where to establish our mission. In the course of his travels Mr. Henderson came to the con- clusion that the most suitable locality would be somewhere in the Shire Highlands, among the Ageneas, and, if possible, in the vicinity of Ma- gomero, the scene of the University Mission la- | THE LIVINGSTONIA MISSION. NARRATIVES OF DRS. J. THORNTON MACKLIN AND JAMES STEWART. bors. Accordingly, when our party had arrived out in 1876, and had reached Ramakukau’s vil- lage, which it may be said is practically the head of the Shire navigation, though seven miles be- low Matili, to which place boats can reach, here Mr. Henderson left us, and went up the hill to fix definitely on a site for the settlement. I should have gone with him, but was ill with fe- ver at the time. The carefulness and discrimi- nation shown in the selection—the result of a — long experience in Australia—clearly points out that Mr. Henderson was well worthy of the trust reposed in him, and well fitted to perform the difficult task laid upon him. A short time ago there was a village here, but it was deserted some time before we came, as the head-man had 1 Flora, 1875, No. 17.

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' 92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE been killed, it is said, by Ramakukau. He was buried in his hut, which was knocked down, and the place was left. When Mr. Henderson came he found several standing, and these he had re- paired and put in order for us to dwell in until such time as we got more suitable houses built. “ Now as to the advantage of the site, and first as to its healthiness. The altitude is good, as we are upon the third plateau of the Shire Hill, which is about 3,000 feet high. Thus we are high above the malarious level, not, I mean, to assert that altitude necessarily procures immunity from ma- laria, for even in the hills, if one chooses to set- tle down in a hollow or low-lying, marshy place, he will probably find more than enough of the miasmatic poison developed than is conducive to health. The temperature is very suitable, being equable, rarely in the shade rising above 80°, and rarely falling below 70°. Drainage is good, and is secured by the settlement standing on a rising ground or knoll, from which the ground slopes away in every direction, so that during the rainy season no water accumulates in our immediate vicinity. “The water-supply is good, both as regards quality and quantity, and it is but a short distance off. Again, almost every day a fine breeze pre- vails, which is cool and bracing, yet mild. I think, therefore, all things being considered, I can congratulate both ourselves aud the friends of the mission at home on the healthiness of Blantyre. Concerning the matter of cultivation, things are satisfactory. The soil is good, and already we have got a large garden, producing not only plants indigenous to the soil, but also home-plants and others we got from the Cape. Now a few words as to the conveniences of the situation. We are but two days’ march from Ramakukau’s, thus we can have speedy access to the coast, Kongoni, or Quillimane. Again, we are within the same number of days’ journey from Pimbe, on the Upper Shire, the place to which the lala, the steamer of the Free-Church party, comes down, so we are also within speedy com- munication with Lake Nyassa. Lake Shirwa is only three days off at the most, and from there the natives bring us very good fish. We are also only one day’s journey from the Ruo; but as it flows through a bad and uninhabited country, it cannot be said to be much of an advantage in the mean time. “ General Aspect of the Country.—Hills and dales, all well wooded and covered with vegeta- tion of different kinds—in some places very rank and dense indeed. I have been caught and held MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. fast in the thicket more than once. In mogt parts wild-flowers abound of many and varied hues, which, in the midst of the fresh green verd. ure that prevails, relieves it, and is very pleasing to the eye, and in some cases our sense of sme] is much gratified. Our water-courses and st are rich with vegetation of every kind and variety, Many different kinds of ferns abound; but I do not think any have yet been found that are not also to be found at home. Very fine and large trees are plentiful on the banks of the streams, too, and some good planks might be got out of them ; but generally the trees which prevail over the country are low and stunted: they are prin. cipally acacias. Sometimes one emerges from the wood into fine glades covered with long, wav. ing green grass; these, in some cases, much re semble the parks in the confines of a gentleman’s grounds at home. They are very picturesque. The mountains are high and steep, with many deep ravines, They are clad with verdure to the very top, from the midst of which the brown rocks may be seen lifting up their ancient, weather-beaten heads, lending enchantment to the view. Here and there are large fields of corn and pumpkins flour. ishing, helping to relieve the wild appearance of the country. The gardens are often far away from the villages in the season, the people leav- ing their homes, and living in temporary habita- tions for the purpose of cultivating them. “The people are quiet and peaceable and well disposed. They are fond of fun and music. They are impressible, expressing great surprise and pleasure at the sight of pictures, our guns, pis- tols, watches, and other, to them, wonderful things. They are quick and intelligent, and pick up with a wonderful degree of alacrity what you want or mean. Their features are not at all un- pleasant to look upon, and there is great variety; the expression is generally happy and compara- tively intelligent. Their stature is very good, and so, too, their physique; in height, on an average, of about 5 feet 6 inches to 5 feet 8 inches. The following measurements I have taken, of which I give the average: the head, in circumference, 21$ inches; chest, 34} inches; arm in length, 22} inches; hand, 6} inches. The measurement of the pelvis by a foot I have not yet ascertained, but they are well proportioned. They are lithe, supple, and active in their move- ments. They are a bow-and-arrow people, and dis- tinguished from those tribes whose chief weapon is the spear, though now many of them have flint- lock muskets, which, curiously enough, are all branded Forty-second Regiment, and have a crown aA na ooe.s«4 2c ene eaiweeeeFnrfgesesensksisHf a on 2 es «. 2 ce 2 of “ki.{] 2 Or

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ich re. ‘Ss may flour. ce of away leav- abita- med, dis- ipon lint- » all gnthem. There is one thing they are very fond of doing, and that is, gathering themselves together to one place, talking and drinking pombe, i. e., native beer—of course, men only; the women do pot take part in these proceedings. Smoking is acommon habit among them; even women and very little boys smoke, and if they would confine themselves to tobacco it would not matter much ; but they have a very pernicious habit of smoking hemp and bangue, which produces a kind of intox- ieation—an hysterical fit I should be inclined to call it; but the effect it produces, be it what it may, seems to be very pleasant, for they practise the habit most pertinaciously, though it produces a severe fit of coughing, which is most painful to hear, if not to experience. The women, like the men, are well formed, and of a good height. They seem quite contented and happy, though undoubtedly they do the most work; still, they are not in any way ill-used by the men. The features of most of the elderly women are disfig- ured by tattoo-marks, and the hideous lip-ring, or pilele ; I say the elder women, for I am happy to say that the younger women are not adopting the foolish fashion of wearing the pilele, though most undergo the tattooing operation. “ Industries —These are chiefly iron manu- factured into various stages, in which they have reached a considerable degree of perfection. Basket-making.—In this I would say they have reached perfection, but then I am not a compe- tent judge. Cloth-Manufacture.—In this trade their attainments are of no mean order, both as regards cloth manufactured from the bark of trees or that from cotton. Of these I will give you more details in a future letter, when I will also speak of their habits, houses, food, and other matters that may prove of interest.” The following letter is from the leader of the expedition, Dr. Stewart, to Mr. Dunn: “ Lrvmnestonia, Lake Nyassa, “ February 27, 1877. “Since I wrote you in December, I am glad to be able to say that things here have been going on well, nothing of any consequence of an untoward kind having occurred, while there is much to be thankful for. There have been a few eases of fever, mostly slight, and lasting only a day or two. With this exception, and that of & chronic case which improves but slowly, the health of the party is fairly good; we cannot ex- pect, in latitude 14° in Central Africa, the robust Vigor and energy we enjoy in latitude 30° or 50°. THE LIVINGSTONIA MISSION. “During the last few weeks, or since the be- ginning of this year, Livingstonia seems to have taken a start, and begun to grow in one of the directions we specially wish it to grow—as an antislavery centre. There were very few people actually settled here in 1876: up to October, at least, not a dozen. Since then, some five or six parties, the smallest numbering from one or two up to twenty-two, have come seeking the pro- tection of the English. The story of these twen- ty-two is this: A man arrived here in the middle of the night, in the fragments of a large canoe, in which I feel certain no white man would venture one hundred yards from the shore, yet it appears that be had been part of the two days and nights in this crazy affair. He had slept on the sand all night, and made his appearance in the station about six in the morning. He was in a woful condition, but told his story with directness, and said he and twenty-one others were about to be sold by Inpemba, a notorious slaver on the west- ern shore of the lake; that they saw the dhow which had come, and having got information from a friend, they fled in the night, in a large canoe, and made for an island to the north; that their canoe had got broken on the rocks as they landed, and he had come in the patched-up frag- ments to ask the assistance and protection of the English ; that there were twenty-one men, wom- en, and children, on the island. There was not much time for delay or consideration—they had nothing to eat, and no means of getting away. We accordingly got up steam in the Ilala, and, taking the fugitive for our guide, made for the island, which we reached about one o’clock. We approached it cautiously, partly on account of the rocks, and partly because I was not sure whether he might not be leading us into some trap, though I have never uttered that opinion till now; but a little doubt in such circumstances, and with new men, is wholesome. The natives saw us, though we did not first see them, as the trees come down to the water’s edge. He shout- ed, and they replied. We sent off the boat, and shortly had all of them on board. There they certainly were—twenty-two men, women, and children. They had only a few hoes, the bows and arrows usually carried by the natives, a little maize in a calabash, and a few wild roots gath- ered on the island. We got up the anchor and steamed off, arriving at the station at sunset; and the Fugitive-Slave Circular never crossed my mind till I sat down to write this. On the con- trary, as we made rapid way homeward over the glassy lake, on a very fine afternoon, I thought the

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94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHL Y.—SUPPLEMENT. Tlala was just about her proper work. It is true she is not a fighting-ship, intended to burn and sink dhows, and frighten Arabs out of their skins and color, but she is peacefully circumventing those senseless chiefs who weaken themselves by sell- ing their people ; and in many ways the steamer has been a great element in our progress and in the security of the position we have attained. Both would have been different and very much less without the steamer. Of course the slaving chiefs cannot look with friendly eyes on these doings, and two efforts have been made to get back the refugees. We have seen no occasion, except in one instance, to give them up, and the applicants have generally departed crestfallen. We tell them—if any man accused of a serious crime comes, and they show that he is guilty, we shall not receive him; but any one running away to escape being sold, will be protected. Out of these cases some complications may yet arise of an unlooked-for kind. In the mean time we can- not do otherwise than as we are doing, even though the increasing numbers lead us into a difficulty about food till their crops are ready, and some were rather late in sowing. We have to feed about one hundred daily, and even though the ra- tion is little over one and a half pound of maize, we are sometimes in a strait; a ton of maize or Caffre corn does not last much more than a fort- night or three weeks. But this giving out of food is not gratuitous; all work at roads, fields, or house-building, or whatever is on hand. We have not an idler about the place, not one. The rule is simple: He who will not work for his daily maize stays not here. “The school goes on steadily; and the daily meeting with the people, now generally held in the evening, is kept up regularly, and ap- parently with interest. The meeting is fre- quently closed by one of Moody and San- key’s hymns; and when it is well sung in parts, it produces a very marked effect, even though they understand but generally what the hymn is about from a few words of previous ex- planation. I have great faith in the daily relig- ious service.. Some time soon it will bear fruit. “The first tusk of ivory was brought into the settlement a fortnight ago, and bought by Mr. Cotterill for £14. I shal) not mention the weight of it, but simply say I would not recommend any one to come here to purchase ivory at present, with the view of making a profitable business of it. Mr. Cotterill apparently bought it simply to commence operations and to encourage the others, “ Our first visitor from the outside world alsp arrived at Livingstonia the other day. He comes straight from the Punjaub, where he has beeg working as an engineer for eight years on the Sir. hind Canal, and having a furlough of two Years, and having also been in Europe lately, and wish. ing to spend a part of his furlough in some use. ful way, comes here and asks if he can help us, and place -himself as a volunteer on the Living. stonia force for a year; and all this from pure interest in the enterprise and in the success of missionary work. If he was not a relative of my own, and also a James Stewart, I should be dig. posed to say this example is worth following by Christian men who have occasional periods of leisure. He is a vigorous young fellow who does not care for spending two years in lounging about Continental picture-galleries or in the pleas. ant work of the old country, but who believes he can be of use elsewhere, and forthwith, after one~ or two letters on the subject, starts off, and we have him here among us. The idea is a new one: and it suggests that many young men of dif. ferent professions and occupations might aid the mission cause temporarily and yet permanently benefit it by a similar course of action. His coming has already benefited us, and cleared up our misty news on various pieces of work going on or to be attempted. The first important work, however, that he will undertake will be a survey of a road over the Murchison Cataracts. We shall probably offer this survey, when completed, to one of the branches of this great International Society inaugurated by the King of the Belgians; it will form an experimentum crucis as to whether actual work is intended by that Society. If they do not aid in the making of the road, we shall just have to make it in an inferior style our- selves. “We also got here last week our first im- portation of cattle, consisting of seven cows, three calves, and a bull. They were brought 450 miles, partly by land and partly in the steamer, and the business was well managed by Dr. Laws. I fear, however, we bave ésetse in this district, and, if so, it is a heavy blow to us. A short time will make the matter plain—a few months at most. No worse blow to our peaceful progress and prosperity could occur than this. “Since writing the above an accident to 8 portion of the machinery of the steamer has caused delay in sending this off. The mischief is now quite repaired. “March is one of the most unhealthy months here (April farther down), and both Dr. Laws a xc. @ | — 9 re ee ee. ee ee ee ee ee ee ee oe ee ee. a

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and myself have had pretty severe attacks, and BRIEF NOTES. among the others. A greater variety and better some of the others have also suffered. The last | food would prevent that anemia that seems to man to succumb, Shadrach Ngunana, from Love- | be the worst part of the fever. dale, who has never yet had the slightest touch of fever, has suffered slightly. Average health “James Srewarr.” — Geographical Magazine. The Volcanoes of Iceland.—Prof. Johnstrup, sent to Iceland by the Danish Government for the purpose of exploring the scene of the recent volcanic disturbances in that island, has made his official report, a summary of which we find in Nature. He first examined the volcanoes of the Dyngju Mountains. These mountains are not of volcanic origin. The Askja Valley, which the Dyngju Mountains encircle, was evidently much deeper in former times than at present: repeated flows of lava have gradually filled it up. Along the outer edge of the Dyngju Mountains are numerous craters, which have contributed most of the lava covering the plain of Odadah- rann. In the neighborhood of the newly-found craters the earth is covered, to the distance of over a mile, with the bright-yellow pumice-stone ejected duting the eruption of March 29, 1875. In places where the pumice-stone is several feet in depth, it covers a layer of snow twenty-five feet deep, and this snow has ever since been pro- tected from the effects of solar heat by the feeble conducting power of its covering. Not a trace of a lava-stream is to be found. At present the craters are to be regarded as gigantic steam-es- cape tubes, the activity of which will continue for an uncertain period with gradually-decreasing intensity. The volcanoes in Myvatns Orefi pre sented entirely different characteristics. In the centre of this barren plain, thirty-five miles long, thirteen wide, a volcano suddenly appeared on February 18, 1875, and four others appeared sub- sequently. They emitted a mass of lava esti- mated at 10,000,000,000 cubic feet. This lava was basaltic and viscous when emitted, and crys- tals of chloride of ammonium were found in the vicinity of the craters, Epidemics of Trichinosis—Between the years 1860 and 1875 there appeared in the kingdom of Saxony 39 epidemics of trichinosis, with 1,267 cases of this disease and 19 deaths. Froma brief digest of the statistics of trichinosis published in the Medical and Surgical Reporter it appears that BRIEF NOTES. only a small proportion of the cases arose from eating raw pork, while one-half were produced by eating smoked sausages, which, however, caused only twodeaths. Among 340 persons who partook of well-cooked sausages eight died. The epidemic appeared in 15 places once, in seven places more than once, and in Dresden seven times. In most instances the number of persons attacked was small, the highest numbers being 209, 140, and 199, and only one death resulted from the total of 548 cases occurring in these epidemics. In several of the “epidemics” (?) the number of cases was as low as from one to seven. The mean (32}) of the 89 epidemics was scarcely exceeded in one-fourth of the places, while in three-quarters of the other places the mean was not reached. In many in- stances the number of cases was so small as to show that a trichinized animal may be entirely consumed without inducing the disease at all. It is calculated that 100 trichinized pigs will give rise to only four cases of the disease in man. Mushroom-Culture in Japan.—The Japanese mode of raising mushrooms, as described by Mr. Robertson, British consul, is as follows: About the beginning of autumn the trunk, about five or six inches in diameter, of the shu or some other tree of the oak kind, is selected and cut into lengths of four or five feet ; each piece is then split lengthwise into four, and on the outer bark slight incisions are either made at once with a hatchet, or the cut logs are left till the follow- ing spring, and then deep wounds, seven or eight inches long, are incised in them. In the former case the logs are placed in a wood or grove, where they can get the full benefit of the air and heat; in about three years they will be tolerably rotten in parts. After the more rotten parts are removed, they are placed against a rack in a slant- ing position, and about the middle of the ensuing spring the mushrooms will come forth in abun- dance. They are then gathered. The logs are, however, still kept, and submitted to the follow- ing process : Every morning they are put in water

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96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. where they remain till afternoon, when they are taken out, laid lengthwise on the ground, and beaten with a mallet. They are then ranged on end, slanting as before, and in two or three days mushrooms again make their appearance. In Yen-shin the custom is to beat the log so heavily that the wood swells, and this induces mushrooms of more than ordinary size. If the logs are beat- en gently, a great number of small mushrooms grow up in succession. The Period of Incubation in Hydrophobia.— An apparently well-proved case of hydrophobia, occurring five years after the lesion which occa- sioned it, is reported for the Lancet by Dr. Hulme. The history of the case is as follows: A muscular agricultural laborer, fifty-one years of age, was very slightly bitten in the finger by a mad dog in 1872. He had the wound thoroughly cauterized, and, as his health seemed in no way affected, soon forgot all about it. But on Monday, June 25th, in the present year, he complained of a general malaise and pain in the arm to which the bitten finger belonged. The next day this pain had so increased that he gave up work, and, becoming alarmed, sent for a surgeon. By ten o’clock on the Wednesday the man began to be plainly hy- drophobic. When the physician saw him, three hours later, he was sitting up in bed very quietly, but troubled with a terrible misgiving, because he felt frightened at the waterin the room. This terror manifested itself when the doctor present- ed the medicine in a fluid state. The glass was nervously seized, and the act of swallowing was attended with convulsive shuddering. The pain soon extended from the arm to the neck, and thence to the diaphragm. Respiration became difficult ; saliva was ejected by jerky discharges, and the jaws moved as though the patient were hawking and spitting. The snap and the bark soon followed, and he threw himself on and off the bed with loud, hoarse screams. In his few moments of consciousness he begged his friends not to approach him, lest he should bite them. The incessant paroxysms soon began to tell upon his frame, and the feeling of suffocation grew more severe each moment. Nervous exhaustion came on, but the patient never reached coma, for eleven hours after his seizure he died of suffoca- tion. Nicotine-Poisoning.—There occurred recently, in England, a case of fatal poisoning by nicotine, | which is worthy of record, inasmuch as it serve as a warning. A child, three years of age, was permitted by his father to use an old wooden pipe for blowing soap-bubbles. The child was then quite well, but an hour later became sick, vomited very much, and afterward became very drowsy and pale. The next day he was worse; castor-oil was administered, and he was put to bed. After a bad night, he was very much worse on the following morning, and in the evening medical advice was sought. But to no avail, for the child grew steadily worse, and died after g ° few hours. The physician said that the deceased was suffering from narcotic poison when he first saw him ; that he was easily aroused, and could answer questions. Two drops of nicotine suffice to kill an adult man, and one drop would killa large dog ; while a very small quantity would be enough to kill a child. Tue subject of forming an inland sea in Al geria is still warmly discussed in France. At one of the late meetings of the Paris Academy of Sei- ences, M, Augot said that the dominant winds of Algeria are not those which have hitherto been regarded as such, namely, southeast, south, and southwest, and are not such as would produce the good effects expected from this artificial sea. The favorable winds are to the others in the propor. tion of one to nine. The vapor which they would carry would be borne almost entirely toward the Sahara, without benefit to Algeria. M. Augot further estimates, from observation, that the aver- age layer of water raised by evaporation from the proposed inland sea in twenty-four hours, would be more than six millimetres; this would require the canal of communication to bring daily at least 78,000,000 cubic metres of water to keep the lake-level constant. A MERCANTILE firm in Aberdeen, interested in the herring-fisheries of Scotland, keep a number of carrier-pigeons, one of which is sent out with each boat in the afternoon, and liberated the fol- lowing morning, to carry intelligence to head- quarters of the quantity of herrings taken, posi- tion of the boat, direction of the wind, prospects of the return-journey, etc. If a boat’s crew need assistance, a tug can be at once dispatched to their aid. Another advantage of this system is, that the men ashore know exactly what quantity of herrings are to be landed, and so can make preparations for expediting the delivery and cur- ing of the fish. SSEQRBERB RTE SE hy Sa ees eTRBREBSEESCRBESCZSBEERSB BE ~~ ecoex»#snkesceernr ez’ &

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aver- ould juire y at ceep MAGNET attracts iron, but, when we ana- lyze the effect, we learn that the metal is pot only attracted but repelled, the final approach to the magnet being due to the difference of two unequal and opposing forces. Social progress is, for the most part, typified by this duplex or polar action. As a general rule, every advance is bal- anced by a partial retreat, every amelioration is associated more or less with deterioration. No great mechanical improvement, for example, is introduced for the benefit of society at large that does not bear hardly upon individuals. Science, like other things, is subject to the operation of this polar law, what is good for it under one as- pect being bad for it under another. Science demands above all things personal concentration. Its home is the study of the mathematician, the quiet laboratory of the ex- perimenter, and the cabinet of the meditative observer of Nature. Different atmospheres are required by the man of science, as such, and the man of action. The atmosphere, for ex- ample, which vivifies and stimulates your ex- cellent representative, Mr. Chamberlain, would be death to me. There are organisms which flourish in oxygen—he is one of them. There are also organisms which demand for their duller lives a less vitalizing air—I am one of these. Thus the facilities of social and inter- national intercourse, the railway, the telegraph, and the post-office, which are such undoubted boons to the man of action, react to some extent injuriously on the man of science. Their ten- dency is to break up that concentrativeness which, as I have said, is an absolute necessity to the scientific investigator. The men who have most profoundly influ- enced the world from the scientific side have habitually sought isolation. Faraday, at a cer- tain period of his career, formally renounced dining out, Darwin lives apart from the bustle of the world in his quiet home in Kent. Mayer and Joule dealt in unobtrusive retirement with the weightiest scientific questions. None of these men, to my knowledge, ever became Presidents of the Midland Institute or of the British Asso- ciation. They could not fail to know that both positions are posts of honor, but they-would also 1 Presidential address, delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, October 1, 1877; with additions. 43 SCIENCE AND MAN. SCIENCE AND MAN.’ By JOHN TYNDALL, F.R.8., LL.D. know that such positions cannot be filled with- out grave disturbance of that sequestered peace which, to them, is a first condition of intellectual life. There is, however, one motive-power in the world which no man, be he a scientific student or otherwise, can afford to treat with indif- ference, and that is the cultivation of right relations with his fellow-men—the performance of his duty, not as an isolated individual, but as a member of society. Such duty often requires the sacrifice of private ease to the pub- lic wishes, if not to the public good. From this point of view, the invitation conveyed to me more than once by your excellent senior vice- president was not to be declined. It was an in- vitation written with the earnestness said to be characteristic of a radical, and certainly with the courtesy characteristic of a gentleman. It quick- ened within me the desire to meet, in a cordial and brotherly spirit, the wish of an institution of which not only Birmingham, but England, may well be proud, and of whose friendliness to my- self I had agreeable evidence in the letters of Mr. Thackray Bunce. To look at his picture as a whole a painter requires distance, and to judge of the total scientific achievement of any age the stand- point of a succeeding age is desirable. We may, however, transport ourselves in idea into the future, and thus obtain a grasp, more or less complete, of the science of our time. We sometimes hear it decried and contrasted to its disadvantage with the science of other times. I do not think that this will be the verdict of pos- terity. I think, on the contrary, that posterity will acknowledge that, in the history of science, no higher samples of intellectual conquest are re- corded than those which this age has made its own. One of the most salient of these I pro- pose, with your permission, to make the subject of our consideration during the coming hour. It is now generally admitted that the man of to- day is the child and product of incalculable ante- cedent time. His physical and intellectual text- ures have been woven for him during his passage through phases of history and forms of existence which lead the mind back to an abysmal past. One of the qualities which he has derived from that past is the yearning to let in the light of

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98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. principles on the otherwise bewildering flux of phenomena. He has been described by the Ger- man Lichtenberg as “‘ das rastlose Ursachenthier ” —the restless, cause-seeking animal, in whom facts excite a kind of hunger to know the sources from which they spring. Never, I venture to say, in the history of the world, has this longing been more liberally responded to, both among men of science and the general public, than during the last thirty or forty years. I say “the general public,” because it is a feature of our time that the man of science no longer limits his labors to the so- | ciety of his colleagues and his peers, but shares, | as far as it is possible to share, with the world at large the fruits of inquiry. The celebrated Robert Boyle regarded the uni- verse as a machine ; Mr. Carlyle prefers regarding itas atree. He loves the image of the umbrageous Igdrasil better than that of the Strasburg clock. A machine may be defined as an organism with life and direction outside; a tree may be defined as an organism with life and direction within. In the light of these definitions, I close with the conception of Carlyle. The order and energy of the universe I hold to be inherent, and not im- posed from without—the expression of fixed law and not of arbitrary will, exercised by what Car- lyle would call an almighty clock-maker. But the two conceptions are not so much opposed to each other, after all. In one fundamental particular they, at all events, agree. They equally imply the interdependence and harmonious interaction of parts, and the subordination of the individual powers of the universal organism to the working of the whole. Never were the harmony and interdependence just referred to so clearly recognized as now. Our insight regarding them is not that vague and general insight to which our fathers had attained, and which, in early times, was more frequently affirmed by the synthetic poet than by the scientific man. The interdependence of our day has become quantitative—expres- sible by numbers—leading, it must be added, directly into that inexorable reign of law which | so many gentle people regard with dread. In the | domain now under review, men of science had first to work their way from darkness into twi- light, and from twilight into day. There is no solution of continuity in science. It is not given to any man, however endowed, to rise spontane- ously into intellectual splendor without the par- entage of antecedent thought. Great discoveries grow. Here, as in other cases, we have first the seed, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, the last member of the series implying the first Thus, as regards the discovery of gravitation, with which the name of Newton is identified, no. tions more or less clear concerning it had entered many minds before Newton’s transcendent mathe. matical genius raised it to the level of a demon. stration. The whole of his deductions, moreover, rested upon the inductions of Kepler. Newton shot beyond his predecessors, but his thoughts were rooted in their thoughts, and a just distriby. tion of merit would assign to them a fair portion of the honor of discovery. Scientific theories sometimes float like rumors in the air before they receive definite expression, The doom of a doctrine is often practically sealed, and the truth of one is often practically accepted, long prior to the theoretic demon. stration of either the error or the truth. Per. petual motion, for example, was discarded before it was proved to be in opposition to natural law; and, as regards the connection and interaction of natural forces, prenatal intimations of modem discoveries and results are strewed through scien. tific literature. Confining ourselves to recent times, Dr. Ingleby has pointed ont to me some singularly sagacious remarks bearing upon this question, which were published by an anonymous writer in 1820. Ro. get’s penetration was conspicuous in 1829. Mohr had grasped, in 1837, some deep-lying truth. The writings of Faraday furnish frequent illustrations of his profound belief in the unity of Nature, “T have long,” he writes, in 1845, “held an opinion almost amounting to conviction, in com- mon, I believe, with other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so di- rectly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalence of power in their action.” His own researches on magneto-electricity, on electro-chemistry, and on the “ magnetization of light,” led him directly to this belief. At am early date Mr. Justice Grove made his mark upon this question. Colding, though starting from a metaphysical basis, grasped eventually the re- lation between heat and mechanical work, and sought to determine it experimentally. And here let me say that to him who has only the truth at heart, and who in his dealings with scientific history keeps his soul unwarped by envy, hatred, or malice, personal or national, every fresh accession to historic knowledge must be welcome. For every new-comer of proved merit, Ssmenm wesekaeaeetwse& aa weeck@Gart2.nawa we Qj@2_in wsese -§ 3s cs — =o=—w epeeeeeend se

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on of it an om & with 1 by very t be ert, ‘tuations are incessantly going on. more especially if that merit should have been previously overlooked, he makes ready room in his recognition or his reverence. But no retro- spect of scientific literature has as yet brought to light a claim which can sensibly affect the posi- tions accorded to two great Path-hewers, as the Germans call them, whose names in relation to this subject are linked in indissoluble association. These names are Julius Robert Mayer and James Prescott Joule. In his essay on “ Circles,” Mr. Emerson, if I re- member rightly, pictured intellectual progress as thythmic, Ata given moment knowledge is sur- rounded by a barrier which marks its limit. It gradually gathers clearness and strength, until, by- and-by, some thinker of exceptional power bursts the barrier and wins a wider circle, within which thought unce more intrenches itself. But the inter- nal force again accumulates, the new barrier is in itsturn broken, and the mind finds itself surround- ed by a sstill wider horizon. Thus, according to Emerson, knowledge spreads by intermittent vic- tories instead of progressing at a uniform rate. When Dr. Joule first proved that a weight of one pound, falling through a height of 772 feet, generated an amount of heat competent to warm a pound of water one degree Fahrenheit, and that in lifting the weight so much heat exactly disap- peared, he broke an Emersonian “ circle,” re- leasing by the act an amount of scientific energy which rapidly overran a vast domain. Helmholtz, Clausius, Thomson, Rankine, Regnault, Woods, Favre, and other illustrious names, are associated with the conquests since achieved and embodied in the great doctrine known as the “‘ Conservation of Energy.” This doctrine recognizes in the material universe a constant sum of power made up of items among which the most protean fluc- It is as if the body of Nature were alive, the thrill and inter- change of its energies resembling those of an organism. The parts of the “ stupendous whole ” shift and change, augment and diminish, appear and disappear, while the total of which they are the parts remains quantitatively immutable—im- mutable, because when change occurs it is always polar—plus accompanies minus, gain accompanies loss, no item varying in the slightest degree with- out an absolutely equal change of some other item in the opposite direction. The sun warms the tropical ocean, converting a portion of its liquid into vapor, which rises in the air and is recondensed on mountain-heights, re- turning in rivers to the ocean from which it came. Up to the point where condensation begins an SCIENCE AND MAN. amount of heat exactly equivalent to the molecular work of vaporization and the mechanical work of lifting the vapor to the mountain-tops has disap- peared from the universe. What is the gain corre- sponding to this loss ? It will seem when mentioned to be expressed in a foreign currency. The loss is a loss of heat; the gain is a gain of distance, both as regards masses and molecules. Water which was formerly at the sea-level has been lifted to a position from which it can fall; mole- cules which had been locked together as a liquid are now separate as vapor which can re- condense. After condensation gravity comes in- to effectual play, pulling the showers down upon the hills, and the rivers thus created through their gorges to the sea. Every rain-drop which smites the mountain producee its definite amount of heat; every river in its course develops heat by the clash of its cataracts and the friction of its bed. In the act of condensation, moreover, the molecular work of vaporization is accurately reversed. Compare, then, the primitive loss of solar warmth with the heat generated by the con- densation of the vapor, and by the subsequent fall of the water from cloud to sea. They are mathematically equal to each other. No particle of vapor was formed and lifted without being paid for in the currency of solar heat; no parti- cle returns as water to the sea without the exact quantitative restitution of that heat. There is nothing gratuitous in physical Nature, no expen- diture without equivalent gain, no gain without equivalent expenditure. With inexorable con- stancy the one accompanies the other, leaving no nook or crevice between them for spontaneity to mingle with the pure and necessary play of natu- ral force, Has this uniformity of Nature ever been broken? The reply is, “Not to the knowledge of Science.” What has been here stated regarding heat and gravity applies to the whole of inorganic Nature. Let us take an illustration from chem- istry. The metal zinc may be burned in oxy- gen, a perfectly definite amount of heat being produced by the combustion of a given weight of the metal. But zinc may also be burned in a liquid which contains a supply of oxygen—in water, for example. It does not in this case pro- duce flame or fire, but it does produce heat which is capable of accurate measurement. But the heat of zinc burned in water falls short of that produced in pure oxygen, the reason being that to obtain its oxygen from the water the zinc must first dislodge the hydrogen. It is in the per- formance of this molecular work that the missing o% See . > @ * . . ‘ . ‘ *e = «@

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100 heat is absorbed. Mix the liberated hydrogen with the oxygen and cause them to recombine, the heat developed is mathematically equal to the missing heat. Thus in pulling the oxygen and hydrogen asunder an amount of heat is con- sumed which is accurately restored by their re- union. This leads up to a few remarks upon the vol- taic battery. It is not my design to dwell upon the technic features of this wonderful instru- ment, but simply by means of it to show what varying shapes a given amount of energy can assume while maintaining unvarying quantitative stability. When that form of power which we call an electric current passes through Grove’s battery, zinc is consumed in acidulated water, and in the battery we are able so to arrange matters that when no current passes no zinc shall be con- sumed. Now the current, whatever it may be, possesses the power of generating heat outside the battery. We can fuse with it iridium, the most refractory of metals, or we can produce with it the dazzling electric light, and that at any ter- restrial distance from the battery itself. We will now, however, content ourselves with causing the current to raise a given length of plat- inum wire, first to a blood-heat, then to redness, and finally to a white heat. The heat under these circumstances generated in the battery by the combustion of a fixed quantity of zinc is no longer constant, but it varies inversely as the heat gen- erated outside. Ifthe outside heat be nil, the iv- side heat is a maximum; if the external wire be raised to a blood-heat, the internal heat falls slightly short of the maximum. If the wire be rendered red-hot, the quantity of missing heat within the battery is greater, and, if the external wire be rendered white-hot, the defect is greater still. Add together the internal and external heat produced by the combustion of a given weight of zinc, and you have an absolutely con- stant total. The heat generated without is so much lost within, the heat generated within is so much lost without, the polar changes already adverted to coming here conspicuously into play. Thus, in a variety of ways, we can distribute the items of a never-varying sum, but even the sub- tile agency of the electric current places no cre- ative power in our hands. Instead of generating external heat we may cause the current to effect chemical decomposition at a distance from the battery. Let it, for exam- ple, decompose water into oxygen and hydrogen. The heat generated in the battery under these cir- cumstances by the combustion of a given weight | junction was chilled. Now, the current in the THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of zine falls short of what is produced when ther is no decomposition. How far short? The ques tion admits of a perfectly exact answer. Whe the oxygen and hydrogen recombine, the heat ab. sorbed in the decomposition is accurately restored, and it is exactly equal in amount to that misgj in the battery. We may, if we like, bottle up the gases, carry in this form the heat of the battery to the polar regions, and liberate it there. The battery, in fact, is a hearth on which fuel is cop. sumed, but the heat of the combustion, instead of being confined in the usual manner to the hearth itself, may be first liberated at the other side of the world. And here we are able to solve an enigma which long perplexed scientific men, and which could not be solved until the bearing of the mechanical theory of heat upon the phenomena of the vol. taic battery was understood, The puzzle was, that a single cell could not decompose water, The reason is now plain enough. The solution of an equivalent of zinc in a single cell develops not much more than half the amount of heat re quired to decompose an equivalent of water, and the single cell cannot cede an amount of force which it does not possess. But by forming a battery of two cells, instead of one, we develop an amount of heat slightly in excess of that needed for the decomposition of the water. The two-celled battery is therefore rich enough to pay for that decomposition, and to maintain the excess referred to within its own cells. Similar reflections apply to the thermo-elec- tric pile, an instrument usually composed of small bars of bismuth and antimony soldered alter- nately together. The electric current is here evoked by warming the soldered junctions of one face of the pile. Like the Voltaic current, the thermo-electric current can heat wires, produce decomposition, magnetize iron, and deflect a mag- netic needle at any distance from its origin. You will be disposed, and rightly disposed, to refer those distant manifestations of power to the heat communicated to the face of the pile, but the case is worthy of closer examination. In 1826 Thomas Seebeck discovered thermo-electricity, and six years subsequently Peltier made an ob- servation which comes with singular felicity to our aid in determining the material used up im the formation of the thermo-electric current. He found that when a weak extraneous current was sent from antimony to bismuth, the junction of the two metals was always heated, but that when the direction was from bismuth to antimony, the SERRE PBT REE a a aS 3.8 oz oruPpsertBeaBeBPBeszaetZTEtses a il ee le ae 2. ek ee ee i a. 6

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eD there De ques. leat ab. Up the battery . The to the + Other which anical he vol. e Was, water, lution velops pat ro- Tr, and - force ing a velop gh to n the alter- SCIENCE AND MAN. fhermo-pile itself is always from bismuth to an- timony, across the heated junction—a direction in which it cannot possibly establish itself with- out consuming the heat imparted to the junction. This heat is the nutriment of the current. Thus the heat generated by the thermo-current in a distant wire is simply that originally imparted to the pile, which has been first transmuted into dectricity, and then retransmuted into its first form at a distance from its origin. As water in astate of vapor passes from a boiler to a distant condenser, and there assumes its primitive form without gain or loss, so the heat communicated to the thermo-pile distills into the subtiler elec- tric current, which is, as it were, recondensed into heat in the distant platinum wire. In my youth I thought an electro-magnetic engine which was shown to me a veritable per- petual motion—a machine, that is to say, which performed work without the expenditure of power. Let us consider the action of such a machine. Suppose it to be employed to pump water from a lower to a higher level. On ex- amining the battery which works the engine we find that the zinc consumed does not yield its full amount of heat. The quantity of heat thus missing within is the exact thermal equivalent of the mechanical work performed without. Let the water fall again to a lower level, it is warmed | by the fall. Add the heat thus produced to | that generated by the friction, mechanical and magnetical, of the engine, we thus obtain the 101 combustion is quickened and the heat is increased, this additional beat being liberated in the muscle itself. I lay hold of a fifty-six-pound weight, and by the contraction of my biceps lift it through the vertical space of a foot. The blood and tis- sue consumed during this contraction have' not developed in the muscle their due amount of heat, A quantity of heat is at this moment missing in my muscle which would raise the temperature of an ounce of water somewhat more than one degree Fahrenheit. I liberate the weight, it falls to the earth, and by its collision generates the precise amount of heat missing in the muscle. _My mus- cular heat is thus transferred from its local hearth to external space. The fuel is consumed in my body, but the heat of combustion is produced outside my body. The case is substantially the same as that of the voltaic battery when it per- forms external work or produces external heat. All this points to the conclusion that the force we employ in muscular exertion is the force of burn- ing fuel and not of creative will. In the light of these facts the body is seen to be as incapable of generating energy without expenditure as the solids and liquids of the voltaic battery. The body, in other words, falls into the category of machines. We can do with the body all that we have already done with the battery—heat platinum wires, decompose water, magnetize iron, and deflect a magnetic needle. The combustion of muscle may be made to produce all these effects, precise amount of heat missing in the battery. | as the combustion of zinc may be caused to pro- All the effects obtained from the machine are | duce them, By turning the handle of a magneto- thus strictly paid for; this “payment for re- | sults” being, I would repeat, the inexorable meth- od of Nature. No engine, however subtly devised, can evade this law of equivalence, or perform on its own ac- count the smallest modicum of work. The ma- chine distributes, but it cannot create. Is the ani- mal body, then, to be classed among machines ? When I lift a weight, or throw a stone, or climb a mountain, or wrestle with my comrade, am I not conscious of actually creating and expending force? Let us look to the antecedents of this force. We derive the muscle and fat of our bodies from what we eat. Animal heat you know to be due to the slow combustion of this fuel. My arm is now inactive, and the ordinary slow combustion of my blood and tissue is going on. For every grain of fuel thus burned & perfectly definite amount of heat has been pro- duced. I now contract my biceps muscle with- out causing it to perform external work. The electric machine, a coil of wire may be caused to rotate between the poles of a magnet. As long as the two ends of the coil are unconnected we have simply to overcome the ordinary inertia and friction of the machine in turning the handle, But the moment the two ends of the coil are united by a thin platinum wire a sudden addition of labor is thrown upon the turning arm. When the necessary labor is expended, its equivalent immediately appears. The platinum wire glows. You can readily maintain it at a white heat or even fuse it. This is a very remarkable result. From the muscles of the arm, with a temperature of 100°, we extract the temperature of molten platinum, which is many thousand degrees. The miracle here is the reverse of that of the burning bush mentioned in Exodus. There the bush burned but was not consumed: here the body is consumed but does not burn. The similarity of the action with that of the voltaic battery when it heats an external wire is too obvious to need

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102 pointing out. When the machine is used to de- compose water, the heat of the muscle, like that of the battery, is consumed in molecular work, being fully restored when the gases recombine. As before, also, the transmuted heat of the mus- cles may be bottled up, carried to the polar re- gions, and there restored to its pristine form. The matter of the human body is the same as that of the world around us, and here we find the forces of the human body identical with those of inorganic Nature. Just as little as the voltaic battery is the animal body a creator of force. It is an apparatus exquisite and effectual beyond all others in transforming and distributing the ener- gy with which it is supplied, but it possesses no creative power. Compared with the notions pre- viously entertained regarding the play of “ vital force,” this is a great result. The problem of vital dynamics has been described by a competent authority as “the grandest of ail.” I subscribe to this opinion, and honor correspondingly the man who first successfully grappled with the prob- lem. He was no pope in the sense of being in- fallible, but he was a man of genius whose work will be held in honor as long as science endures. I have already named him in connection with our illustrious countryman Dr. Joule. Other eminent men took up this subject subsequently and inde- peudently; but all that has been done hitherto enhances, instead of diminishing, the merits of Dr. Mayer. Consider the vigor of his reasoning: “ Be- yond the power of generating internal heat, the animal organism can generate heat external to itself. A blacksmith by hammering can warm a nail, and a savage by friction can heat wood to its point of ignition. Unless, then, we abandon the physiological axiom that the animal body cannot create heat out of nothing, we are driven to the conclusion that it is the total heat, within and without, that ought to be regarded as the real calorific effect of the oxidation within the body.” Mayer, however, not only states the principle, but illustrates numerically the transfer of muscular heat to external space. A bowler who imparts a velocity of thirty feet to an eight- pound ball consumes in the act one-tenth of a grain of carbon. The heat of the muscle is here distributed over the track of the ball, being de- veloped there by mechanical friction. A man weighing one hundred and fifty pounds consumes in lifting his own body to a height of eight feet the heat of a grain of carbon. Jumping from this height the heat is restored. The consumption of two ounces four drachms twenty grains of carbon THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. would place the same man on the summit of mountain 10,000 feet high. In descending the mountain an amount of heat equal to that pro- duced by the combustion of the foregoing amount of carbon is restored. The muscles of a laborer whose weight is one hundred and fifty pounds weigh sixty-four pounds. When dried they are reduced to fifteen pounds. Were the oxidation corresponding to a day-laborer’s ordinary work exerted on the muscles alone, they would be wholly consumed in eighty days. Were the oxidation necessary to sustain the heart’s action concen trated on the heart itself, it would be consumed in eight days. And if we confine our attention to the two ventricles, their action would consume the associated muscular tissue in three days and a half. With a fullness and precision of which this is but a sample did Mayer, between 1842 and 1845, deal with the great question of vital dynamics. In direct opposition, moreover, to the fore- most scientific authorities of that day, with Lie- big at their head, this solitary Heilbronn worker was led by his calculations to maintain that the muscles, in the main, played the part of machin- ery, converting the fat, which had been previous- ly considered a mere heat-producer, into the mo- tive power of the organism. Mayer’s prevision has been justified by events, for the scientific world is now upon his side. We place, then, food in our stomachs as 80 much combustible matter. It is first dissolved by purely chemical processes, and the nutritive fluid is poured into the blood. Here it comes into contact with atmospheric oxygen admitted by the lungs. It unites with the oxygen as wood or coal might unite with it in a furnace. The matter-products of .the union, if I may use the term, are the same in both cases—viz., carbonic acid and water. The force-products are also the same—heat within the body, or heat and work outside the body. Thus far every action of the organism belongs to the domain either of physics or of chemistry. But you saw me contract the muscle of my arm. What enabled me to do so? Was it or was it not the direct action of my will? The answer is, the action of the will is mediate, not direct. Over and above the muscles the hu- man organism is provided with long, whitish fila- ments of medullary matter, which issue from the spinal column, being connected by it on the one side with the brain, and on the other side losing themselves in the muscles. Those filaments or cords are the nerves, which you know are divided into two kinds, sensor and motor, or, if you like 214136 = aa ebeeresese & Ee a & —_- © —_ -_ s2seemUrh ee lU ir lUrrlhlUvlUrlCUlCUCUD

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the terms better, afferent and efferent nerves. The former carry impressions from the external world to the brain ; the latter convey the behests of the brain to the muscles. Here, as elsewhere, we find ourselves aided by the sagacity of Mayer, who was the first clearly to formulate the part played by the nerves in the organism. Mayer gaw that neither nerves nor brain, nor both to- gether, possessed the energy necessary to animal motion; but he also saw that the nerve could lift a latch and open a door by which floods of energy are let loose. “As an engineer,” he says with admirable lucidity, “ by the motion of his finger in opening a valve or loosening a detent can lib- erate an amount of mechanical energy almost in- finite compared with its exciting cause, so the nerves, acting on the muscles, can unlock an amount of power out of all proportion to the work done by the nerves themselves.” The nerves, according to Mayer, pull the trigger, but the gun- powder which they ignite is stored in the muscles, This is the view now universally entertained. The quickness of thought has passed into a proverb, and the notion that any measurable time elapsed between the infliction of a wound and the feeling of the injury would have been rejected as preposterous thirty years ago. Nervous im- pressions, notwithstanding the results of Haller, were thought to be transmitted, if not instan- taneously, at all events with the rapidity of elec- tricity. Hence, when Helmholtz, in 1851, af- firmed, as the result of experiment, nervous transmission to be a comparatively sluggish pro- cess, very few believed him. His experiments may now be made in the lecture-room. Sound in air moves at the rate of 1,100 feet a second; sound in water moves at the rate of 5,000 feet a second; light in ether moves at the rate of 186,- 000 miles a second, and electricity in free wires moves probably at the same rate. But the nerves transmit their messages at the rate of only 70 feet a second, a progress which in these quick times might well be regarded as intolerably slow. Your townsman, Mr. Gore, has produced by electrolysis a kind of antimony which exhibits an action strikingly analogous to that of nervous propagation. A rod of this antimony is in such a molecular condition that, when you scratch or heat one end of the rod, the disturbance propa- gates itself before your eyes to the other end, the onward march of the disturbance being announced by the development of heat and fumes along the line of propagation. In some such way the mole- cules of the nerves are successively overthrown ; SCIENCE AND MAN. and if Mr. Gore could only devise some means of winding up his exhausted antimony, as the nu- tritive blood winds up exhausted nerves, the com- parison would be complete. The subject may be summed up, as Du Bois-Reymond has summed it up, by reference to the case of a whale struck by a harpoon in the tail. If the animal were seventy feet long, a second would elapse before the dis- turbance could reach the brain. But the im- pression after its arrival has to diffuse itself and throw the brain into the molecular condition necessary to consciousness. Then, and not till then, the command to the tail to defend itself is shot through the motor nerves. Another second must elapse before the command can reach the tail, so that more than two seconds transpire between the infliction of the wound and the muscular re- sponse of the part wounded. The interval required for the kindling of consciousness would probably more than suffice for the destruction of the brain by lightning or even bya rifle-bullet. Before the organ can arrange itself, it may, therefore, be destroyed, and in such a case we may safely con- clude that death is painless. The experiences of common life supply us with copious instances of the liberation of vast stores of muscular power by an infinitesimal “priming” of the muscles by the nerves. We all know the effect produced on a “nervous” organization by a slight sound which causes affright. An aérial wave the energy of which would not reach a minute fraction of that necessary to raise the thousandth of a grain through the thousandth of an inch, can throw the whole human frame into a powerful mechanical spasm, followed by violent respiration and palpi- tation. The eye, of course, may be appealed to as well as the ear. Of this the lamented Lange gives the following vivid illustration : A merchant sits complacently in his easy-chair, not knowing whether smoking, sleeping, news- paper-reading, or the digestion of food, occupies the largest portion of his personality. A servant enters the room with a telegram bearing the words, “ Antwerp, etc. .. . Jonas & Co. have failed.” “Tell James to harness the horses!” The ser- vant flies. Up starts the merchant wide awake, makes a dozen paces through the room, descends to the counting-house, dictates letters and for- wards dispatches. He jumps into his carriage, the horses snort, and their driver is immediately at the bank, on the Bourse, and among his com- mercial friends. Before an hour has elapsed he is again at home, where he throws himself once more into his easy-chair with a deep-drawn sigh,

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104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “Thank God I am protected against the worst, and now for further reflection !” This complex mass of action, emotional, in- tellectual, and mechanical, is evoked by the im- pact upon the retina of the infinitesimal waves of light coming from a few pencil-marks on a bit of paper. We have, as Lange says, terror, hope, sensation, calculation, possible ruin, and victory, compressed into a moment. What caused the merchant to spring out of his chair? The contraction of his muscles. What made his muscles contract? An impulse of the nerves, which lifted the proper latch, and liberated the muscular power. Whence this im- pulse? From the centre of the nervous system. But how did it originate there? This is the critical question, to which some will reply that it had its origin in the human soul. The aim and effort of science is to explain the unknown in terms of the known. Expla- nation, therefore, is conditioned by knowledge. You have probably heard the story of the German peasant who, in early railway days, was taken to see the performance of a locomotive. He had never known carriages to be moved ex- cept by animal power. Every explanation outside of this conception lay beyond his experience, and could not be invoked. After long reflection, therefore, and seeing no possible cscape from the conclusion, he exclaimed confidently to his com- panion, “Es miissen doch Pferde darin sein” (“There must be horses inside”), Amusing as this locomotive theory may seem, it illustrates a deep-lying truth. With reference to our present question, some may be disposed to press upon me such con- siderations as these: Your motor nerves are so many speaking-tubes, through which mes- sages are sent from the man to the world; and your sensor nerves are so many conduits through which the whispers of the world are sent back to the man. But you have not told us where is the man. Who or what is it that sends and receives those messages through the bodily organism? Do not the phenomena point to the existence of a self within the self, which acts through the body as through a skillfully-con- structed instrument? You picture the muscles as hearkening to the commands sent through the motor nerves, and ‘you picture the sensor nerves as the vehicles of incoming intelligence; are you not bound to supplement this mechanism by the assumption of an entity which uses it? In other words, are you not forced by your own exposition into the hypothesis of a free human soul ? Is this reasoning congruous with the knowk edge of our time? — If so, it cannot be called uj scientific. On the same ground the anthropo. morphic notion of a creative architect, endowed with manlike powers of indefinite magnitude, ig to be regarded with consideration. It marks g phase of theoretic activity, which the humay race could not escape, and our present objection to such a notion rests on its incongruity with oup knowledge. “ When God,” says the great Jesuit teacher, Perrone, “orders a given planet to stand still, he does not detract from any law passed by himself, but orders that planet to move round and round the sun for such and such a time, then to stand still, and then to move again, as his pleas. ure may be.” You notice that a modicum of science has entered even the mind of Perrone, At an earlier period he would not have said, “When God orders a planet to move round the sun,” but “‘ When God orders the sun to move round a planet.” And why, unless the com. mands of the Almighty are hampered by consid. erations of mass, should he not give this latter order? Why, moreover, has he suspended his orders, and abandoned sun and planets to the law of gravitation during those particular ages when the human intellect was most specially prepared to appreciate the wonder? The case, to say the least, is suspicious. In Joshua’s time such an hypothesis was allowable, and the error of Per- rone is simply a sin against the law of relativity. He, and such as he, transport into the nineteenth century the puerilities of a by-gone age. No won- der that our Catholic youth from time to time re- bel against such teaching. But to return to the hypothesis of a human soul, offered as an explanation or simplification of a series of obscure phenomena. Adequate reflec- tion shows that, instead of introducing light into our minds, it increases our darkness, You do not in this case explain the unknown in terms of the known, which, as stated above, is the method of science, but you explain the unknown in terms of the more unknown. Try to mentally visualize this soul as an entity distinct from the body, and the difficulty immediately appears. From the side of science all that we are warranted in stating is that the terror, hope, sensation, and calculation of Lange’s merchant are psychical phenomena produced by, or associated with, the molecular processes set up by the waves of light in a pre- viously-prepared brain. When facts present themselves let us dare to face them, but let us equally dare to confess igno- rance where it prevails. What is the causal connec- =—oo es a. oo ok ani ae oo oe eee a ae @ OF a ae a ee oe eee

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| of PEAS _ a = STO. Pe este ES tion, if any, between the objective and subjective, between molecular motions and states of con- sciousness ? My answer is: I do not see the con- nection, nor have I as yet met anybody who does. It is no explanation to say that the objective and subjective effects are two sides of one and the same phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have two sides? This is the very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a win- dow-pane? If not, why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion, consciousness? We can present to our minds a coherent picture of the physical pro- cesses—the stirring of the brain, the thrilling of the nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and all the subsequent mechanical motions of the or- ganism. But we can present no picture of the process whereby consciousness emerges, either as a necessary link or as an accidental by-product of this series of actions. Yet it certainly does emerge—the prick of a pin suffices to prove that molecular motion can produce consciousness, The reverse process of the production of. motion by consciousness is equally unpresentable to the mind. We are here, in fact, upon the boundary- line of the intellect, where the ordinary canons of science fail to extricate us from our difficulties. If we are true to these canons, we must deny to subjective phenomena all influence on physical processes. Observation proves that they interact, but in passing from the one to the other we meet a blank which mechanical deduction is unable to fill. Frankly stated, we have here to deal with facts almost as difficult to be seized mentally as the idea of a soul. And if you are content to make your “soul” a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws, I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality. Amid all our speculative uncertainty, however, there is one practical point as clear as the day—namely, that the brightness and the use- fulness of life, as well as its darkness and disaster, depend to a great extent upon our own use or abuse of this miraculous organ. [Im an article betraying signs of haste and its consequent confusion, a well-known and accom- plished essayist pulls me sharply up in the Spec- tator for the phraseology here employed. In a single breath he brands my “ poetic rendering” as a “ falsehood” and a “ fib.” I should be loath to apply to any utterance of my respected critic terms so uncivil as these. They are, in my opin- ion, unmerited, for poetry or ideality and untruth SCIENCE AND MAN. 105 are assuredly very different things. The one may vivify while the other kills. When St. John extends the notion of a soul to “souls washed in the blood of Christ” does he “fib?” Indeed, Christ himself, according to my critic’s canon, ought not to have escaped censure. Nor did he escape it. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” expressed the skeptical flouting of un- poetic natures. Such are still among us. Car- dinal Manning would doubtless tell my critic that he, even he, “fibs” away the plain words of his Saviour when he reduces “the body of the Lord” in the sacrament to a mere figure of speech. Though misuse may render it grotesque or in- sincere, the idealization of ancient conceptions, when done consciously and above board, has, in my opinion, an important future. We are not radically different from our historic ancestors, and any feeling which affected them profoundly requires only appropriate clothing to affect us. The world will not lightly relinquish its heritage of poetic feeling, and metaphysic will be wel- comed when it abandons its pretensions to sci- entific discovery, and consents to be ranked as a kind of poetry. “A good symbol,” says Emer- son, “is a missionary to persuade thousands. The Vedas, the Edda, the Koran, are each re- membered by its happiest figure. There is no more welcome gift to men than a new symbol. They assimilate themselves to it, deal with it in all ways, and it will last a hundred years. Then comes a new genius and brings another.” Our ideas of God and the soul are obviously subject to this symbolic mutation. They are not now what they were a century ago. They will not be a century hence what they are now. Such ideas constitute a kind of central energy in the human mind, capable, like the energy of the physical universe, of assuming various shapes and under- going various transformations. They baffle and elude the theological mechanic who would carve them to dogmatic forms. They offer themselves freely to the poet who understands his vocation, and whose function is, or ought to be, to find “local habitation” for thoughts woven into our subjective life, but which refuse to be mechani- cally defined. ] We now stand face to face with the final problem. It is this: Are the brain, and the moral and intellectual processes known to be associated with the brain—and, as far as our experience goes, indissolubly associated—subject to the laws which we find paramount in physi- cal Nature? Is the will of man, in other words,

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106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE free, or are it and Nature equally “bound fast in fate?” From this latter conclusion, after he had established it to the entire satisfaction of his understanding, the great German thinker Fichte recoiled. You will find the record of this struggle between head and heart in his book entitled “ Die Bestimmung des Menschen ” (“ The Vocation of Man”).' Fichte was determined at all hazards to maintain his freedom, but the price he paid for it indicates the difficulty of the task. To escape from the iron necessity seen every- where reigning in physical Nature, he turned defi- antly round upon Nature and law, and affirmed both of them to be the products of his own mind. He was not going to be the slave of a thing which he had himself created. There is a good deal to be said in favor of this view, but few of us prob- ably would be able to bring into play the sol- vent transcendentalism whereby Fichte melted his chains. Why do some of us regard this notion of ne- cessity with terror, while others do not fear it at all? Has not Carlyle somewhere said that a belief in destiny is the bias of all earnest minds ? “Tt is not Nature,” says Fichte, “it is freedom itself, by which the greatest and most terrible dis- orders incident to our race are produced. Man is the cruelest enemy of man.” But the question of moral responsibility here emerges, and it is the possible loosening of this responsibility that so many of us dread. The notion of necessity cer- tainly failed to frighten Bishop Butler. He thought it untrue, but he did not fear its practi- cal consequences. He showed, on the contrary, in the “ Analogy,” that as far as human conduct is concerned the two theories of free-will and necessity come to the same in the end. What is meant by free-will? Does it imply the power of producing events without antece- dents—of starting, as it were, upon a creative tour of occurrences without any impulse from within or from without? Let us consider the point. If there be absolutely or relatively no reason why a tree should fall, it will not fall; and, if there be absolutely or relatively no reason why a man should act, he will not act. It is true that the united voice of this assembly could not per- suade me that I have not, at this moment, the power to lift my arm if I wished todoso. Within this range the conscious freedom of my will can- not be questioned. But what about the origin of the “wish?” Are we, or are we not, complete masters of the circumstances which create our wishes, motives, and tendencies to action? Ade- 1 Translated by Dr. William Smith. Tribner, 1873. | kindness could conciliate, and no discipline tame. aes MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. quate reflection will, I think, prove that we are not, What, for example, have I had to do with the gen. eration and development of that which some will consider my total being, and others a most potent factor of my total being—the living, speaking op. ganism which now addresses you? As stated at the beginning of this discourse, my physical and in. tellectual textures were woven for me, not by me. Processes in the conduct or regulation of which I had no share have made me whatI am. Here, surely, if anywhere, we are as clay in the hands of the potter. It is the greatest of delusions to suppose that we come into this world as sheets of white paper on which the age can write any- thing it likes, making us good or bad, noble or | mean, as the age pleases. The age can stunt, | promote, or pervert preéxistent capacities, but it cannot create them. The worthy Robert Owen, | who saw in external circumstances the great moulders of human character, was obliged to | supplement his doctrine by making the man him- self one of the circumstances, It is as fatal as it | is cowardly to blink facts because they are not | to our taste. How many disorders, ghostly and bodily, are transmitted to us by inheritance! In our courts of law, whenever it is a question | whether a crime has been committed under the | influence of insanity, the best guidance the judge ‘and jury can have is derived from the parental | antecedents of the accused. If among these in- | sanity be exhibited in any marked degree, the presumption in the prisoner’s favor is enormously enhanced, because the experience of life has taught both judge and jury that insanity is fre- quently transmitted from parent to child. I met some years ago in a railway-carriage the governor of one of our largest prisons. He was evidently an observant and reflective man, pos- sessed of wide experience gathered in various parts of the world, and a thorough student of the duties of his vocation. He told me that the prison- ers in his charge might be divided into three dis- | tinet classes. The first class consisted of persons who ought never to have been in prison. External ' accident, and not internal taint, had brought them | within the grasp of the law, and what had happened toe them might happen to most of us. They were | essentially men of sound moral stamina, though | wearing the prison-garb. Then came the largest class, formed of individuals possessing no strong bias, moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of circumstances which could mould them into ' either good or evil members of society. Thirdly | came a class—happily not a large one—whom no ecoompureateaenenes-3 a nn nk _ e ee ee Oe Ue 6 ee ee ee [eee

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ig Or. a ? & Jae r Om SP & S&S FT FT were sent into this world labeled “incor- rigible,” wickedness being stamped, as it were, upon their organizations. It was an unpleasant truth, but as a truth it ought to be faced. For such criminals the prison over which he ruled was certainly not the proper place. If confined at all, their prison should be on a desert island where the deadly contagium of their example could not taint the moral air. But the sea itself be was disposed to regard as a cheap and appro- priate substitute for the island. It seemed to him evident that the state would benefit if pris- oners of the first class were liberated ; prisoners of the second class educated; and prisoners of the third class put compendiously under water. It is not, however, from the observation of in- dividuals that the argument against “ free-will,” as commonly understood, derives its principal force. It is, as already hinted, indefinitely strengthened when extended to the race. Most of you have been forced to listen to the outcries and denun- ciations which rung discordant through the land for some years after the publication of Mr. Dar- win’s “Origin of Species.” Well, the world— even the clerical world—has for the most part settled down in the belief that Mr. Darwin’s book simply reflects the truth of Nature; that we who are now “foremost in the files of time” have come to the front through almost endless stages of promotion from lower to higher forms of life. If to any one of us were given the privilege of looking back through the eons across which life has crept toward its present outcome, his vision would ultimately reach a point when the progeni- tors of this assembly could not be called human. From that humble society, through the interac- tion of its members and the storing up of their best qualities, a better one emerged; from this again a better still; until at length, by the inte- gration of infinitesimals through ages of ameliora- tion, we came to be what we are to-day. We of this generation had no conscious share in the production of this grand and beneficent result. Any and every generation which preceded us had just as little share. The favored organisms whose garnered excellence constitutes our present store owed their advantages, firstly, to what we in our ignorance are obliged to call.“ accidental varia- tion;” and, secondly, to a law of heredity in the passing of which our suffrages were not collected. With characteristic felicity and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts this question into the free air of poetry, but not out of the atmosphere of truth, when he ascribes the process of ameliora- tion to “a power not ourselves which makes for SCIENCE AND MAN. 107 righteousness.” If, then, our organisms, with all their tendencies and capacities, are given to us without our being consulted, and if, while capa- ble of acting within certain limits in accordance with our wishes, we are not masters of the cir- cumstances in which motives and wishes origi- nate; if, finally, our motives and wishes deter- mine our actions—in what sense can these actions be said to be the result of free-will ? Here, ugain, we are confronted with the ques- tion of moral responsibility which it is desirable to meet in its rudest form and in the most uncom- promising way. “If,” says the robber, the ravish- er, or the murderer, “I act because I must act, what right have you to hold me responsible for my deeds?” The reply is, “The right of society to protect itself against aggressive and injurious forces, whether they be bond or free, forces of Nature or forces of man.” “Then,” retorts the criminal, “ you punish me for what I cannot help.” “Granted,” says society, “but had you known that the treadmill or the gallows was certainly in store for you, you might have ‘helped.’ Let us reason the matter fully and frankly out. We en- tertain no malice or hatred against you, but sim- ply with a view to our own safety and purifica- tion we are determined that you and such as you shall not enjoy liberty of evil action in our midst. You, who have behaved as a wild beast, we claim the right to cage or kill as we should a wild beast. The public safety is a matter of more im- portance than the very limited chance of your moral renovation, while the knowledge that you have been hanged by the neck may furnish to others about to do as you have done the precise motive which will hold them back. If your act be such as to invoke a minor penalty, then not only others, but yourself, may profit by the punishment which we inflict. On the homely principle that ‘a burned child dreads the fire,” it will make you think twice before venturing on a repetition of your crime. Observe, finally, the consistency of our conduct. You offend, be- cause you cannot help offending, to the public detriment. We punish, because we cannot help punishing, for the public good. Practically, then, as Bishop Butler predicted, we act as the world acted when it supposed the evil deeds of its criminals to be the products of free-will.” “* What,” I have heard it argued, “ is the use of preaching about duty if man’s predetermined position in the mora] world renders him incapa- ble of profiting by advice?”” Who knows that he is incapable ? The preacher’s last word is a factor in the man’s conduct; and it may be a most

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108 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. important factor, unlocking moral energies which might otherwise remain imprisoned and unused. If the preacher thoroughly feel that words of enlightenment, courage, and admonition, enter into the list of forces employed by Nature her- self for man’s amelioration, since she gifted man with speech, he will suffer no paralysis to fall upon his tongue. Dung the fig-tree hopefully, and not until its barrenness has been demon- strated beyond a doubt let the sentence go forth, “ Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground ?” I remember, when a youth in the town of Hali- fax, some two-and-thirty years ago, attending a lecture given by a young man to a small but select audience. The aspect of the lecturer was ear- nest and practical, and his voice soon riveted at- tention. He spoke of duty, defining it as a debt owed, and there was a kindling vigor in his words which must have strengthened the sense of duty in the minds of those who heard him. No specu- lations regarding the freedom of the will could alter the fact that the words of that young man did me good. His name was George Dawson. He also spoke, if you will allow me to allude to it, of a social subject much discussed at the time—the Chartist subject of “leveling.” ‘ Sup- pose,” he said, “two men to be equal at night, and that one rises at six, while the other sleeps till nine next morning, what becomes of your lev- eling?” And in so speaking he made himself the mouth-piece of Nature, which, as we have seen, secures advance, not by the reduction of all to a common level, but by the encouragement and conservation of what is best. It may be urged that, in dealing as above with my hypothetical criminal, I am assuming a state of things brought about by the influence of reli- gions which include the dogmas of theology and the belief in free-will—a state, namely, in which a moral majority control and keep in awe an im- moral minority. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. With- draw, then, our theologic sanctions, including the belief in free-will, and the condition of the race will be typified by the samples of individual wick- edness which have been adduced. We shall all, that is, become robbers, and ravishers, and mur- derers. From much that has been written of late it would seem that this astounding inference finds house-room in many minds. Possibly, the peo- ple who hold such views might be able to illus- trate them by individual instances: “ The fear of hell's a hangman’s whip, To keep the wretch in order.” Remove the fear, and the wretch, following his natural instinct, may become disorderly; but I refuse to accept him as a sample of humanity, “ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” ig by no means the ethical consequence of a rejection of dogma. To many of you the name of George Jacob Holyoake is doubtless familiar, and you are probably aware that at no man in England has the term atheist been more frequently pelted, There are, moreover, really few who have more completely liberated themselves from theologic notions. Among working-class politicians Mr, Holyoake is a leader. Does he exhort his fol- lowers to “ eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?” Not so. In the August number of the Nineteenth Century you will find these words from his pen: “The gospel of dirt is bad enough, but the gos- pel of mere material comfort is much worse,” He contemptuously calls the Comtist champion- ship of the working-man “the championship of the trencher.” He would place “ the leanest lib- erty which brought with it the dignity and power of self-help” higher than “any prospect of a full plate without it.” Such is the moral doctrine taught by this “atheistic” leader; and no Chris- tian, I apprehend, need be ashamed of it. Most heartily do I recognize and admire the spiritual radiance, if I may use the term, shed by religion on the minds and lives of many personal- ly known to me. At the same time I cannot but observe how signally, as regards the production of anything beautiful, religion fails in other cases. Its professor and defender is sometimes at bottom a brewleranda clown. These differences depend upon primary distinctions of character which reli- gion does not remove. It may comfort some to know that there are among us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would call “atheists” and “ materialists,” whose lives, nevertheless, as test- ed by any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more than favorably with the lives of those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say “ offensive,” I refer simply to the intention of those who use such terms, and not because atheism or materialism, when com- pared with many of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious newspapers, has any particu- lar offensiveness for me. If I wished to find men who are scrupulous in their adherence to engage- ments, whose words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind is subjectively un- known ; if I wanted a loving father, a faithful husband, an honorable neighbor, and a just citi- zen—I should seek him and find him among the band of “atheists” to which I refer. I have emarepser i ele ee ee le ee. aa ee ee, a. ae ae

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) de known some of the most pronounced among them pot only in life but in death—seen them approach- ing with open eyes the inexorable goal, with no dread of a “ hangman’s whip,” with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their du- ties, and as faithful in the discharge of them, as if their eternal future depended upon their latest deeds. In letters addressed to myself, and in utter- ances addressed to the public, Faraday is often referred to as a sample of the association of reli- gious faith with moral elevation. I was locally intimate with him for fourteen or fifteen years of my life, and had thus occasion to observe how nearly his character approached what might, without extravagance, be called perfection. He was strong but gentle, impetuous but self-re- strained; a sweet and lofty courtesy marked his dealings with men and women; and though he sprung from the body of the people, a nature so fine might well have been distilled from the flower of antecedent chivalry. Not only in its broader sense was the Christian religion necessary to Faraday’s spiritual peace, but in what many would call the narrow sense held by those described by Faraday himself as “a very small and despised sect of Christians, known, if known at all, as Sandemanians,” it constituted the light and com- fort of his days. Were our experience confined to such cases, it would furnish an irresistible argument in favor of the association of dogmatic religion with mor- al purity and grace. But, as already intimated, our experience is not thus confined. In further illustration of this point we may compare with Faraday a philosopher of equal magnitude, whose character, including gentleness and strength, can- dor and simplicity, intellectual power and moral elevation, singularly resembles that of the great Sandemanian, but who has neither shared the theologic views nor the religious emotions which formed so dominant a factor in Faraday’s life. I allude to Mr. Charles Darwin, the Abraham of scientific men—a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of God. I cannot, therefore, as so many desire, look upon Faraday’s religious belief as the exclusive source of qualities shared so con- spicuously by one uninfluenced by that belief. To a deeper virtue belonging to reviled human nature in its purer forms I am disposed to refer the excellence of both. Superstition may be defined as religion which SCIENCE AND MAN. 109 constrained its subjects to abandon many per- nicious practices and to adopt many useful ones.” The real loss accompanying its decay at the pres- ent day has been thus clearly stated by the same philosopher: “ In so far as these lamentations do not proceed from the priests themselves—whose grief at the loss of their dominion over the hu- man mind we can well understand—but from the politicians, the whole matter resolves itself into this, that government has thereby become more difficult and expensive. The judge was spared the exercise of his own sagacity and penetration when, by threats of relentless damnation, he could compel the accused to make confession. The evil spirit formerly performed without reward services for which in later times judges and po- licemen have to be paid.” No man ever felt the need of a high and en- nobling religion more thoroughly than this pow- erful and fervid teacher, who, by-the-way, did not escape the brand of “atheist.” But Fichte asserted emphatically the power and sufficiency of morality in its own sphere. “ Let us con- sider,” he says, “ the highest which man can pos- sess in the absence of religion—I mean pure mo- rality. The moral man obeys the law of duty in his breast absolutely, because it isa law unto him ; and he does whatever reveals itself to him as his duty simply because it is duty. Let not the impudent assertion be repeated that such an obedience, without regard for consequences, and without desire for consequences, is in itself im- possible and opposed to human nature.” So much for Fichte. I would add that the muse of Tennyson never reached a higher strain than when it embodied the same sentiment in “none :” ** And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom im the scorn of consequence.” Not in the way assumed by our dogmatic teach- ers has the morality of human nature been built up. The power which has moulded us thus far has worked with stern tools upon a very rigid stuff. What it has done cannot be so readily undone ; and it has endowed us with moral con- stitutions which take pleasure in the noble, the beautiful, and the true, just as surely as it has endowed us with sentient organisms which find aloes bitter and sugar sweet. That power did not work with delusions, nor will it stay its hand when such are removed. Facts rather than dog- mas have been its ministers—hunger and thirst, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, fervor, sym- pathy, shame, pride, love, hate, terror, awe—such has grown incongruous with intelligence. “ Su- perstition,” says Fichte, “has unquestionably were the forces whose interaction and adjust- , ment throughout an immeasurable past wove the

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110 triplex web of man’s physical, intellectual, and moral nature, and such are the forces that will be effectual to the end.’ You may retort that even on my own showing “the power which makes for righteousness ” has dealt in delusions ; for it cannot be denied that the beliefs of religion, including the dogmas of theology and the freedom of the will, have had some effect in moulding the moral world. Grant- ed; but I do not think that this goes to the root of the matter. Are you quite sure that those beliefs and dogmas are primary, and not derived —that they are not the products, instead of be- ing the creators, of man’s moral nature? I think it is in one of the “ Latter-Day Pamphlets” that Carlyle corrects a reasoner, who deduced the nobility of man from a belief in heaven, by telling him that he puts the cart before the horse, the real truth being that the belief in heaven is derived from the nobility of man. The bird’s instinct to weave its nest is referred to by Eimer- son as typical of the force which built cathe- drals, temples, and pyramids : “ Knowest thou what wove yon woodbird’s nest Of leaves and feathers from her breast, Or how the fish outbuilt its shell, Painting with morn each annual cell ? Such and so grew these holy piles While love and terror laid the tiles ; Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone ; And Morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids ; O’er England's abbeys bends the sky As on its friends with kindred eye ; For out of Thought’s interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air, And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat.” Surely, many utterances which have been ac- cepted as descriptions ought to be interpreted as aspirations, or as having their roots in aspira- 1 My Spectator critic says that I give up approda- tion and disapprobation ; but, as already indicated, the critic writes hastily. Each of them is a subsec- tion of one or another of the influences mentioned above. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. tion instead of in objective knowledge. Does the song of the herald angels, “‘ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good-will toward men,” express the exaltation and the yearning of a human soul, or does it describe an optical and acoustical fact—a visible host and an audible song? If the former, the exaltation and the yearning are man’s imperishable possession—a ferment long confined to individuals, but which may by-and-by become the leaven of the race, If the latter, then belief in the entire trangae. tion is wrecked by non-fulfillment. Look to the East at the present moment as a comment on the promise of peace on earth and good-will toward men. That promise is a dream ruined by the experience of eighteen centuries, and in that ruin is involved the claim of the “ heavenly host” to prophetic vision. But, though the mechanical theory proves untenable, the immortal song and the feelings it expresses are still ours, to be in- corporated, let us hope, in purer and less shad- owy forms in the poetry, philosophy, and prac- tice, of the future. Thus, following the lead of physical science, we are brought without solution of continuity into the presence of problems which, as usually classified, lie entirely outside the domain of phys- ics. To these problems thoughtful and penetra- tive minds are now applying those methods of research which in physical science have proved their truth by their fruit. There is on all hands a growing repugnance to invoke the supernatural in accounting for the phenomena of human life; and the thoughtful minds just referred to, find- ing no trace of evidence in favor of any other origin, are driven to seek in the interaction of social forces the genesis and development of man’s moral nature. If they succeed in their search —and I think they are sure to succeed—social duty would be raised to a higher level of signifi- cance, and the deepening sense of social duty will, it is to be hoped, lessen, if not obliterate, the strifes and heart-burnings which now beset and disfigure our social life. Toward this great end it behooves us one and all to work ; and, devoutly wishing its consummation, I have the honor, ladies and gentlemen, to bid you a friendly farewell. eegte47T) So -&teee @&

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INCE the publication in Fraser of the two lectures on “ Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc.,” which I delivered at the London Institution near the close of last year, I have learned much more than I had previously known, both of the extent of what I hold to be a most mischievous epidemic delusion, comparable to the witchcraft epidemic of the seventeenth century; and of the very gen- eral existence of a peculiar state of mind, which as much predisposes to attacks of spiritualism as did the almost universal belief in Biblical au- thority for the existence of witches determine the witch-persecution in Puritan New England. A friend residing at Boston (United States) has kindly sent me a number of excerpts from its newspapers, which give very curious indica- tions, alike in their “advertisements” and in their “intelligence,” of what has been lately tak- ing place in that centre of enlightenment and progress. And another friend, who has recently visited that city, informs me that its “ Trades’ Directory” has whole columns of the names of professors of the different forms of spiritualistic “mediumship”"—rapping mediums, writing me- diums, drawing mediums, materializing mediums, test mediums, photographic mediums, trance me- diums, healing mediums, and the like. Many of these professors occupy some of the best houses in Boston; and must be carrying on a first-class business among the “upper then thousand.” Others practise in a humbler sphere ; but, though receiving lower fees, get so many of them as to be driving a very profitable trade in “interview- ing the spirits.” I understand the like to be true, in a greater or less degree, of many other towns, small as well as large (New York being a conspicuous example), in the United States. A most unexpected revelation of another kind has been made by the perusal of the recently- published “ Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism,” by Mr. D. D. Home, reputed in the outer world as the arch-priest of this new religion; who, pro- fessing an earnest desire to purify the system from “the seething mass of folly and imposture which every attempt at examination discloses,” devotes not less than 200 octavo pages to such an ex- posure of the “Delusions,” the “ Absurdities,” and the “ Trickeries ” of modern spiritualism, as, if made by any scientific opponent, would have PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. By WILLIAM B, CARPENTER, C.B., M.D., LL.D., F. B.S. 111 most assuredly subjected him to a crushing fire of the most tremendous expletives that even spiritualistic language (choice samples of which I shall presently give) can convey. No unprée- judiced reader can rise from the perusal of Mr, Home’s pages without the melancholy convic- tion that the honest believers, who (to use his words) “accept nothing as proof which leaves the tiniest loop-hole for the entrance of doubt; who try all mediums and all spirits by the strict- est tests; who refuse to be carried away by en- thusiasm or swayed by partisanship,” are few indeed in comparison, on the one hand, with the knavish impostors who practise on the folly and credulity of their victims, and, on the other, with the gobe-mouches who (as Mr. Home says) “ swal- low whatever is offered them, and strain neither at camels nor at gnats.” My knowledge has been further extended by an elaborate review of my lectures, contributed by Mr. Wallace to the July number of the Quar- terly Journal of Science. As Mr. Crookes is the editor of that journal, I may fairly regard this review as representing his own ideas upon the subject, as well as those of Mr. Wallace, who continually refers to him; and I regard it as a very curious revelation of the state of mind to which two honest men, both highly distinguished in the scientific world, can bring themselves, by continually dwelling on their own conclusions, and discoursing of them only with sympathizers ; without bringing them to the test of calm dis- cussion with other men of science, who are cer- tainly no less competent for the investigation than themselves, and who have given a large amount of time and attention to it. According to Mr. Wallace, no one who really examines the : evidence in its favor can honestly refuse to ac- cept the facts of mesmerism from a distance and of clairvoyance ; or can fail to see, with Mr. Wal- lace himself, that Mr. Hewes’s “ Jack,” who was so completely detected in Manchester that his patron at once gave him up, was all the while a genuine clairvoyant, And so, every one who can- not see, as Mr. Wallace does, that the flowers, fruits, etc., “ produced” at spiritualistic séances, are “demonstrably not brought in by the me- diums,” is open to the charge of willfully shutting his eyes to the most conclusive proofs. Further,

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE 112 taking his cue from Mr. Crookes, who six years ago rebuked men of science generally, for their “refusal to institute a scientific investigation into the exiStence and nature of facts asserted by so many competent and credible witnesses, and which they are so freely invited to examine when and where they please,” ' Mr. Wallace charges the periodical press with being in “a conspiracy of silence”’ to prevent the spread of what he regards as important and well-established truth. Reserving for another place? my reply to the grave imputations which Mr. Wallace (indorsed by the editorial authority of Mr. Crookes) has cast upon myself personally, I shall now place before the readers of Fraser a series of psycholo- gical curiosities collected from the three sources just indicated; and, as the names of Messrs. Crookes and Wallace will continually recur in this connection, I think it well to explain my reason for so frequently introducing them. Appreciating most highly the beautiful dis- coveries recently made in physical science by Mr. Crookes, and the large and varied additions to biological knowledge and doctrine made at - MONTHL Y.—SUPPLEMENT. most gladly lay aside for the scientific investiga. tions which afford me the purest and most undig. turbed enjoyment, seems to me the same as jg made upon every member of the profession to which I have the honor to belong, that he should do his utmost to cure or to mitigate bodily dig. ease. Theoretical and experimental studies, ex. tending over forty years, have given me what I honestly believe (whether rightly or wrongly) to be a rather unusual power of dealing with this subject. Since the appearance of my lectures, I have received a large number of public assurances that they are doing good service in preventing the spread of a noxious mental epidemic in this country ; and I have been privately informed of several instances in which persons, who had been “bitten” by this malady, have owed their re. covery tomy treatment. Looking to the danger which threatens us from the United States, of an importation of a real spiritualistic mania, far more injurious to our mental welfare than that of the Colorado beetle will be to our material in. terests, I should be untrue to my own convictions of duty if I did not do what in me lies to prevent different times by Mr. Wallace, I cannot blind it. I know too well that I thus expose myself to myself to the fact that the very scientific distinc- | severe obloquy, which (as I am not peculiarly tion they have so deservedly acquired is doing great injury to the cause which I maintain to be that of reason and common-sense. In the Uni- | ted States more particularly—where, since the death of Prof. Hare, who thought he had ob- tained precise experimental proof of the immor- tality of the soul, not a single scientific man of note (so far as I am aware) has joined the spirit- ualistic ranks—the names of the “eminent Brit- ish scientists” Messrs. Crookes and Wallace are a “tower of strength.” And it consequently be- comes necessary for me, if I take any further part in the discussion, to undermine that “ tower,” by showing that in their investigation of this sub- ject they have followed methods which are thor- oughly snscientific, and have been led by their “ prepossession” to accept with implicit faith a number of statements which ought to be rejected as completely untrustworthy. My call to take such a part, which I would 1 It would seem that there is no longer the same disposition to admit scientific inquirers to spiritual- istic séances. Things do not go so well when skeptics are present ; and while Mr. Home rebukes those who would exclude all but the “ faithful,” bis reviewer says that “all sitters in circle, and communicants with the spirit-world, find it necessary to restrict the company to those who are in sympathy with one an- other, or of one marked form of thought, or degree of moral development.” ? The forthcoming new edition of my lectares. thick-skinned) will be very unpleasant to myself, and unfortunately still more so to some who are nearly connected with me. But I am content to brave all, if I can console myself with the belief that this exposé will be of the least service, either to individuals or to society at large. That I do not take an exaggerated view of the danger, will appear, I think, from the’ follow- ing citations from Mr. Home’s book : “In dealing with spiritualism, it is the custom of a certain class of weak minds to break loose from all restraint. Reason being weak and enthusiasm strong, the very thought of communion with the dwellers in another world appears to intoxicate these unfortunates almost to madness. Their va- garies are often scarcely distinguishable from those beheld in mad-houses or at the wilder kind of re- vival-meetings. The disease manifests itself in a variety of ways. Some of the men and women attacked by it pin themselves to a particular de- lusion, with a fanatical tenacity which nothing can affect.” In another place Mr. Home speaks of “the wild dances in which ‘ mediums’ (generally fe- males) indulge under the influence of imaginary Indian controls.” Can anything be a stronger confirmatich of the doctrine of “ Epidemic Delusion ” than this reproduction of the “ Dancing Mania” under a different form of “ possession ? ” SePeywerest8 6S ws mwaedwanatent tt nh tian, amit Ge a> a

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Sf ee, ee ae a a ee ee ae ParLosorny or Sprrirvais. As Moses & Son kept a poet, so does spiritual- ism now keep a philosopher—a Master of Arts of Oxford—who, speculating profoundly on the con- stitution of matter, has recently announced his conclusion that there is no logical distinction whatever between matter and spirit; and that there is, consequently, nothing at all difficult to believe, either in the “ materialization” of de- parted spirits who return to earth, or in the “ de- materialization ” and “ rematerialization ” of solid fleshly bodies. Hence he considers it to be true, not only of the mind, but of the body, that ** Stone-walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage ""— a doctrine that will prove extremely convenient to the inmates of these institutions, if only they can get “the spirits” to help them out. And the passage of Mrs. Guppy through either the walls, the closed doors, the shuttered windows, the floor beneath, or the roof and ceilings above, is to be regarded as, though somewhat unusual, a perfectly “‘ natural” phenomenon.’ Now, this reasoning seems to me so transpar- ently fallacious as not to require wasting many words upon it. Even if we accept, as Faraday showed an inclination to do, the physical doctrine of Boscovich, that what we call a “ material” body is nothing else than an aggregation of “centres of force,” and if we psychologically re- fine down matter, as John S. Mill did, into “a permanent possibility of sensation,” I cannot see that this carries us one single step toward the M. A.’s deduction. For the very foundation of our conception of “ matter” is the sense of resist- ance which we experience when we press some part of our body against it; and as we cannot take any such cognizance of “ spirit,” we cannot conceive of it as having anything in common with matter; the two remaining, just as they always have been, “ logically distinct entities,” If this be a fair sample of the result of the philosophic teaching imparted by the University of Oxford, the sooner that teaching is reformed the better for common-sense and rationality. AMENITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. It has been the boast of spiritualists that, if their new religion does not supersede Christianity, it is at any rate to supplement it, by carrying its teachings to a higher development, and by thus leading to the earlier prevalence of that universal 1“ Ts there any such Thing as Matter?” By M. A. (Oxon.). Human Nature for May, 1877. dt PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 113 reign of peace and good-will which Christianity has as yet failed to bring about. So far, how- ever, is the practice of “ professing ” spiritualists from being much better in this particular than that of “ professing ” Christians, that it seems to me to be worse ; instead of being “ slow to anger” and “forsaking wrath,” there are spiritualists who carry on their controversies, even among themselves, with most reprehensible bitterness ; while even the scientific advocates of the system, whgge position should place them above personal animosity, cannot find decent language to put down a troublesome skeptic, who imputes to them nothing worse than a too easy credulity. Thus Mr. Home’s book affords an ample store of very choice samples of vituperative eloquence, directed, not against scientific skeptics, for these he treats with a marked consideration which Mr. Wallace might well imitate, but against certain spiritualists, whom he regards (for reasons not stated) with a very unchristian hostility. One of these is Colonel Olcott, of New York, President of the Theosophical Society, of whom I shall have more to say presently. This gentleman has lately published a book called “ People from the Other World,” dedicated to Messrs. Crookes and Wal- lace, giving an account of the “ materializations ” of the Eddy brothers, which Mr. Home utterly discredits. Of this book Mr. Home says that “it is ten times more meaningless than the gospel of Mormon, or the speculations of Joanna South- cote ;” that “seldom before have human minds been astonished at such utterances;” and that while “ other productions of the kind infest spiritual literature, there are few which display such an utter lack of principle, such a happy audacity in assertion, or so complete a disregard of facts.” Of course, Mr. Home will “ catch it” in his turn from the spiritualistic critics of his book. The following are a few excerpts from the only re- view of it that I have seen: '! ‘‘ Mr. Home can have no pretense whatever to occupy that lofty and interior plane from which spirtualism proper is capable of being apprehended. He is simply a phenomenal medium, and we have yet to learn that this class contains any of those gift- ed with glowing inspiration, placid wisdom, or pure disinterestedness. . . . The clay of human mortal- ity is attached to him so firmly that not for one moment does ke soar into the higher realm of spiritual light and principles [which is, of course, inhabited by his critic]. . . . Rightly or wrongly, Mr. Home has been most cruelly attacked by a 1 Human Nature, a Monthly Journal of Zoistic Scé- ence, May, 1877.

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114 legion of opponents, who have had to invent most varied excuses for being his implacable foes. Strangely enough, these adversaries are, most of them, in the same sphere of spiritual activity with himself. They are mediums—physical or phe- nomenal mediuuns—of one kind or another, and therefore brought into close juxtaposition with their elder brother. . . . This inflated selfishness only leads to mutual detraction and evil-speaking, which, when reproduced and carried from country to country, becomes a perfect host of devils, suffi- cient to goad to madness any one who lives onghe plane of their action. . . . The whole proceeding is an instructive illustration of the too-extended development of physical mediumship, unsanctified by spiritual love and unselfish beneficence.” So much for Mr. Home personally; now for his book : “Take the book as a whole, from beginning to end, it is a superficial compilation witkout an original thought or inspired purpose, and, as all such performances are, it is charmingly illogical.” See how these spiritualists love one another. I now turn to Mr, Wallace, an old friend with whom I have never had the slightest personal disagreement, except that which has arisen (on his side) out of our difference of opinion on the subjects discussed in my lectures. In the review of these lectures to which I have already referred, Mr. Wallace charges me with “complete misrepresentations of the epin- ions of his opponents,” with making “ vague gen- eral assertions, without a particle of proof offered, or which can be offered ; ” and, what is far worse, with willful and repeated suppressio veri. One passage in particular, reflecting upon what I con- sidered Mr. Wallace’s too ready acceptance of “the slenderest evidence of the greatest mar- vels,” is denounced by Mr. Wallace, first, as “an utterly unjustifiable remark ;” secondly, as not having “ even the shadow of a foundation ;” and thirdly (when he has worked himself up to the highest pitch of virtuous indignation), as a “reckless accusation, which he cannot adequately characterize without using language which he would not wish touse.” The terrific force of this last dreadful denunciation (equivalent to the speak- er’s fearful threat of “ naming ” an honorable mem- ber) makes me thankful that, as spiritualism is not yet a dominant power in the state, I can at present be only morally “ pilloried.” Looking, however, to the case of the unfortunate minister who was hanged during the Salem epidemic, for having dared to call in question the very exist- ence of witcheraft, I cannot contemplate with- out a shudder the doom that might befall me if I THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. were put on trial for my spiritualistic heresy, with Messrs. Crookes and Wallace for my judges, the Oxford M. A. as attorney-general for the prosecution, and Mrs. Guppy Volckman as the principal witness against me ! Having introduced these citations merely as choice samples of the “amenities of spiriual. ism,” which remind one of the “brief” instrug. tions given to the counsel for a defendant—“ No case; abuse the plaintiff's attorney ”"—I pass op to the next “ curiosity.” Wuat Mr. Wattace means sy “ Dewonstra- TION.” Every one who has studied the subject of evi- dence knows perfectly well that to “demon. strate” a certain proposition is, as Dr. Johnson defined it, “to establish so as to exclude possi- bility of doubt or denial ;” the type of demonstra. tive reasoning being the mathematical, in which every step in the deductive process is so com- pletely indubitable—either the contrary, or any- thing else than the proposition affirmed, being “ unthinkable ’—that we have as firm an assur- ance of the final Q. E. D. as we have of the ax- ioms from which we first started. No evidence as to either scientific or ordinary facts can be, in the strict sense, “ demonstra- tive;” for it is open to various sources of fal- lacy, such as errors of observation, errors of inter- pretation, and errors (intentional or unintentional) of statement. But what we ordinarily proceed up- cn in the formation of our convictions is a con- currence of testimony given by competent and disinterested witnesses, which, if it does not abso- lutely “exclude possibility of doubt or denial,” does so to such a degree as to establish the high- est moral probability that the case admits of. Where, on the other hand, there is a reasonable ground for doubt, either as to the sufficiency of the testimony for the establishment of the factum probandum, or as to its trustworthiness (which may be questioned not only on the ground of in- tentional deceit, but on many others), it would altogether confuse the meaning of terms to call such evidence “ demonstrative.” This, however, is what Mr. Wallace has re- peatedly done ; charging me with willfully shutting my own eyes to, and endeavoring to hide from the eyes of others, what he considers the demon- strative evidence in favor of certain propositions; which evidence, so far from being free from “ the possibility of doubt or denial,” appears to me open to question on every one of the grounds I have just specified.

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BErES§ 2B Ba F es a — It has also appeared to me that the “ spirit- ualistic” production of flowers, fruits, ete., in dark séances, which is now one of the commonest “ mediumistic ” performances, should, even more than the moving of tables and the production of “raps,” be regarded as so completely ex rerum natura, a8 to justify the assumption that it isa mere piece of jugglery, which a thorough investi- gation must detect ; the fact of its non-detection merely showing that the investigation has not been complete. There can be only two hypothe- ses about the matter: either that the fruit, flow- ers, etc., have been brought into the room by the “medium,” or by some confederate, or that they have been dematerialized, that is, resolved into their component atoms, which after passing through either walls, doors, or window-panes, have not only come together again in their origi- nal forms, but, in the case of living bodies, have renewed their vital activity. Of course, if we be- lieve this possible of live eels or lobsters, we may believe it also of Mrs. Guppy. But, to myself, the one is as inconceivable as the other ; and even Mr. D. D. Home, who has witnessed many in- stances in which this “ passage of matter through matter” was said to have occurred, agrees with me in considering that they “could one and all be explained by less far-fetched theories.” (Op. cit. p. 851.) Yet Mr. Wallace complains of my not accepting the flowers and fruits “ produced” | in his own drawing-room, and those which made their appearance in the house of Mr. T. A. Trol- lope at Florence (related in the “ Dialectical Re- port”), as “ demonstrably not brought by the me- dium.”’ cases : “Let me give” (says Mr. Home, op. cit., page 852) “‘an idea of how the bringing fruit, fish, etc., into a darkened room is often accomplished. The expectant circle, we will suppose, is seated round the table. The stream of harmony gushes forth as usual. Presently the ‘medium’ (generally a lady—ladies’ dresses offer such facilities for con- cealment) feels and announces the presence of the ‘spirits.’ She commences to speculate as to what they will bring. ‘Let me see! at our last séance the dear spirits brought in some cabbages. Sup- pose they were to bring lilies-of-the-valley this time, how nice that would be! Oh, dear, no! We must not ask for lilies-of-the-valley. Let us think of something else. What would any of you like ?’ “ Naturally a voice proceeds from some one in the circle, ‘ J would like to have lilies-of-the-val- ley.’ PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 115 “ The ‘ medium’ energetically repudiates the suggestion. ‘Perhaps the dear spirits could not bring them. Why will you ask for such out-of- the-way things ?’! “ ¢ Tf they bring lilies-of-the-valley, I shall con- sider it a test.’ “ The next instant a scattering sound is heard. A ‘spirit-voice’ probably announces, ‘ We have brought you the lilies, since you wish for them so much.’ And, sure enough, on a light being struck, the table is found strewed with the flowers in question. And the next issue of some spiritual journal describes, as a ‘ good test,’ that ‘ at Mrs. —’s séance,a few days ago, Mr. A—— wished for some lilies-of-the-valley, which the spirits “instantly brought.”’” (Op. cit., p. 353.) This “suggestive” method is well known to be employed by conjurers; who can “force a card” upon the most unwilling victim, or compel him to select, out of a dozen or two of handker- chiefs, the one suitable for his trick. The only difference is, that the suggestion is conveyed oral- ly in the one case, and presented visually in the other. But, besides this unconscious confeder- acy, there is full opportunity for the intentional complicity which Sergeant Cox has exposed in the case of the “ materialization” imposture ; and not even members of the family or the most intimate friends can be in strictness regarded as beyond the pale of suspicion. Clever as they are, however, “mediums” are sometimes caught in their own trap. “T recall an instance” (says Mr. Home) “in which about half a pint of gooseberries were thrown on a table in the dark. ‘There,’ cried the | ‘medium,’ ‘is not that a beautiful manifestation? I shall now, with Mr. Home’s assistance, in- | Don’t you think it is perfectly astonishing?’ A quire into the probative value of each of these | burst of indignation ensued when the two other persons present ‘ could find nothing astonishing in it.’ ‘What!’ said the wonder, ‘ you think I | had the berries in my pocket, do you?’ And to prove the honesty of all this wrath, the said pock- et was turned inside out. Alas for the result! The ‘ medium’ had forgotten the little withered ends [of the corolla] which adhere to the goose- berry. At least a dozen of these were disen- tombed from the depths of that pocket.” The “medium,” however, was quite equal to the occasion: “Evil spirits must have placed them there!” Does Mr. Wallace accept this explanation ? If not, why not? It is surely just as likely as the “ dematerialization” itself. Now it will scarcely be believed that in Mr. 1 Provided always (says Mr. Home) they are in sea- son. The “spirits’’ never bring flowers which are out of season, or the products of distant lands.

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHL ¥.—8 UPPLEMENT. 116 Wallace’s own case no precautions whatever had ' of the healthful condition of Mr. Wallace’s ming, been employed! The“ medium” was Miss Nichol If the latter, what is the probative value of the (of whom more anon) ; and the production took ' “demonstrative” performance in Mr. Wallace's place for the first time, and “at a very early | drawing-room ? stage of her development.” The only shred of But now for the other case specially cited by evidence adduced by Mr. Wallace that the flow- | Mr. Wallace, that of Mr. T. A. Trollope. Here ers and ferns had not been brought in by the | the “medium’s” dress had been carefully exam. “ medium,” consists in what he asserts to have | ined by Mrs. Trollope before the séance began, been their condition—they being “all absolutely ‘and a previous search of the room had been fresh as if just gathered from a conservatory, | | made by the gentlemen of the party. Now, con. and covered with a fine, cold dew.” This, in Mr. | sidering how cleverly (as will be presently shown) Wallace’s opinion, made it “absolutely impos- | the concealment of the “ properties” required for sible” for Miss Nichol to have kept them con- te spirit materialization” can be managed by in cealed about her person “in a very warm, gas- | genious ladies, it would have been more satisfac. lighted room four hours before the flowers ap- | tory if the examination of Miss Nicbol’s dress peared.” Now, granting Mr. Wallace’s testimony | had been effected by an experienced female on this point—as to which I fully admit that he searcher ; and the assistance of a clever detec. was specially qualified to judge—to have been tive might have been a useful help to the gentle. entirely unbiased, there is one little defect in his men-searchers of the room. But even if all these narrative, which, as will presently appear, serious- | precautions had been adopted, a trick so simple ly impairs its probative value. The whole thing , that (as M. Robin the conjurer said) “it makes happened more than ten years ago; and such a | one laugh to see how easily people can be de- triviality as Miss Nichol’s having left the room , ceived,” would have been quite sufficient to get during these four hours, or having had an opera- | over the little difficulty. cloak brought in to prevent her feeling. chilly | (it being mid-winter), may have escaped Mr. Wal- lace’s attention at the time, or slipped his mem- ory since. But, even taking the case exactly as Mr. Wallace puts it, what is the proof of his “ absolute impossibility ?’’ Every one has seen conjurers tumble piles of bouquets out of a hat, | in which it was “absolutely impossible” that | they could have been all contained. And most people who have been long in India have seen | the celebrated “tree-trick,” which, as described | to me by several of our most distinguished civil- ians and scientific officers, is simply the greatest marvel I ever heard of. That a mango-tree should first shoot up to a height of six inches, from a grass-plot to which the conjurers had no previous access, beneath an inverted cylindrical basket whose emptiness has been previously | “ demonstrated,” and that this tree should ap- pear to grow in the course of half an hour from | six inches to six fect, under a succession of tall- er and yet taller baskets, quite beats Miss Nichol. | Does Mr. Wallace attribute this to “ spiritual | agency,” in like manner as Mr. Benjamin Cole- man insists that Messrs. Cooke and Maskelyne, in spite of their disclaimer, “are the best of living mediums for the production of physical effects?” | Or, like the world in general, and the perform- ers of the “tree-trick” in particular, does he | regard it as a piece of clever jugglery? If the former, we are free to entertain our own opinion | In the case of a “medium” known to Mr. Home (op. cit., page 353), “in more than one in- | stance, after the most rigid scrutiny of her dress had been made, flowers, and even small branches of shrubs with the leaves attached, were brought, in total darkness, of course.” One evening, | however, a gentleman who had come too late to be admitted to the séance, but to whom, after its conclusion, one of the little “ spirit-branches” had been given to examine, happened to notice a leaf hanging from the lower part of the red opera- cloak worn by the “medium ;” and, finding that it corresponded exactly with the leaves of the twig he held in his hand, he caught up the cloak, and showed to all present that the “ spirit- ual” productions had been concealed in its lin- ing. And “it was then remembered that the ‘medium ’ had, after being searched, complained of feeling chilly, and had requested permission | to put on the red opera-cloak which she had left (quite promiscuously, of course) in the hall.” Thus, in addition to a very thorough search, alike of the “medium” and of the apartment, before the séance, it would be essential that after its commencement nothing should be brought in. Even this precaution, however, would not suffice to “demonstrate” the “spiritual” intro- duction of the articles in question. For there would remain full scope for the exercise of con- | federacy, which, says Mr. ca “plays a great part on these occasions. . . . I have known of -

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ntle- mple eases,” he continues, “where servants of the house were bribed into acting as accomplices.” And Sergeant Cox, speaking of the “ materializa- tion” performance, refers to “ people who knew it was a trick, and lent themselves to it.” “ The lesson,” continues Sergeant Cox, ‘‘ to be learned from all this [the system of cheating he has honestly exposed] is, that no phenomena should be accepted as genuine that are not produced un- der strict test-conditions. Investigators should be satisfied with no evidence short of the very best that the circumstances will permit.” 1 feel sure, therefore, that, as an experienced criminal judge, Sergeant Cox will bear me out in saying that, in the case now under discussion, the only ‘‘ test-condition ” that could be consid- ered “ demonstrative ” would be a careful search of every individual admitted to the séance, Such a test, however, would probably be objected to by Mr. Wallace, as showing an unreasonable de- gree of suspicion, which might deter the “ dear spirits” from favoring the séance with their gifts ; and he would argue that failure under such “ rig- id conditions” proved nothing against the gen- uineness of successes obtained under more fa- vorable circumstances. But I believe that the common-sense of such as have not surrendered it to the spiritualistic “ prepossession ” will bear me out in the conclusion that Mr. Wallace’s “ demon- stration” is no demonstration at all; and that, until some better shall have been given, we are fully justified in deeming it more probable that there is imposture somewhere than that “ matter can pass through matter.” That there is good ground for suspecting even ladies who are above receiving money as profes- sional “mediums” of occasionally amusing them- selves in this way for the mere pleasure of decep- tion, I pointed out in my lectures, as a probability well known to medical practitioners, of which Mr. Wallace bas not had—what I have had—per- sonal experience. And I shall now give the par- ticulars of a case of this kind, referred to in my second lecture, my account of which has been called in question by Mr. Wallace. Tn his zeal to defend a “ lady-medium,” whom he considers that I have most unjustly aspersed, Mr. Wallace suggests that my informant “ manu- factured the evidence ;” asks for “ independent testimony that the salt was not applied to the flowers after they appeared at the séance ;” and States that “‘some of the flowers were sent to a medical man in the town, and that no trace of ferrocyanide of potassium could be detected.” As Mr. Wallace has no reserve about the case, I _¢ } / PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 117 may now say that the “medium” was Mr. Wal- lace’s favorite performer—Miss Nichol, afterward Mrs. Guppy, and now Mrs. Guppy Volckman— the subject of the celebrated aérial transportation from her house in Highbury Hill Park into a se- curely-closed room in Lamb’s Conduit Street ; and that the séance was one of. several held dur- ing the meeting of the British Association at Belfast, three years ago, in a house into which Mrs. Guppy had been received as a guest. Hav- ing myself seen one of the hollyhocks “ pro- duced” on that occasion, and having learned that a fraud had been chemically detected by a young gentleman present at the séance, I put my- self into communication with him, and soon re- ceived an explicit statement of what had passed, not only at this, but at a previous séance, with full permission to publish it. The following ver- batim extract from this statement, which, having lain in my desk for more than three years, has not been “ manufactured ’”’ to meet Mr. Wallace’s objections—as its precise “ fit” might seem to suggest—contains all that is essential to the case : “Having observed [in previous séances] that the flowers were soaked in wet (dew does not soak to the heart of a flower), I considered that the dew on them was artificially produced ; and on August 21st I mixed a small quantity of solution of potas- sium ferrocyanide with the water on the wash-stand in Mrs. Guppy’s rooms. “ Séance No. 4, August 23, 1874.—Fifteen per- sons sat; of these five were strangers—viz., Mr. and Mrs. Guppy, and three gentlemen introduced by them, one a professed medium. The candle was put out, and the table began to oscillate vio- lently. We were asked to wish for three kinds of flowers. The table now jolted violently, and I struck some matches. It at once stopped. Mrs. Guppy got very angry, and said it was as much as to say they were cheating. Being pacified, the candle was again extinguished, after we had found on the table some sand, a plant like an onion, etc. The table rocked violently, and scent was squirted from one of the mediums. A large quantity of flowers were thrown from their side of the table, among which were china-asters, which I took out, and, having wet a piece of white blotting-paper with the ‘ dew’ off them, poured some ferrous-sul- phate solution on it. The result was the ordinary Prussian-blue color. A spike of pink hollyhock gave a very decided blue color. Similar flowers, fresh from the garden, gave no reaction. The flowers were allowed to remain in my laboratory, the door of which was not locked, till the morning of August 25th, when I took some in to Dr. Hodg- es, and he with several friends could find no trace of the salt in them. I immediately wrote to a

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friend who had been present at the séance, and who had taken an aster with him as a keepsake, to have it tested. He writes: ‘I have had the plants analyzed to-day by Professors Delfs, of Hei- delberg, and Roscoe, of Manchester. The asters showed unmistakable signs of ferrocyanide of po- tassium, and in no small quantity either.’ I be- lieve the reason Dr. Hodges could find nothing in the hollyhocks was, that the fresh flowers had been substituted for them on Monday evening (24th), when every one was from home at Sir J. Lubbock’s lecture, except the mediums.” Being able to add, from inquiries I have made, that my informant bears an unblemished charac- ter, as does also the friend to whom he refers, I ask, Which is the more to be trusted—the tes- timony of these two gentlemen, or the honesty of Mrs. Guppy? It will be observed that we have here no evidence whatever that the flowers were not brought in by the medium; while the immediate detection of the salt by one of the wit- nesses, and the subsequent confirmatory testi- mony of the other, affords the strongest assur- ance that the flowers had been watered out of the decanter in Mrs. Guppy’s room—by whom? I can only say, as an ex-professor of medical juris- prudence, that I have not the least doubt, sup- posing this to have been a case of poisoning, as to the verdict that an intelligent jury would re- turn. Wuat Mr. Wattace peems “ Rigip Conpi- TIONS.” The failure of each of the three claimants for the Burdin prize, as narrated in my second lect- ure, is thus accounted for by Mr. Wallace: “The reader might well doubt if offering a prize for reading under rigid conditions was an adequate means of sifting a faculty so eminently variable, uncertain, and delicate, as clairvoyance is ad- mitted to be.” Now, what were these conditions ? In the first case, Mademoiselle Emélie was not permitted to acquaint herself by ordinary vision with the contents of a book which she was to read with her occiput. In the second, Mademoi- selle Pigeaire, whose eyes were covered by a black-velvet bandage, was required to read a book held directly opposite her face, and was not permitted to hold it for herself in such a position that she could see it downward beneath the band- age. And, in the third, M. Teste’s clairvoyante was not allowed to open the box in which the test-lines of print were inclosed! From these examples it may be judged what are the tests which Mr. Wallace would consider adequate.

118 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT.

Waar Messrs. WaLLAack AND CROOKES REGARD ag “ Trustwortuy Testimony.” Every one who has followed the recent history of spiritualism has heard of the exposure of the American “ Katie King,” to which I referred in my lectures as a matter of public notoriety, It is well known ‘hat Robert Dale Owen had sent to a Boston periodical a narrative of the “mate. rialization” manifestations, to which he pledged his credit; that when this exposure took place, he tried (in vain) to prevent the appearance of his narrative; and that its publication so dis. tressed him as to have had much to do with the mental and bodily illness to which he succumbed not long afterward. Mr. Home, together with (as I am in a position to show) the most respect- able American spiritualists, including the family of Robert Dale Owen, altogether disown her, But in order to support the charge which Messrs, Wallace and Crookes make against me, of a “ rep. rehensible eagerness to accept and retail what- ever falsehoods may be circulated against medi- ums,” a witness is brought forward to rehabilitate “ Katie King,” by giving the results of a reinves- tigation of the case by “a gentleman connected with the New York daily press.” Now, who is this reinvestigator, whose judgment is to be set in opposition to the verdict of the committee— composed not of hostile skeptics, but of honest spiritualists—by which the case was originally examined? None other than the very Colonel Olcott, whose indorsement of the Eddy impost- ure has drawn forth Mr. D. D. Home’s severest reprobation. But, as it may be said that Mr. Home’s is a prejudiced judgment, I shall call Colonel Olcott himself as a witness to his own character. Among other vagaries of the Theo- sophical Society of which he is president, is the dispatch of a newly-affiliated member to Tunis and Cairo, with the charge to find and bring back an “ African sorcerer, who will, for a small fee, show you images of the dead, and en- able you to converse with them in an audible voice. They will walk self-levitated in air; climb poles which rest upon nothing, until they go out of sight, and dismember themselves even to decapi- tation without injury. . . . You have the oppor- tunity to introduce to Western scientists, under the patronage, restrictions, and guarantees of a scien- tifie society, those proofs of occult powers, for lack of which they have been drifting into materialism and infidelity.” * 1I give this extract on the authority of Mr. Home (op. cit., p. 247), whom I can scarcely suppose to have deliberately forged, even to blacken Colone] Olcott,

—" se -¢s -_ <a or a, ee eee

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The inditer of this precious stuff is the érust- worthy witness whose assurance that he has ved, “under the most rigid test-conditions,” that “Katie King” could not have been person- ated by Eliza White, is adduced by Messrs. Wal- lace and Crookes in support of the above charge! Mr. Crookes anp ais “Screntiric Txsts.” As Mr. Crookes has in more than one instance pledged his scientific reputation to the genuine- ness of the performances of “mediums,” on the strength of what he describes as “scientific tests,” the probative value of these tests consti- tutes a most legitimate subject of inquiry; and the following history will afford some means of estimating this : About three years ago, there came to London from Louisville, Kentucky, a good-looking young woman, who, having come out as “a physical and mental test medium,” and having in that capacity made the tour of the principal cities and towns of the United States, gave a series of performances in the Hanover Square Rooms, at one of which I was myself present, A short preliminary lecture was given by a gentlemanly- looking man, styling himself “Colonel” Fay, whose relation to the lady was then spoken of as paternal, though elsewhere it seems to have been marital. The “colonel” candidly informed his audience that he purposely abstained from saying anything about the nature of the ‘ mani- festations ;" he did not claim for them a “spirit- ualistic”” character; on the other hand, he did not present them as conjuring tricks. He left every one free to judge for himself or herself; as the showman said to the little girl, it was “ which- ever you please, my pretty dear.” The performance consisted of two parts: the first, or “light séance,” being a new version of the “cabinet-trick” originally introduced by the Davenport brothers; while the second was a “dark séance,” for “ manifestations” of a differ- ent order. Having previously seen Maskelyne and Cooke’s presentation of the cabinet-trick, “with new and startling effects,” I felt perfectly sure that they could, without the least difficulty, reproduce everything done by Eva Fay ; her per- formances being all explicable on the very simple hypothesis that her hands were not really tied what he puts forward asa public document. And I may add that it is fully borne out by information I have received direct from New York ; which, without at all calling his honesty in question, makes it clear that he is the very type of those gobe-mouches who, as Mr. Home says, are ready to swallow anything from gnats to camels. PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 119 behind her so tightly as they seemed to be. And Mr. Maskelyne states (“Modern Spiritualism,” page 121) that while these “ manifestations” were running on at the Hanover Square Rooms, Mr. Cooke was actually giving an exact reproduc- tion of them twice a week at the Egyptian Hall. . At the conclusion of the first part of the per. formance, the cabinet was moved out of the way; and Eva Fay having taken her seat on a stool in the centre of the stage, the “colonel” requested the occupants of the two front rows of reserved seats to come up and sit on a circle of chairs placed around her, joining their hands together, so that the “circle” (of which the colonel, like myself, was a component) should be complete. Eva Fay then began clapping her hands together with a steady rhythmical beat; and we were directed to keep our attention fixed upon the continuity of this, after the lights should be turned down, as a proof that any “ manifesta- tion” which should require manual instrumen- tality could not be her doing. Various “ proper- ties”—such as guitars, bells, and fans—were then laid about “promiscuously,” some of them on the knees of the sitters; and the gas having been put out on and near the stage, and turned “down to the blue” elsewhere, the darkness on the stage was so complete that nothing whatever could be discerned by any one not habituated to it. Immediately there was a rustling sound within the circle, as of “ spirits” moving stealthily about ; guitar-strings were twanged, bells were rung, open fans were moved before our faces, our legs were struck, our arms were pinched, our whiskers were pulled, and some “old fogies ” were chucked under the chin —while all this time the clapping sound was con- tinuously heard! Now, granting that there was no confederacy, that the “ colonel’s” hands were held during the whole time, so that he could not give any assistance to his partner, would it not become clear to any man of average shrewdness not “possessed” by an idea, that, while Eva Fay was doing all this “ business” with one hand, she could keep up the clapping sound by striking her forehead, cheek, or bared arm, with the other? But if this should be openly suggested by any troublesome skeptic (which did not happen when I was myself present), the “ colonel” was pre- pared with another “ manifestation.” ‘To show the impossibility of such a thing, one gentleman shall now be allowed to hold the medium’s hands ; still, a bell shall be rung, a guitar be thrummed, and possibly the gentleman holding the medium’s hands shall have his face fanned.” ll this, says

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120 -THE POPULAR SCIENCE Mr. Maskelyne, can be very easily accomplished. “ Miss Fay will pass a bell to the colonel’s mouth, which he will shake as a terrier does a rat, while his boot operates upon the guitar-strings, and produces the thrumming ; and the ‘ medium,’ with a fan held between her teeth, will gently wave it in the face of him who holds her hand.” And he thus explained to his audience at the Egyptian Hall every one of the apparent marvels of Eva Fay’s “ dark séance ;’’ these being, as he truly says, “too simple and absurd to bear any other treatment.” But, while not putting forth any public claim as a spiritualistic “medium,” Eva Fay asserted herself in private to be such; and, for good rea- sons of her own, sought to convince the London spiritualists in general, and Mr. Crookes in par- ticular, that she really was so. Accordingly, Mr. Crookes subjected her to what he considered to be “ scientific tests;” which, as I am assured on good authority, could be evaded by a “ dodge” so simple (reminding one of Edgar Poe’s well- known story of “The Lost Letter”) that Mr. Crookes’s highly-trained scientific acumen could | not detect it.' And this is confirmed by the statement of Mr. Maskelyne (“‘ Modern Spiritual- ism,” p. 122), that, while this testing was in prog- ress, Miss Fay’s business agent made Mr. M—— an offer, at first verbally, and then confirmed by letters in his possession (dated Birmingham, May 12 and 15, 1875)—copies of which I have my- self seen—that for an adequate sum of money the “medium” should expose the whole affair, “ scientific tests” and all—‘ complicating at least six big guns, the F.R.S. people "—as she was not | properly supported by the spiritualists ! This offer having been declined by Mr. Maske- lyne, and her London audiences dwindling away, Eva Fay returned to the United States, carrying with her a letter from Mr, Crookes, which set forth that, since doubts had been thrown on the spiritualistic nature of her “‘ manifestations,” and since he, in common with other Fellows of the Royal Society, had satisfied himself of their gen- uineness by “scientific tests,” he willingly gave her the benefit of his attestation. This letter was published, in fac-simile, in American news- papers ; and Eva Fay announced ber spiritual- istic séances as “indorsed by Prof. Crookes and other Fellows of the Royal Society!” Unluckily, however, for her own reputation and for that of Mr. Crookes, it happened that a 1 I shall give the whole explanation in the new edi- tion of my lectures. MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. young gentleman of New York, Mr. Washington Irving Bishop, of excellent social position—hjg father being a very eminent lawyer, and Wash. ington Irving having been his godfather—wag moved to bestow a great deal of time and attep. tion on the pretensions of the spiritualistic “ me. diums.” “A friend whom he loved, as did every one else who enjoyed his acquaintance—a young man full of promise, intellectual, gifted, brilliant—be- came ill, and was sent to a foreign country for treatment. Here he finally fell under the infernal stored him to his home and friends hopelessly in- sane ; and thus he remains to this day. Mr. Bish- op covenanted with himself— those bonds are strong ones when made in thorough earnest—that he would leave no stone unturned until he had fer- reted out the explanation of the whole mediumistic business.’’—( Boston Herald, November 6, 1876.) Convinced that there was deception in the matter, he devoted many months to the investi- gation, and finally discovered the clew. He then trained himself to do everything done by Eva | Fay, “a woman who had successfully cheated two | hemispheres ; who had fairly drained money from | rich and poor, high and low; who fooled men of | the sharpest intellects, men of science and close | students of human and every other nature ;” and exhibited to his eircle of private friends, which in- cluded several of the most distinguished members of the clerical and medical professions in New York, an exact counterpart of Eva Fay’s per- formances, Two of the latter, one of them well known in this country as an eminent physiologist | as well as an able surgeon, and the other an ex- surgeon-general in the United States Army, ad- | dressed to him the following letter : ** New York, March 30, 1876. ‘““W. Irvine Bisnor, Ese. _ “Dgar Sm: It has given us great pleasure to : witness the very satisfactory manner in which you show the fraudulent nature of the pretensions of the so-called spiritual mediums, especially those of | Annie Eva Fay, who has received the indorsement of Mr. William Crookes and other Fellows of the Royal Society. We believe the performances of these people are calculated to produce evil effects | upon the credulous and disordered imaginations of many persons; and, with a view to put an ef- fectual stop to them, we earnestly request you to communicate to the public the manner in which the so-called spiritualists conduct their deceitful practices. Such an exposé as we refer to can only be productive of good results; and we trust, therefore, in view of the importance of the whole | arts of the spiritual mediumistic healers, who re-- ges . a | de fo eanaone * & - aeiwos eel

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Seeb Es PRESTR I ESTES ~~ See vw i-FTwwF = @& PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 121 matter, that you will accede to our request. With | one of great public importance, and tends to dis- great respect, we are your obedient servants, abuse the public mind of a very mischievous and “ Writs A. Hammonp, M.D., | very general delusion, which indeed is becoming a “ AtexanperR B. Mort, M. D.” vulgar religion with thousands. No description of | it can take the place of an actual sight of it. It This having been followed a month later by &@ might advantageously be repeated in every town, requisition to the same effect by twenty-four gen- | where the pretended séances of the modern necro- tlemen, mostly well-known clergymen of various | mancer have played upon the weaker portion of denominations and eminent M. D.s, a public per- communities. Without attributing any exalted formance was arranged, which consisted (1) in motive to the business which engages you, I de- the repetition of the most mysterious of the oe oped Gink, be mgr of rd ends you «mediumistic” feats, including “ slate-writing ” see » th t your exhibition is one of the most in- —— agp . structive and useful I have ever seen, as well as ad “flowers from an invisible garden ;” and one of the most interesting and successful. I wish then (2) in the exhibition and explanation of the you a long succession of fortunate spectators. whole modus operandi, in full view of the specta- “ Yours truly, tors. From among the various attestations to *“ Henry W. Beiiows.” the completeness of this exposure, I select the following, because, as Dr. Bellows is a val- The immediate effect of Mr. Bishop’s ex- ued personal friend of my own, I can bear the | posure upon Eva Fay’s status was, we are as- strongest testimony to his intellectual ability, | sured by the Boston Herald, “to reduce her to moral warth, and practical clear-headedness.! | the level of a pitiful street performer, obliging The style in which Dr. Bellows delivers his tes- | her to take out a license as a juggler before she timony will confirm my own estimate of his vig- could carry on the nefarious business by which orous and thorough grasp of the subject : her ill-gotten gains could be continued.” It is, perhaps, to be wished that a similar legal pro- cess could be applied to the like class in this country. Let them not be martyrized by crimi- 4 ° 45 ” attending your exposure of the acts by which the =: a an oo he a i eer alleged proofs of spiritualism are foisted upon a | “* censed jugglers ;” and then be allow eredulous public. You showed in a most effectual | C@Ty on their vocation without let or hinderance and convincing way that a most intelligent audi- | as long as they find people ready to pay for see- ence could be entirely deceived by the testimony | ing them. of its own senses, in regard to matters which were The fame of Mr. Bishop’s performances hav- “New York, 232 East 15TH a “October 16, 1876. “Dear Sin: I had the pleasure and profit of afterward shown openly by you to be mere tricks, in which sleight of hand and a diversion of atten- tion from the real to the artificial and chosen con- | ditions were the means of success. After puzzling | the audience, as no juggler could puzzle them, for an hour and a half, with feats that seemed super- natural, you untied all the riddles. I felt con- vinced that nothing that spiritualists pretend or believe is done by spirits beyond the reach of a clever juggler, who possesses unusual suppleness of joints, strength of muscles, and agility of move- ments, perfected by practice, and skillfully plays upon the credulity of our common nature. “TI am of the opinion that your exhibition is ‘It may, however, be not amiss for me to state that Dr. B. was the originator and organizer, and was then appointed by universal acclaim the chairman, of that great volunteer Sanitary Commission which, throughout the war between the Northern and Sonth- ern States, supplemented the work of the military or- ganization of the North in every way that could con- tribute to the health and welfare of the army; the extent of its operations being such that Dr. Bellows assured me that @ million and a half of pounds ster- ing reached Boston, he was invited by a commit- tee vomposed—like that of New York—of some of its most distinguished members of the medi- cal and clerical professions (the honored name of Oliver Wendell Holmes standing at the head of a requisition now before me, dated October 18, 1876), to repeat them in that great intellectual centre; and the result was equally satisfactory. The newspapers were filled with the accounts of his exposures, not only of Eva Fay, but of vari- ous other “mediums,” including the Hardy trick of the moulding of paraffin-hands, and the so- called “ thought-reading”’—the first of which I shall presently notice; and they also contain “illustrations” of the manner in which all the tricks were worked. It is nota little significant of the effect produced by Mr. Bishop’s most laud- able exertions that the American Graphic—which had so far given in to the “ materializations ” of the Eddy brothers as to send a special “ com- missioner” to report upon them (the Colonel ling passed through his bands during hie four years of | Olcott of whom I have already spoken), who was office. known to favor the doctrine—thus decidedly ex-

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122 pressed itself after seeing in private Mr. Bishop’s | sittings for ‘spirit-forms.’ If, however, the andi: imitation of them, as well as of “Katie King,” | whom the Graphic’s ‘‘ commissioner” had pre- viously tried to rehabilitate: THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ence consists of known and enthusiastic dupes, the conditions are at once pronounced favorable, A larger share of light is admitted; the form ap- pears, and moves about among the believers preg “Mr. Bishop unraveled the Katie King mys- | ent. Their credulity rapidly mounts to fever-heat, tery, that seemed for a time to defy the most rigid Patched and darned shawls are discovered to be scrutiny ; and more recently he has been engaged ‘robes of delicate texture and surpassing gorgeous- in revealing the method by which the Eddy broth- ers produced those sub-mundane entertainments, which long harassed the public mind and im- posed upon the credulity of many thoughtful and intelligent men.””— Graphic, April 12, 1876. Returning to the subject a month afterward (May 10th), the Graphic says: “It certainly would be a laudable thing for clergymen, physicians, and leading citizens gener- ally, to invite Mr. Bishop to exhibit in every city | and town in the country ; for the exposure he gives | of the mediumistic tricks is so complete that it | could not but convince even the most credulous that ‘ spirits’ have nothing to do with these mani- | festations.”’ MarTeriaLizaTion SEANCES. | It is, I suppose, now generally known that spiritualists claim not only to hold intercourse with “‘the spirits” by raps, slate-writing, and | the like, but also to induce them to clothe them- | |. selves afresh in a “materialized” form, possess- ing the substance and weight of ordinary mortals. | It was Mr. Home, I believe, who first “ produced” | spirit-hands; but he bas been so far outdone by those who “materialize” whole figures, that he | feels it incumbent upon him not only to denoun¢e them as impostors, but to make a full exposure of the various modes in which the trick is played. As I have never myself been present at any of these performances, and could therefore only describe from hearsay, I borrow Mr. Home’s ac- count of them: “Nothing is offered that can in the slightest | degree be considered as approaching a test; the imposture is often of the baldest and grossest char- acter; yet the ‘medium’ is congratulated on the success of the séance, and credulous fools are hap- py. Perhaps the sitting is for ‘ materialized’ forms or faces; in such case the proceedings are regulated according to the character of the per- sons present. Should these be unknown, or re- garded as possessing a fair share of common-sense, nothing goes well. The circle is described as ‘ in- harmonious.’ The cabinet is jealously guarded. | A distressingly tiny ray of light having been in- | troduced, ‘ materialization’ takes place. All that the persons present can perceive is something | white ; shape and features there are none. Such | is a faithful portraiture of perhaps the majority of | _ partaken of them. ness.’ A kerchief twisted round the head be- comes an unmistakable turban; false whiskers and Indian-ink produce ‘a manly and noble face;? rouge and pearl-powder, in conjunction with g skillfully -arranged head-dress, are sufficient to send the credulous into raptures over the ‘ vision of surpassing loveliness’ presented. The famil- iarity of the spiritual visitors is charming; they have been known to seat themselves at the tea- table, and make a hearty meal, ‘ inquiring jocular- ly whether the muffins were well buttered.’ They _ have mixed stiff glasses of grog for the sitters, und, not satisfied with mixing, have themselves In such little réunions, tests are never employed or mentioned. Not a dupe present but would rather perish than take a sus- picious peep into the cabinet while the materialized form is out and moving about the room. Nota hand among the party but would rather be cut off at the wrist than grasp in detective fashion the said form. The spirit is in every respect at home, and may walk in or out of the cabinet as he or she “The darkness of the séance is thus propor tioned to the sense of the sitters. Where skepti- cism is rife, the most jealous precautions are taken lest that skepticism should behold too much. If they be of an inconvenient nature, the impostor whom they are intended to unmask usually de- clines them. If, on the other hand, they appear | such as may be eluded by jugglery or confederacy, they are at once adopted.” In the simplest form of these performances, only one “spirit” appears; and, if it should be objected that it “is very like the medium,” the incredulous are sometimes admitted into the back-room, or cabinet, where either a “ dummy” has been prepared, or a confederate introduced, to represent the “medium” as in a state of trance ; no light being allowed but that of a bot- _ tle of phosphorized oil, or some similar glimmer ; and no handling being permitted. A wicked skeptic has been known to endeavor to identify | the “spirit” and the “medium” by squirting ink on the arm of the former, and pointing out its presence on the arm of the latter on his (or her) return to the company; or by smearing ink on his own hand, and then, by a friendly grasp, imparting some of it to the hand of the “spirit,” who unsuspiciously reappears as the “medium”. without washing it off. But this little incident, oa wm be wok ‘nh ie ae 6. 2 ae

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it appears, is referable to the “ well-known law of spiritualism,” that any impression of this kind made on the spirit is transferred to the medium. Such a test as the free opening of the doors, and the examination of both figures un- der a full light, is, of course, not to be thought of. In another set of cases, a spirit “dummy” is made up with a life-sized doll bead and shoul- ders, and long, flowing robes; this may be held up by the medium, who is ensconced behind the curtains, and who passes his or her hand between them; or else two spirits may appear at once, performed by the medium and the dummy, the latter being made to appear to sink into the floor by a very simple contrivance. That multitudes of men and women, who claim to be sensible and well educated, should be vic- timized by such an obvious imposture, especially after its repeated detection and exposure, seems almost incredible ; to me it is one of the most pitiable facts in the mental condition of our time. Mr. Home telis us that he does not believe that there are more than five of these “ materializing mediums’ who have not been found out; and yet the thing goes on. The fact seems to be, that the respectable spiritualists who have counte- nanced it in the first instance, being generally ashamed of their gullibility, refrain from publish- ing the detection themselves, and do their best to keep others quiet. Sergeant Cox, however, who seems to have been partly taken in at first, has since honestly and vigorously denounced the cheat ; a long letter from him being published in Mr. Home’s book, which contains a set of instruc- tions given by a “medium” to her pupil; by which we find inéer alia that, in order to evade the search for “ properties,” which is sometimes made on entrance, she brings in a veil under her drawers ! Now, so far is Mr. Crookes from having been a cautious scientific investigator of these “ mate- tializations,” that it can be shown from his own utterances that he has “gone in ” for them most enthusiastically. One of his favorite “ spirits ” is the English (not the American) “ Katie King ;” of whose “ entrancing loveliness ” he thus speaks : “But photography is as inadequate to depict the perfect beauty of Katey’s face as words are powerless to describe her charms of manner. Pho- tography may, indeed, give a map of her counte- nance; but how can it reproduce the brilliant purity of her complexion, or the ever-varying ex- pression of her most mobile features, now over- shadowed with sadness when relating some of the PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 123 bitter experiences of her past life, now smiling with all the innocence of happy girlhood when she had collected my children round her, and was amusing them by recounting anecdotes of her ad- ventures in India {— ** Round her she made an atmosphere of life, The very air seemed lighter from her eyes ; They were so soft and beautiful, and rife With all we can imagine of the skies ; Her overpowering presence made you feel It would not be idolatry to knee.” 4 Truly, as has been well said, “the ‘ scientist’ who writes like this is much too far gone for in- vestigation.” We shall now see how Mr. Crookes, fascinated by these “spiritual” charms, lent him- self to Katie King’s influence, and was rewarded by her fullest confidence. This, he says— “ Gradually grew until she refused to give a sé- ance unless I took charge of the arrangements. She said she always wanted me to keep close to her and near the cabinet; and I found that after this confidence was established, and she was satisfied I would not break any promise I might make to her, the phenomena increased greatly in power, and tests were freely given that would have been un- ' obtainable had I approached the subject in another manner. She often consulted me about persons present at the séances, and where they should be placed; for of late she had become very nervous, in consequence of certain ill-advised suggestions that JSorce should be employed as an adjunct to more scientific modes of research.” 2 This last refers to an unpleasant circumstance which took place in an early stage of the “ Katie King” materialization—the unceremonious clasp- ing of her spiritual waist by an incredulous “ Dia- lectical,” for whom “ materialization” seems to have been a little “ too strong,” and who was re- warded for his impudence by a very forcible tug at his beard, which is said to have despoiled it of some of its beauty. Further, the Rev. C. Maurice Davies, a well- known author, who was far from being unfavora- bly disposed to spiritualism, and who was at the time a member of the Council of the British Na- tional Association of Spiritualists, thus describes, in his “Mystic London,” the part taken by Mr. Crookes (whom he styles “ the professor”) at a séance at which he was present: “The professor acted all the time as master of the ceremonies, retaining his place at the aperture ; and, I fear, from the very first, exciting suspicion by his marked attention, not to the medium, but to the ghost.” And he afterward speaks of Mr. Crookes’s 1 The Spiritualist, June 5, 1874. 2 Ibid.

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194 conduct in the matter as having given the final death-blow to his belief that there might be “ something” in the face-manifestations ! It has been rumored that Mr. Crookes has pri- vately admitted that some of his “ mediums,” wien they could not evoke the “ manifestations ” by fair means, have done so by foul. Now that he knows (if he did not know before) bow his name and reputation are being traded upon in the United States, and that the Royal Society is being trailed through the dirt by his instrumen- tality, it may be hoped (if this rumor be true) that he will honestly come forward, and, by public admission thut he has been even occasionally duped, will do all he can to repair the mischief he has done by his inconsiderate “indorsement ” of one of the grossest impostures ever practised— that of Eva Fay. “THe Last New Taine” in Sprritva.istic MATERIALIZATIONS. Everybody knows that Paris “ sets the fash- ions” in ladies’ dress ; and, in like manner, Bos- ton (United States) “ sets the fashions” in spirit- ualism. The latest “ manifestation,” which has not yet (so far as I am aware) been imported into England, is the production of likenesses of the hands of departed friends, “moulded” by “the spirits” in paraffin. A “circle,” including the “ medium,” is constituted round a table, beneath which is placed a bucket of hot water, wherein some Jumps of solid paraffin have been placed, so as to form when melted a floating stratum two or three inches thick. After a longer or shorter interval, the “spirits” announce by raps that the process is complete ; the table-cloth is lifted up, anda hand moulded in solid paraffin is found on the floor, or on the knees of the “medium,” which the “ faithful” accept as their indubitable production. Of course the hand is “ demonstra- bly not brought in by the medium;” for how could such a brittle affair have been carried in her pocket, or hid in the folds of her dress? Suspicious half-believers may observe shreds of cotton-wool adherent to the hand; or may notice that the hand “ produced” at one séance has a very suspicious likeness in shape, or in some little defect or fracture, to one they have pre- viously seen. But, of course, the cotton-wool has been brought by the “ bad spirits ;” and, as even “ good spirits” sometimes bungle their work, there is nothing extraordinary in the same de- fect being repeated, when the same spirits are the operators. Everything that can be thus | THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. readily explained away goes for nothing with — those who are predetermined to believe. But how about the following? A set of trou. blesome skeptics, Mr. Home tells us, bought ¢ proper quantity of paraffin-lumps, and had them carefully weighed, and their weight recorded by the dealer. After the conclusion of the séance, when the water had cooled and the paraffin had solidified again, the whole of it was collected; and, on being taken back to the same dealer, was Sound to weigh exactly the same as it had weighed before. Of course, the explanation is ready; either the gentlemen who planned this test, and the dealer on whose independent verdict the re. sult depended, were leagued together to “ manu. facture evidence,” or else the “ spirits” could not only mould the hand, but could supply the par. affin. To doubt the “medium,” in Mr. Wal- lace’s view, is to have ‘“‘a reprehensible eagerness to accept and retail whatever falsehoods may be circulated to her disadvantage.” To doubt the honesty of the skeptics, on the other hand, is perfectly legitimate. I cannot question that “the spirits” could as easily have supplied paraffin as mould it into a hand; but then what was the need of the bucket under the table? Messrs, Crookes and Wallace, however, may say that it is Mr. Home who has put together these “idle tales,” without either “time, place, or circum. stance;” and that his testimony, on account of his obvious animus, ought not to be received. I will give them, therefore, another case, the testi- mony in regard to which, having been given on oath by a gentleman whose high character and social position are thoroughly vouched for, my opponents are bound to admit until they can sue- ceed in discrediting it. On Sunday evening, October 29, 1876, a sé- ance, convened by public advertisement in the Boston Herald, was held, “for moulds and the materialization of spirit-forms,” by Mrs. Hardy, residing at No. 4 Concord Street, Boston; de scribed in the Herald as a “substantial structure in one of the most fashionable neighborhoods in Boston.” To this séance the Herald sent a re- porter, who was accompanied by a “skeptical expert "—no other than the troublesome Mr. W. Irving Bishop. The usual bucket having been brought in, and all who desired being allowed to examine the pail and its contents—“ some of them, in the eagerness of their curiosity, even dipping their fingers into the oleaginous liquid in which angel-hands were soon to dabble ”—the Herald representative followed their example; and, “ while he plunged his finger into the trans-

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FSsSQs6b AB? a @ P .. parent fat, he emptied from the hollow of his an ounce or two of that harmless substance with which the New England dairy-women are wont to give a red color to their cheeses, and stirred it in with his finger.” Mrs. Hardy seems to have “smelt a rat;” for at first “she declared that it was doubtful if there would be any mani- festation of spiritual presence, for the reason that some foreign substance had been put into the pail,” the “pure spirits with whom she dealt abhorring all chemical combinations.” Having been asked, however, whether they could favor the company, they promised that in seven min- utes the materialization of a spirit-form would be produced ; and, after only five minutes of breath- less expectation, Mrs. Hardy announced that the spirits had done their work. The table-cloth be- ing removed, there lay, within six inches of Mrs. Hardy’s right foot, a beautiful model of a human hand, cold as marble, and white as alabaster. “There were exclamations of surprise and won- der from all parts of the room, and some there were who felt themselves in the presence of the sublime realities of the unseen world. But the Herald observer was not of that number.” While this model was being passed round for inspection, he dipped four fingers again and again into the now cooling paraffin in the bucket, until they were incased by the material; and then, as it hardened, he peeled it off and rolled it into a little ball of the size of a nutmeg. He then pointed out that, as the hand was admitted by all to be cold, it could not have been produced out of the paraffin in the pail, which could not have thus completely cooled in so short a time, and that, as it was pure white, it did not corre- spond with the material in the pail, of which the sample he had taken was distinctly red, as all could see. Some demur having been made to this conclusion, on the ground that the coloring- matter might have been unequally mixed, so that some of the paraffin in the pail might have re- mained untinged, Mrs. Hardy was offered twenty dollars to mould a white hand out of it, which challenge she declined. Mr. W. Irving Bishop then took another sample from the pail, and broke off a piece of the hand. The next day he took both samples to Prof. Horsford, of Cam- bridge University ; and the day after that he made the following affidavit : “T, W. Irving Bishop, of New York, on oath de- pose and say, that on Sunday evening, October 29, 1876, I was present at a séance held by Mrs. Hardy, 4 Concord Square, for the production of moulds and materialization of spirit-hands. A paraffin-form PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 125 of a hand was produced, which Mrs. Hardy alleged was made by the spirits, from the contents of a pail of melted paraffin placed under the table. And I here state that coloring-matter had been placed in the said paraffin, and that I took a piece of the hand produced, and also, by dipping my finger into the heated paraffin, obtained an impres- sion of the contents of said pail, for the purpose of comparison. “ That, subsequently, I submitted both pieces to Frof. Horsford, of Cambridge, who placed a por- tion of each in test-tubes, and, by the applica- tion of proper chemicals, found that the paraffin taken from the pail exhibited a slight reddish color, while that from the mould gave no appear- ance of the existence of coloring-matter. ‘“W. Irvine Bisnor, of 98 Fifth Avenue, New York. Suffolk, ss. ‘* Sworn and subscribed to this 31st day of Octo- ber, 1876. Cuartes J. Brooks, “* Justice of Peace.” May we not now affirm with Prince Hal, that “these lies are like the father that begat them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable?” Well might the reporter of the Herald say of the moulded hand that “it symbolized the cunning and the craft of the woman who produced it, and who for years had speculated upon the credulity of the commnnity, and made heartless traffic of the tenderest sympathies of human nature.” Well might he be convinced that “all the much-vaunted spiritual manifestations at the Hardy mansion are the grossest impostures, and that they deserve to be ranked in the same category with those cf 3uch charlatan pretenders as Katie King, the Eddy brothers, and Mrs. Bennett, the exposure of whose consummate knavery was recently made in those columns.” And well might he urge that the time has surely now come when the strong hand of the law should be invoked to protect the public from such chicanery and fraud. Sprritcvat Revecations. “ By their fruits ye shall know them” is an adage as to which experience is entirely in ac- cord with authority. And I shall close this sur- vey of the present aspect of spiritualism by a brief notice of its teachings. The highest form of these, we are assured by Mr. Wallace,' is to be found in the spoken ad- dresses of one of the most gifted “ trance-medi- ums,” Mrs. Emma Hardinge, of which he gives selected samples. The idea which runs through the whole is that the future life is one of prog- 1 See his “Miracles and Modern Spiritualism,” p. 110.

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126 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MON: THL Y.—SUPPLEMENT. ress; and that, according to the elevation we at- tain in this life by the right use of the powers intrusted to us—“ not one jot of what we learn, or think, or strive for here, being lost””—will be the height of the platform (so to speak) from which we shall commence our ascent from the lower to the higher spheres of the next. Now, surely “it needs no ghost to tell us that.” “To understand that we are spirits, and that we live for immortality, to know and insure its issues,” though to spiritualists the last and noblest “ bright page which God has revealed to us,” is surely a fundamental doctrine of every form of Christianity ; and the particular idea of continuity and progress has been the teaching of the religious community (that of Channing and Martineau) in which I was myself brought up, as far back 1s I can remember. Mrs. Hardinge’s new Ten Commandments, again, if an improvement on the old, are only so in as far as they engraft Christian morality upon the Judaic code. And, looking to the exhibi- tions of “envy, hatred, malice, and all unchari- tableness ” which are to be found in the quarrels of ‘*mediums,” even “advanced” spiritualists would seem not to be at all more free from these faults than ordinary Christians. For the following samples of the /ower forms of Spiritualistic communications made by “ spir- its” who must be still in Mrs. Hardinge’s “ Hades,” I am indebted to Mr. Home. (Op. cit., p. 304.) An American “circle” has been informed by John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, that “I and Lincoln often have a cozy chat up here. We agree that it was just as well I shot him. You see it was set down in the order of things for me to do it; and I don’t see why I should be blamed for accomplishing my destiny. The world was all the better for it.” The inspirational source of this philosophy is obviously that doctrine of human automatism of which it seems to me to be the legitimate out- come. Although Mr. Home elsewhere classes me with the “materialists” because I do not accept his form of “ spiritualism,” I am entirely at one with him in the conviction that, were such doctrines as the foregoing generally accepted among spiritualists, “spiritualism would be the greatest curse which could befall mankind ;” the negation of those moral instincts which lie deep- est in our nature being (as I have elsewhere * 1 Preface to the fourth edition of ‘‘ Principles of Mental Physiology.” endeavored to show) the most convincing proof of their really unscientific nature. The following is a specimen of those elevated teachings which are brought to us by the “ spip, its” from “another and a better world,” inhab. ited by purer and higher natures than are left in this: “ Wisdom is what is wise. Wisdom is not folly, and folly is not wisdom. Wisdom is not selfishness, and selfishness is not wisdom. Wis. dom is not evil, and evil is not wisdom, All ig not wisdom, all is not folly.” I have heard of 4 little boy to whom Sundays were made to be days of gloom and weariness; and who, when told that heaven would be “all Sundays,” replied that if that were the case he should not wish to go there. I quite agree with those who prefer annihilation, if the twaddle just quoted is a true sample of the conversation of the blest. As Prof. Huxley said, when invited to take part in the investigations of the Dialectical Soei- ety: “The only good that I can see in a demon- stration of the truth of spiritualism is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a ‘medium’ hired at a guinea a séance.” Although the spiritualistic genuineness of the foregoing communications is utterly discredited by Mr. Home, they will probably be regarded by Mr. Wallace, who has a much larger receptivity, as proceeding from “spirits” who have made very little progress since they left the earth. The following, however, cited by Mr. Home from Le Flambeau du Spiritisme, will, I should hope, be too strong even for my guondam friend : ““¢*The spirit-authors’ are represented as be. ing no less personages than the twelve apostles of Christianity. We are gravely assured that at various periods they dictated this incomparable production to the person who has caused a few copies to be published. The subject is the Life of Christ. Zhe mixture of ribaldry, insanity, and absurdity, is almost incredible. One of the apos- tles favors us with particulars regarding the every- day doings of the twelve. ‘ We always took a small boy with us to clean our shoes. The Mas- ter liked us all to look well, and he was very par- ticular that our shoes should be nicely blacked.’ The ordinary attire of Christ consisted of a flow- ing robe and ‘ bright blue boots.’ On one occasion he was reviled as an impostor. The incident is thus described: ‘ How can you call me an impos tor?’ said the Master, turning round. ‘ Don’t you see my yellow curly hair and my nice blue boots? Would I have such things, do you think, if I were an impostor?’ An apostle gives vari- aearaease

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ous facts respecting a journey to Jerusalem: ‘ We were very poor, and we sold little pamphlets of the life and doings of Jesus, to bring us in money. We made great haste to get to Jerusalem, for fear that the newspapers should get hold of our coming, and announce it.’” (Op. cit., p. 809.) This, I should think, will be quite enough ; but any one who wishes for more of a yet worse kind (such as “ the Master, after a supper, joins jin a round dance with his apostles and Mary Magdalene ”) will find some of it in Mr. Home’s yolume, and plenty more in the three hundred pages of “the nauseous stuff”—parts of which (says Mr. Home) “it is simply impossible to quote”"—which constitutes Le Flambeau du Spi- The celebrated “John King” finds little fa- yor with Mr. Home. For, though this spirit of “an evil and famous man” has announced that “itis at once his duty and his pleasure to do good to his fellow-men, he is the reprover of the sinful and the comforter of the sad; his is a di- vine mission, and in it he finds his glory, the glory of an angel;” yet he is terribly carnal in some of his proceedings—throwing a sofa-cush- ion at the head of a skeptic; rubbing a paper tube over an inquirer’s cranium, and remarking, “This is hair-brushing by machinery ;” pouring tea out of a teapot “in the usual way” for a party of enthusiastic old women; and expressing his own preference for “regular baths and a bottle of Guinness’s stout after dinner. . . . Such is the fashion,” says Mr. Home, “in which John King makes his progress to higher states of pu- rity.” (Op. cit., p. 312.) Now, it must be evident to every reader of Mr. Home’s “ Lights and Shadows of Spiritual- ism,” that he agrees with me in the fundamental principle of deciding upon the genuineness of a large number of the asserted “spiritualistic” revelations, by what seems to him their inherent probability ; trusting rather to the evidence of his “sense” than to that of his “senses.” And I would commend to Mr. Wallace’s attentive study the “Modern Spiritualism” of Mr. Home, as a far more complete defense of that position than anything I could myself have made—my knowl- edge of the wilder vagaries of the system being extremely limited. “Tt is not,” says Mr. Home, “ to drink tea and play on the fiddle, to give blasphemously-ludicrous communications regarding Christ and his apostles, to strut about in skull-caps and yellow boots, to beat people over the head with paper tubes, to throw cushions at skeptics, to hold up murderers PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 127 as respectable objects, to tell people by what om- nibuses to travel, or to describe the next world as a place where humanity deteriorates, that departed spirits return to earth. Their mission is great— their opportunities are limited. What time have they to waste in idiotisms of which a schoolboy would be ashamed? Let us refer such to their proper sources ; some to insanity, some to knavery —many to this world, few to the next. Let us recognize the height and the holiness of phenom- ena which show how * The beloved, the true-hearted, Revisit earth once more.’ Let us put from our path all which savors of folly and fraud, and press steadily and undeviatingly toward the truth. It is full time the errors I have been treating of should ‘ die among their worship- ers.’”? (Op. cit., p. 823.) I feel that the cause of common-sense has been so greatly served by Mr. Home’s fearless exposure of the knavery of “mediums” and the credulous folly of their votaries, that I would not here call in question his own belief in the phe- nomena whose “height” and “holiness” he re- gards as demonstrating the return of departed spirits to earth. But to me there seems nothing either morally or spiritually elevating in the “elongation” of Mr. Home’s already tall body: or in his moonlight sail out of one window and in at another, even at a height of sixty feet from the ground. Nor can I see anything peculiarly “holy” in Mr. Home’s putting hot coals on his own hand, or in his heaping them on the head of a bald gentleman. I should myself have thought such performances no less a waste of the limited time and opportunities of the departed spirits who revisit earth, than those which Mr. Home “pillories” so cruelly. And I merely claim to exercise, in regard to the validity of Mr. Home’s own pretensions, the independent judgment as to what is inherently probable, which he himself so freely passes upon the pretensions of others. Writing upon this subject six years ago,’ I remarked upon “ the unhealthy craving which now prevails for some ‘sign’ that shall testify to the reality of the existence of disembodied spirits, while the legitimate influence of the noble lives and pregnant sayings of the great and good who have gone before us is proportionately ignored.” And I referred to the two great men in whose obsequies I had been not long before called upon to take part—Sir John F. W. Herschel and George Grote—as having left behind them an influence far more elevating, more wide-spread, as well as 1 Quarterly Review, October, 1871.

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128 more enduring, than any that their “spirits” could exert by playing tunes on accordions or rapping out passages from their works. May I not now say the same—though I have the honor to be her brother—of the noble-hearted woman whose recent loss has been mourned, not alone by her family and personal friends, but by a world-embracing circle that ranges through all grades of society, from the very highest to the very lowest? The life devoted by Mary Carpen- ter to the rescue of the “dangerous and perish- ing classes” from brutal ignorance and degrading vice was “controlled” in the first instance by the “spirit” of the Great Teacher of that faith in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man which “ possessed” her whole nature ; next, by that of the earthly father who had trained her, alike by precept and example, to a life of service to mankind ; and then by those of Joseph Tuckerman—the Oberlin of Boston, Massachusetts —and of Rammohun Roy, the great Hindoo re- former. It was under these influences that she did, in the second half of a life of seventy years, a work for which the first half was the training ; and which, I venture to affirm, has not been sur- passed in its power, its range, or its productive- ness, by that of any other single philanthropist, male or female. And when the history of that life, the details of that work, shall have been fully given to the world, I cannot doubt that the THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “spirit” of Mary Carpenter will animate the zea} and direct the activity of those who follow in her footsteps far more effectively than if her “mate rialized”” image were to appear among the in. mates of her reformatory, or her “raps” or her “slate-writing” were to signify her instructions to the women of India. Those who, while living, have been “ epistles known and read of all men ”’—who have achieved the truest greatness by laboring in the service of others (“ whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister”)—leave behind them ap influence which, no less than that of the great in intellectual power and in moral worth, diffuses and deepens in each succeeding generation. I feel sure that any one who has tried to shape hig (or her) life under the “ spirit-control” of John F. W. Herschel, of George Grote, or of Mary Car. penter, would far rather that anything he may have well done should help to transmit that in. fluence to those who come after, than that, if permitted to “revisit the glimpses of the moon,” he should be placed at the disposal of the profes. sional “ mediums” who trade in “spiritual com- munications,” and should be made to pander to the vulgar curiosity of those who will delight to be assured that he is “ pretty jolly up there,” or “very miserable down below,” according to their respective conceptions of his deserts.—Fraser’s Magazine. of researches made by isolated observers during the last twenty years, The common re- sult to which these researches point is a more direct connection between solar activity and the atmospheric conditions of the earth than was previously suspected. This conclusion has been arrived at independently of a priori considera- tions. Indeed, one of the most remarkable feat- ures of the gradual building up of the connec- | tion has been, the aversion on the part of each investigator to draw general inferences from the special result at which he had arrived. We think that the time has now come to ex- amine the common direction to which these iso- lated observations point, and to inquire how far SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. By J. NORMAN LOCKYER anv Pror. W. W. HUNTER. HE Madras famine gives emphasis to a series | the common result is in accord with the conclu | 1 sions which might have been anticipated a priori from recent solar work. Exactly a century ago scientific men were dis- cussing the startling announcements made by De la Lande concerning the constitution of the sun. Dr. Wilson, of Glasgow, had discovered, as he thought, that the solar spots which for upward of two centuries had proved a stumbling-block for astronomers, were simply great, yawning chasms in the outer atmosphere of that luminary. De la Lande had fallen upon this conclusion with his accustomed vigor, and declared that they were nothing but the higher and more irreducible parts—the mountains, in fact—of a solid sun ex- posed from time to time by the ebb and flow of ._ es == «=-. et @

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r to it to a sea liquid, fiery, and so transparent that round the bases of these solar hills the shallower por- tions of the molten ocean might be detected. This announcement gave a tone to subsequent work. To Sir William Herschel, who outstripped even De la Lande in imaginative power, the spots were parts of a cool, habitable globe. We are told of mountainous countries with peaks six hundred miles high, and the outer shining enve- lope, according to him, was so constituted that, while it gave light and heat to all the members of the solar family, its brilliance was tempered in such a manner to the inhabitants of the cool solid sun beneath as to render life possible. The science of the nineteenth century has . swept away these beautiful dreams. In such in- quiries the telescope has given place to the spec- troscope, and no fact is now more certain than that the sun is a huge incandescent globe, the very coolest visible portion of which is glowing with a heat which transcends all our earthly fires. This is no vague statement put forth without evidence, or in the absence of ascertained facts. The chemical composition of the exterior of this vast furnace is now to a great extent known, and the physical astronomer can easily detect when a fresh supply of the vapor, now of iron, or now of magnesium, is shot up from below to recruit the glow of the exterior. We have called the sun a furnace, but this word must be used with a qualification. The heat of the sun is due, not to combustion as in our ordinary fires, but to the vivid incandescence of each particle brought about by the original contraction of the vaporous globe, or by causes even more remote and unknown. But this we know, that the energies at work on the sun are not always constant. At times, there are spots _ nits surface of such enormous magnitude that they are visible to the naked eye; at others, it is apparently as spotless as the most eager of Gal- ileo’s adversaries, who had the dictum of Aris- totle to defend, could have desired. At times, again, glowing vapors rush up from its bowels with such persistence that the careful observer is sure to catch a sight of their eruptions when- ever he looks for them. At other times they are invisible for months together. Strange forms are also seen, exquisite in color, fantastic beyond description in outline, and of stupendous magnitude. These are the solar prominences or red flames, the existence of which was formerly revealed to us in eclipses only. Like the spots, and like the eruptions, they wax and wane, At one time a dozen may be visible 45 SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. 129 round the edge of the sun, some of them a hun- dred thousand miles high; at other times there is scarcely the most feeble indication of this form of solar activity. The sun, then, may not only be likened to a furnace the heat of which is be- yond expression; but it may be likened to a fur- nace the intensity of which is apparently variable. The next point is that the apparent variation in activity is not irregular and therefore unpre- dictable, but that it is regular and predictable, at all events within certain limits. The variation is in fact periodic, and the solar phenomena to which we have referred vary together; that is, when we have the greatest number of uprushes of heated natter from below, we have the great- est number of spots and the greatest number of prominences. All these phenomena ebb and flow once in eleven years. So that every eleven years we have the greatest activity in the production of up- rushes, spots, and prominences ; and between the periods of maximum we have a period of mini- mum, when such manifestations‘are almost en- tirely wanting. In fact, the spots may be taken as a rough index of solar energy, just as the rain- fall may be taken as a convenient indication of terrestrial climate. They are an index, but not a measure of solar activity; and their absence indicates a reduction, not the cessation, of the sun’s energy. Whether this reduction means one in a hundred or one in a thousand, we do not know. If we now pass from the sun, the great reser- voir of energy in our planetary system, to our own earth, we find a very different order of things. The incandescence of our planet is a thing of the past; and the loss by radiation of its internal heat is now so small and varies so slightly in a long period of time that, as compared with a period of eleven years, we may regard this heat as a constant quantity. It was, perhaps, scarcely necessary thus to clear the ground for the general statement, now an accepted fact of science, that, with the excep- tion of tide-work, all our terrestrial energies come from the sun. In the great modern principle of the conservation of energy, we have not only proof that the actual energy stored up in our planet is constant, but that the solar energy is the great prime mover of all the changeable phe- nomena with which we are here familiar, espe- cially in the inorganic world. That energy gives us our meteorology by fall- ing at different times on different points of the aérial and aqueous envelopes of our planet, there- | by producing ocean and air currents, while, by

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. aan) xs in, eS . . | ig ii : > | ss 130 acting upon the various forms of water which ex- ist in those envelopes, it is the fruitful parent of rain, and cloud, and mist. Nor does it stop here. It affects, in a more mysterious way, the electri- city in the atmosphere, and the magnetism of the globe itself. If the energy radiated from the sun were con- stant, we should expect that the terrestrial con- ditions which depend on the amount of solar energy received at any one place would be con- stant too. The daily change due to the earth’s rotation, the yearly change brought about by the earth’s revolution, would be there; but there change would stop. The fire, as well as the air, earth, and water, would be constant quantities. But, suppose the fire to be variable; in other words, suppose the solar energy to change in amount from year to year. To the daily and annual changes of our terrestrial phenomena would then be added another change—a change absolutely ir- regular and unpredictable if the variation in the amount of the solar energy were subject to no law; but a change as regular as the daily and the yearly one, if the variation in the amount of so- lar energy were subject toa law. The period of the additional terrestrial change would agree with the period of the solar change, whatever that might be; and to the daily and yearly response of the earth to the solar energy, there would be superadded an additional change, depending upon and coincident in the main with the period of the solar change. We have said coincident in the main, because it is easy to imagine, in the case of meteorological phenomena dependent upon a long train of intermediate influences between the im- pact of the solar energy and the final result, that time would be taken for their development. In this case, although the dependence would be there, an exact coincidence would not. There would be a lagging behind, and this lagging be- hind would possibly not be the same at different latitudes. We come now to the facts, accepting sun-spot frequency as the index of solar activity. With- out dwelling upon previous work, the actual enu- meration of sun-spots was undertaken in 1826 by Hofrath Schwabe, of Dessau, and patiently car- ried out by means of a daily scrutiny of the sun’s surface. His eye-observations have been im- proved upon by accurate measurements of the solar-spotted area, by the late Mr. R. C. Carring- ton at Redhill, and by the solar work at the Kew Observatory, conducted by Dr. W. De la Rue and Prof. Balfour Stewart. Similar observations are now in progress, and photographs of the sun-spots THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. are being taken in France, Germany, Russia, Italy, aud Greenwich. Dr. Rudolf Wolf has reduced the materials thus obtained to a uniform stand ard, and published a list of the relative number of sun-spots for each year since 1750; the dat, for the earlier years being, however, of less value than for the later period, during which daily de. lineations of the sun’s surface have been going on. Dr. Wolf's list exhibits eleven complete cycles of sun-spots, from 1750 to 1870, giving an average of, as nearly as possible, eleven years to each cycle. The individual cycles vary within certain limits, but the largest variations appear in the last century and early in the present one, before the commencement of Hofrath Schwabe’s continuous observations in 1826. Are these cycles of solar activity coincident with any well-marked cycles in the atmospheric or other conditions of the earth? The inquiries into such a coincidence have been directed to four classes of terrestrial phenomena. They are: 1, Periodical variations in terrestrial magnetism and electrical activity; 2. Periodical variations in temperature ; 3. The periodicity of wind-dis. turbances, hurricanes, and cyclones ; 4. Perio. dicity in the rainfall. It is with the last class of phenomena that we have specifically to deal in this article, But it may be well to summarize the results arrived at with respect to the first three, First, then, with regard to terrestrial magne tism and electrical activity. A freely-suspended magnet, although it points in one direction, is, nevertheless, within small limits, always in mo tion. Certain of these motions depend, as is well known, upon the hour of the day, but the magnet is also liable to irregular, abrupt flucte- tions, which cannot be connected with the diur- nal oscillations. While Hofrath Schwabe was e- gaged in delineating the sun-spots, Sir Edward Sabine was conducting a series of observations with regard to these spasmodic affections of the needle. He found that such fluctuations are most frequent in years of high sun-spot activity. Van Swinden had suggested, but only suggested, « periodicity in the irregular movements, as far back as 1785. Gauss had made further discov- eries between 1834 and 1837. Arago’s obser- vations from 1820 to 1880 were reduced and pub- lished in 1854, in such a form as to prove that a minimum period of magnetic variations had occurred in 1823-'24, a year of minimum sul spots ; and that a maximum period of such vath ations had occurred in 1829, a year of maximum sun-spots. In 1851 Dr. Lamont, of Munich, pub

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deal in rize the discov- d pub- ye that 1s had n sun h vari- 1, pub- BAS ~ fished his long-continued researches, indicating the existence of a cycle in magnetic variations, occupying on an average ten and a third years. Sir Edward Sabine, in 1852, carried forward the work by a paper in the “Transactions of the Royal Society.” He subsequently communicated the results of a series of records between 1859 and 1864, of the horizontal and vertical force magnetometers at the Kew Observatory, with a note showing their connection with the sun- spots and giving interesting historical details. He observed, too, that the fluctuations of the magnet were almost invariably accompanied by displays of the aurora borealis, and came to the conclusion that auroral displays occur most fre- quently in years of maximum sun-spots. Dr. Wolf, now of Zurich, and M. Gautier, of Geneva, had independently remarked, in 1852, the coin- cidence of Lamont’s decennial magnetic period with Schwabe’s period of sun-spots. In 1865 Prof. Loomis, of Yale College, supplied further evidence on the range of magnetic declination and auroras, in their relation to sun-spots. He concluded that the auroras observed in Europe and America exhibit a true periodicity, closely following the magnetic periods, but not perfectly identical with them. He believed that a sun- spot is the result of a disturbance of the sun’s surface, with some emanation from the sun which is felt almost instantly upon the earth. Signor Schiaparelli, in 1875, brought out with great clearness the relations between the sun-spot pe- tiods and the variations in the declination of the magnetic needle. In the same year, also, Sophus Tromholdt contributed to the Zeitschrift der és- terreichischen Gesellschaft fiir Meteorologie a note on the connection of auroras with the sun-spot peri- ods. In 1876 Dr. J. A. Broun presented the re- sults derived from observations of magnetic dec- lination made during nearly a quarter of a cen- turyat Trevandrum. He gave the mean duration of the magnetic cycle at 10.45 years, and sup- plied a very valuable chart showing the decen- nial period of the diurnal range of magnetic dec- lination and sun-spot area from 1784 to 1876. The curves of this elaborate and most interesting chart place the general coincidence of the mag- netic and sun-spot cycles in a clear light. Dr. Broun came to the conclusion that while the sun-spot activity is not an exact measure of mag- netic action, “ each is a distinct result due to the same cause.” The whole question has, during the present summer (May, 1877), been reviewed by Prof. Balfour Stewart, a distinguished work- er in the same field. He has exhibited the solar SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. spots, magnetic declination, and aurora displays, from 1776 to 1872, in curves which follow each other with an indisputable coincidence. He fur- ther examines the connection of these three co- incident cycles with planetary configurations: a question discussed by Mr. Fritz in the “ Proceed- ings of the Royal Society” in 1871, and previ- ously studied with much care by Dr. De la Rue and Prof. Balfour Stewart, at Kew (1854-66). To sum up: magnetic observers now hold that not only do the spasmodical affections of the needle follow curves closely coincident with the solar spots, “but its diurnal oscillations are not less dependent on the state of the sun’s surface.” Such magnetic disturbances have very prac- tical results. Telegraphy and telegraphic lines form one of the most conspicuous of the new commercial undertakings of our day, During periods of maximum magnetic disturbance, tele- graphic communication between points so close as London and Dover is sometimes interrupted. Mr. Charles V. Walker, superintendent of tele- graphs, presented an important paper in 1861 to the Royal Society, on magnetic storms and earth- currents. He described the remarkable disturb- ances in communication which took place in 1848, a year of maximum sun-spots, and in the autumn of 1859, just before the next year of maximum sun-spots (1860). The first period of disturbance appeared ‘to his staff to be an altogether “ab- normal” one. “ Wedid not then know,” writes Mr. Walker, “as we now do, that these disturbances have a cycle of about eleven years from the maximum period of activity to the next maxi- mum.” An idea of the violence of such mag- netic storms may be derived from the Dover clerk’s entry on September 2, 1859: “This morning, on opening the office, I found the nee- dies of both instruments firmly blocked over to the left, and, although the handles were firmly held over to the right to counteract the power, to my surprise I found that our battery-power had not the slightest effect. . . . I am sorry to say that there is not the slightest possibility of our working the instrument ; needles continuing firmly fixed over, and this has continued for up- ward of half an hour.”. This disturbance was of such magnitude and of so long duration that the operators were unable to supply an adequate narrative of it, as “they were at their wits’ end to clear off the telegrams which accumulated in their hands, by other less affected but less direct routes.” Mr. Walker has retained no record of the earth-currents during the last pe- riod of maximum sun-spots (1870), but the dis-

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132 turbances on the lines were not of so marked a character. He holds as an established fact that “earth-currents, disturbed magnetometers, and aurore, are parts of the same phenomenon,” and, in a recent letter to one of the writers of this article, he reaffirms his conviction regard- ing the relationship between earth-currents, tele- graphic disturbances, and sun-spots. The second class of phenomena, in which a periodicity coinciding with the sun-spot cycle is believed to have been discovered, has reference to solar radiation and thermometric variations. For reasons which would require too much space to detail, various difficulties complicate this line of research, and we should state, at the outset, that the evidence is less complete and satisfactory than that which connects magnetic disturbances and rainfall with sun-spots. A moment’s consid- eration will show the kind of complication to which we refer. If the earth had no atmosphere, all the solar energy would be incident and operative on the earth’s surface, where perforce our measuring instruments are placed. But the earth has an atmosphere, which is the vast scene of the play THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of the solar energies; and the work done there is of such a nature that the more energy there is | in operation, the more effectively is the direct energy of the sun screened from the surface. | Further, there is not wanting evidence to show -that the vapor of water, like the vapors of the metals, exists in various molecular conditions, some of which are transparent and others opaque to those rays which affect our thermometers.' The thermometric inquiry divides itself into sev- eral distinct branches, such as the direct solar radiation or calorific intensity of the sun’s light, the daily temperature range, and the mean an- | nual temperature. We shall very briefly state | the conclusions at which observers have arrived during the last ten years, without criticism or any expression of opinion. In 1867 Mr. Joseph Baxendell communicated the results of a scrutiny of the Solar Radiation Registers, kept at the Radcliffe Observatory, Ox- ford, from 1856 to 1864. He came to the fol- lowing conclusions, among others: 1. That the calorific intensity of the sun’s light is subject to periodical changes, the maxima and minima of which correspond respectively with those of sun-spot frequency. 2. That it seems probable that the heating rays of the sun consist of two 1 There is evidence to suggest that the aqueous va- por produced at the period of minimum eun-spots would be more transparent to the heat-rays than that produced at other times.—J. N. L. kinds, differing in intensity, and subject to pe riodical changes; the times of maxima of one kind, and those of minima of the other, corre. sponding respectively to the times of maximum frequency of solar spots. Mr. Baxendell also pointed out a connection between the mean monthly variation of solar radiation on cloudless days and the mean monthly daily range of the magnetometer. In 1871 he published his further researches on the changes in the distribution of barometric pressure, temperature, and rainfall, under different winds, during a period of solar. spot frequency. He found that changes had taken place in the three elements under discus. sion, which corresponded very closely in the times of their maxima and minima with those of sun-spot frequency. In 1875 Mr. H. T. Blandford, Meteorological Reporter at Calcutta, stated, from experiments conducted in Bengal: “ The result is to me very striking, and, if not absolutely con- clusive as to the direct variation of the sun’s heat with the number of spots and prominences, cer- tainly, as far as it goes, strongly confirms Mr, Baxendell’s conclusions.”! In the same year Professors Balfour Stewart and Roscoe, from an investigation of the heating effects of the sun, came to the conclusion that there is more sun- shine at London in years of maximum than in years of minimum solar disturbance. Next year, 1876, Prof. Balfour Stewart found that the win- ter temperature range at Kew apparently de- pends on the sun-spot period, being greatest at times of maximum sun-spots, and least at times of minimum sun-spots. This year, 1877, he has raised, and produced evidence upon, the interest- ing question whether the mean daily range does not depend, among other influences, on the state of the sun’s surface with regard to spots. Meanwhile, another series of observations had been going on, not with black-bulb thermometers for solar radiation, but with reference to the mean annual temperature. In 1870 Prof. Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, published the result of observations made from 1837 to 1869, with thermometers sunk in the rock at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. He came to the conclusion that a great heat-wave occurs every eleven years and a fraction, its maximum slightly lagging behind the minimum of the sun-spot cy- cle. Next year, 1871, Mr. E. J. Stone, the As- tronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope, ex- 1 We should add, however, that a communication has just appeared (Nature, October 11, 1877), from Mr. Hill, in Northern India, differing from Mr. Blandford’s conclusions. eomaasa afk w€zw oe = © ese a eS

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“S@@SalFs ; —? amined the temperature-observations recorded during thirty years at the Cape under his prede- cessor, Sir T. Maclear. He stated that the tem- perature and sun-spot curves presented an agree- ment so close as to compel him to believe that | the same cause which leads to an access of mean annual tempcrature leads equally to a dissipation of solar spots. Here, also, we find the maximum heat slightly lagging behind the minimum spots. In 1873 Signor Celoria, from a comparison of the sun-spot periods with the rainfall at Milan from 1763 to 1872, came to the result that the coinci- dence was marked, but not very decidedly. Dr. W. Képpen’s papers in the Zeitschrift der dster- reichischen Gesellschaft fiir Meteorologie for Au- gust and September, 1873, form the most im- portant contribution upon the question. He en- deavored, with an elaboration and completeness not previously attempted, to present the earth’s temperature in connection with sun-spots for the hundred years preceding 1870. He divided the thermumetric returns into two great classes— those taken within the tropics, and those be- longing to the extra-tropical zones. The barest summary of his researches would occupy several pages. Ina carefully-prepared chart he exhibited the rainfall and sun-spot curves from 1768. Dur- ing the earlier part of this period he had thermo- metric returns only from the northern temperate zone. The curves do not show a coincidence; whether from the local character of the tempera- ture returns, or from the uncertain value of the sun-spot curve, we need not here inquire. After the year 1826, when the sun-spot data become more trustworthy, the case is entirely different. The eurves follow each other in a most striking man- ner; and, indeed, he states that, from 1816 to 1854, the coincidence of temperature-changes with the sun-spots does not merely extend over the aver- age length of the cycles, but reflects all the lead- ing disturbances and peculiarities of the sun-spot periods. Dr. Képpen further points out that, as the period of increase from the minimum to the maximum year in the sun-spot cycle is almost al- ways shorter than the period of decrease from the maximum to the minimum, so, on the whole, is that feature reflected in the temperature- changes. The parallelism in this series of re- turns, he says, with reference to his table dealing with the period from 1820 to 1854, is so great, that there can be no question of accidental coin- cidence of variations independent of each other. On the other hand, his figures disclose many anomalies. Thus, in the tropics, the maximum of warmth occurs a full year before the year of SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. minimum sun-spots; while in the zones beyond the tropics it falls two years after the minimum, The regularity and magnitude of the undulation of the temperature-curve are most strongly marked in the tropics, and decrease toward the poles. With regard to the third class of phenomena, wind-disturbances, the evidence, although less abundant, is more uniform. The frequency of such disturbances at times of maxima sun-spots has been observed independently by two me- teorologists on the opposite sides of the globe. In both cases their observations were made in the tropics, where wind-disturbances have so vio- lent and so well-marked a character as to admit of more easy enumeration than in the extra-trop- ‘ical zones. To our countryman Dr. Meldrum, government-astronomer at Mauritius, belongs the honor of originating, with the chief credit of prosecuting, this research. By a series of care- ful observations he had, more than five years ago, established the existence of a coincidence be- tween the frequency of cyclones and sun-spots. In 1872 one of the writers of this article thus summarized the results: “ Mr. Meldrum tells us that the whole question of cyclones is a question of solar activity, and that, if we write down in one column the number of cyclones in any given year, there will be a strict relation between them —many sun-spots, many hurricanes; few sun- spots, few hurricanes. Mr. Meldrum points out that, in those years in which we have been quietly mapping out the sun-spot maxima, the harbors were filled with wrecks and vessels coming in disabled from every part of the great Indian Ocean.” Next year, 1873, M. Poéy, who had conducted a similar research into the hurricanes of the West Indies, communicated his results to the Académie des Sciences at Paris. He enu- merated 357 hurricanes between 1750 and 1873, , and stated that, out of twelve maxima, ten agreed. A careful reéxamination of his materials discloses | striking coincidences, but at the same time, we ought to add, very serious discrepancies. The discrepancies, however, chiefly belong to the last century and the earlier part of the present one. Since the commencement of Schwabe’s continu- ous sun-spot observations in 1826, the common periodicity is more strongly marked, as Table | IIL, on page 139, will show. During the present summer, 1877, an effort has been made to ascertain whether the periodici- ty thus observed in the wind-disturbances of the tropics produces any well-marked results upon the shipping of the world. Mr. Henry Jeula,

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s 134 secretary to the late Statistical Committee of Lloyd’s, obtained the returns of marine casual- ties posted on Lloyd’s loss-book, from 1855 to 1876. Conjointly with one of the writers of this article, he worked out and tabulated the informa- tion thus derived with regard to the two periods of eleven years from 1855 to 1876. It was found tnat the marine casualties disclosed a cycle closely corresponding with the sun-spot period. The per- centage of casualties on the registered vessels of the United Kingdom was seventeen and a half in the common cycle than during the minimum two years. The percentage of losses on the to- tal, posted on Lloyd’s loss-book during the eleven years, was fifteen per cent. greater during the two maximum years of the common cycle than during the two minimum ones. This cycle of marine casualties coincides with that of the trop- ical rainfall, and it will be exhibited side by side with the tabulated periods of the rainfall at Madras. Itshould be remembered, however, that the two periods of eleven years for which the re- turns of marine casualties are available form a very narrow basis for a statistical induction. We now come to the fourth and last branch of the inquiry. We have already seen that Mr. Joseph Baxendell, in 1871, found that changes had taken place in the rainfall as well as in the tem- perature and barometric pressure, which corre- sponded very closely in their maxima and minima periods with those of the sun-spots. Dr. Meldrum, from a comparison of the rain-return at Mauritius, Adelaide, and Brisbane, came to the conclusion that the evidence of a connection between its max- ima and minima periods, and the corresponding sun-spot periods, although not absolute, was very striking, and demanded further inquiry. In 1872 one of the writers of this article published a paper entitled “The Meteorology of the Future,” in which was developed the idea of a connection be- tween sun-spots and rainfall, and further evidence was produced. In 1872-'73 frequent contributions appeared on the subject, but at first with con- flicting results. In opposition to individual coin- cidences, Sir R. Rawson rejoined that, “ assuming that sun-spots affect all parts of the globe equal- ly, and that periodicity prevails in all alike, the experience of Barbadoes is opposed to the the- ory.” Dr. Carl Jelinek; of Vienna, from an examination of fourteen stations between 1833 and 1869, showed that, while a coincidence held good in fifty-two cases, it failed in forty-two. In 1873 the inquiry branched out in a new dirce- THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. | inquiry in America, per cent. greater during the maximum two years | tion. Gustav Wex made an examination ing the depths of water recorded in the Elbe, Rhing Oder, Danube, and Vistula, for the six sun-spoq periods from 1800 to 1867. He came to the re sult that the years in which the maximum amount of water appeared in the rivers were years of maximum sun-spots ; while the minimum amount of water occurred during the years of minimum sun-spots. Mr. G. M. Dawson, geologist to the B. N. A. Boundary Commission, made a similar In 1874 he stated that the correspondence between the periods of maxims and minima in the solar-spot cycles, and in the fluctuations of the Great Lakes, though by ng means absolute, was sufficiently close to opens new field of inquiry. In the same year, Mr. J, H. Hennessey, from an examination of the rain. fall at Masdri in India, arrived at a similar con- clusion. In 1874 also Dr. J. A. Broun, in an analysis of the returns from ten stations, con- | sidered it probable that a difference of about two inches in the rainfall might be expected between the years of greatest and the years of least sun. spotarea. Prof. John Brocklesby, in the Ameri can Journal of Science, stated that the results of his examination pointed to a connection between variatiors in the sun-spot area and the annual rainfall ; the rainfall rising above the mean when the sun-spot area is in excess, and falling below the mean in periods of small sun-spots. At the close of 1876 it was the duty of one of the writers of this article to examine the Ma- dras rainfall in connection with the anticipated famine. It soon became apparent to him that inquiries which deal with the rain-supply of India as a yearly unit must be essentially inade- quate. Native usage and speech strongly mark the existence of two distinct factors in the annu- al rainfall; and the local system of agriculture is merely a practical recognition of this meteor- ological fact. The summer monsoon, with its stately and ever-shifting procession of rain- clouds, marching over India in aérial battalions from the southern ocean to their resting-place in the Himalayas, formed a theme dear to the San- skrit poet. It seemed as if the continent “ be- loved of Indra” had only to sit still and receive in her lap the treasures which the winds gathered from distant tropical seas. Indra, the personi- fication of the watery atmosphere, won his way to the supreme godhead of the Sanskrit pantheon by the all-powerful influence which he exercised, for weal or for woe, on a population of husband- men. Himeelf gracious and beneficent, ever seek-

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Teor SEF FSSSRP CEE ny ~~ 5 ing to showet his treasures on the thirsty earth, he was nevertheless restrained, and from time to time prevented, by the evil spirit, Vrita. Next to Indra came Vayu, the Wind, representing in his single personality the combined Maruts or storm-gods, The same Indra and Vayu, the watery atmosphere and the wind, whom the San- skrit race adored centuries before the commence- ment of our era, still decide each autumn the fate of the Indian people. The meteorological year at Madras divides itself into three parts. The first of them extends from January to the end of April, with a nominal rainfall of but half an inch per mensem. The second commences toward the end of May or early in June, and lasts till the end of September, or beginning of October. It is popularly known as the southwest monsoon, and if we include in it the month of May, it supplies 17 inches of the yearly rainfall of 484; if we exclude the month of May, it yields 15 inches. In October the northerly wind sets in, and the last three months of the year derive from its influence a rainfall of close on 29 inches. In an inquiry such as the present, the first four months of the year, with their sporadic rainfall of half an inch per mensem, may be dismissed. The two over- ruling factors in the rainfall are the southwest monsoon from May to September, and the north- east monsoon from October to December. If either of these monsoons fails to bring its sup- ply of rain, or if they both fail partially, the re- sult is famine. Of the five Madras famines since the institution of rain-gauges, three have been caused by the failure of the winter monsoon, one by the failure of the summer monsoon, and one by the partial failure of both. ThegMadras rainfall, therefore, furnishes three distinctly-marked elements for comparison with the cycle of sun-spots. There is first the north- east monsoon during the last three months of the year, bringing its average rainfall of nearly 29 inches; second, the southwest monsoon from May to September, supplying over 17 inches, or 15, if we take it as commencing from June; and third, the total yearly rainfall of 48} inches. Does sun-spot activity exercise any influence upon the supply which the two great water-carriers collect from the ocean-tract stretching from the southern pole to India, and then shower upon taat country ? As regards the principal factor, the northeast monsoon, which brings 29 inches out of the whole yearly rainfall of 48} inches, the statistics are these: Of the six years of minimum sun- - SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. spots, including 1876 as one, since rain-gauges were kept at Madras, the northeast monsoon has in five had a distinctly deficient rainfall. The av- erage rainfall of the northeast monsoon during these six years of minimum sun-spots has been only 16.94 inches, against the average of 28.90 inches which the northeastern monsoon annually brought during the last sixty-four years. The northeast monsoon in years of minimum sun- spots brings therefore 41.39 per cent, less rain than in ordinary years; or, put differently, it brings 70 per cent. more rain on the average of sixty-four years than in the years of minimum sun-spots. Nor is this deficiency confined to the exact year of minimum sun-spots. Taking the years of minimum sun-spots together with the preceding years, the northeastern monsoon yield- ed 25§$ per cent. less rainfall, during the twelve years thus made up, than its average yield during the sixty-four years for which returns exist. Or, put in other words, the average water-supply brought to Madras in ordinary years by the north- eastern monsoon is 34} per cent. greater than that which it brings during the years of minimum sun-spots and the years immediately preceding them. The southwest monsoon yields little more than one-half the rainfall which the northeastern one supplies to Madras. Its deficiency during years of low solar-spot activity is, however, well-marked. If we take the southwest monsoon as commencing in June, it yielded in each of the six years of min- imum sun-spots less rain than in ordinary years. Its water-supply during the six years of minimum sun-spots averaged only 12.12 inches or 20 per cent. less than its normal rainfall of 15.13 inches in ordinary years. If we include the rainfall for May in the southwest monsoon, it yielded less than its normal average in five out of the six years of minimum sun-spots. In only one year of minimum sun-spots did the southwest monsoon (including the May rainfall) yield more than its average supply, taken over the sixty-four years. It is very doubtful whether the exceptional year, 1848, was really an exception. A great rain- storm took place in May, before the monsoon had established itself, and of a character different from the regular monsoon rains. This storm poured down a sudden deluge of over 14 inches on Madras, and completely disguised the average for the monsoon months, the ordinary rainfall in May being just two inches. Deducting this rain- storm in 1843, the southern monsoon has proved deficient at Madras, whether we take it to com- mence in May or June, during every year of mini-

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136 mum sun-spots since the returns began in 1813. This deficiency is well-marked, not only in the years of minimum sun-spots, but in the years preceding and following them. Thus, even in- cluding the month of May and the exceptional rain-storm of May, 1843, the southern monsoon during the six years of minimum sun-spots, and the years immediately preceding them, yielded, during the twelve years thus made up, 20% per cent. less rain than its average yield in the sixty- four years. Or, expressed in another form, the water-supply brought to Madras by the southern monsoon is 26% per cent. greater in ordinary years than in the years of minimum sun-spots and those immediately preceding them. The two monsoons are the great factors of the rain-supply at Madras, and their fluctuations are distinctly marked in the third element of com- parison, the total rainfall for the year. In five out of the six years of minimum sun-spots the annual rainfall fell short for the average supply, calculated over the sixty-four years. The excep- tional year was 1843, and its exceptional charac- ter was due to the sporadic rain-storm in May, ai- ready mentioned. Even including that rain-storm, however, the six years of minimum sun-spots had an average rainfall of less than 34} inches, against THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the sixty-four years. The minimum years of sup. spots, therefore, brought 29 per cent. less raip. fall than ordinary years: or, put into another form, the average annual rainfall supply at Ma. dras is 40} per cent. greater than in years of minimum sun-spots. In each of the three elements of comparison, the deficient rainfall is not confined to the mini- mum year of sun-spots, but includes the preced. ing year as well. But it should be clearly stated that no numerical proportion exists between the actual number of sun-spots and the number of inches. There is a rain-cycle of eleven years at Madras, which coincides with the cycle of sun. spots. The periods of maxima and minima in these two cycles disclose a striking coincidence, That coincidence is common to all the three elements of comparison: namely, the rainfall of the year, of the great northern mensoon, and of the southwestern monsoon. will show this. The cycle of eleven years starts from 1876, and runs back to 1813, at which year the rain-returns commence. The eleventh, first, and second series in the cycle include all the years of minimum sun-spots since 1810, and form TABLE I. Exeven Years’ Cycie or Scn-Spots anp RatnFatt aT Mapras. the minimum group of rainfall: Average Annual | Northeast Mon- | Southwest Mon- Relative Number Total Average soon, Madras, soon, Madras, SERIES OF YEARS IN THE CYCLE of Sun-Spots Annual Rainfall | Oct.-Dee, Aver- | May-Sept. Aver- , OF SVEN YEARS (Wolf's List, at Medras, age Rainfell, - | age Rainfall, 1877), 1810—"75. 1813-76. 1813-76, 1813~76, Inches, Inches. | Inches. | Inches. Minimum j Eleventh! series......... 16.8 87.08 | 18.76 15.78 grou { First 2 and second 3 series} 10.8 }12.6av. 42.07 hav. 40.39) 96.49 So 2392) 14.08 Sym 4.65 Third ¢ and fourth ® series........... 48.6 9.12 | 82.87 Fifth * and sixth’ series............. 83.3 54.64 $1.48 19. Pd Seventh ® and eighth ® series......... 65.3 } 52.36 80.64 18.93 Ninth 1° and tenth }! series.......... 88.5 49.02 | 97.61 18.58 Eleventh 12 series................... 16.3 87.08 18.76 15.78 esc es a g 1857, 1846, 1835, 1824, 1871, 1860, 1849, 1835, FREES & 6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ’ 10 11 i2 = a’ 23 + -_ Ba _ The cyclic coincidence may be tested in an- other way. If there is a true coincidence it should disclose a well-marked minimum group at the ex- tremities of the cycle (in the eleventh, first, and Namely, bay 1865, 1854, 1848, 1832, 1821, [1810, ———> only]. 1866, 1855, 1844, 1833, 1822, fis sun-spots onl 1867, 1856, 1845, 1834, 1823, 1812, sun-spots only]. 869, 1858, 1847, 1836, 1825 isi 1810, 1859, 1848, 1887, 1826, 1815. 1827, 1816. 1872, 1861, 1850, 1839, 1828, 1817, 1878, 1862, 1851, 1840, 1829, 1818. 1820. 1876, 1865, 1854, + Hea 188 1882) 1821, [1810, sun-spots only). second years), and a well-marked maximum group in the middle of the cycle (the fifth and following years). The years on both sides of the central maxi- mum group should yield intermediate results, and the ordinary annual rainfall of 48} calculated over The following table .

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= Se SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. when taken together should form a well-marked | so far as the number admits, into three equal istermediate group. Dividing the cycle, therefore, | groups of four years, we get the following results : TABLE II. Exeven Years’ Crcie or Sun-Spors anp Rarnratt 1n Mapras. Number of Sun- Spots (Wolf's List, 1877), 1810-"75. YEARS. Average Relative Northeast Mon- Total Average soon, Madras, soon, Madras, Annual Rainfall Oct.—Dec, Aver- | May-Sept. Aver- at M age Annual Rain- Annual Rain- 1813-"76, fall, 1813-76. fall, 1813~76. Mrxrmium Grovp. Eleventh, first, and second years of the cycle of eleven years.......... 12.6 INTERMEDIATE GrocP. Third, fourth, ninth, and tenth years as of the cycle of eleven years....... Maxrucu Grovp. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth years of the cycle of eleven years........ 76.8 Inches. Inches, laches, 28.92 40.39 14.65 49.07 80.27 16.71 53.50 81.06 19.81 Has this recurring period of deficient sun-spot and rainfall any practical result on the food-sup- ply of the people? It is well known that at the end of the last century, and during the earlier years of the present one, Southern India suffered an almost perpetual distress. But for these years we have no rain-register; and the desolation spread by native misrule, together with the drain of food for great armies in the field, sufficed to intensify every local scarcity to the starvation- point. A march of Tippoo Sultan left a worse blight on a district than a dozen inches of defi- ciency in the rainfall; and Mahratta raids were a more direct and frequent factor of famine than the sun-spots. We are destitute of the first con- ditions for a scientific study of the food-supply, until we reach the period of settled British rule and rain-gauges. It would be fruitless, therefore, to extend the inquiry beyond the year 1810, the earliest year in the sun-spot cycles with which we deal. The years of famine at Madras since that date have been 1811, 1824, 1833, 1854, 1866, and 1877. These famines were caused by deficient rainfall in the preceding years, namely, in 1810, 1823, 1832, 1853, 1865, and 1876. Now, five out of these six years of drought fell within the three years’ group of minimum rainfall and sun-spots shown in the foregoing tables; the remaining drought (1853- 55) extended over a year immediately preceding the minimum group and two years within that group; the famine itself resulting within the min- imum group. Three of the six years of drought fell exactly in years of minimum sun-spots; one fell in the year preceding a year of minimum sun- spots; one fell in the second year preceding a year of minimum sun-spots; the remaining drought, 1853-'55, fell in the first, second, and third years preceding a year of minimum sun-spots. There have been other years of scarcity in Madras. But the above six years were selected by Sir William Robinson, sometime acting gov- ernor, as the years of true famine, without any acquaintance with the writer’s speculations on the rainfall, or of any cycle being supported or disproved by them. No famine in Madras has been recorded from 1810 to 1877, caused by a drought lying entirely outside the minimum group of sun-spots and rainfall (as shown in the fore- going tables). The only drought which could be claimed as an exception, 1853-55, extended over two years within the group and the year immedi- ately preceding them. It is shown as an excep- tion in Table III. The foregoing statistics refer to the single sta- tion of Madras. They are, however, of special value for testing the coincidence between sun-spot frequency and the rainfall, which the northeast monsoon brings to Southern India. For that mon- soon strikes the land with all its first vigor at Ma- dras. By the time it crosses the Eastern Ghauts, and finds its way to the central plateau, it has got rid of the aqueous burden which it has carried down the bay of Bengal. To the table-land of Mysore it™ brings only eight inches, while at Belléri and in Hyderabad it only supplies three. But even at My- sore a deficiency of rainfall in years of minimum sun-spotsis disclosed. Of four years of minimum sun-spots for which materials exist (1876 to 1837), not one had quite the full annual rainfall; and the

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1388 average rain-supply brought by the forty years was close on sixteen per cent. greater in Mysore than the rainfall in the years of minimum sun-spots. To Bombay the northeast monsoon brings scarcely any rain, and the returns lately published omit it as being “immaterial” in twenty out of sixty years. The southwest monsoon is at Bom- bay the great factor of rainfall. According to those returns, the rainfall at Bombay was more or less below the average in every one of the six years of minimum sun-spots during the sixty years. The average rain-supply of the sixty years was eighteen per cent. greater than the average rainfall in the six years of minimum sun-spots. A well-marked coincidence exists between the eleven years’ cycle of sun-spots and the rainfall at Bom- bay. This will be clearly shown in Table III. Passing from these two points on the great Indian Ocean lying north of the equator, to an- other station in the south, we find similar results. The periodicity in the rainfall of the Cape of Good Hope is even more strongly disclosed in the fol- lowing table than that of Madras or Bombay. The Australian stations do not lie upon the Indian Ocean, and are separated from it by a great con- tinent. The evidence which they yield on the sub- ject is meagre and irregular; but, such as it is, it scarcely bears on an inquiry which deals with the water-supply collected by the great periodical winds from the Indian Ocean. The collateral evidence with regard to a com- mon periodicity between the sun-spots, wind-dis- turbances, and rainfall, may therefore be ranged under ten heads. These are: first, magnetic de- clination; second, electrical displays (auroras); | third, Dr. Meldrum’s list of cyclones in the Indian THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHL ¥.—SUPPLEMEN T. common cycle exist in solar and terrestrial phe nomena, in addition to and independent of the two ordinary cycles, caused by the diurnal and by the annual revolutions of the earth? To answer this question we have examined the results separately arrived at by students of five classes of phenomena ; namely, the sun-spots as an index of solar energy, terrestrial magnetism, temperature, wind-disturbances, and rainfall. We find that as regards sun-spots and terrestrial mag. netism a common cycle of eleven years is now an established fact; that there are indications (al. though not proofs) of an eleven years’ cycle in solar radiation and mean temperature ; that there is ample evidence of such a cycle in wind-disturb. ances; and absolute proof of a cycle of cleven years in the great factors of tropical rainfall. We further find that the eleven years’ cycle in the separate classes of terrestrial phenomena corre. spond with the eleven years’ cycle of sun-spots; and that, with regard to the three sets of terres. trial phenomena on which we possess fullest evi- dence (magnetism, wind-disturbances, and rain- fall), the correspondence is most clearly estab- lished. At the commencement of the paper we saw that on a priori grounds, arrived at from re- cent solar work, there was reason to suspect an eleven years’ cycle common to the phenomena of the earth and the sun. We have now shown, by an induction from widely-separated but converg- ing series of facts, that such a cycle exists. This induction has a very practical interest. We have seen that the eleven years’ cycle in ter- restrial magnetism has a direct and important in- fluence on telegraphic enterprise; that the cycle of wind-disturbances produces distinct results Ocean ; fourth, M. Poéy’s hurricane-lists for the | upon the percentage of casualties among the ship- West Indies ; fifth, the marine casualties posted | ping of the world; and that the cycle of tropi- on Loyd’s Loss-book; sixth, the rainfall at Ma- cal rainfall has a portentous coincidence with a dras brought by the northeastern, and seventh, by | cycle of famine. One of the writers of this ar- the southwestern monsoon; eighth, the annual * rainfall at Madras; ninth, the annual rainfall at Bombay (almost entirely brought by the south- western monsoon) ; and tenth, the annual rainfall at the Cape of Good Hope. We have stated the facts as regards solar radiation and mean tempera- ture; but they do not, in our opinion, supply a suf- ficiently firm basis for induction. The rest of the evidence is exhibited in the table on the next page. The main point of inquiry in that table may be thus stated: Is the variation in solar activity, as indicated by the waxing and waning of solar | up-rushes, spots, and prominences, reflected in | have to deal with the great present problem of terrestrial phenomena ? Consequently, does a | Indian administration. ticle has dealt with the subject purely as a statis- tician, whose duty it was to collect and tabulate all collateral evidence bearing upon the discovery which he had made regarding the cyclic charac- ter of the factors of the Madras rainfall. The other writer has reéxamined that evidence in its bearings on solar physics. The conclusions at which they have jointly arrived are: 1. That, not- withstanding many apparent anomalies and a large area of unexplained facts, the evidence suf- fices to establish the existence of a common cycle; 2. That the subject merits the earnest at- tention both of men of science and of those who

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140 A study of the rainfall is one of the first duties of a civilized government in India. Indra and Vayu, the Watery Atmosphere and the Wind, are still the prime dispensers of weal or woe to the Indian races. Hundreds of thousands of lives lie every year at the mercy of the rainfall. The population is a constant (or rather an increas- ing) quantity, emigration on any adequate scale being incompatible with the feelings of the peo- ple. The area of tillage is also a constant quan- tity throughout a great part of India, spare land being no longer available. But whether the yield of the one constant quantity will or will not suf- fice for the necessities of the other, depends each autumn on the rainfall—a quantity which has hitherto been regarded as altogether inconstant and beyond calculation. We believe that the sup- posed inconstancy of the rainfall is simply the measure not of its freedom from law, but of our ignorance. We do not think it wise, from the data here collected, to prophesy future famines at Madras; although five out of the six famine- causing droughts of this century, since 1810, hap- pened at Madras within the minimum group of our cycle, and the sixth fell in that group together with the year immediately preceding it. The time for safe prediction has not yet come. But we do think that the cyclic character of the Ma- dras rainfall must henceforth enter into considera- tions connected with the food-supply of the peo- ple, and into arrangements for husbanding and distributing the water-supply of Madras. The problem is how best to conserve and utilize the rainfall, not merely of the year, but of the cycle. Fortunately, while the study of the rainfall forms a prime state duty in India, there is per- haps no country in the world better suited than India for meteorological research. If a meteo- rologist were to sit down and construct a model field for his inquiries, he would make a continent stretching from near the equator up into the tem- perate zone. He would cut off his field by a great wall on the north, with smaller coast-walls running down toward the southern extremity, and with two distinct, regular, and well-ascertained sets of winds playing from a vast expanse of ocean upon each side. India is precisely such a model. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. If we are ever to reach the great laws which reg: ulate the weather, it will be by combining mete. orological observations with statistical inductions in a country like that, where the general laws have a sufficient space to produce general results, and where the disturbing intluences are regular and well asvertained. The first step is to find the quantitative value and variations of the several factors of the Indian rainfell. Nothing will he accomplished by jumbling together rain-returng from unhomogeneous stations, at which, from their situation and surroundings, the same factors act in a totally dissimilar manner. Thus, if the northeastern monsoon produces a periodicity in the rainfall of Madras, where it contributes twenty. nine inches of the total rainfall, there is no cause for surprise in not finding a similar periodicity at Bellari or Hyderabad, where it only yields three. The figures for which we have found space in the foregoing pages establish the cycle of rainfall at only two stations in Indias but they are the stations for which returns exist for the longest periods; and at which the two great fac- tors of the Indian rainfall can produce clearly. marked effects. If, out of each thousand pounds spent on famine-relief this year, ten shillings were laid aside for an inquiry into the physical laws of famine, we should await the next calam- ity with a very different power of dealing with it. The people of England, both now and beforetime, have displayed a noble liberality to their suffer. ing fellow-subjects in the East. On the present occasion, however, they have not only been lib- eral of their money; they have disclosed an ear- nestness to understand the real meaning of an Indian famine, and to find out its causes and its remedies. Splendid as have been their acts of national sympathy and benevolence, this desire to arrive at a truer understanding of the facts will prove of not less service to the Indian races, and of not less help and encouragement to those on whom rests the anxious task of Indian admin- istration. It may be that we have here another instance of how a patient study of the abstract truths of science is fruitful of practical benefits to man- kind.— Nineteenth Century.

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HE objects of this society are, I believe, of an extremely practical kind. It wishes to give the English people pure air, pure water, wholesome food, and habitable houses. It would give us, if it could, good drains to carry nox- jous refuse from the houses into the street, and it would not empty that drain into a river near the reservoir of a water-company, but would yield its contents to the all-receiving, purifying earth, where the miraculous agencies of vegeta- tion are at hand to turn death into life, foulness into beauty. Finally, it would wage war against the unseen demons of infectious poison, and against the dull, heavy forces of ignorance and prejudice and indifference that help them in their death-dealing work. It would teach a laundress that when her children have scarlet fever she must not kill other people’s children by sending back infected linen to their houses. It would also teach some of those other people that, when scarlet fever is in their houses, they must not send infected linen to the laundress, and expose her to the terrible choice of starvation or crime. It would teach the milkman to rinse his cans with pure water, so as to avoid disseminating ty- phoid fever through a hundred houses. It would teach the country squire to see that the milkman and all other tenants of his estate have pure water at their disposal. Finally, it would reit- erate the well-worn lesson that to unvaccinated people small-pox is more terrible than cholera or the plague; that an anti-vaccination orator is a homicide; and that a careless vaccinator, letting fall from his lancet some dust of disease or death, and supplying fuel to the agitator, is a homicide no less. This being so, I feel that some apology is needful for occupying the time of men and women intent on purposes of immediate practical utility with talk which, as I give fair warning, will seem to many discursive, vague, theoretical, and misty. But I have to say, in the first place, that being occupied with practical work myself of a kind not foreign to the objects of this society—hav- ing something to do, for instance, with the busi- ness of providing hospital accommodation for the chronically sick among the poorest class of 1 Delivered before the National Health Society, June 20, 1877. THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPEOTS OF HEALTH. THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH.’ Br J. H. BRIDGES. London—my own personal experience has not convinced me that work which is called imme- diate and practical involves the shutting out from one’s thoughts of deeper and wider consid- erations. It has, indeed, led me to quite the opposite conclusion. Almost every practical re- form, however necessary, however obvious, sug- gests questions of a startling kind; sometimes leading you to doubt whether or not the remedy may itself be the source of new evils in the fu- ture; and always inducing thoughtful minds to ask themselves whether the amount of attention given to temporary palliatives may not be exces- sive, and may not be distracting attention from the deeper evils. At least there can be no harm, there can be nothing but good, in now and then mounting to the point of view from which, so far as our poor faculties admit, the problem before us can be looked upon as a whole. A whole, I say. For it is no mere play of words to dwell on the primal meanings of the word Health. Wholeness, soundness, entireness. Integrity—the meaning of the Latin word being Untouched—as you would say of a perfectly ripe fruit in which there is no symptom of decay. The essential] thought inherent in the word is that in every organism, every living thing, if one part suffers, the others suffer also. This is the dis- tinction between living things and things that are not living. You cut off a piece from a lump of gold or iron; all that happens is that you have two small lumps instead of one large one—noth- ing else. The weight of the two lumps is equal to that of the one. But in a living thing it is quite otherwise. You prune the roots of a tree, and you alter the relations of leaf and blossom. You irritate a point in the skin of an animal, and the whole creature is thrown into convulsions. The whole art of medicine is based on the study of these correlations of functions. The first great object of the physician is to find out what is the matter with his patient. He does this by observ- ing symptoms. That is to say, the observation of a change in some part of the body which he can see, leads him to infer a corresponding change in some part of the body which he cannot see. By the state of the pulse he infers the state of the heart and blood-vessels all through the body ; by the state of the tongue, that of a long tract of

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THE POPULAR SOIENCE 142 mucous membrane ; looking through his ophthal- MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. differences—root, stem, leaf, calyx, corolla, sta- moscope at a diseased retina, he infers in certain | men, ovary, seed, and so on. Moreover, if you cases diseases of the nervous system, diseases of the vascular system, of the secreting system. A glance at a child’s teeth will every now and then indicate to the practised eye a constitutional unsoundness of a very precise kind inherited from his parents. And so on through countless instances. We have here before us the most important and fundamental of all the facts connected with living things—the sympathy, or, if you like the Latin word translated from the Greek, the con- sensus, or in plain English the fellow-feeling, of all the parts of the same organism. For the pur- poses of this lecture I shall have to dwell much on this point. Meanwhile, I remark in the first place that this sympathy, though very real, is by no means complete or perfect. There are parts which are more bound together, and parts which are less bound. You cannot cut away the prin- cipal roots of a tree without risking its life ; but you can cut away leaves, fiowers, and even branch- es, without any very marked effect. In man and other animals, as we know, hair can be cut, nails, hoofs, and cuticle, may be partially removed, with- out any consensus, any affection of the rest of the organism. On the other hand, there are parts which are vital. A bullet through the heart means instant death. There is a very small and well-defined place in the upper part of the spinal cord, and if that be injured, life ceases in a mo- ment. Thus there are parts that are more bound together, and parts that are less bound. And observe, in the second place, that, as we rise higher in the scale of life, we find two great distinctions gradually growing upon us, and form- ing a slowly-increasing contrast between the higb- er forms of life and the lower. We find, in the first place, a greater variety of parts; in the second place we find a greater oneness, a strong- er binding together. The slightest consideration will show this. The huge ocean sea-weeds, hun- dreds of feet long, are formed of monotonous repe- titions of similar parts; there are millions and billions of cells, bound no doubt together by ma- terial contact, like bricks in a long wall, but with very little vital connection. No simultaneous thrill, no wave of excitement, can pass through such an organism as this. The parts are all alike, and they have very little vital union. You may vivisect such an organism as this with per- fect impunity. Pass upward to the exogamous plant—to any one, for instance, of our common- est trees or shrubs. Here you have many more look at it closely, you will find difference of tis. sues; not merely cells, but the coalescence of as we have seen, there is complete unity, though still very imperfect. It is stil] very difficult to say whether the plant is an individual or whether it is a collection of individuals. You can cut off a twig, and place it in the soil under suitable con- ditions, and it becomes a new tree. You can re- peat this process any number of times. Pass up- ward from the plant to the vertebrate animal, and you find a vastly greater multiplicity of parts or organs—brain, heart, lungs, intestines, etc., ete, —these organs when analyzed resolving them- selves into a relatively small number of tissues, but still far more numerous than the tissues of the highest plant. And, corresponding to this divergency, we find that strongly-marked consen- sus of which I have already spoken. Here, then, we have the meaning of that very profound re- mark of Coleridge—though possibly, like so many others, it was not his own thought—“ Life is the tendency to individuation.” That is to say, the higher forms of life are more distinctly individu- als than the lower. To use philosophic language, in the higher forms of life, as compared with the lower, there is increased differentiation coupled with increased integration. There is at once greater variety of parts and greater unity of the whole. So much for plants and animals. Let us now ask ourselves whether anything of the same kind can be traced in the comparison of different na- tions, or of nations in different stages? What, in a few words, is the difference between the savage state and the civilized state? Is it not this: that in the savage state people have very little to do with one another, and are very like one another; in the civilized state, people have very much to do with one another, and are very much unlike one another? In the one case there is independence without individuality; in the other case there is dependence with individuality. This is quite contrary to the common democratic prejudice that Rousseau imported into the world, which is widely diffused in America. It differs from the opening statements in Mr. Mill’s “ Essay on Liberty.” But I think it will be found true. I suppose Shakespeare was a strongly-marked individual. Well, try fora moment to think of Shakespeare quite apart from the whole history of England and of Europe before him. You might just as well try to think of the blossom of cells into fibres of various textures. And here, . a ee ee ee ie le ee ee Ges OP a i a jay

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PF F 1e the aloe existing and growing apart from its leaf and root. If any one should bring himself to doubt that increased civilization means increased dependence of human beings on one another, let ’ him simply read the city articles in the Times. Let him see there how an earthquake in Peru brings desolation into an English parsonage. Let him think how other widows than Bulgarian and Bosnian have been ruined by Russian and Turk- ish wars. Let him remember how Lancashire starved because three hundred years ago Coium- bus took Africans across the Atlantic. The fact is, that the whole science of sociology, by far the greatest and most momentous of the many acqui- sitions of science in our century, consists in the study of this consensus—how it has grown, how it works, how it can be modified. But we are here now to think of its effect on health. Let us, then, compare the savage and the civilized man in this respect. It is quite clear at the outset that there is a balance of ad- vantages which is not easy to strike. On the side of the savage there is the open-air life; the con- stant muscular exercise; there is the ignorance, in most cases, of alcohol in all its forms from gin to sherry; there is the weeding out, either by direct infanticide or by rigorous climate, of un- healthy elements Tn infancy ; there is the absence of certain fearful hereditary blood-poisonings ; there is the absence of harassing business and harassing pleasures; the fever of speculation, mercantile, philosophical, or religious, is not there—all these well-known causes of disease are absent. And you find, as the result of it, that the minute processes of growth go on differently in the savage and in the dwellers in cities. I well remember Livingstone, after his first journey to Africa, telling me of his surgical operations, removal of tumors, and so on. The two edges of the cut skin grew together, he said, with ex- traordinary rapidity. If you read Cook’s voyages you will find the same thing. We need not travel so far as Africa and Polynesia to see this. A savage, of course, approaches the state of a horse ora dog. Wounds in horses or dogs heal with the same rapidity. I do not mention this as an excuse for vivisection either in the one case or in the other. There are many obvious and weighty things, no doubt, to be placed in the opposite scale of the balance. The want of shelter, the want of clothing, the want of warmth, the long intervals of insufficient food, the absence of all those aids and appliances of life which depend on helpful intercourse of:man with man—all these weigh THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPEOTS. OF HEALTH. 143 heavily on the other side. The brain, too, though less easily goaded to dangerous excitement, is more easily stupefied by paralyzing fear or de- spondency. Perhaps it is from this reason that epidemics are so fearfully fatal. Perhaps it is also from this reason that at the sight of civilized man, with his magic instruments of death and the resistless appliances of his industry, hope and energy are struck down. The wish to live, the wish to reproduce their kind, ceases; the race dies out. Wise, enlightened, persevering sym- pathy might possibly preserve them, and slowly render back their strength. But that agency is rarely at hand. I have touched, in passing, on many points which it would be interesting to examine. But as we are not proposing to go back, like Rousseau, to the savage state, it interests us mainly from the © light it throws on the contrasted state of civilized man, And, out of many aspects of the subject that might be dwelt on, I would draw attention specially to the two ways in which health is af- fected by civilization, namely, first, that the body is acted upon by a more active, more excitable, and more complicated brain ; secondly, that there is a more complicated and more stimulating social environment. All this comes to the same thing as saying that there is more life ; for life consists in the adjustment of the interactions of organism and environment. Where there are more of these interactions, there is more life. Where the ad- justment of these interactions goes on harmoni- ously and without shock, there is health. And since a complicated system is more difficult to maintain in working than a simple system—since, for instance, a watch or a steam-engine is more difficult to keep in order than a windlass or a plough—we may infer that, though health in civilization may be more perfect, it most assured- ly is more difficult, than health in savagery. Let us again compare some simple social states with others that are less simple. If we are tired of the savage, let us look at a peasant proprietor in a French village, or at a wealthy squatter far away among the gum-trees in Australia. The contrast between their life and that of the dwell- ers in large towns might, for many purposes, be summed up in two epithets borrowed from geom- etry (and you know modern mathematics are capable of explaining everything). It might be spoken of as the vertical state as opposed to the horizontal, Remark that to the colonist it is of comparatively—I need not say I lay great stress on the word—little importance what his neighbor or the rest of the world do. His food comes to a

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144 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. great extent vertically upward te him from the ground ; water comes vertically downward to him from the sky. His clothing, whether of wool, or flax, or skin, grows on the spot; his house is built from a quarry in his field, or from logs in his own bit of forest; the refuse from his house and person is buried in the soil, and so on. Con- trast all this with the Aorizontality, so to speak, of town arrangements. Water is brought from reservoirs twenty or fifty miles away; food comes from farms miles distant, perbaps from the other side of the Atlantic, or from the other side of the Pacific; clothing from any part of Europe or Asia. As for refuse substances, no vertical re- moval of them is possible ; complicated labyrinths of tunnels, arterial systems, pumping-stations, sewage irrigations, acts of Parliament, and what not, have to be instituted to prevent us from poisoning one another. Think again of all the horizontality implied in highways, railroads, and telegraphs. ‘ I would not strain my geometrical metaphor further than it will bear. Dwell on one more as- pect of the same subject. Think how much his- torical phenomena have to do with the matter. For good or for evil, for good infinitely more than for evil, but yet for evil also, we have to bear the burden of the past. The treasures are mixed with dross. Take the single instance of house- provision. A squatter in the bush can build his house where he likes, he has hill and vale to choose from ; but a house commonly lasts longer than a man, and in towns we have to choose from the houses provided by other generations. Put yourself in the position of a workmen who must live near his work, say within a mile of where we are now. Think of the structure of London be- tween Regent Street and the Tower—I speak of the courts, back streets, and lanes, which I would advise you to walk through this evening or to- morrow, they are much more interesting than the lanes of Venice—and then ask the question, How much of all this is due to the intolerably bad domestic government of England from the restoration of the Stuarts down to, let us say, the reign of Dr. Chadwick, thirty to forty years ago? Think how it would have been if London, after the Fire, could have been rebuilt under the eye of Cromwell, instead of the unholy brood who for a whole generation threw England to the dogs, and whose mere names, were it possible, we would forget! Then follow the growth of London into the next century by the light of Hogarth’s pict- ures—take the one picture of Cruelty, for in- stance—and think how very little forethought might have changed the growth of St. Giles’s, Bloomsbury, or St. Anne’s, Soho. And then, when by reading, and also by ocular inspection, you have become familiar with the anatomy and phys- iology of a London court, including the Embryol- ogy of it, that is, the way in which it arises, un. der the motive power of high rents, by the sim- ple process of building rows of smal] houses at the end, and ultimately at the sides, of back gar. dens, the wind from each one of the four quar. ters of the sky hermetically shut out, and the ignorant greed of the builder uninterfered with by wisdom or by policemen of any sort or kind; then, I say, when the lesson has been well learned, go to Hackney, or to Stratford, where new London is ravaging the green fields rapidly, and ask how far is the next generation to be com- promised by what the speculative builders are doing there at this moment, and compare the rate of velocity of their proceedings with that of Sir Sidney Waterlow’s most admirable building so- ciety or of the Peabody trustees. But since we have thus ventured on histori- cal ground, let us follow on a little farther. Why is it that we have been obliged to pay such atten- tion to public health in England? We have taken the lead, it is admitted, in this matter; is this solely and entirely owing to our superior wisdom and morality, or are there other rea- sons ? I suppose the facts calling for sanitary inter- ference in this country may be condensed into two: the fact that half the nation is living in large towns, and the fact that milk and pure water are unattainable in country villages. I cannot touch on this latter point; but I think . you will find it connected with the disappearance of the numerous freeholds of between twenty and fifty acres that existed till a century ago. But it is worth while to dwell for a moment on the first, because, next to the Norman conquest and the Puritan Revolution, it is certainly the most im- portant event, or set of events, in English his- tory. You are aware, of course, that it is an en- tirely modern fact. Till almost eighty years ago the growth of towns in Engiand had gone on with steady, quiet progress, from the time of the Tu- dors downward. Then began the most stupen- dous torrent of bricks and mortar that the world has ever seen. In 1801, London—I mean the whole area of the Metropolitan Board of Works— had about 900,000 people. It now has four times that number. Manchester, Glasgow, Birming- ham, and Liverpool, were all much below 100,000. They now exceed or approach the half-million. Yo

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'ys- rol- > Ve aon) x * OS The rest of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire has increased in the same way. Why and how is this? Every one is ready with the answer. It is the steam-engine — the steam-engine and alli the other engines which grew up around it, some before and some after: the spinning-jenny, Arkwright’s rollers, Crompton’s mule, Cartwright’s power-loom, Brindley’s ca- nals, the iron-puddling machinery, dye-works, tel- egraphs, and all the other countless applications of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. All this was in the air, was germinating long before; the brains of Descartes, Galileo, Bacon, and Newton, the brains even of Archimedes and the Greek geometers, contained the germs of it. The thing itself, the conquest of Nature by man, was normal, was predestined, is still in great part to come. But our question still is, “ Wiy did it come about in England with such terrific and ab- normal rapidity?” There was science in France as well as in England. There is wealth at this moment in France, after payment of her milliards, as well as in England. But France is not devas- tated by the hail-storm of hideous towns that has visited this country. When you go from Charing Cross to Paris, the two ends of the journey are not alike. I have iooked in Paris for a Stratford or a Lambeth, but I have never found it. Misery enough; but not the same wide diffusion of un- organized meanness, shabbiness, and squalor. There must be a reason for this. And, again, I go back to the second of my three great events of English history—I mean the Puritan Revolution—and ask myself, “ How would it have been if that revolution had not come to so violent and abortive a close?” Put prejudice aside, and realize for a moment, by the aid of Milton, Bunyan, and Thomas Carlyle, what the government of Cromwell and his Ironsides meant. Think that England was really for a series of years governed by a set of plain, hard- headed men of business, to whom the Christian religion was the most intense reality, a thing to put into every-day working practice in the man- agement of life, public as well as private. And is it not probable, or rather certain, that if their influence could have been maintained, in however modified a way, the industrial development of England would have been widely different ; that while there would have been no Buddhist or monastic indifference to material progress, yet that politics (that is to say industry, which is modern politics) would have been subordinated to morality, to a degree of which the French Con- vention alone, perhaps, in subsequent history has 46 ' THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 145 given the world some imperfect glimpse? You will say that 1688 followed thirty years after Cromwell’s death, and that the good side of Pu- ritanism was preserved, its extravagances sifted away. I reply that the men were gone. England had driven them out. The torch of republican progress was in Frerfch hands. The most strenu- ous types of manhood since the best days of the Roman commonwealth had been chased beyond seas—to Holland, to Geneva, and finally across the Atlantic, where they were not heard of for a hundred years, and then were heard somewhat too loudly. Iam not indulging in any spirit of paradox, nor in any feeling of detraction of our own mod- ern time. I recognize the renewal in our own immediate generation of a nobler spirit of public morality, underneath all outward discouragement. Our political economy, for instance, imperfect though it be, is widely different from the base doctrines taught publicly thirty or forty years ago; and many other signs there are of the same kind. But the eighteenth century in England seems to me a time when, owing to the banish- ment or suppression of her noblest and bravest men, public morality was dormant or dead ; when the greatest statesman, with the applause of his fellow-citizens (you may read it on Chatham’s pedestal in the Guildhall now), deliberately waged war for the sake of commerce; when all harmo- nious proportion between the aspects of man’s many-sided life was lost; when all the sentences of the old prayer were forgotten, except that which asks for daily bread; when all the scien- tific energy of the nation was concentrated in the alchemistic search for gold, until at last the un- couth Genius came at our bidding, streaming down, with profuse irony, his inky gifts of crowd- ed town and hideous, trailing suburb, and black- ened fields, and devastating chimneys—has come at our bidding, and as yet refuses to go. Like the Athenians with their nether-gods, so we, eu- phemistically trembling, decorate him with an imposing title. We call him Beneficent Law of Supply and Demand; and put up what poor earthworks of defense we may in the shape of sanitary appliances, drainage-works, and pollu- tion-of-river commissions. But most of us still believe that his dominion will endure forever. So much for the first of the two modes in which civilization affects health. It creates a complicated set of circumstances, a complicated social environment which may or may not be fa- vorable to health. This is the political side of the subject. Now a few words—and they must

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‘146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. be but few—on the second mode. The results of civilization, the gains of human tradition, from the savage of glacial epochs to Londoners and Parisians of the nineteenth century, are con- densed, in the shape of faculties, emotions, de- sires, aspirations, instincts, activities, within a

storehouse of energy which we call the Human Brain. This brain is either at one with itself, or | it is at discord with itself. Its reaction on the | body will vary accordingly. The complicated | social environment; the complicated brain. These are the two aspects of the matter. The | first is the political side of health, the second the | moral side. There is a great deal of discussion about the brain in our time, and some of it is curious. There are people who open the skulls of animals (not yet of men, which would be more rational possibly) and thrust electric wires into the brain, and then watch to see what happens. They think much light will be thrown on human nature in this way. I say nothing here of the right or wrong of this, but one word as to its sense or nonsense. To me such people seem like a man who, instead of standing in front of one of Ra- phael’s pictures to look at it, should go behind the frame, pick out a few fibres from the canvas, and, by the help of great botanical knowledge and a strong microscope, should decide what species of hemp or flax it was made of. You re- monstrate. ‘“ Oh,” he says, “ your way of stand- ing there looking at the picture is mere superfi- cial, empirical observation ; that is not the scien- tific way of proceeding. Let us first decide the species of the flax and the chemical composition of the pigments, then, perhaps, a thousand years hence we shall get to know something of the way in which they were put together.” So be it. Let us go our way, and him his. Let us be con- tent to follow far behind in the track of Aristotle and Shakespeare, and study the brain as it shows itself in thoughts, energies, and feelings. Our first question, then, is this: Do thoughts, energies, and feelings, act upon bodily health at all? In novels people always die of broken hearts ; in real life it is said they never do. Very shallow practical men rather pride themselves in exposing the flimsy fallacy ; yet the common-sense of man- kind in general, and the less common sense of poets, philosophers, and experienced physicians, is not so entirely against the novelists as might be supposed. Where does the truth lie ? I suppose the truth is pretty well illustrated by what occurs in Indian famines. No one in an

Indian famine, as we know, ever dies of starva. tion. This would be contrary to official rule, There are deaths, of course. Somehow or other the death-rate rises a little, then it rises a good deal, and at last enormously above the aver- age; but these are deaths not from famine, but from liver-disease, dysentery, fevers of various kinds, and so on. We are all of us so wonder. fully willing to submit to the dominion of words that this account of the matter-is very apt to sat- isfy us. Such a person dies of bronchitis. Bron- chitis is a respectable medical entity, with a reg- ular set of symptoms, with a proper set of drugs appropriated to it, with a recognized place in the records of the registrar-general; so that, when we have set it down that a man dies of bronchi- tis, what more can be wished for? So in India —No deaths from famine have occurred this week.” What energy on the part of the ad. ministration ! Yet, without disparaging this energy, which every candid man knows to be very great, often heroic and self-sacrificing, it may be permitted to go one foot deeper below the surface, and to ask what brought this bronchitis or this dysentery on? Was it that the tiny cells that form the outer coating of the membrane that lines the air- tubes had become more short-lived, more liable to decay, reproducing themselves in unhealthy multitudes more rapidly than usual, and thus forming the substance that we know as purulent matter? And is this rapid growth of unhealthy cells, that ought to have developed themselves into healthy fibres and membranes, but could not, a symptom or outcome of poor blood ill supplied with fat or starch or gluten? And, if this be so, is it very important which was the particular por- tion of the mucous surface, whether in lung or intestine, which some slight outside irritant, or some slight inherited weakness, caused to give way first? Death from insufficient food—surely that is the right answer—whether it was in the bronchial membrane or the intestinal membrane that the mischief first revealed itself. Throw a cricket-ball along the turf, and ultimately some one particular little tuft of grass stops it; but I suppose the explanation of stoppage lies in a very great number of similar grass-tufts, insuffi- ciently resisted by the hand that threw. So it is with the moral antecedents of disease. There are cases where the sudden shock of un- foreseen calamity is transmitted with such in- tense violence from the brain to the heart as to stop its action there and then, and the man fails down dead. But such things are as rare a8

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deaths from pure unmitigated starvation. For one such case as this, how many thousands, how many millions, where the balance of functions un- dergoes some slight, unperceived, accumulating disturbance! There is an instinct within us which, without analyzing it further just now, we may call the self-preserving instinct. When we stum- ble, the arm is thrust out violently to restore the balance. When a stone or insect flies too near the eyes, the lids close involuntarily. When the air in the lungs becomes too highly charged with refuse, this instinct shows itself in the besoin de respirer, and deep draughts of fresh air are taken in. And so with every other function of the body. This instinct (I am not now discussing whether it be simple or complex) takes cogni- zance, as it were, of the uneasy sensations that indicate the need of food, of drink, of exercise, and of every other natural function. Now see what happens when, from any cause whatever, this instinct is’ interfered with. Take simple instances to begin with. Watch animals. Vivinspection is a much more fruitful way of reaching truth of this kind than vivisection. Watch a favorite dog that has been waiting an hour or two for his dinner, and then, just as it is brought, invite him for a walk. The excitement of joy ut- terly overwhelms hunger, the whole muscular sys- tem is violently agitated—non ha membro, che terga fermo, as Dante would say; and the meal is for the moment utterly forgotten. I often watch this little spectacle, and it seems to me to have a great deal of instruction in it. Here we have an interruption to the self-preserving instinct, but it is a disturbance of a thoroughly healthy kind ; the sense of hunger returns in very good time; meantime there has been a good walk, the blood has been purified, the digestive organs are readier for their work. Such a disturbance as this is like the discords of the musician which pave the way to higher harmony. This temporary super- seding, and, so to speak, natural and spontane- ous discipline, of the lower instincts lies at the | very root of the higher forms of health. But now take instances of the opposite kind. Watch a dog that has lost its master, or a wild creature newly taken captive. See the paralysis both of animal energy and vegetal energy that results. Note the failure of muscular activity, the failure of respiration, the failure of digestion and appetite. I saw a parrot not long ago refuse . its food for two days from jealousy of a white dove whose cage had been placed in the same room. I say again, watch your animals; don’t vivisect them, vivinspect them, and see what wis- THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS ‘OF HEALTH. BES re Ds canine St ed ae Be ti athe’ - ali S 1~ ‘1 147 dom can be got ont of them that way. You see, then, even among them, what an element of dis- turbance or of strengthening the health emotion may be. And now follow out these rudimentary truths to their legitimate logical consequences among savages, and then among civilized man. See how we tend more and more to live by the brain. More than ever is it evident now that man lives not by bread alone. “ We live,” says Wordsworth, “by admiration, hope, and love; and, even as these are well and wisely fixed, in dignity of being we ascend.” And do you sup- pose that it is of no consequence to that harmo- nious vigor of bodily functions whether these things are well and wisely fixed, or whether they are fixed at all? Are you so credulous as to suppose that carking care and fretful discontent and feverish excitement and thwarted ambition and cankering remorse can do their work for years and show no sign? Read what poet Blake thought as he wandered about London streets, looking at what passed him like a ghost in a city of ghosts : “I wander through each chartered street Near where the chartered Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. “In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear. “ How the chimney-sweeper’s cry Every blackening church appalls! And the hapless soldier's sigh Runs in blood down palace-walls { “ But most through midnight streets I hear How the youthful harlot’s curse Blasts the new-born infant's tear, And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.” There are many types, both bad and good, of the opposite kind. All concentrated unity of moral purpose, bad or good, tends to harmony of bodily functions, to physical vigor, to health. Life-long avarice, successful ambition, have this result very often. There is selfish unity of pur- pose, and there is unselfish unity. But remark that the first can only exist in the few that are strong and successful : in the two or three misers that win fortunes, the two or three slaves of am- bition that wade their way through slaughter to a throne. Thwarted ambition, thwarted avarice, lead to a very different result. The only unity which is perfect, the only unity which is attainable by the weak as well as by the strong, is that which goes side by side with union—at once the source of it,

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148 and the result. Those who haye seen the perfect type of unselfish old age, where love is as bright as in the days of childhood, will understand this. But I must not pursue this subject any further. And now, after all this expatiating over a very wide extent of country, it is time to ask my- self, as you will no doubt have asked me, the ques- tion: “What does it all come to? What is the practical drift? What are we to do?” Undoubtedly, this question should have been before us from the outset. Disquisitions on the structure of society, which are intended to leave us where they found us, have always filled me with a sense of unutterable ennui. Sir Isaac Newton, as we all know, compares scientific dis- coverers to children picking up shells on the sea- shore. Well, shells on the sea-shore may be pol- ished and put into a cabinet, or something pretty may be made of them; but analysis of the evils of society, unless something is to come of it, is more like a little boy pulling his drum to pieces to see what is inside. We had so much better spend our time in listening to Wagner or looking at Mr. Burne Jones’s pictures. Yet, if I am not wholly wrong, there is an intensely practical ob- ject in the kind of thoughts which I have tried to set before vou. And I speak with the less diffidence, that they are none of my own origi- nating. The seeds of all of them were sown by another. Let us see to what we have come. We have seen that for civilized man health is an infinitely deeper and more complex word than is generally supposed ; that it implies the vigorous and har- monious working together of all functions, not physical only, but mental and moral; not lungs merely and heart and muscle and digestive organs, but of nerve and brain; that a very great deal | town-conditions to thousands; more enters into the subject than considerations | of pure air, and pure water, and unpoisoned food, and wholesome houses, and disinfection, and vacci- nation, and drainage, and sewage irrigation ; that these things are of real, and urgent, and unques- | tionable moment, but that they are not all that is THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. they live? Will there be any costermongers, any poor Irish, any pauperism, any wholesale out-relief, any ignorant or indolent almsgiving, any sectarian soup-kitchens; and, as a conse. quence of all these things, any poor people flock. ing from far and wide toward this vision of food without work ; and then, when their patronesses have run away from Hygieia for the London season, ready to do charing-work for eighteen- pence a day? Or is there to be no London season for the happy and coutented dwellers in this wonderful city? No imperious calls on dress-makers, and temptations to their work-wom- en to break the factory act or starve? Nosudden revolutions of fashion from silks to velvet, from alpaca to cashmere, turning myriads of spinners and weavers out of work in Bradford or in Coventry, and overtaxing the factories of other places, thus driving in country-people to the towns before houses can be built for them, de- moralizing them by sudden flushes of high wages, poisoning them in overcrowded lodgings, and then, when the tide of fashion changes, again turning them adrift? Or, again, will there be any house-speculators in this city? Will the town-council be empowered to pass building by- laws? if so, will it be elected by universal suf- frage, and in that case is it certain that there will be no vestryman or councilman anxious for rents and glad to get the building-standard a little low- ered? Or will publicans be excluded by law, and the alcoholic question satisfactorily solved ? The luxury problem—one man’s labor for a day being consumed by another in five minutes; the | new machinery question—involving sudden pri- vation of work to hundreds, sudden accession of unwholesome work and wages, and demoralizing the capital and labor question in every one of its aspects—how for a moment can we dream of cities of Hygieia without taking account of these things? And even supposing it were otherwise, fancy what a city of valetudinarians it would be! Fancy a life in which the preservation of health were wanted, nor yet nearly so much as half what is | made the one great object of concern. Think wanted ; and, further, that so long as they are considered as being all, so long as exclusive con- sideration is given to them, precisely so long will their attainment be impossible. Hygieia, the city of health, and the thought | forces itself upon some of us, Where will the | servants be lodged? The people who clean the | chimneys and brush the beautiful parquet floor- We have all | looked at Dr. Richardson’s beautiful picture of ing—what wages will they get, and where will | of the commonplaces of every-day talk. How one would yearn for the small-talk and scandal of the vulgarest watering-place, by comparison ! We must not forget that the highest health, like the highest virtue, supposes the unconscious- ness of its own existence. Struggling, as we in _ England, and more especially in London and Lancashire, are now, against social diseases of a special and altogether exceptional kind, pro- duced by revolutionary confusion and by one-sided on -f- &f ws o2wa ee ao _~_ a Dia Aa nlCeeellCUelCU CU ahClUe COU

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industrial development, we have, like other sick people, to think a great deal about our symptoms, and to surround ourselves, so to speak, with medicine-bottles and nursing appliances. But pitiable, indeed, were the prospect if this state were to be the normal condition of civilized man. One should be tempted in that case to try Pla- to’s drastic remedies—banish all physicians from the republic, let Death work his will, and let none but the sound and strong survive. Nay, as I said before, it is one of the condi- tions of cure, even in the practical present that surrounds us, that we do not concentrate too dis- proportionate an amount of attention on the physical and material side of the malady. There are many of the evils and dangers which con- front us which it is best to attack indirectly rath- er than directly—by a flank movement as it were, or by the slow process of undermining the citadel. The temperance problem is a case in point. People are now beginning to see the fu- tility of adding an eleventh commandment to the Decalogue, Thou shalt not drink gin; or rather they now propose to alter it thus: Thou shalt forget the dull dreariness of thy daily burden in bright, wholesome, social pleasures, a sufficient share of which we will provide for thee. I have tried to show that the health prob- lem is but the visible outcropping of far deeper- rooted spiritual evils; one among the many re- sults of a disorganization of life visible and ex- plicable to those who try to render to themselves an account of the changes of faith and opinion in later European history. There is no use in disguising it, the root of the matter lies here. A very fundamental change in our way of re- garding man and his life upon this earth; a careful examination of the laws of development by which we have reached all that is good in our present state of progress; a reverential study of the lives of the great men who in accordance with these laws of development have been the agents of this progress; a submission to this buman order, and the conviction of the possibil- ity of wisely modifying it, and, as the final up. shot of all this, a new ideal set before all men, the humblest no less than the wisest, toward which they may set their faces and their foot- steps in steadfast hope and courage: all this, nothing less than this, is in the world now, is surely and silently germinating, and when it has branched out a little, the public-health question, like a good many other questions, will find their natural and speedy solution. To put it in another way: it is universally THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 149 held that for individual sick men, medicine with. out physiology, the art of healing without a knowledge of the laws of life and growth, is mere quackery and empiricism. So it is with public health and public diseases. There must be a study of the laws of social life and social growth before there can be any attempt to cure, It will be seen, then, that, like a previous lect- urer before this society, I believe in the effica- ciousness of education. Only, are we sure that we all mean the same thing by this word ? We know what Aristotle meant by it. He meant an agency for the implanting of sound and virtuous habits. Nothing else would satisfy him for a moment. And what he wanted was not realized till three hundred years afterward, when St. Paul planted the shores of the Mediterranean with Catholic societies. And to take lower ground for a mo- ment, I cannot but think that we have gone a little backward and downward in our notion of education from the time when, fifty years ago, Owen and his band of dreamers included in that word all the influences that surround life and that form character. I would not disparage the London School Board for a moment, entertaining as I do a great respect for their operations ; but it has always seemed to me that education was a rather ambitious word to use for the process by which many thousands of little children are taught by other children nearly as little to read and write imperfectly. If, however, I were asked, What or where is my solution of the public-health problem, my cure for the degradation of civilized life which makes it needful to consider that problem? I, too, should say with others, Nowhere but in educa- tion can it be found. But then I should propose to define education, not the teaching the little children of the poor to read and write imperfect- ly, combined in the case of a few clever ones with a “laborious inacquaintance” with geography and English grammar; nor even the technical teaching now so much in vogue, which is to teach men trades, make them better instruments of production, and enable us to hold our own in the European struggle for commercial existence ; nor even that créme de la créme of university culture, the capacity for writing mediocre verses in a dead language. Of all these things I would speak with the varying measure of respect which belongs to them ; but for the purpose before us, namely, the purpose of securing the healthful life of a nation, I would define education as the effort to place be- fore children, men, and women, whether rich or

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150 poor, the highest ideal that we can frame to our- selves of human life. I believe that this will be regarded as utterly visionary. I fear that even Mr. Ruskin, himself _ perhaps a visionary in some things, would demur to it. But surely it is only our amazing want of faith and settled conviction of any sort that makes us say so. Look at itin this way. The Bible is not yet driven out of our schools, though many excellent people, from motives which I under- stand and respect, are trying very hard to secure this object. But from a simply secular view, what is the Bible but the highest culture of a remarkable people two thousand years ago? If Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Isaiah, have become familiar names to the humblest, where | lies the impossibility of enlarging the scale a | little, and instead of driving out the Bible in or- | der to give more time for the study of adverbs, adjectives, industrial products, and the like, add | to the Bible some continuous chain of the great poets, thinkers, and statesmen, that make up the tradition of humanity. A Catholic, who has his THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. find borne out in history, that the Utopias of one generation are very often the familiar dwelling. places of the next, and that though some are marsh-fires that lead astray, others are stars that guide. Is it, after all, so very chimerical to conceive some rich man building somewhere east of the Bank a somewhat stately room, not meaner, per- haps, in its proportions than the beautiful hall of the Reform Club—for this is to be a reform club too—and that the walls and corridors should be trusted to a painter and a sculptor for handling of the noblest subject tbat human imagination will ever be able to conceive—the growth of social life, symbolically treated as in Homer’s shield of Achilles, and the series of great men who best represent the stream of the noblest human progress. Take, if you can find it, some grander programme for this purpose than is set forth in the historical calendar of Auguste Comte; or take that, if you can find, as I can find, none " better : there would be a large agreement between lives of saints linked together through the middle ages, might understand this better. A Jew, per- haps, or a Chinese, whose tradition is unbroken | _ ing simple and grand and tender, shall take the for three thousand years, might understand it better still. Ina word, the education needed for healthful national life is such as to restore to England the old Puritan energy and devotion. | But, Puritanism with a larger Bible. Do you ask again, What has all this to do with public health? I reply, It has everything to do with it. Public disease springs from indifference to life, because life has been made worthless. If you would have public health, you must make life valued, and to that end you must make it valuable. I need not say that to make these elemental truths living and vital, to bind them not merely by rote upon the tongue, not merely by reason upon the intellect, but to stamp them upon the heart and the character, something more will be needed than philosophic lectures. Of deeds, of conduct, of life, of example, I say nothing here ; but for the mere reception of the thought into the mind something more than speech is needed. Speech is good, but art is better; and here lies the true future of art—a golden future indeed. The five sisters, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, Music, each and all must work their magic in our favor, kindling the dry fuel of philosophic force into the flames of inspiration and energy. Bear with me if I seem to take refuge in Utopia for a moment, remembering only, what you will every one on this head, whichever list was chosen. Endow some reader to read at intervals from the great world poets; some musical choir to render such passages from the great musicians as, be- hearts of all that hear them captive ; finally, from time to time, let some man who knows, by a few simple words, point the moral of the whole, and would you not have in some such scheme as this a civilizing and, in the truest sense, a health-giv- ing agency? Would it not, I again say, conduce to the public health, in the narrowest and most superficial as well as in the widest sense of that word, that something of the pomp, and stateli- ness, and dignity, and splendor, of human life should be brought within the reach of the hum- blest? Who that has seen the grand, ragged Roman beggars resting in the warmth and mag- nificence of their vast churches but has had some glimpse of this ? Art is far more accessible to the ignorant than we suppose. People who read and write, and who come of parents who read and wrote, are very apt to judge of others by their own incom- petence. But the sons of shoemakers, carpenters, and blacksmiths, are born with hands far better prepared than ours. Let us remember that there were men in the glacial epochs, say fifty thousand years ago, who carved bones and drew pictures of animals very far better than many of us here ean do. Or, again, go into the worst hovels of Westminster or Clerkenwell, you will find, no books, but the walls lined with pictures. Science, a ee ee

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book-learning, and so on, are not natural to man, but art is. Then, side by side with art, try Nature. Side by side of the worship of humanity, or, if you pleese, reverence for humanity, try the worship of the earth and sky. Remember Miss Nightingale’s story of the dying man in hospital, where the windows were too high from the ground: “ He didn’t know anything about Natur’, but he should like to have one look out at window before he died.” You think the colonist’s earth-hunger, the passion of the French peasant for his freehold, is mere sordid greed. It is that; and it is also something infinitely larger and higher than that. It is the earth-worship instinctive in the rave. If you doubt it, look at the geranium-pots in the back alleys of Bethnal Green. This brings me to the last point I will obtrude upon you. In the name of public health, the health of London and Liverpool, as well as of England generally, make the most of what of the rural population is still left to us. Six out of each eleven persons living in London were born outside it. If you talk to them, you will find they do not regret their country villages. There is no homesickness. Why? Because village life is dull; because in London, with its vile lodgings and precarious struggle for existence, there is excitement, there is life by the brain. There is arich multiform drama every Saturday night in the Whitechapel Road. Fiaring gas -lights; strong lights and shadows; carts of vegetables and cheap fruits; variety of strongly-seasoned food; toys, colors, shop-windows, street-cries, collisions, medleys of all sorts, and stimulating social intercourse—what is there in country vil- \ lages to compare with this? The very fairs, in- stead of being made decent, have been abolished. Then in London there is independence. There is no farmer to turn one adrift at a week’s notice, or to strip the ripe grapes from the pretty cottage walls or the ripe cider-apples from the trees. I speak of things I have myself seen and known. And I lived for years on the estate of a most philanthropic nobleman. In the interests of town and country alike, is there not some reasonable percentage among the twelve thousand gentlemen who possess two- THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 151 thirds of the soit of England, who are, ready to become great citizens, who are prepared to stop the velocity of this exodus from villages, by making village life more bright, more free, more strong—in one word, more healthy? Some slight restoration of the twenty-acre freeholds of past times, some fixed ownership of house and gar- den, some genial simulating culture—difficult of attainment though all this be—is it so chimeri- cally impossible? Must the whole work of rural progress be left to Joseph Arch and other subse- quent antagonisms far more fierce and far less manly ? I have done; but in ending, as in beginning, let me deprecate very earnestly the thought that by any implication I have disparaged other pro- jects of reform, more practical apparently and more immediate, in the obtrusion of my own. And especially let it be granted me to say one word in thankful praise of the lecture and of the lecturess who opened the course this year by her plea for Open Spaces. From the precept and example of Miss Octavia Hill I have always thought it a privilege to be a learner. Her close contact with the hard, dry, minute, tedious facts of misery, whether in Barrett Court or in out- relief committees ; her attempts to lessen, not so much physical pain, as moral degradation; her up-hill struggle against the miserable indulgence of indolent or sectarian almsgiving; and her last pa- tient and eloquent pleading for green breathing- spaces and resting-places close to the homes of the poor, are all precious, not merely for their immedi. ate beneficence to the needy, but still more because they seem to me a sort of object-lessons in large type for the rich in elementary social ethics—les- sons which can hardly fail to lead the pupils in her school to larger and deeper issues. More- over, they will bear, as many other remedial measures will not bear, the test which should be applied to all palliatives; that is to say, being beneficent for the immediate present, they are such as to facilitate, not such as to prejudice, the future. They are not impediments, but install- ments, of that guiding ideal toward which each one of us, I believe, whatever his point of depart- ure, whatever the path he may have chosen, pur- poses to strive.—Fortnightly Review.

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HAD climbed with a friend up the steep down which overhangs Ventnor, and reached the obelisk at Appuldurcombe. From its base the eye ranges over the loveliest panorama in the Isle of Wight. The Solent gleams blue in the sunlight to northward, and the Channel, studded with white sails, spreads below us to the south ; while at the eastern and western ends of the island, the great chalk-cliffs of the Culvers and the Main Bench stand out in dazzling purity against the purple waters of Sandown Bay and Freshwater Gate. Around us on every side stretches an undulating reach of tilled or wooded country, all the more grateful, perhaps, for its trim neatness to an eye wearied with the rank luxuriance of tropical hill-sides. But what strikes one most in the prospect is the singular way in which every conspicuous height is crowned by some kind of monument or landmark, giving to each portion of the scene an individuality and a topographical distinctness of its own. Here, close at hand, is the Appuldurcombe Obelisk, built on a@ commanding point of view by Sir Richard Worsley, the former owner of the great house which stands in solitary grandeur, shrouded by the elms of the park, at our feet. The obelisk has been struck by lightning and shaken to its very base; while the topmost stones have fallen in a long line on the down, still preserving their relative positions, and impressing the visitor with a very massive idea of ruin. Looking northward, we see the monument on Bembridge cliffs and the sea-mark on Ashey Down; while on the opposite side the St. Catherine’s beacon and Cook’s Castle stand out among a number of minor pillars. We bad been discussing some question of xsthetics on our way, and, as we gazed round upon this exquisite view—a mere hackneyed English scene, it is true, and perhaps on that account not worth the trouble of a description to those who measure Nature with a foot-rule, but lovely, indeed, to any one who worships beauty for its own sake, and acknowledges it wherever he may find it—my friend inquired of me, “ How do you account, on general esthetic principles, for the pleasure we derive from an obelisk ? ” The question was not one to be answered in a moment. Indeed, the actual analysis into simple psychological elements of any esthetic object, however slight, is a lengthy task ; for many sep- ZZSTHETIC ANALYSIS OF AN OBELISK. By Pror. GRANT ALLEN. arate factors, intellectual, emotional, and sensu- ous, must be taken into consideration and duly coérdinated. We talked over the point as we returned to Ventnor, and several other observa- tions occurred to me in the course of our rambles afterward ; so I propose to set down in this paper the net result of our joint investigations. The starting-point of our exposition will seem at first sight sufficiently remote from any question, either of obelisks or of esthetics, but I trust that as I proceed its relevancy to the main subject will be- come clearer. A baby of my acquaintance, aged seven months, is very fond of hearing a spoon knocked against a finger-glass. One day the spoon was put into her hands, and, after a series of random efforts, she at last succeeded, half by accident, in strik- ing the glass and producing the musical note which pleases her. This performance gave her the most intense delight, as was evidenced by her smiles and chuckles. She continued her endeavors with varying success, and soon learned how to direct her muscles so as to bring about the desired ef- fect. Every exercise of this power gives her acute pleasure, and is followed by a crow of ex- citement and a glance around which asks mutely for the sympathy or approbation of by-standers. Evidently, even at this early age, the gratification of power, the pleasure of successful effort, is a feeling within the range of her unfolding intelli- gence. Another baby, half a year older, is in the habit of pursing her lips and blowing upon her papa, who thereupon pretends to be knocked down, and falls upon the carpet. In this case the gratification is even more evident, and the supposed effect is more conspicuous and striking. Other children, again, push down grown up peo- ple with their hands, and are delighted at their resistless fall. The main element in all these pleasures is the production of a noticeable ef- fect; and it is obviously desirable, both for the individual and the race, that such efficient action should be followed by pleasurable feeling. The power to produce great mechanical results and the will to initiate them are necessary factors of success in the struggle for life among the higher animals, Poys a little more advanced in nervous and muscular development derive analogous pleasure a ee ee et” Oe ee er

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ith from somewhat similar exercises. They love to roll huge stones close to the edge of a hill, and then watch them tearing down its slopes, rooting up the plants or shrubs, and thundering into the valley beneath. At other times, they band to- gether to fling a small bowlder into a lake, and revel in the exhibition of power given by its splash and roar. And this enjoyment is proba- bly not confined to human beings ; for our con- | geners, the monkeys, delight in similar displays ; and those of them who are trained in the Malay | peninsula to pick and fling down cocoanuts from the palms, chuckle and grin over each nut as it falls, with true boyish merriment. But the most conspicuous manifestation of these feelings is to be seen when the constructive faculty comes into play. The first desire of chil- dren in their games is to build something big, a visible trophy of their architectural skill. On the sea-shore they pile up great mounds of sand, or dig a pit surrounded by a mimic rampart. If they can get at a heap of bricks or deal planks, they will arrange them in a pyramid, and will judge their success by the height which they can attain. In doors, their ambition finds vent in card-houses, or lofty edifices of wooden blocks, In winter, the big snowball forms a never-failing centre of attraction; while American and Cana- dian boys obtain a firm material in the frozen snow for neatly-built palaces, which sometimes outlast an entire week. But, above all, it is im- portant in every case to notice that children invariably call the attention of older people to these great effects which their hands and arms have produced. The first element of the sublime is possibly to be sought in this sympathetic admi- ration for the big products of childish effort. Among the earliest works of human art which are yet left to us from the sacrilegious hands of landlords and pashas, the same love for something big is still to be noticed. The chief- tain’s body lies beneath a big tumulus, or its resting-place is marked by a cromlech of big un- hewed stones. The Gael crowns his mountain-top with a monstrous cairn; the Cymry pile the long avenues of Carnac ; or perhaps a still earlier race lift into their places the huge rocks of Stone- henge. Italy and Greece still show us the Cyclo- pean masonry of Volaterre and Tiryns; while farther east, the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the colos- 3al Memnon, the endless colonnades of Karnak, bear witness to the self-same delight in bigness for its own sake, as a monument of power, per- sonal or vicarious, AESTHETIC ANALYSIS OF AN OBELISE. So here, almost without knowing it, we have traced back our obelisk to the land of its birth, and seen the main reasons which gave it origin. All phallic speculations would obviously be out of place here ; for even if we grant that the obelisk is in its first conception a phallus (which is far from certain), at any rate our present point will be gained if objectors allow us in return that it lis a very big phallus. Beginning as a rough monolith, in all probability, the obelisk assumed in Egypt the form in which we know it best, a massive, tapering, sharply-pointed square column | of polished granite. A few more words must be devoted to its historical growth before we pass on to its modern esthetic value. Egypt is the land of colossi. The notion of bigness seems to have held a closer grip over the despotic Egyptian mind than over any other psychological specimen with which we are ac- quainted. It does not need a journey up the Nile to show us their fondness for the immense; half an hour at the British Museum is quite suffi- cient. Now, why did the Egyptians so revel in enormous works of art? This question is usually answered by saying that their absolute rulers loved thus to show the vastness.of their power; and doubtless the answer is very true as far as it goes, and quite falls in with our theory given above. But it does not always happen that de- spotic monarchs build pyramids or Memnons; and the further question suggests itself, What was there in the circumstances of Egypt which determined this special and exceptional display of architectural extravagance? As we cast about for an answer, an analogy strikes us at once. Taking the world as a whole, I think it will be seen that the greatest architectural achievements are to be found in the great plain countries; and that mountain districts are comparatively bare of large edifices. The plain of Lombardy, the plain of the Low Countries, the plain of Chartres, the Lower Rhine Valley, the eastern counties—these are the spots where our great European cathe- drals are to be found; and, if we pass over to Asia, we shall similarly discover the country for pagodas, mosques, and temples, in the broad basins of the Euphrates, the Ganges, the Indus, the Hoang-ho, and the Yang-tse-kiang. No doubt castles and fortresses are to be found everywhere on heights for purposes of defense; but purely ornamental architecture is most flour- ishing in level expanses of land. Now, there is no level expanse in the world, habitable by man, so utterly unbroken and continuous as the valley of the Nile. Herein, doubtless, we have a clew to the special Egyptian love for colossal under-

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154 takings of every sort. Let us proceed to apply it psychologically. Children at play on the sands do not pile up ‘ their great mound in the midst of rocks and bowlders. On the contrary, they choose a level space, where no neighboring object overpeers and casts into the shade their little colossus— not by premeditation and concert, of course, but by iustinctive feeling that a big heap will look bigger just here. So with primitive man: he puts his tumulus not in the midst of natural’ ele- vations which mock his puny efforts, but in some wide plain where its size comes out by contrast with the small objects around. And, as civiliza- tion advances, it will naturally follow that man will most indulge his love for conspicuous dis- plays of material power in those places where such displays produce the greatest effect. In mountain-countries, man’s bandiwork is apt to be dwarfed by the proximity of Nature’s majestic piles, and his amour propre is not constantly stimulated to some greater and yet greater achiev- ment; but in wide and level valleys the effects he can produce are so relatively striking, that every despot is urged on by an overwhelming desire to outdo the triumphs of his predecessors. From Timour’s pyramid of skulls to the Arc de ’ PEtoile in Paris one sees the same spirit of boast- fulness, allied with the same predatory instinct, running through the long line of columns, pillars, triumphal arches, and Nelson monuments. A word must be added to prevent misconcep- tion. Undoubtedly some splendid architectural works are to be found in mountainous districts ; but they are the exception, not the rule. And even so they are apt to be rather military than ornamental, owing their beauty more to inciden- tal circumstances than to deliberate design. Be- ginning with the rude earthworks which cap most heights in the British Isles, we go on to the Hel- lenic Acropolis and the Italian Arx, the ruined eastles of Rhineland, the fortress-crowned heights of Stirling and Dumbarton, the frowning battle- ments of Quebec and Gibraltar. When an eccle- siastical character has been given to such build- ings, it seldom quite obscures their original war- like purpose. Most of the churches dedicated to St. Michael, the militant archangel who delights in airy pinnacles, are connected with adjoining for- tresses; the cathedrals of Zion and Durham are fronted by the castles of the prince-bishop ; and the Parthenon or the Capitol does not make us forget the real nature of the Acropolis and the Arx. Such cases are very different from those of Milan and Cologne, of the Memnonium and the THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. T4j-Mahal. Moreover, it is worth noticing that in mountainous or hilly regions the buildings usually crown the highest points, so that Nature aids art instead of obscuring it. If a tumulus must be placed in a hill-country, it is piled on the top of the most conspicuous elevation: and all landmarks, from cairns to Hardy monuments, are perched in similar situations. But this point is one which will come in further on. Egypt, then, being the flattest of all flat coun- tries, is the one where we might naturally expect the taste for bigness to reach the most portentous development. Aided by the existence of a simple autocracy and an overwhelming military spirit, it produced all those forms of colossi with which we are so familiar; and among them our present subject, the obelisk. But so far we have only considered its historical origin; we have now to inquire what are the points about it which give it esthetic beauty in our eyes at the present day. In a formal analysis it would be necessary to divide the elements of our feeling into various classes—the sensuous, the emotional, and the in- tellectual; but for our immediate purpose it will perhaps be better if we take the complex total in its ensemble, and notice its different factors in the order of their prominence. To do so properly, let us begin with the obelisk in itself, viewed ab- solutely, and apart from all considerations of lo- cality, fitness, and association. As we look up at our present specimen, the first point which strikes us is its size. It appeals to the emotion of the sublime in its simplest form, the admiration for the literally great in man’s handiwork. We think instinctively : “ What a hugh mass of stone this is! How it towers up into the air! How many men it must have taken to raise it to that height!” In short, one’s earli- est feeling is summed up in a note of admiration. The Appuldurcombe Obelisk is formed of sepa. rate stones, each of immense size, and we see immediately how impossible it would be for our unaided efforts to roll over even a single one of them. But most other obelisks are monolithic, and in that case our direct affection of the sub- blime is far more vivid. We picture to ourselves the difficulty of hewing that immense, unbroken mass from the solid rock of its parent-quarry ; the care that must have been taken to insure it against fracture or chipping; the mechanical power involved in raising it successfully to its final site, and planting it firmly on its pedestal. The most conspicuous element in our esthetic pleasure on viewing an obelisk is clearly the sym-

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it, it hich sent only v to zive ent y to ous in- vill | in the ly, pathetic reflex of that primitive Egyptian delight in something big. The next element in order of conspicuousness isits form. This it is which on the one hand marks off the obelisk, as such, from any other massive monument, and on the other hand adds a further element of beauty when massiveness is wanting. Any obelisk, great or small, pleases us (irrespec- tive of its surroundings) by its graceful, tapering shape. It is not like the pyramid, a squat heap of stones, placed in the position where the least possible mass is supported by the greatest possi- ble base. On the contrary, while the stability of the shaft is sufficiently insured, its slender di- mensions yield the notion of comparative slight- ness. Nor is it like the column, whose natural purpose is that of a support to some other body, and which always looks ridiculous when sur- mounted by a figure; an absurdity conspicuous enough in Trafalgar Square and the Place Ven- dime, but reaching a culminating point in the meaningless colonnades of the Taylorian Institute at Oxford. The column has no natural termina- tion, and so, when it is wrested from its original intention, it always disappoints us by its useless capital, which obviously implies a superincumbent mass; but the obelisk has no other object, to serve save that of beauty, and its summit is planed off into the most graceful and appropriate form. Again, the simplicity of its outline pleases us. If the angles were cut down so as to make an octagoual plinth, we should feel that additional trouble had been taken with no additional effect. But, as it now stands, we see in its plain sides and rectangular corners a native grandeur which would be lost by more ambitious decoration. Carve its contour, ornament its simple summit, bevel its straight edges, and all its impressiveness is gone at once. From these complex considerations of form, mainly composed of intellectual factors, we may pass on to those more elementary ones, the effect of which is rather directly sensuous. The obelisk is bounded by straight lines whose length is not excessive, and whose direction can be followed by the eye with ease and gratification. Its up- ward tapering form adapts itself admirably to the natural convergence of the lines of vision. Its four sides can be grasped at once without con- fusion, and its pointed top, leveled all round, gives an obvious and pleasing termination to the muscular sweep. Then, too, it is throughout symmetrical, and that in a manner which requires no effort for its comprehension. If one side bulged a little, if one angle were untrue, if one ; ESTHETIC ANALYSIS OF AN OBELISK. 1BB line of slope at the summit did not “come square” with its neighbor, if anywhere there were a breach of symmetry, an indication of un- workmanlike carelessness, all our pleasure would be gone. But when we see that the artisan has exactly carried out his ideal, simple as that ideal is, we are pleased by the evidence of skill and care, aud sensuously gratified by the simplifica- tion of our visual act in apprehending the form produced. Closely- allied to these sources of pleasure are those which depend upon the polish of a granite Obelisk. Sensuously we derive two kinds of gratification from this property: the visual gloss gives an agreeable stimulus to the eye, while the tactual smoothness affords pleasure to the ner- vous terminals of the hand. Further, it is intel- lectually gratifying as another symbol of the care bestowed by the workman upon his work. And when in certain cases we add to the last-named idea the historical conception of the inadequate tools with which our Egyptian artist must have wrought this exquisite sheen, we raise our feeling at once to a far higher emotional level. But we have not yet exhausted the elements of beauty and interest given by an obelisk, even apart from special circumstances of site and sur- roundings. Its surface may be deeply scored with hieroglyphics, and this, though in one sense a detriment to the general effect, yet gives a cer- tain detailed interest of its own. We can notice, too, how this carving of the plane surfaces, which nowhere interferes with the typical outline, does not disfigure our obelisk in at all the same way as ornamentation of its edges or summit would dis- figure it. The hieroglyphics leave it still essen- tially the same as ever; while a little floral dec- oration, a few scrolls or acanthus-leaves at its criti- cal points, would make it something totally differ- ent and vastly inferior. Again, the mere color and texture of the stone may form partial elements in the total result. Red granite, closely dappled with points of crystalline transparency, or blue and gray limestone, shining with a dull and sub- dued glossiness, are in themselves striking com- ponents of the beauty which we notice in particu- lar instances. When we pass on from these immediate and general impressions to those more special ones which are given by historical and geographical association, a whole flood of feelings crowds upon our mind. Let us try to disentangle a few of the most prominent strands, again in the order of their conspicuousness. | Part of our pleasure in viewing such an erec- ee a, Spe

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156 tion is undoubtedly due to the recognition, “ This is an obelisk.” Every cognition, as Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us, is a recognition ; and every rec- ognition is in itself, apart from specialties, pleas- urable. And, when an educated man recognizes an obelisk as such, he greets it as an old acquaint- ance, around which cling many interesting associa- tions of time and piace. In its origin it is, for our present purpose at least, Egyptian ; and we see in it always a certain Egyptian massiveness, solidity, simplicity, grandeur. While to the merest child or boor it is beautiful for its form, its height, its size, its gloss, its texture ; to the cultivated mind it is further beautiful for its suggestions of a dim past, a great empire, a forgotten language, a mighty race, now gone forever, but once the teachers and pioneers of humanity on its upward struggle to light. We cannot divorce from our recognition of its shape and name some dim recollection of its history and its birthplace. When we meet it in the cemeteries of Western America, or on the hill-sides of sub-tropical Australia, it carries us back, perhaps unconsciously, but none the less effectively, over a thousand miles and ten thou- sand years to the temple-courts of Meroe or the mitred presence of Amenuph. If we feel thus in the case of any obelisk, still more do we feel so in the case of an actual Egyp- tian obelisk. It makes a great difference in the impressiveness of each particular block of stone whether it was hewed a myriad of years ago in the quarries of Syene, or last year in the quarries of Aberdeen. The sublime in its most developed forms comes in to complicate our simple sense of beauty when we have to deal with long-past time and the relics of ancient empire. There is a great gulf between the child’s admiration for that big pillar of polished rock and the cultivated man’s half awe-struck gaze upon that sculptured monument of the earliest great civilization whose memory has come down to us across the abyss of ages. More or less remotely present in some few minds will be the still earlier history of that smooth needle of serpentine. The fancy will run back to those primeval days when the action of seething subterranean waves melted together and fixed into solid crystal the intricate veins of green and russet whose mazes traverse its surface. But the eyes that so turn backward instinctively to the first beginnings of mundane things are as yet but very few, and we need hardly follow out their speculations further, rather satisfying ourselves with the passing observation that each such pro- longation of our field of vision lays open before THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. us wider and yet wider expanses for the exercise of our esthetic faculties in the regions of the highest and truest sublime. Thus we have unraveled a few among the many tangled threads of semi-automatic con. sciousness which go to make up our idea of beauty in the case of an obelisk in itself, regard. ed without any reference to place or time. Let us now turn our attention awhile to the question of surrounding circumstances, and inquire how far the beauty of every particular obelisk de- pends upon its harmony with neighboring ob. jects. There is a Dissenting chapel in Oxford, the four corners of whose roof are decorated—as I suppose the architect fondly hoped—with four obelisks of painted stucco. I have often noticed in passing this chapel that each separate obelisk, regarded apart from its incongruous position, is capable of yielding considerable pleasure on the score of form alone, even in spite of the poor and flimsy material of which it is composed. Some faint odor of Egyptian solidity, some eva- nescent tinge of architectural grace, still clings individually about every one of these brick-and- plaster monstrosities. Shoddy though they are, they nevertheless suggest the notion of massive stone, which custom has associated with the shape in which they are cast. But when the eye turns from each isolated pillar to the whole of which they form a part, the utter incongruity of their position overwhelms one with its absurdity. Wherever else an obelisk ought to be set, it is clear that it should not be set at every angle of a roof. On the other hand, as we look away from Appuldurcombe over to the monuments which mark and individualize every ridge in the dis- tance, we see that an obelisk, placed on a com- manding natural height, in a solitary conspicu- ous position, adds to the beauty of certain scenes instead of detracting from it. Certain scenes, I am careful to say; for there are some wild, rocky districts where such puny decorations only reveal a miserable cockney conceit. But in typical English undulating country—such a country as that which swells on every side of Appuldur- combe—with its gentle alternation of hill and dale, dotted with church-towers and stately man- sions, a monument on every greater ridge is an unmitigated boon. It gives the eye a salient ob- ject on which to rest as it sweeps the horizon. It makes up in part for the want of jutting peaks or glacier-worn bosses. Above all, it harmo- nizes withthe “general evidences of cultivation ie ee a el a a: a re “re

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the our and painstaking human endeavor. In a High- land glen we look for unmixed Nature—purple heather, brown and naked rock, brawling stream, rugged hill-side, and lonely fir-trees beaten and distorted by the wind. But, in a graceful Eng- lish scene like this, we are gratified by the tri- umph of man’s art—level lawns, green or golden cornfields, lofty steeples, smooth parks shaded with majestic and evenly-grown oaks. So, in the first case, we are displeased by any obtrusion of would-be artistic handicraft, such as the eigh- teenth century officiously foisted upon the scenery it admired; while in the second case we find in these purely ornamental structures the final touch which finishes off an artificial landscape. In such circumstances the obelisk is a symbol of loving care, giving to the complex picture the one element which it lacks. Whatever may have been the original pur- pose of the obelisk—and we can hardly doubt that it had once a religious signification—its modern use is the one thus indicated, as a mark or salient point to fix the eye upon a critical site, either in a close area or an extended prospect. When we employ it to decorate a town, we place it in some open and conspicuous situation, either in the centre of a square, or where roads diverge, or at the apex of a triangular green, or at the point of bisection in one side of a bilaterally symmetrical oblong. When we use it for rural decoration, we perch it on the summit of a rounded and sloping hill. It does not look well on an elevation which already possesses a natu- ral peak or well-marked crest; but it serves admirably to fasten the eye on the otherwise doubtful crown of a long and sweeping ridge. Again, such a pillar would be absurd half-way up a hill, where it would hardly come out against the neighboring background of green; but it stands up with a pleasing boldness against the cold gray and somewhat monotonous sky-line of an English down. In short, an obelisk, viewed apart from its own individuality, and with reference to the whole scene in which it fills a place, is essentially a mark to call attention to the site on which it stands. Of course, a column often serves the same purpose ; but, then, a col- umn serves it badly, and an obelisk serves it well. It is just because it does so that it has survived to the present day. If we look at a few such individual cases we shall find yet other elements in the complex feel- ing of beauty and fitness. There is the Luxor Obelisk in the Place dela Concorde. Here we have all the usual points which belong to the form as ESTHETIC ANALYSIS OF AN OBELISE. such, to the massive and monolithic character, to the high polish and sombre coloring, to the quaint and suggestive hieroglyphics with which it is deeply scored; and we have also the addi- tional points given by its central and symmetri- cal position in a noble square, marking, as it were, a node in the long vista which reaches to the Louvre on the one side and the Are de Tri- omphe on the other; but. over and above all these factors in our complex emotional state, there is a strange sense of irony in the colloca- tion of that mute memorial of a solid and patient primeval race beside the gilded dome of the In- valides, the brand-new architectural elegancies of the Haussmann order, and the frivolous modern throng which pours ceaselessly past it up the Champs Elysées. I have seen that relic of the Pharaohs illuminated with gas-jets and colored lanterns in honor of the Féte Napoléon. And yet’ few will be disposed to deny that there is, by reason of this very contrast, a sort of odd fitness in the present position of the Luxor Obelisk. Now, let us turn to a very different instance, the Speke memorial in Kensington Gardens. Here we have to deal with a perfectly modern specimen, lacking all the historical interest of the Colonne de Luxor. But we have still the grace- ful form, the hard and solid material, the glis- tening surface, the suggestion of antique work- manship. And here the obelisk stands at the end of a green vista; it is approached by a close- cut sward, and it forms a pleasant termination to a pretty, if strictly artificial, scene. Moreover, there is a solemn appropriateness in the choice of an old Egyptian form for the commemoration of a fearless and ill-fated Nile explorer; while the brevity and simplicity of the legend—the single word “ Speke” engraved on its base—is in admirable keeping with the general character- istics of the obelisk. On the whole, it is proba- bly the best-chosen and best-situated monument ' in London. Another similar structure with which many of us are familiar may supply a passing illustra- tion. It is a column this time, not an obelisk, but it will serve equally well to point the moral in hand. On the heights which bound the val- ley of the Niagara and overlook the sleepy waters of Lake Ontario stands a Corinthian column, sur- mounted by a statue, and known as Brock’s monu- ment. As one passes down the river, leaving behind the great cataract itself, and the pine-clad ravine through which the whirlpool rapids surge with ceaseless foam, a turn of the stream brings one suddenly in view of a level reach which forms

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158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. part of the monotonous Ontario basin. Brock’s monument stands at the very edge of the higher lands before they dip into this low-lying plain. If it stood in Waterloo Place, the visitor would pass it by with the same carelessly contemptuous glance which he vouchsafes in passing to the Duke of York’s Column. But on the banks of a great American stream the righteous indigna- tion which man naturally feels toward a sup- porter with nothing to support is waived in favor of other associations. In the midst of a wide, half-tilled expanse, still dotted with stumps of trees and interspersed with shabby wooden vil- lages, that tall shaft of sculptured stone, in mem- ory of a British soldier, has an air of European solidity and ancient civilization that contrasts well with the shuffling modern appearance of everything else in the prospect. All other hu- man additions to the neighborhood of Niagara— the big wooden hotels with their sham cupolas, the line of bazaars with their sham Indians, the paper-mills of Luna Island, with their intense- ly realistic appurtenances—are simply hideous. But that one touch of familiar European art, spurious as it is in itself, can hardly fail to raise a thrill of pleasurable surprise and grateful rec- ognition in every visitor from the older lands across the Atlantic. Perhaps it is this very consciousness of con- trast which fills Greenwood and Mount Auburn with Ionic temples or Roman mausoleums. Bad as is generally the taste displayed in such struct- ures and the choice of their position, an occasion- al success half redeems the many failures. A monument which struck me much in this respect is situated in the graveyard of a church in the mountain district of Jamaica. As you ride down from the Newcastle cantonment you pass through a narrow horse-path, almost choked with tropical ferns, wild brushwood, and spreading aloe-plants. But when you reach this little churchyard, neatly kept and planted with English-looking flowers, you see a plain obelisk of polished Aberdonian granite, whose simple gracefulness could not of- fend the most fastidious eye, while the evidence of care and comparative culture strikes the mind at once with a pleasant relief. There are many other cases nearer home of similar erections which might be examined, did space permit, such as the Baxter monument near Kidderminster, the various London and Paris columns, the Colonne de la Grande Armée at Bou- logne, and so forth. But the instances already given will suffice to mark the complexity which is introduced by consideration of surrounding circumstances. It would be interesting, too, to compare them as regards their origin and purpose, their harmonies and contrasts, with the Highland cairn and the Welsh maen-hir, the white horses of Calne and Wantage, the arches of Titus and Severus, the pillars of Byzantium, the minarets of Delhi, the pagodas of Kew and Peking, the campanili of Italy, the steeples of our own village churches, and the Albert, Scott, Stewart, and Martyrs’ memorials. But such a treatment of the subject would probably prove too exhaustive for even the most minutely conscientious student, and perhaps their relations are sufficiently hinted even in the brief list we have just strung togeth- er. Let us pass on to see the net results of our previous inquiry. At first sight few esthetic objects could seem simpler of explanation than an obelisk. Com- pared with an historical painting, or a lyric poem, or an operatic aria, or even a landscape, it is but a single element by the side of the many which go to compose those complex wholes. But when we proceeded to analyze this seemingly element- ary factor in the whole scene which lay before us from Appuldurcombe, we saw that it is really itself made up of a thousand different threads of’ feeling, sensuous, intellectual, and emotional. While most theorists are ready to account for every manifestation of beauty by a single uniform principle, actual analysis revealed to us the. fact that even the most apparently uncompounded per- ception depended for its pleasurable effect upon a whole mass of complicated causes. Some of these factors are immediate and universal, appeal- ing to the senses of child and savage and culti- vated man alike; others are mediate and special, being entirely relative to the knowledge and emo- tional constitution of the individual percipient. We will sum them up briefly under the different categories into which they would fall in a sys- tematic scheme of our esthetic nature. Sensuously, the obelisk has tactual smoothness and visual gloss; a simple, graceful, and easily- apprehended form, and sometimes delicate or variegated coloring, as well as crystalline texture. In special cases it may also afford harmonious re- lief from neighboring tints, and may stand out with pleasing boldness against a monotonous ho- rizon. Emotionally, the obelisk appeals to the affec- tion of the sublime, both directly, by its massive size and weight, and indirectly, by its suggestion of remote antiquity and despotic power. It arouses the sympathetic admiration of skill and honest workmanship, and in special cases it re-

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‘ BOOKS AND CRITICS. calls historical or geographical associations, and brings back to the spectator familiar scenes in the midst of unfamiliar surroundings, besides yielding grateful evidence of human care and in- dustry. Jnutellectually, the obelisk accords with the natural love of symmetry, both in itself, owing to the even arrangement of its sides and angles, and with reference to its surroundings, in those cases where it occupies the central or nodal position in a regular inclosure. In a landscape, it yields us the pleasurable feeling of individuality and recog- nizability, aiding us in the determination of dis- tant topographical details. Ina city, it decorates and defines the noticeable sites. And in all cases alike it produces either the intellectual pleasure resulting from a sense of harmony with neighbor- ing conditions, or the intellectual discomfort due to a consciousness of discord and incongruity. Now, if ano belisk, with all its apparent sim- plicity, really involves so immense a number of feelings for its proper perception, we may per- haps form some dim idea of the infinite plexus of feelings which are concerned in the proper perception of a great work of art. We may thus be led, by an easy example, to hesitate before we accept those current esthetic dogmas which at- tribute the sense of beauty to any one faculty, intellectual or emotional, And we may conclude that every separate thrill of that developed emo- tion which we call the consciousness of beauty is ultimately analyzable into an immense number of factors, the main and original members of which are purely sensuous, while its minor and deriva- tive members are more or less distinctly ideal. To the child and the savage a beautiful object is chiefly one which gives immediate and pleasura- ble stimulation to the eye or the ear: tothe culti- vated man, a beautiful object is still the same in essence, with the superadded gratifications of the highly-evolved intelligence and moral nature.— Cornhill Magazine. EFORE advancing any statements which may appear to you doubtful, I will bespeak your favorable attention by saying something which cannot be contradicted. Aman should not talk about what he does not know. That is a proposition which must be granted me. I will go on to say further—it is not the same thing—a man should speak of what he knows. When it was proposed to me to say something to you this evening, I wished that what I said should be about something I knew. I think I do know something about the use of books. Not the contents of books, but the value and useof them. All men have read some books. Many have read much. There are many men who have read more books than I have. Few in this busy, energetic island in which we live can say, what I have to confess of myself, that my whole life has been passed in handling books. The books of which we are going to speak to- night are the books of our day—modern litera- ture, or what are commonly called “new books.” So various are the contents of the many-col- ored volumes which solicit our attention month after month for at least nine months of the year 1A lecture delivered October 29, 1877. BOOKS AND CRITICS.’ By MARK PATTISON. that it may seem an impossible thing to render any account of so many-sided a phenomenon in the short space of one lecture. But I am not proposing to pass in review book by book, or writer by writer—that would be endless. I am not proposing to you to speak of individuals at all; I want you to take a comprehensive point of view, to consider our books en masse, a8 a col- lective phenomenon—say from such a point of view as is indicated by the questions, “ Who write them? Who read them? Why do they write or read them? What is the educational or social value of the labor so expended in reading or writing ?” Literature is a commodity, and as such it is subject to economic law. Books, like any other commodity, can only be produced by the com- bination of labor and capital—the labor of the author, the capital of the publisher. They would not be written unless the author labored to write them. They could not be printed unless there was somebody ready to advance money for the paper and the work of the printing-press. The publisher, the capitalist, risks his money on a book because he expects to turn it over with a trade-profit—say twelve per cent.—on it. On wn

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160 the capitalist side the production is purely a com- mercial transaction ; but, on the labor side—i. e., on the part of the author—it is not equally easy to state the case as one of labor motived by wages. Certainly authorship is a profession. There are authors who are authors and nothing more—men who live by their pen, as a counsel lives by giving opinions, or a physician by pre- scribing for patients. But this is only partially the case with our literature. A large part of it is not paid for; the author’s labor is not set in motion by wages. Many other motives come in, inducing men to address the public in print be- sides the motive of wages. Disinterested enthu- siasm ; youthful ardor of conviction ; egotism in some one of its many forms of ambition ; vanity, the desire to teach, to preach, to be listened to; mere restlessness of temperament ; even the hav- ing nothing else to do—these things will make a man write a book quite irrespective of being paid for doing so. Did you ever hear of Catherinot ? No! Well, Catherinot was a French antiquary of the seventeenth century—a very learned one, if learning means to have read many books with- out understanding. Catherinot printed, whether at his own cost or another's I cannot say, a vast number of dissertations on matters of antiquity. David Clément, the curious bibliographer, has collected the titles of one hundred and eighty- two of those dissertations, and adds there were more of them which he had not been able to find. Nobody wanted these dissertations of Ca- therinot. He wrote them and printed them for his own gratification, As the public would not take his paperasses, as Valesius called them, he had recourse to a device to force a circulation for them. There was then no penny-post, so he could not, like Herman Heinfetter, post his lucu- brations to all likely addresses, but he used to go round the guais in Paris, where the old book- stalls are, and, while pretending to be looking overthe books, slip some of his dissertations be- tween the volumes of the boutiguier. In this way the one hundred and eighty-two or more have come down to us, Catherinot is a by-word, the typical case of scribbleomania—of the insanabile scribendi cacoethes—but the malady is not un- known to our time, and accounts for some of our many reams of print. And, even if pure scrib- bleomania is not a common complaint, there are very many other motives to writing besides the avowed and legitimate motive of earning an in- come by the pen. Why do men make speeches to public meetings, or give lectures in public in- stitutions? It is a great deal of trouble to do THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. so. The motives of the labor are very various, Whatever they are, the same variety of motives urges men to write books. Notwithstanding these exceptions, the number and importance of which must not be lost sight of in our inquiry, the general rule will still hold that books, being a commodity, are subject to the same economic laws as all commodities. That one which is of importance for us is the law of demand and supply; the Jaw which says that demand creates supply, and prescribes its quan- tity and quality. You see at once how vital to literature must be the establishment of this com- mercial principle as its regulator, and how radical must have been the revolution in the relation be- tween writer and reader which was brought about when it was established. In the times when the writer was the exponent of universally-received first principles, what he said might be true or might be false, might be ill or well received, but at all events he delivered his message; he spoke as one having authority, and did not shape his thoughts so as to offer what should be accept- able to his auditory. Authorship was not a trade; books were not a commodity ; demand did not dictate the quality of the article supplied. In England, at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- tury, the transformation of the writer from the prophet into the trading author was pretty well complete. As we trace back our civilization to the cave-man, so it is worth while casting a glance at the ancestral authorape from whom is de- scended the accomplished and highly-paid leader- writer of 1877, who sits for a county, and the “honor of whose company” dukes solicit. The professional author of Queen Anne’s time has been delineated to us, by the master-hand of Pope, as a disreputable being, starving in a gar- ret “high in Drury Lane,” on an occasional five guineas thrown to him by the grudging charity of one of the wealthy publishers, Tonson or Lin- tot, or more likely Curll, “turning a Persian tale for half a crown,” that he might not go to bed supperless and swearing. He was a brainless dunce without education, a sneaking scoundrel without a conscience. But you will notice that in this his mean estate, now become a hireling scribbler, he continued for long to keep up the fiction that the author was a gentleman who wrote because it pleased him so todo. When he had finished his pamphlet in defense of the pres- ent administration, a pamphlet for which he was to get Sir Robert’s shabby pay, he pretended, in his preface, that he had taken up his pen for the amusement of his leisure hours. When he had

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0m- lical be- out the ved ) or but oke his pt- lid turned into rhyme Ovid’s “De Arte Amandi” “for Curll’s chaste press,” he said he was going to oblige the town with a poetical trifle. You all remember Pope’s couplet— «Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends, Obliged by hunger and request of friends.” The second line ought to be read thus : * Obliged by hunger and—request of friends,” hunger being the real cause of the hurried pub- lication; “request of friends” the cause as- signed, suppose on the title-page. The transfor- mation of the teacher into the paid author was complete; but the professional author, though compelled to supply the article which was in de- mand, still gave himself the airs of an indepen- dent gentleman, and affected to be controlling taste instead of ministering to it. In our own day, notwithstanding the excep- tions to which I have alluded, it is now the rule that the character of general literature is deter- mined by the taste of the reading public. It is true that any man may write what he likes, and may print it. But if he cannot get the public to buy it, his book can hardly be said to be pub- lished. At any rate, books that are not read count for nothing in that literature of the day which is the subject before us. Let us first inquire what literature is as to its mass, before we look into its composition. And here it will simplify our subject if we divide books into two classes—literature strictly so called, and the books which are not literature. Literature does not mean all printed matter. Blue-books and acts of Parliament, Mrs. Beeton’s “ Household Management,” Timbs’s “ Year-book of Facts,” Fresenius’s “ Chemical Analysis,” these are not literature. The word is not applicable to all the books in our libraries. Most books are didactic—i. e., they are intended to convey in- formation on special subjects. Treatises on agri- culture, astronomy, a dictionary of commerce, are not literary works. They are books—useful, necessary for those who are studying agriculture, astronomy, commerce—but they do not come under the head of literature. There are books which the publishers are pleased to advertise as “ gift-books,” the object of whose existence is that they may be “‘given”—no doubt they an- swer their purpose, they are “ given”’—and there is an end of them. I have seen an American advertising column headed “ swift-selling books,” the object of which books, I presume, was that they might be “sold,” like Peter Pindar’s razors. When we have excluded all books which teach 47 BOOKS AND ORITICS. special subjects, all gift-books, all swift-selling books, all religious books, history and politics, those which remain are “ literature.” I am unable to give a definition of literature. I have not met with a satisfactory one. Mr. Stop- ford Brooke, in a little book which I can cordially recommend to beginners—it is called “ A Primer of English Literature”—has felt this difficulty at the outset. He says in his first page, “ By litera- ture we mean the written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women arranged in a way which will give pleasure to the reader.” It would be easy to show the defects of this definition; but, till I am prepared to propose a better, we may let this pass. Of what books the class litera- | ture consists may be better understood by set- ting the class in opposition to special books than by a description, Catalogues of classified libra- ries use the term “ belles-lettres” for this class of book. When we have thus reduced the comprehen- sion of the term “literature” to its narrowest limits, the mass of reading soliciting our notice is still enormous—overwhelming. First come the periodicals, and of periodicals first the dailies. The daily newspaper is political or commercial, mainly ; but even the daily paper now, which pre- tends to any standing, must have its column of literature. The weekly papers are literary in a large proportion of their bulk. Our old friend the Saturday Review is literary as to a full half of its contents, and, having worked off the froth and frivolity of its froward youth, offers you for sixpence a codperative store of literary opinion of a highly -instructive character, and always worth attention. There are the exclusively liter- ary weeklies—the Academy, the Atheneum, the Literary World—all necessary to be looked at as being integral parts of current opinion. We come to the monthlies. It is characteristic of the eager haste of our modern Athenians to hear “some new thing,” that we cannot now wait for quarter-day. Those venerable old wooden three- deckers, the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review, still put out to sea under the command, I believe, of the Ancient Mariner, but the active warfare of opinion is conducted by the three new iron monitors, the Fortnightly, the Contemporary, and the Nineteenth Century. In these monthblies the best writers of the day vie with each other in soliciting our jaded appetites on every con- ceivable subject. Indeed, the monthly periodical seems destined to supersede books altogether. Books now are largely made up of republished review articles. Even when this is not the case,

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162 the substance of the ideas expanded in the oc- tavo volume will generally be found to have been first put out in the magazine article of thirty pages. Hence the monthlies cannot be disposed of by slightly looking into them; they form at this moment the most characteristic and pithy part of our literary produce. It has been calcu- lated that the insect-life upon our globe, if piled in one mass, would exceed in magnitude the heap which would be made by bringing together all the beasts and birds. For though each insect be iudividually minute, their collective number is enormous. Soa single number of a periodical seems little compared with a book; but then there are so many of them, and they are repro- duced so fast! A newspaper seems less than it is on account of the spread of the sheet. One number of the Times, a double sheet containing 16 pages, or 96 columns, contains a quantity of printing equal to 384 pages 8vo, or an average- sized 8vo volume. Even a herd reader might find it difficult within thirty days to overtake the periodical output of the month; and then on the first he would have to begin all over again. So much for periodicals ; we come now to the books. The total number of new books, not includ- ing new editions and reprints, published in Great Britain in 1876, was 2,920. In accordance with the construction I have put on the term litera- ture, we must subtract from this total all re- ligious, political, legal, commercial, medical, ju- venile books, and all pamphlets. There will remain somewhere about 1,620 books of litera- ture, taking the word in its widest extent. I may say, by-the-way, that these figures can only be regarded as approximative. Cataloguing in this country is disgracefully careless. Many books published are every year omitted from the Lon- don catalogue. For example, out of 267 works published in the two counties of Lancashire and Cheshire, only 31 are found entered in the last London catalogue. But I will take no account of omissions. I will even strike off the odd 120 from my total of 1,620, and say that English lit- erature grows only at the rate of 1,500 works per annum. At this rate in ten years our liter- ary product amounts to 15,000 books. Put the duration of man’s reading life at forty years. If he had to read everything that came out, to keep pace with the teeming press, he would have had in his forty years 60,000 works of contemporary literature to wade through. This in books only, over and above his periodical work, which we calculated would require pretty well all his time. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. But as yet we have got only Great Britain, But England is not all the world, as Mr. Matthew Arnold reminds us (“ Essays,” p.43). By the very nature of things, much of the best that is known and thought in the world cannot be of English growth, must be foreign; in a survey of litera. ture we cannot afford to ignore what is being said and written in the countries near us, any more than in politics we can afford to ignore what is being done by them. At present Ger. many and France are the two countries with whom we are most closely connected, and whose sayings are the most influential sayings in the world. Germany is the country of books, and its out- put of books is enormous. The average annual number of books printed in that language is about 12,000. However, only a fraction of this total of German books deserves to rank as liter- ature. Mere book-making is carried in Germany to a frightful pitch. The bad tobacco and the falsified wines of Mayence and Hamburg find their counterpart in the book-wares of Leip- sic. The German language is one of the most powerful instruments for the expression of thought and feeling to which human invention has ever given birth. The average German literary style of the present day is a barbarous jargon, wrap- ping up an attenuated and cloudy sense in bales of high-sounding words. The fatigue which this style of utterance inflicts upon the mind is as great as that which their Gothic letter, a relic of the fifteenth century, inflicts upon the eye, black- ening and smearing all the page. An examina- tion of the boys in the Johanneum of Hamburg elicited the fact that sixty-one per cent. of the upper class were short-sighted. A large part of German books is not significant of anything— mere sound without meaning. Putting aside, however, the meaningless, there remains not a little in German publication which requires the attention of one who makes it his business to know the thoughts of his age. The residuum of these 12,000 annual vol- umes has to be sifted out of the lumber of the book-shops, for it embodies the thoughts and the moral ideal of a great country and a great peo- ple. Poor as Germany is in literature, it is rich in learning. As compilers of dictionaries, as ac- cumulators of facts, the German book-maker is unrivaled. The Germans are the hewers of wood and drawers of water for a literature which they have not got. All the rest of the European nations put together do not do so much for the illustration of the Greek and Latin classics as

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the Germans alone do—classics by whose form and spirit they have profited so little. It is one of the paradoxes of literary history that in this very country—Germany—which is the world’s schoolmaster in learning the Greek and Latin languages—so little of the style and beauty of those immortal models passes into its daily liter- ature. If style and form alone were what gave value to literature, the first literature now produced in the world would be the French. All that the Germans have not the French have. Form, method, measure, proportion, classical elegance, refinement, the cultivated taste, the stamp of good society—these traits belong not only to the first class of French books, but even to their second and third rate books. No writer in France of whatever calibre can hope for accept- ance who violates good taste or is ignorant of polite address. German literature is not written by gentlemen—mind, I speak of literature, not of works of erudition—but by a tousle-headed, unkempt, unwashed professional bookmaker, ig- norant alike of manners and the world. In France a writer cannot gain a hearing unless he stands upon the platform of the man of the world, who lives in society, and accepts its pre- scription before he undertakes to instruct it. French books are written by men of the world for the world. This is the merit of the French. The weak point of French books is their defi- ciency of fact, their emptiness of information. The self-complacent ignorance of the French writer is astonishing. Their books are too often style and nothing more. The French language has been wrought up to be the perfect vehicle of wit and wisdom—the wisdom of the serpent— the incisive medium of the practical intelligence. But the French mind has polished the French language to this perfection at a great cost—at the cost of total ignorance of all that is not written in French. Few educated Frenchmen know any language but their own. They travel ‘little, and, when they do travel, their ignorance of the speech of the country cuts them off from getting to know what the people are like. We must credit the French with knowing their own affairs; of the affairs even of their nearest neighbors in Europe they are as ignorant as a Chinese. Their newspapers are dependent for their foreign intelligence on the telegrams of the Times. Hence their foreign policy has been a series of blunders. Had the merits of the case been known to it, could republican France, in 1849, have sent out an expedition to Rome to set BOOKS AND ORITIOCS. up again the miserable ecclesiastical government which the Romans had thrown off? I was read- ing in the Figaro not long ago a paragraph giv- ing an account of the visit of a French gentle- man in England. On some occasion he had to make a speech ; and he made it in Eriglish, ac- quitting himself very creditably. “ M. Blanc,” says the Figaro, “being a Breton, spoke Eng- lish like a native Englishman, on account of the close affinity between the two languages, Breton and English.” The Figaro is one of the most widely-circulated newspapers in France. Eng- land is a country with which the French are in close and constant communication, and yet they have not discovered that the English tongue does not belong to the Keltic family of languages. That Germany is as little known to them as Eng- land I might instance in the most popular tour- ist’s book of the day. Victor Tissot’s “ Voyage au Pays des Milliards” has reached something approaching to fifty editions. It is nothing but a tissue of epigrams and witty exaggerations, a farce disguised as fact, and taken by the French nation as a serious description of German life. It is an error to say, as is sometimes said, that French literature is a mere literature of style. This finished expression embalms much worldly wisdom, the life-experience of the most social of modern men and women; but it is an experience whose horizon is limited by the limits of France. It is a strictly national literature. It is, in this respect, the counterpart of the liter- ature of ancient Athens. We, all the rest of us, are to the Frenchman barbarians in our speech and manners. He will not trouble himself about us. By this exclusiveness he gains something and loses much, He preserves the purity of his style. The clearness of his vision and the pre- cision of his judgment, from his national point of view, are unimpaired. He loses the cosmo- politan breadth—the comparative standpoint. But the comparative standpoint is the great conquest of our century, which has revolutionized history and created social science and the sci- ence of language. He who aims at comprehending modern liter- ature must keep himself well acquainted with the contemporary course of French and German books, as well as of his own language; and these two are enough. A Spanish literature of to-day can hardly be said to exist, and the Italians are too much occupied at present in reproduction and imitation to have much that is original to contribute to the general stock of Europe. English, French, German: the periodical and

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164 the volume publication in these three languages, ' year by year: you will say the quantity is pro- digious—overwhelming, if it were to be supposed that any reader must read it all. But this is not | the case: what the publisher’s table offers is a choice—something for all tastes: one reads one | book, another another. As I divided books into two classes, books of special information and books of general literature, so readers must now be divided into two classes—the general public and the professional literary man: the author, or critic, let us call him. I am not proposing that the general public should read, or look at, all this mass of current literature. It would be prepos- terous to think of it. You must read by selec- tion; but for your selection you will be guided— you are so in fact—by the opinion of those whom I must now speak of as a class, by the name of critics. Criticism is a profession, and, as you will have gathered from what has been said, an arduous profession ; the responsibility great, the labor heavy. Literature is not your profession—I speak to you as the general public—it is at most a solace of your leisure hours; but the critic, he who sits on the judgment-seat of letters, and has to acquit or condemn, to examine how each writer has executed his task, to guide the reading com- | munity by distinguishing the good and censuring the bad—he really holds an educational office which is above that of any professor or doctor, inasmuch as the doctor of laws or of divinity is | authorized to speak to his own faculty, whereas the critic speaks to the whole republic of letters. What is recreation to you is business to the critic, | and his business is to keep himself acquainted with the course of publication in at least these three languages. Looking, then, at the mass and volume of printed matter to be thus daily and | hourly sifted, you cannot think that the profession of critic is a sinecure. And before he can be qualified to take his seat on the bench and dispense the law, consider | what a lengthened course of professional training must have been gone through by our critic or ju- dicial reader. When he has once entered upon his functions, his whole time will be consumed, and his powers of attention strained to the ut- most, in the effort to keep abreast of that contem- porary literature which he is to watch and report | upon. But no one can have any pretension to | judge of the literature of the day who has not had a thorough training in the literature of the past. The critic must have been apprenticed to his profession. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. It has been calculated that in a very advanced and ramified science, e. g., chemistry, fourteen years are required by the student to overtake knowledge as it now stands. That is to say, that to learn what is known, before you can proceed to institute new experiments, fourteen years are necessary—twice the time which the old law ex- acted of an apprentice bound to any trade. The fifth of Elizabeth, which used to be known as the statute of apprenticeship, enacted that no person should for the future exercise any trade, craft, or mystery, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least. This enactment of 1563 was but the legislative sanction of what had been for centuries the by- law of the trade-guilds, This by-law had ruled, not in England only, but over all the civilized countries of Europe. It was a by-law that had not been confined to trades. It had extended over the arts and over the liberal professions, University degrees are nothing more than the ap- plication of this by-law to the learned profes- sions. It required study for twenty-eight academ- ical terms, i. e., seven years, to qualify for the degree of M. A. in the universities. Rather, I would say, that the line was not then drawn be- tween the mechanical and the liberal branches of human endeavor ; both were alike designated “Arts;” and the term “universities,” now re- stricted to the bodies which profess theoretical science, was then the common appellation of all corporations and trade-guilds, as well as the so- called Universities of Paris and Bologna. Regarding literature as a separate art, we might ask, “How long would it require to go through the whole of it to become a master of this art?” Even taking the narrowest definition of literature, it seems a vast surface to travel over, from Homer down to our own day! I say the surface, because no one supposes it necessary to read every line of every book which can call itself literature. Remember that, in studying the literature of the past, other countries than France and Germany come in. I have dispensed ours critic from occupying himself with the Italian and Spanish books of to-day. But with the books of the past it is different. Italy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was the most civilized and literary country in Europe. And Spain has its classical writers. Their mere mass is pro- digious. Life in Italy was rich and varied, and consequently so were the materials for that true narrative which is stranger than fiction. Villari has computed that the Italian republics of the middle ages enjoyed a total of 7,200 revolutions,

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and recreated themselves with 700 grand massa- cres. ‘The longest single poem, I believe, extant, is an Italian poem, the “ Adone” of Marini, who lived in the time of our James I. It contains 45,000 lines. As for Spain, one single author of the seventeenth century, Lope de Vega, wrote 1,800 plays; his works altogether fill forty-seven quarto volumes, Alonso Tostado, a Spanish bishop of the fifteenth century, wrote nearly forty folios, having covered with print three times as many leaves as he had lived days. To come to Eng- land. Our William Prynne wrote 200 different works. Chalmers’s collected edition of the Eng- lish poets only comes down to Cowper, who died in 1800, and it fills twenty-one volumes royal 8vo, double columns, small type. The volumes average 700 pages. This gives a total of 14,- 700 pages, or 29,400 columns. Now it takes— I have made the experiment—four minutes to read a column with fair attention. Here is a good year’s work in reading over, only once, a selection from the English poets. The amount of reading which a student can get through in a given time hardly admits of being measured by the ell. The rate of reading varies with the sub- ject, the rapid glance with which we skim the columns of a newspaper being at one end of the scale, and the slow sap which is required for a page of, say, Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” be- ing at the other. Still, just to get something to go upon, make a calculation in this way: Suppose a man to be able to read eight hoursa day. No one can really sustain receptive or critical atten- tion to written matter for eight hours. But take eight hours as the outside possibility. Thirty pages 8vo is an average hour’s read, taking one book with another. This would make 240 pages per day, 1,680 per week, and 87,360 pages in the year. Taking the average thickness of an 8vo volume as 400 pages only, the quantity of reading which a diligent student can get over in a year is no more than an amount equal to about 220 vol- umes 8vo. Of course, this is a merely mechani- cal computation, by which we cannot pretend to gauge mental processes. But it may be worth while knowing that the merely mechanical limit of study is some 220 volumes 8vo per annum. It would be clearly impossible even for an industrious reader to read, even once, every line of the world’s stock of poetry, much less every line of all that can be called literature. In no branch of study is mere mechanical application of much avail. In the study of literature, as in art, mechanical attention, the mere perusal of the printed page, is wholly useless. The student, ‘ BOOKS AND ORITIOS. 165 therefore, has to overcome the brute mass of the material on which he works by artificial expedi- ~ ents, Of these expedients the most helpful is that of selection. As he cannot look into every book, he must select the best. And selection must not be arbitrary. In the literary creations of the ideal world, as in the living organisms of the material world, natural selection has saved us the difficulty of choice. The best books are already found and determined for us by the verdict of time. Life of books is as life of nations. In the battle for existence the best survive, the weaker sink below the surface, and are heard of no more. In each generation since the invention of printing many thousand works have issued from the press. Out of all this mass of print a few hundred are read by the generation which succeeds; at the end of the century a score or so may be still in vogue. Every language has its classics, and it is by this process of natural selection that the classics of any given country are distin- guished from the weltering mass of abandoned books. It is a great assistance to the student that the classics of each language are already found for him by the hand of time. But our accomplished critic cannot confine his reading to the classics in each language; his education is not complete till he bas in his mind a conception of the succes- sive phases of thought and feeling from the be- ginning of letters. Though he need not read every book, he must have surveyed literature in its totality. Partial knowledge of literature is no knowledge. It is only by the comparative method that a founded judgment can be reached. And the comparative method implies a complete survey of the phenomena. It is recorded of Au- guste Comte that, after he had acquired what he considered a sufficient stock of material, he ab- stained scrupulously from all reading, except two or three poets (of whom one was Dante) and the “Tmitatio Christi” of Thomas 4 Kempis. This ab- stinence from reading Comte called his hygiéne cérébrale,” healthy treatment of his brain. The citizens of his Utopia are to be prohibited from reading any books but those which bad happened to fall in Comte’s way before he gave up reading. It is, I think, the case that our student has now to read more than is compatible with perfect equilibrium of faculty. On the other hand, the consequences of cutting off contact with the thoughts of others, as Comte resolutely did, may be seen in the unbealthy egotism and puerile self- complacency which deform his writings, his per- petual “ mistake as to the relative value of his

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE 166 own things and the things of others.” (Arnold’s “ Essays.”’) - We require of our thoroughly furnished critic that he should have prepared himself for his pro- fession by a comprehensive study of all that human thought, experience, and imagination, have stored up for us. When we have used all the short cuts to this goal which art and Nature have provided, how many years will such an appren- ticeship require? The data are wanting on which to found a calculation. Can the work be got through in seven years, in twice seven, or in three times seven? I do not know. Archbishop Usher at twenty began to read the Fathers, Greek and Latin, with the resolution of reading them through. The task was achieved in nineteen years. Hammond, at Oxford, read thirteen hours a day (Life of Usher. Life of Hammond, by Fell). Milton’s “industrious and select reading,” in preparation for the great work to which he dedi- cated a whole life, long choosing, and late begin- ning, are as well known as the thirty years spent by Edward Gibbon in preparing for and in com- posing his history. Of course in- this, as in other trades, a man learns while he practises. Buffon told a friend that, after passing fifty years at his desk, he was every day learning to write. The critic’s judgment matures by many failures. Without these three elements—time, industry, arduous endeavor—no man can attain to be a supreme judge of literary worth. Perhaps you have been accustomed to set before yourselves quite another ideal of the literary life. You have thought the business of reviewing a lazy profession, the resource of men who wanted industry or talent, who were, in short, fit for noth- ing better, a profession largely adopted by brief- less barristers, by incompetent clerks, by green youths fresh from college examinations, and gen- erally by men who shirk hard work—in fact, an easy-chair and slipper business. You have, per- haps, supposed that anybody can write a review, that essay-writing is as easy as talking, that it is only a matter of cheek and fluency. You have imagined that a quarterly or a weekly reviewer merely gets his knowledge of the subject in hand out of the book he has under review; that he, thereupon, dishonestly assumes to have known all about it, and with voluble impertinence goes on to retail this newly-acquired information as if it were his own, seasoning it with sneers and sar- casms at the author from whom he is stealing. I know these things are said. I have heard even respectable reviews and magazines accused of paying for this sort of thing by the column, i. e., ' : MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ' giving a pecuniary inducement to fill out paper | with words—to make copy, or padding, as it ig , called. I don’t know if these things are done in practice. If they are, they are fraudulent, and must, J should think, come within the act against adulteration. What I have set before you in the above outline is the honest critic who gives to | his calling the devotion of a life, prepares him- self by antecedent study, and continues through the whole of his career to make daily new acqui- sitions and to cultivate his susceptibility to new impressions. | Such are the qualifications of the teacher, of the writer of books. I turn now from the author to the reader, from the producer to the consumer. You to whom I now speak are a portion of the public ; you represent the consumer. And first, what is the mechanism by which the consumer is provided with his article? The English are not a book-storing people. Each family has not, as a rule, its own library. In great country-houses, it is true, there is always the library. Many treasures are in these old repositories—the accu- mulated store of half a dozen generations. They often go back to Queen Anne, the great book- | diffusing period of our annals; sometimes, but | more rarely, to the seventeenth century. The | family history may be read in the successive strata, superimposed, like geological strata, one | on the other. The learned literature of the seventeenth century, largely composed in Latin, its Elzevirs, and its Variorum classics, will often be found relegated to a garret. These books have come to be regarded as lumber. They are only not cleared out and dispatched to Sotheby's, because the cost of removal would exceed their produce at the auction. This, though hoisted up to the garret by an upheaval, is in point of time the earliest stratum. Upon this will be found a bed of theological pamphlets mostly in small quarto, in which lurk the ashes of passion, once fired by the Revolution of 1688, the non-juring pamphlets, the Dr. Sacheverell pamphlets, the Bangorian controversy. In the great library on the ground-floor we shall find the earliest stratum to consist of the splendid quartos, on thick paper with wide margin, of Queen Anne’s time. The Spectator, the Tatler, Pope’s Homer, a subscrip- tion copy; the folios of Carte and Echard, and so down the century over Junius and Chester- field’s “ Letters” to the first editions of Sir Walter Scott’s poems. The mere titles of such a collec- tion, or accretion, form a history of literature. But it is only in our old country-houses that such

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a treat is to be enjoyed, and the number of these diminishes in each generation. Cultivation and intellectua] tastes seem to be dying out among the English aristocracy. It has been said (“ New Republic”) the fop of Charles II.’s time at least affected to be a wit and a scholar, the fop of our times aims at being a fool and a dunce. In the house of a middle-class family you will also find a few books—chiefly religious books or specialty books—little literature, and that casu- al, showing no selection, no acquaintance with the movement of letters. There will be nothing that can be called a library. The intellectual barrenness of these middle-class homes is appall- ing. The dearth of books is only the outward and visible sign of the mental torpor which reigns in those destitute regions. Even in priest-ridden France, where the confessor has all the women and half the men under his thumb, there is more of that cultivation which desiderates the posses- sion of books. In many a French family of no great means is a bookcase of some five hundred volumes, not presents, but chosen, and in which the chefs-d'euvre of French literature will be in- cluded. They will be in half morocco, with gilt edges; binding not sumptuous, but elegant, and perfectly clean, neither thumbed nor grease- stained, nor gas-shriveled—a sign, you will say, that they are not much used. Notso. A French- man cannot endure a dirty book. It is an error to suppose that the dirt on the cover and pages of a book is a sign of its studious employment. Those who use books to most purpose handle them with loving care. The dirt on English books is a sign of neglect, not of work. It is disrespectful and ignorant handling. If you have a select cabinet of books, with which you live habitually as friends and companions, you would not choose to have them repulsive in dress and outward appearance. How insignificant an item of household expen- diture is the bookseller’s bill in a middle-class family! A man who is making £1,000 a year will not think of spending one pound a week on books. If you descend to a lower grade of in- come, the purchase of a book at all is an exception- al occurrence, and then it will rarely be a book of pure literature. The total population of the United Kingdom is more than 33,000,000. The aggregate wealth of this population is manifold more than it was one hundred and fifty years ago, but the circle of book-buyers, of the lovers of literature, is certainly not larger, if it be not absolutely smaller. One reason which may be assigned for the book BOOKS AND ORITICS. dearth among families of small means is want of space. Room in this country is now become very costly. A family of £1,000 a year in a town prob- ably pays out £100 a year as rent. A heavy tax! And what do you get for it? A hutch in which you can scarcely put up your family or breathe yourself. You have literally no room for books, This, I grant, is a too true description of the town dwelling. But it is not altogether an account of why you are without a library. A set of shelves, thirteen feet by ten feet, and six inches deep, placed against a wall, will accommodate nearly one thousand volumes 8vo. Cheap as books now are, a well-selected library of English classics could be compressed into less room than this, was the companionship of books felt by you to be among the necessaries of life. If narrow income and cramped premises will not let us have a private library, we may meet our wants in some measure by public libraries. The codperative store, as applied to groceries, is a discovery of our generation. But the principle of codperation was applied to libraries long be- fore. The book-club is an old institution which flourished in the last century, but is nearly ex- tinct now. There were some twelve hundred of these clubs scattered over England, and their dis- appearance has had a marked effect on the char- acter of our book-market. Each country club naturally fell under the control of the one or two best-informed men of the neighborhood. The books ordered were thus of a superior class, and publishers could venture upon publishing such books, because they knew they could look to the country clubs to absorb one edition. Now, the supply of new books has passed away from the local clubs, and into the hands of two great central houses. Smith and Madie, of course, look only to what is most asked for. And, as even among readers the ignorant, the indolent, and the vulgar, are in a large majority, it is the ignorant, the indolent, and the vulgar, who now create that demand which the publisher has to meet. Universal suffrage in the choice of books has taken the place of a number of independent centres which the aristocracy of intellect could influence. It may prove some compensation for the de- struction of the country book-clubs, that the great towns are beginning to bestir themselves to look after their book-supply. The earliest common libraries were, as we should expect, in universi- ties and colleges, often remote from populous centres, such as the Sharp Library in Bamburgh It is only quite recently that the trading Castle.

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168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. and manufacturing towns have begun to feel the want of books. And the desire is still feeble, and has spread but a little way. Some eighty or ninety cities and towns, I believe, in all Great Britain, have adopted, in whole or in part, Mr. Ewart’s act. There is still a very large number of towns with a population over three thousand who have not yet felt the want of a public library. Your city, always forward where enterprise can go, and where educational matters are in ques- tion, stands first, or only second to Manchester, in apprehending the public importance of a com- plete outfit of books. So much on the book-supply. I go on to the question, What is the stimulus which makes men ask for books ? Why do English men and women of the present day read ? There are people, I believe, who read books that they may be able to talk about them. Read- ing from any motive is better than satisfied ig- norance ; but, surely this motive is both morally and intellectualy unsound. Morally, it is an os- tentation, an affectation of an interest you do not feel. Intellectually, it is on a par with cram; it is no more knowledge than what is got up for the purpose of an examination is knowledge. What is read for the sake of reproducing in talk has neither gone to the head nor the heart. When any one says to me in company, “ Have you read so-and-so?” I always feel an inclination to an- swer, “No, I never read anything,” for I know the next question will be, “ Did you like it?” and there an end. Those who most read books don’t want to talk about them. The conversa- tion of the man who reads to any purpose will be flavored by his reading; but it will not be about his reading. The people who read in order to talk about it, are people who read the books of the season because they are the fashion—books which come in with the season and go out with it. ‘When a new book comes out I read an old one,” said the poet Rogers. And Lord Dudley— the great Lord Dudley, not the present possessor of the title—writes to the Bishop of Llandaff: “I read new publications unwillingly. In literature I am fond of confining myself to the best com- pany, which consists chiefly of my old acquaint- ance with whom I am desirous of becoming more intimate. I suspect that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book over again than to read a new one for the first time. . . . Is it not better to try to elevate and endow one’s mind by the constant study and contemplation of the great models, than merely to know of one’s own knowledge that such a book a’nt worth reading ?”—(“ Lord Dudley's Letters.”) We wear clothes of a particular cut because other people are wearing them. That is so. For to differ markedly in dress and behavior from other people is a sign of a desire to attract attention to yourself, and is bad taste. Dress is social, but intellect is individual: it has special wants at special moments. The tendency of edu- cation through books is to sharpen individuality, and to cultivate independence of mind, to make a man cease to be “ the contented servant of the things that perish.” Dr. Halley used to recommend reading on medical grounds. He said close study prolonged life by keeping a man out of harm’s way. But I never met with any one who acted upon Dr. Halley’s advice, and chose to read hard that he might live long. And is there not truth in the opposite doctrine, which Mortimer Collins (“Se- cret of Long Life,” page 136) inculcates, that “the laziest men live longest ? ” I have not, remember, raised the question, Why should we read? This is the most im- portant question of all those which can be raised about books. But I am not to-night presuming to advise you as to what you should do. I am only observing our ways with books—recording facts, not exhorting to repentance. Why do men read? What is the motive power which causes the flow of that constant supply of new books which flows over at those literary drinking-foun- tains, Smith’s book-stalls ? Making exception of the specialty books— those which we get in order to learn some special subject—there is one, and one only, motive of all this reading—the desire of entertainment. Books are in our day the resource of our leisure; we turn to them in default of better amusement. Of course, you will think immediately of the many exceptions which there are to this general state- ment. But, as I said before, the character of the books offered in the book-market is deter- mined by the nature of the general demand. And it is the character of the general literature of the day which fixes our attention at this moment. In taking the Smith and Mudie counter as the standard of the literature consumed by the English public, I do so because the class of book they supply is the best average class of book going—of “new book.” I do not forget how small a fraction, after all, of the 34,000,000 Britons the consumers of books of this class are. We sometimes speak of the readers of this class of book as “the reading public.” But I do not forget that there exists a wider “reading

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T @BEROBRER AT i en i ee ee ee | public,” which is below the Smith and Mudie level. Enter a book-shop in a small town in a remote province, and you will find on its counter and shelves a class of literature of a grade so mean that a Smith’s book-stall instantly rises fifty per cent in your imagination. Ask for Thackeray’s “ Vanity Fair.” The well-dressed young person who attends to the shop never heard of Thackeray. The few books she can offer are mostly children’s books—grown people don’t seem to read in country places—or they are books of a denominational cast, books which perhaps are called religious, but which are, strictly speaking, about nothing at all, and made up of strings of conventional phraseology. Some of these books, unknown as they are to the reviews, have a circulation which far surpasses anything ever reached by one of our “new books” which has been ushered into the world by compliment- ary notices in all the papers. In estimating the intellectual pabulum most relished by my coun- trymen, I do not forget that “ Zadkiel’s Almanac” had a circulation of 200,000. Commander Mor- rison, R. N., who only died as lately as 1874, was perhaps the most successful author of the day, and a great authority on astrology. He wrote, among other books, one entitled “ The Solar Sys- tem as it is, and not as it is represented by the Newtonians.” He brought an action against Sir Edward Belcher, who had called him in print an impostor. It was tried before Chief - Justice Cockburn, and Commander Morrison, who re- tained Sergeant Ballantine, obtained damages. The Court of Queen’s Bench decided that Zad- kiel was not an impostor. The tastes of this widest circle of readers—the 200,000 abonnés of Zadkiel—are not now under our consideration. We are speaking of the “reading public” in the narrower sense, and of what are called new books. And I was saying that this public reads for amuse- ment, and that this fact decides the character of the books which are written for us. As amusement I do not think reading can rank very high. When the brain has been strained by some hours’ attention to business some form of open-air recreation is what would be hygienically best for it. An interesting game which can be played in the fresh air is the health- iest restorative of the jaded senses. It is a na- tional misfortune that as our great towns have grown up in England there has been no reserve of ground in the public interest. The rich have their fox-hunting and their shooting, their deer- forests and their salmon-rivers. But these are only for the wealthy. Besides, they are pastimes BOORS AND ORITICS. turned into pursuits. What is wanted, in the in- terest of the humbler classes, is public places of considerable extent, easily accessible, where rec- reation for an hour or two can be always at hand, After manual labor rest and a book, after desk-work active exercise and a game, are what Nature and reason prescribe. As every village should have its village green, so every town should have its one or more recreation-grounds, where cricket, fives, tennis, croquet, bowls, can be got at a moment’s notice in a wholesome atmosphere, not impregnated by gas, not poisoned by chemical fumes. Our towns are sadly behind in the sup- ply of pleasant places of public resort. The co- operative principle has yet to be applied to open- air amusements. It is surely bad economy of life that in one of our wealth-producing centres a game of fives should be almost as difficult to get as a salmon-river. Still, even if these things were to be had, in- stead of being as they are unprocurable, in the long winter of our northern climate there are many months in the year during which our amuse- ment must be sought in-doors. Here come in the social amusements — theatres, concerts, dances, dinners, and the varied forms of social gathering. It is when all these fail us, and because they do so often fail us, that we have recourse to the final resource of all—reading. Of in-door enter- tainment the truest and most human is that of conversation. But this social amusement is not, in all circumstances, to be got, and when it is to be had we are not always fit for it. The art of conversation is so little cultivated among us, the tongue is so little refined, the play of wit and the flow of fancy so little encouraged or esteemed, that our social gatherings are terribly stupid and wearisome. Count Pozzo di Borgo, miserable amid the luxurious appliances of an English coun- try-house—it is Lord Houghton tells the story (“ Monographs,” page 212)—“ drew some newly- arrived foreigner into a corner with the eager request, ‘ Viens done causer, je n'ai pas causé pour quinze jours.’ Neither our language nor our temperament favors that sympathetic inter- course, where the feature and the gesture are as active as the voice, and in which the pleasure does not so much consist in the thing communi- cated as in the act of communication, and still less are we inclined to cultivate that true art of conversation, that rapid counterplay and vivid exercise of combined intelligences, which presup- poses long and due preparation of the imagina- tion and the intellect.” Instead of stimulating, we bore each other to

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a y as eee de vs i Pe ¢.> ” - 22 r - ’ 4 . — . - : . “ . . : : ; , 170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the death. It is that we may escape from the | it is not surprising that the species of composition an terrible ennui of society that we have recourse to | which is most in favor should be prose fiction, Ye a book. We go to read not from craving for ex- | In every other style of literary art, prose or poeti- sa citement, but as a refuge from the tedium vite, | cal, our age looks back to by-gone ages for models to the irksomeness of herding with uninteresting | which it is ever endeavoring to approach, but dare TI fellow-mortals. The man who is engaged all the | not hope to surpass. In the novel, our age, but or A morning, and has his faculties stimulated, his in- | especially our own country, may justly boast to el tellect edged to keenness by the details of busi- | have attained a development of inventive power gi ness, cannot, on his return to his fireside, subside | unequaled in the annals of all literature. It is in into vacuity. He must have something to whittle | not only that this is the most prolific species of t at. He reads his newspaper as long as he can, | book, more than one novel per working-day being st and, when the newspaper at last gives out, he | given to the world every year, but it is that the T falls back upon a book. The native of a southern | most accomplished talent which is at work for t climate who has no business, and whose mind is | the book-market is devoted to this class of pro- a never roused to exertion, has no such craving. | duction. If, as I laid down at the commence- t The Italian noble does without books. He passes | ment of this lecture, supply is governed by de- C his day in listless indolence, content without ideas. | mand, it is clear that this result must be so. En- There is no vacuity, and therefore no supply of | tertainment without mental effort being our re- books to fill it. quirement, we must have our politics, our history, Here is the key to the character of the litera- | our travels, presented in an entertaining way. ture of our age. Books are a response to a de- | But fiction, if taken from every-day life, and not ] mand. And the demand is a demand for recrea- | calling upon us for that effort of imagination tion by minds roused to intelligence but not to | which is necessary to enable us to realize a past ' intellectual activity. The mind of the English | age, is entertainment pure, without admixture of reader is not, as in the southern man, torpid, | mental strain or hitch of any kind. non-existent; it is alive and restless. But it is For our modern reader it is as necessary that not animated by a curiosity to inquire, it is not | the book should be new as that it should be awake to the charm of ideas, it is only passively | bound in colored cloth. Your confirmed novel- recipient of images. An idea is an excitant, | reader has a holy horror of second perusals, and comes from mind, and calls forth mind. An | would rather read any trash for the first time image is a sedative. than “ Pendennis ” or “ Pride and Prejudice” for The bvoks, then, which are produced have to | the second. The book must be written in the meet this mental condition of the reader. They | dialect and grammar of to-day. No word, no have to occupy his attention without making any | construction, no phrase, which is not current in call upon his vigilance. There must be no reflex | the newspaper, must be used. A racy and idio- mental action. Meditation is pain. Fresh images | matic style, fed by the habitual reading of our must flow as a continuous douche of tepid water | old English literature, would choke the young over the mind of the reader, which must remain | man who does the literature for the Daily Tele- pleased but passive. Books must be so contrived | graph, and he would issue in “ the largest circu- as to produce and sustain this beatific self-forget- | lation in the world” a complaint that Mr. —— fulness. That is called by publishers a success- | seems to write strange English! Our modern ful book which just hits this mental level. To | reader requires his author’s book, as he does his express all I have tried to say in one epithet—a | newspaper leader or his clergyman's sermon, to book must be readable. Ifa book has this qual- | be the echo of his own sentiments. If Lady ity, it does not much matter what it is about. | Flora were to ask me to recommend her a book Any subject will answer the purpose if the treat- | to read, and I were to suggest Johnson’s “ Lives ment be agreeable. The book must be so written | of the Poets,” do you think she would ever ask that it can be read without any force being put | my advice again? Or, if I were to mention Tre- upon the attention. It must not require thought | velyan’s “ Life of Lord Macaulay,” the best biog- or memory. Nor must there be any learned rub- | raphy written since Lockhart’s “ Life of Scott,” bish about. A Latin quotation may be ventured | she would say, “ We had that long ago” (it came only by an established favorite. Ouida did once | out in 1876); “I mean a new book.” hazard “facilis descensus Avernus,” but it was | To a veteran like myself, who have watched ill-taken by the critics. the books of forty seasons, there is nothing so Under these conditions of the public demand, | old as a new book. An astonishing sameness

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ST ews 2 eT A MIGHTY SEA- WAVE. 171 and want of individuality pervades modern books. You would think they were all written by the same map. The ideas they contain do not seem to have passed through the mind of the writer. They have not even that originality—the only originality which John Mill in his modesty would claim for himself—“ which every thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and express- ing truths which sre common property "—(“ Au- tobiography,” p. 119). When you arejn London step into the reading-room of the British Museum. There is the great manufactory out of which we turn the books of the season. We are all there at work for Smith and Mudie. It was so before there was any British Museum. It was so in Chaucer’s time: “ For out of the olde fleldes, as men saythe, Cometb all this newe corn fro yere to yere, And out of olde bookes in good faithe Cometh all this newe science that men lere.”’ It continued to be so in Cervantes’s day. “There are,” says Cervantes in “ Don Quixote ” (32), “ men who will make you books and turn them loose in the world with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.” It is not, then, any wonder that De Quincey should account it (“ Life of De Quincey,” i., 385) “ one of the misfortunes of life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have ¢ead them,” or that Mrs. Brown- ing should say : “ The ne plus ultra of intellectual indolence is this reading of books. It comes next to what the Americans call whittling.” And I cannot doubt that Bishop Butler had observed the same phenomenon which has been my subject to-night when he wrote, in 1729, a century and a half ago (“ Preface to Sermons,” p. 4): “The great number of books of amusement which daily come in one’s way, have in part occasioned this idle way of considering things. By this means time, even in solitude, is happily got rid of with- out the pain of attention; neither is any part of it more put to the account of idleness, one can scarce forbear saying is spent with less thought, than great part of that which is spent in read- ing.” —Fortnightly Review. A MIGHTY Q* May 10th last a tremendous wave swept the Pacific Ocean from Peru northward, westward, and southward, traveling at a rate many times greater than that of the swiftest express-train. For reasons best known to themselves, writers in the newspapers have by almost common consent called this phenomenon a tidal wave. But the tides have had nothing to do with it. Unquestionably the wave resulted from the upheaval of the bed of the ocean in some part of that angle of the Pacific Ocean which is bounded by the shores of Peru and Chili. This region has Jong been celebrated for tremen- dons submarine and subterranean upheavals. The opinions of geologists and geographers have been divided as to the real origin of the dis- turbances by which at one time the land, at an- other time the sea, and at yet other times (often- er in fact than either of the others) both land and sea, have been shaken as by some mighty im- prisoned giant, struggling, like Prometheus, to cast from his limbs the mountain-masses which hold them down. Some consider that the seat of the Vulcanian forces lies deep below that part of the chain of the Andes which lies at the apex of SEA-WAVE. the angle just mentioned, and that the direction of their action varies according to the varying conditions under which the imprisoned gases find vent. Others consider that there are two if not several seats of subterranean activity. Yet oth- ers suppose that the real seat of disturbance lies beneath the ocean itself, a view which seems to find support in several phenomena of recent Pe- ruvian earthquakes. Although we have not as yet full information concerning the great wave which in May last swept across the Pacific, and northward and southward along the shores of the two Americas, it may be interesting to consider some of the more striking features of this great disturbance of the so-called peaceful ocean, and to compare them with those which have characterized former disturbances of a similar kind. We may thus, perhaps, find some evidence by which an opinion may be formed as to the real seat of subterra- nean activity in this region. It may seem strange, in dealing with the case of a wave which apparently had its origin in or near Peru on May 9th, to consider the behavior of a volcano, distant 5,000 miles from this region,

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172 a week before the disturbance took place. But, although the coincidence may possibly have been accidental, yet, in endeavoring to ascertain the true seat of disturbance, we must overlook no evidence, however seemingly remote, which may throw light on that point; and as the sea-wave generated by the disturbance reached very quick- ly the distant region referred to, it is by no means unlikely that the subterranean excitement which the disturbance relieved may have manifested its effects beforehand at the same remote volcanic region. Be this as it may, it is certain that on May Ist the great crater of Kilauea, in the island of Hawaii, became active, and on the 4th severe shocks of earthquake were felt at the Volcano House. At three in the afternoon a jet of lava was thrown up to a height of about 100 feet, and afterward some fifty jets came into action. Subsequently jets of steam issued along the line formed by a fissure four miles in length down the mountain-side. The disturbance lessened considerably on the 5th, and an observing-party examined the crater. They found that a rounded hill, 700 feet in height, and 1,400 feet in diameter, had been thrown up on the plain which forms the floor of the crater. Fire and scoria were spouted up in various places. Before rejecting utterly the belief that the ac- tivity thus exhibited in the Hawaii volcano had its origin in the same subterrene or submarine region as the Peruvian earthquake, we should re- member that other regions scarcely less remote have been regarded as forming part of this great Vulcanian district. The violent earthquakes which occurred at New Madrid, in Missouri, in 1812, took place at the same time as the earthquake of Caraccas, the West Indian volcanoes being si- multaneously active; and earthquakes had been felt in South Carolina for several months before the destruction of Caraccas and La Guayra. Now we have abundant evidence to show that the West Indian volcanoes are connected with the Peruvian and Chilian regions of Vulcanian ener- gy, and the Chilian region is about as far from New Madrid as Arica in Peru from the Sand- wich Isle. It was not, however, until about half-past eight on the evening of May 9th that the Peru- vian earthquake began. A severe shock, lasting from four to five minutes, was felt along the en- tire southern coast, even reaching Autofagasta. The shock was so severe that it was impossible, in many places, to stand upright. It was suc- ceeded by several others of less intensity. While the land was thus disturbed, the sea THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ' was observed to be gradually receding, a move- ment which former experiences have taught the Peruvians to regard with even more terror than the disturbance of the earth itself. The waters which had thus withdrawn, as if concen. trating their energies to leap more fiercely on their prey, presently returned in a mighty wave, which swept past Callao, traveling southward with fearful velocity, while in its train followed wave after wave, until no less than eight had taken their part in the work of destruction. At Mollendo the railway was torn up by the sea for a distance of 300 feet. A violent hurricane which set in afterward from the south pre vented all vessels from approaching, and un- roofed most of the houses in the town. At Ari- ca the people were busily engaged in prepar- ing temporary fortifications to repel a threat- ened assault of the rebel ram Huiscar, at the moment when the roar of the earthquake was heard. The shocks here were very numerous, and caused immense damage in the town, the people flying to the Morro for safety. The sea was suddenly perceived to recede from the beach, and a wave from ten feet to fifteen feet in height rolled in upon the shore, carrying before it all that it met. Eight times was this assault of the ocean repeated. The earthquake had leveled to the ground a portion of the custom-house, the railway-station, the submarine-cable office, the hotel, the British consulate, the steamship-agen- cy, and many private dwellings. Owing to the early hour of the evening, and the excitement attendant on the proposed attack of the Huiscar, every one was out and stirring; but the only loss of life which was reported is that of three little children who were overtaken by the water. The progress of the wave was only stopped at the foot of the hill on which the church stands, which point is farther inland than that reached in Au- gust, 1868, Four miles of the embankment of the railway were swept away like sand before the wind. Locomotives, cars, and rails, were hurled about by the sea like so many playthings, and left in a tumbled mass of rubbish. The account proceeds to say that the United States steamer Waters, stranded by the bore of 1868, was lifted up bodily by the wave at Arica, and floated two miles north of her former posi- tion. The reference is, no doubt, to the double- ender Wateree, not stranded by a bore (a term utterly inapplicable to any kind of sea-wave at Arica, where there is no large river), but carried in by the great wave which followed the earth- quake of August 13th. The description of the

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ht A MIGHTY wave at Arica on that occasion should be com- pared with that of the wave last May. About twenty minutes after the first earth-shock the sea was seen to retire, as if about to leavs the shores wholly dry; but presently its waters returned with tremendous force. A mighty wave, whose length seemed immeasurable, was seen advancing like a dark wall upon the unfortunate town, a large part of which was overwhelmed by it. Two ships, the Peruvian corvette America, and the American double-ender Wateree, were carried nearly half a mile to the north of Arica, beyond the railroad which runs to Tacna, and there left stranded high and dry. As the English vice-con- sul at Arica estimated the height of this enormous wave at fully fifty feet, it would not seem that the account of the wave of last May has been ex- aggerated, for a much less height is, as we have seen, attributed to it, though, as it carried the Wateree still farther inland, it must have been higher. The small loss of life can be easily un- derstood, when we consider that the earthquake was not followed instantly by the sea-wave. Warned by the experience of the earthquake of 1868, which most of them must have remembered, the inhabitants sought safety on the higher grounds until the great wave and its successors had flowed in. We read that the damage done was greater than that caused by the previous ca- lamity, the new buildings erected since 1868 being of a more costly and substantial class. Merchan- dise from the custom-house and stores was car- ried by the water to a point on the beach five miles distant. At Iquique, in 1868, the great wave was esti- mated at fifty feet in height. We are told that it was black with the mud and slime of the sea-bot- tom. “Those who witnessed its progress from the upper balconies of their houses, and present- ly saw its black mass rushing close beneath their feet, looked on their safety as a miracle. Many buildings were, indeed, washed away, and in the ‘ow-lying parts of the town there was a terrible loss of life.” Last May the greatest mischief at Iquique would seem to have been caused by the earthquake, not by the sea-wave, though this, also, was destructive in its own way. ‘‘Iquique,” we are told, “is in ruins. The movement was ex- perienced there at the same time and with the same force” (as at Arica). “Its duration was ex- actly four minutes and a third. It proceeded from the southeast, exactly from the direction of Tlaga.”’ The houses built of wood and cane tum- bled down at the first attack, lamps were broken, and the burning oil spread over and set fire to SEA-WAVE. the ruins. Three companies of firemen, German, Italian, and Peruvian, were instantly at their posts, although it was difficult to maintain an up- right position, shock following shock with dread- ful rapidity. Nearly 400,000 quintals of nitrate in the stores at Iquique and the adjacent ports of Molle and Pisagua were destroyed. The Brit- ish bark Caprera and a German bark sank, and all the coasting-craft and small boats in the har- bor were broken to pieces, and drifted about in every direction. At Chanavaya, a small town at the guano- loading deposit known as Pabellon de Pica, only two houses were left standing out of four hun- dred. Here the earthquake-shock was specially severe. In some places the earth opened in crev- ices seventeen yards deep, and the whole surface of the ground was changed. The shipping along the Peruvian and Bolivian coast suffered terribly. The list of vessels lost or badly injured at Pabellon de Pica alone reads like the list of a fleet. We have been particular in thus describing the effects produced by the earthquake and sea- wave on the shores of South America, in order that the reader may recognize in the disturbance produced there the real origin of the great wave which a few hours later reached the Sandwich Isles, 5,000 miles away. Doubt has been enter- tained respecting the possibility of a wave, other than the tidal wave, being transmitted right across the Pacific. Although in August, 1868, the course of the great wave which swept from some region near Peru, not only to the Sandwich Isles, bat in all directions over the entire ocean, could be clearly traced, there were some who considered the connection between the oceanic phenomena and the Peruvian earthquake a mere coincidence. It is on this account, perhaps, chiefly, that the evidence obtained last May is most important. It is interesting, indeed, as showing how tremendous was the disturbance which the earth’s frame must then have under- gone. It would have been possible, however, had we no other evidence, for some to have maintained that the wave which came in upon the shores of the Sandwich Isles a few hours after the earth- quake and sea-disturbance in South America was, in reality, an entirely independent phenome- non. But when we compare the events which happened last May with those of August, 1868, and perceive their exact similarity, we can no longer reasonably entertain any doubt of the really stupendous fact that the throes of the earth in and near Peru are of sufficient energy to send an oceanic wave right across the Pacific, and of

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174 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. such enormous height at starting, that, after ' traveling with necessarily diminishing height the’ whole way to Hawaii, it still rises and falls through thirty-six feet. The real significance of this amaz- ing oceanic disturbance is exemplified by the | wave-circles which spread around the spot where a stone has fallen into a smooth lake. We know how, as the circle widens, the height of the wave grows less and less, until, at no great distance from the centre of disturbance, the wave can no longer be discerned, so slight is the slope of its | advancing and following faces. How tremen-_ dous, then, must have been the upheeval of the bed of ocean by which wave-circles were sent across the Pacific, retaining, after traveling 5,000 miles from the centre of disturbance, the height of a two-storied house! In 1868, indeed, we know (now even more certainly than then) that the wave traveled very much farther, reaching | the shores of Japan, of New Zealand, and of | Australia, even if it did not make its way through the East Indian Archipelago to the Indian Ocean, | as some observations seem to show. Doubtless we shall hear, in the course of the next few months, of the corresponding effects of the spread | of last May’s mighty wave athwart the Pacific, though the dimensions of the wave of last May, | when it reached the Sandwich Isles, fell far short of those of the great wave of August 13-14, 1868. It will be well to make a direct comparison between the waves of May last and August, 1868, in this respect, as also with regard to the rate at which they would seem to have traversed the dis- tance between Peru and Hawaii. On this last point, however, it must be noted that we cannot form an exact opinion until we have ascertained the real region of Vulcanian disturbance on each oceasion. It is possible that a careful examina- tion of times, and of the direction in which the wave-front advanced upon different shores, might serve to show where this region lay. We should not be greatly surprised to learn that it was far | from the continent of South America. | The great wave reached the Sandwich Isles places the difference was much less, being in some only three feet, a circumstance doubtless due to interference, waves which had reached the same spot, along different courses, chancing so to arrive that the crest of one corresponded with the trough of the other, so that the resulting wave was only the difference of the two. We must explain, however, in the same way, the _ highest waves of thirty-six to forty feet, which were doubtless due to similar interference, crest agreeing with crest, and trough with trough, so that the resulting wave was the sum of the two which had been divided, and had reached the same spot along different courses. It would fol- low that the higher of the two waves was about twenty-one feet high, the lower about eighteen feet high; but as some height would be lost in the encounter with the shore-line, wherever it lay, on which the waves divided, we may fairly assume that in the open ocean, before reaching the Sandwich group, the wave had a height of nearly thirty feet from trough to crest. We read, in accordance with this explanation, that “ the regurgitations of the sea were violent and com- plex, and continued through the day.” The wave, regarded as a whole, seems to have reached all the islands at the same time. If this is confirmed by later accounts, we shall be com- pelled to conclude that the wave reached the group with its front parallel to the length of the group, so that it must have come (arriving as it did from the side toward which Hilo lies) from the northeast. It was then not the direct wave from Peru, but the wave reflected from the shores of California, which produced the most marked effects. We can understand well, this being so, that the regurgitations of the sea were complex. Any one who has watched the inflow of waves on a beach so lying within an angle of the shore, that while one set of waves comes straight in from the sea, another thwart set comes from the shore forming the other side of the angle, will understand how such waves differ from a set of ordinary rollers. The crests of the two sets form between four and five on the morning of May | a sort of network, ever changing as each set rolls 10th, corresponding to about five hours later of | on; and considering any one of the four-cornered Peruvian time. An oscillation only was first ob- | meshes of this wave-net, the observer will notice served at Hilo, on the east coast of the great | that, while the middle of the raised sides rises southern island of Hawaii, the wave itself not | little above the surrounding level, because here reaching the village till about a quarter before | the crests of one set cross the troughs of the five. The greatest difference between the crest | other, the corners of each quadrangle are higher and trough of the wave was found to be thirty- | than they would be in either set taken separately, six feet here; but at the opposite side of the | while the middle of the four-cornered space is island, in Kealakeakua Bay (where Captain Cook , correspondingly depressed. The reason is, that died), amounted only to thirty feet, In other at the corners of the wave-net crests join with | | | |

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= Ow Oe; @82e me @ FS SES crests to raise the water-surface, while in the middle of the net (not the middle of the sides, but the middle of the space inclosed by the four sides) trough joins with trough to depress the water-surface.! We must take into account the circumstance that the wave which reached Hawaii last May was probably reflected from the California coast, when we endeavor to determine the rate at which the sea-disturbance was propagated across the Atlantic. The direct wave would kave come sooner, and may have escaped notice because arriving in the night-time, as it would necessarily have done if a wave which traveled to California, and thence, after reflection, to the Sandwich group, arrived there at a quarter before five in the morning following the Peruvian earthquake. We shall be better able to form an opinion on this point after considering what happened in August, 1868. The earth-throe on that occasion was felt in Peru about five minutes past five on the evening of August 13th. Twelve hours later, or shortly before midnight, August 13th, Sandwich Island time (corresponding to 5 a. m., August 14th, Pe- ruvian time), the sea round the group of the Sand- wich Isles rose in a surprising manner, “ inso- much that many thought the islands were sink- ing, and would shortly subside altogether beneath the waves. Some of the smaller islands were for a time completely submerged. Before long, how- ever, the sea fell again, and as it did so the ob- servers found it impossible to resist the impres- sion that the islands were rising bodily out of the water. For no less than three days this strange oscillation of the sea continued to be ex- perienced, the most remarkable ebbs and floods being noticed at Honolulu, on the island of Oa- hu.” The distance between Honolulu and Arica is about 6,300 statute miles; so that, if the wave traveled directly from the shores of Peru to the Sandwich Isles, it must have advanced at an av- erage rate of about 525 miles an hour (about 450 knots an hour), This is nearly half the rate at which the earth's surface near the equator is car- 1 The phenomena here described are well worth ob- serving on their own account as affording a very in- structive and, at the same time, very beautiful illustra- tion of wave-motions. They can be well seen at many of our watering-places. The same laws of wave-mo- tion can be readily illustrated, also, by throwing two stones into a large, smooth pool at points a few yards apert. The crossing of the two sets of circular waves Produces a wave-net, the meshes of which vary in shape according to their position. A MIGHTY SEA-WAVE. ried round by the earth’s rotation, or is about the rate at which parts in latitudes 62° or 63° north are carried round by rotation; so that the mo- tion of the great wave in 1868 was fairly com- parable with one of the movements which we are accustomed to regard as cosmical. We shall presently have something more to say on this point. Now, last May, as we have seen, the wave reached Hawaii at about a quarter to five in the morning, corresponding to about ten, Peruvian time. Since, then, the earthquake was felt in Peru at half-past eight on the previous evening, it follows that the wave, if it traveled directly from Peru, must have taken about thirteen and a half hours, or an hour and a half longer, in trav- eling from Peru to the Sandwich Isles, than it took in August, 1868. This is unlikely, because ocean-waves travel nearly at the same rate in the same parts of the ocean, whatever their dimen- sions, so only that they are large. We have, then, in the difference of time occupied by the wave in May last and in August, 1868, in reach- ing Hawaii, some corroboration of the result to which we were led by the arrival of the wave simultaneously at all the islands of the Sandwich group—the inference, namely, that the observed wave had reached these islands after reflection from the California shore-line. As the hour when the direct wave probably reached Hawaii was about a quarter-past three in the morning, when not only was it night-time, but also a time when few would be awake to notice the rise and fall of the sea, it seems not at all improbable that the direct wave escaped notice, and that the wave actually observed was the reflected wave from California. The direction, also, in which the os- cillation was first observed corresponds well with this explanation. It is clear that the wave which traversed the Pacific last May was somewhat inferior in size to that of August, 1868, which, therefore, still de- serves to be called (as then by the present writer) the greatest sea-wave ever known. The earth- quake, indeed, which preceded the oceanic dis- turbance of 1868 was far more destructive than that of May last, and the waves which came in upon the Peruvian and Bolivian shores were larger. Nevertheless, the wave of last May was not so far inferior to that of August, 1868, but that we may expect to hear of its course being traced athwart the entire extent of the Pacific Ocean. When we consider the characteristic features of the Peruvian and Chilian earthquakes, and especially when we note how wide is the extent

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176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of the region over which their action is felt in one | way or another, it can scarcely be doubted that the earth’s Vulcanian energies are at present more actively at work throughout that region than in any other. There is nothing so remarkable, one may even say so stupendous, in the history of subterranean disturbance as the alternation of mighty earth-throes, by which, at one time, the whole of the Chilian Andes seem disturbed, and anon the whole of the Peruvian Andes, In Chili scarcely a year ever passes without earthquakes, and the same may be said of Peru; but, so far as great earthquakes are concerned, the activity of the Peruvian region seems to synchronize with the comparative quiescence of the Chilian region, and wice versa, Thus, in 1797, the terrible earth- quake occurred known as the earthquake of Riobamba, which affected the entire Peruvian earthquake region. Thirty years later a series of tremendous throes shook the whole of Chili, permanently elevating the whole line of coast to the height of several feet. During the last ten years the Peruvian region has in turn been dis- turbed by great earthquakes. It should be added that between Chili and Peru there is a region about 500 miles in length in which scarcely any volcanic action has been observed. And, singu- larly enough, “this very portion of the Andes, to which one would imagine that the Peruvians and Chilians would fly as to a region of safety, is the part most thinly inhabited—insomuch that, as Von Buch observes, it is in some places entirely deserted.” One can readily understand that this enor- mous double region of earthquakes, whose oscil- lations on either side of the central region of comparative rest may be compared to the sway- ing of a mighty seesaw on either side of its point of support, should be capable of giving birth to throes propelling sea-waves across the Pacific Ocean. The throe actually experienced at any given place is relatively but an insignifi- cant phenomenon ; it is the disturbance of the entire region over which the throe is felt which must be considered in attempting to estimate the energy of the disturbing cause. The region shaken by the earthquake of 1868, for instance, was equal to at least a fourth of Europe, and probably to fully one-half. From Quito southward as far as Iquique—or along a full third part of the length of the South American Andes—the shock produced destructive effects. It was also distinctly felt far to the north of Quito, far to the south of Iquique, and inland to enormous distances. The disturbing force which thus shook 1,000,000 square miles of the earth’s surface must have been one of almost inconceiy. able energy. If directed entirely te the upheaval of a land-region no larger than England, those forces would have sufficed to have destroyed ut- terly every city, town, and village, within such a region ; if directed entirely to the upheaval of an oceanic region, they would have been capable of raising a wave which would have been felt on ev- ery shore-line of the whole earth. Divided even between the ocean on the one side and a land-re- gion larger than Russia in Europe on the other, those Vulcanian forces shook the whole of the land-region, and sent athwart the largest of our earth’s oceans a wave which ran in upon shores 10,000 miles from the centre of disturbance with a crest thirty feet high. Forces such as these may fairly be regarded as cosmical; they show unmistakably that the earth has by no means set- tled down into that condition of repose in which some geologists still believe. We may ask with the late Sir Charles Lyell whether, after contem- plating the tremendous energy thus displayed by the earth, any geologist will continue to assert that the changes of relative level of land and sea, so common in former ages of the world, have now ceased? and agree with him that if, in the face of such evidence, a geologist persists in maintaining this favorite dogma, it would be vain to hope, by accumulating proofs of similar con- vulsions during a series of ages, to shake the tenacity of his conviction— “ Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruins.” But there is one aspect in which such mighty sea-waves as in 1868, and again last May, have swept over the surface of our terrestrial oceans, remains yet to be considered. The oceans and continents of our earth must be clearly discernible from her nearer neighbors among the planets—from Venus and Mercury on the inner side of her path around the sun, and from Mars (though under less favorable condi- tions) from the outer side. When we consider, indeed, that the lands and seas of Mars can be clearly discerned with telescopic aid from our earth at a distance of 40,000,000 miles, we per- ceive that our earth, seen from Venus at little more than half this distance, must present a very interesting appearance. Enlarged, owing to great- er proximity, nearly fourfold, having a diameter nearly twice as great as that of Mars, so that at the same distance her disk would seem more than three times as large, more brightly illuminated by the sun in the proportion of about five to tw sh Ms ab ©o dis ar of bs be n al a v nD c t] 0 a fi e t t t t

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rth’s ceiy. 1 ut- ith A MIGHTY SEA-WAVE. 177 she would shine with a lustre exceeding that of Mars when in full brightness in the midnight sky about thirty times, and all her features would, of course, be seen with correspondingly-increased distinctness. Moreover, the oceans of our earth are so much larger in relative extent than those of Mars, covering nearly three-fourths instead of barely one-half of the surface of the world they belong to, that they would appear as far more marked and characteristic features than the seas and lakes of Mars. When the Pacific Ocean, in- deed, occupies centrally the disk of the earth which at the moment is turned toward any planet, nearly the whole of that disk must appear to be covered by the ocean. Under such circumstances the passage of a wide-spreading series of waves over the Pacific, at the rate of about 500 miles an hour, is a phenomenon which could scarcely fail to be discernible from Venus or Mercury, if either planet chanced to be favorably placed for the observation of the earth—always supposing there were observers in Mercury or Venus, and that these observers were provided with powerful telescopes. It must be remembered that the waves which spread over the Pacific on August 13-14, 1868, and again on May 9th-10th last, were not only of enormous range in length (measured along erest or trough), but also of enormous breadth (measured from crest to crest, or from trough to trough). Were it otherwise, indeed, the progress of a wave forty or fifty feet high (at starting, and thirty-five feet high after traveling 6,000 miles), at the rate of 500 miles per hour, must have proved destructive to ships in the open. ocean as well as along the shore-line. Suppose, for in- stance, the breadth of the wave from crest to crest one mile, then, in passing under a ship at the rate of 500 miles per hour, the wave would raise the ship from trough to crest—that is, through a height of forty feet—in one-thousandth part of an hour (for the distance from trough to crest is but half the breadth of the wave), or in less than four seconds, lowering it again in the same short interval of time, lifting and lowering it at the same rate several successive times. The velocity with which the ship would travel up- ward and downward would be greatest when she was midway in her ascent and descent, and would then be equal to about the velocity with which a body strikes the ground after falling from a height of four yards. It is hardly necessary to say that small vessels subjected to such tossing as this would inevitably be swamped. On even the largest ships the effect of such motion would 48 be-most unpleasantly obvious. Now, as a matter of fact, the passage of the great sea-wave in 1868 was not noticed at all on board ships in open sea. Even within sight of the shore of Peru, where the oscillation of the sea was most marked, the motion was such that its effects were referred to the shore. Weare told that observers on the deck of a United States war-steamer dis- tinctly saw the “ peaks of the mountains in the chain of the Cordilleras wave to and fro like reeds in a storm ;” the fact really being that the deck on which they stood was swayed toand fro. This, too, was in a part of the sea where the great wave had not attained its open-sea form, but was a rolling wave, because of the shallowness of the water. In the open sea, we read that the pas- sage of the great sea-wave was no more noticed than is the passage of the tidal wave itself. “ Among the hnndreds of ships which were sail- ing upon the Pacific when its length and breadth were traversed by the great sea-wave, there was not one in which any unusual motion was per- ceived.” The inference is clear that the slope of the advancing and following faces of the great wave was very much less than in the case above imagined; in other words, that the breadth of the wave greatly exceeded one mile—amounting, in fact, to many miles. Where the interval between the passage of succcssive wave-crests was noted, we can tell the actual breadth of the wave. Thus, at the Samo- an Isles, in 1868, the crests succeeded each other at intervals of sixteen minutes, corresponding to eight minutes between crest and trough. As we have seen that, if the waves were one mile in breadth, the corresponding interval would be onl four seconds, or only 120th part of eight minutes, it would follow that the breadth of the great wave, where it reached the Samoan Isles in 1868, was about 120 miles. Now, a wave extending right athwart the Pa- cific Ocean, and having a cross-breadth of more than 100 miles, would be discernible as a marked feature of the disk of our earth, seen, under the conditions described above, either from Mercury or Venus. It is true that the slope of the wave’s advancing and following surfaces would be but slight, yet the difference of illumination under the sun’s rays would be recognizable. Then, also, it is to be remembered that there was not merely a single wave, but a succession of many waves. These traveled also with enormous velocity; and though at the distance of even the nearest planet the apparent motion of the great wave, swift though it was in reality, would be so far reduced

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178 that it would bave to be estimated rather than actually seen, yet there would be no difficulty in thus perceiving it with the mind’s eye. The rate of motion, indeed, would almost be exactly the same as that of the equatorial part of the surface of Mars, in consequence of the planet’s rotation ; and this (as is well known to telescopists), though not discernible, directly produces, even in a few minutes, changes which a good eye can clearly recognize. We can scarcely doubt, then, that if our earth were so situated at any time when one of the great waves generated by Peruvian earth- quakes is traversing the Pacific that the hemi- sphere containing this ocean were turned fully illuminated toward Venus (favorably placed for observing her), the disturbance of the Pacific could be observed and measured by telescopists on that planet. Unfortunately, there is little chance that ter- restrial observers will ever be able to watch the progress of great waves athwart the oceans of Mars, and still less that any disturbance of the frame of Venus should become discernible to us by its effects. We can scarcely even be assured that there are lands and seas on Venus, so far as direct observation is concerned, so unfavorably is she always placed for observation; and though we see Mars under much more favorable condi- tions, his seas are too small and would seem to be too shallow (compared with our own) for great waves to traverse them such as could be dis- cerned from the earth. Yet it may be well to remember the possibil- ity that changes may at times take place in the nearer planets—thet errestrial planets, as they are commonly called, Mars, Venus, and Mereury— such as telescopic observation under favorable conditions might detect. Telescopists have, in- deed, described apparent changes, lasting only for “a short time, in the appearance of one of these planets, Mars, which may fairly be attributed to disturbances affecting its surface in no greater degree than the great Peruvian earthquakes have affected for a time the surface of our earth. For THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. instance, the American astronomer Mitchel says that, on the night of July 12, 1845, the bright po. lar snows of Mars exhibited an appearance never noticed at any preceding or succeeding observa- tion. In the very centre of the white surface ap. peared a dark spot, which retained its position during several hours. On the following evening not a trace of the spot could be seen. Again, the same observer says that, on the evening of August 30, 1845, he observed for the first time a small bright spot, nearly or quite round, project. ing out of the lower side of the polar spot. “In the early part of the evening,” he says, “the small bright spot seemed to be partly buried in the large one. After the lapse of an hour or more my attention was again directed to the planet, when I was astonished to find a manifest change in the position of the small bright spot. It had apparently separated from the large spot, and the edges alone of the two were now in contact, whereas when first seen they overlapped by an amount quite equal to one-third of the diameter of the small one. This, however, was merely an optical phenomenon, for on the next evening the spots went through the same apparent changes, as the planet went through the corresponding part of its rotation. But it showed the spots to be real ice-masses. The strange part of the story is, that in the course of a few days the smaller spot, which must have been a mass of snow and ice as large as Nova Zembla, gradually disap- peared.” Probably some great shock had sepa- rated an enormous field of ice from the polar snows, and it had eventually been broken up and its fragments carried away from the arctic regions by currents in the Martian oceans. It appears to us that the study of our own earth, and of the changes and occasional convulsions which affect its surface, gives to the observation of such phe- nomena as we have just described a new interest, Or rather, perhaps, it is not too much to say that telescopic observations of the planets derive their only real interest from such considerations.— Cornhill Magazine.

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T is interesting to observe the scientific treat- ment two or three hundred years ago of such questions as the origin of species and the migra- tion of the human race. I do not mean the pure- ly theological treatment of these subjects, for be- lief in the letter has ever been ready with its so- lutions of such difficult problems, but I mean the honest striving and mental effort of candid men to establish a harmony between Revelation, Rea- son,and Discovery. In this respect, it appears to me that a book by Abraham Milius, on the “Origin of Animals and the Migration of Peo- ples,” * published in the third quarter of the sev- eateenth century, at Salzburg, under the high ap- probation of the archbishop of that see, is wor- thy of a pretty thorough examination. This work shows, better than any other I know of, what a botch is made of our theories of the universe when Reason and Revelation exchange compli- ments and make compromises with each other. It also shows what a powerful influence the dis- covery of America and Australia, with their wealth of unknown animals and plants, exercised upon the traditional theories of the universe— theories that were undisturbed even by the dis- coveries of Copernicus and Kepler. I would remark that this work, originally written in Latin, was accessible to me only in the German translation of the Austrian Kreisphy- sikus, Christoph Bitterkraut,? a work of 400 pages; and, in view of the free and even arbi- trary dealing of the translator with the original, it may be that for many a contradiction in the text the translator alone is answerable. Of the life and rank of the author, or the date of publica- tion of the original, unfortunately, I have no in- formation. It is an agreeable surprise to find in a work published in the seventeenth century by permission of the church authorities a far freer exposition of the Scriptures than would be likely to be permitted in the same circles nowadays. The author promisingly sets out with a eulogy on human reason, which, as he says, can neither be driven nor tied, but which unerringly pursues its 1 Translated from the German by J. Fitzgerald, A.M. 2“ De Origine Animalinm et Migratione Populo- rum.” 3“ Merkwirdiger Diskursz von dem Ursprung der Thier und Aufzug der VOlcker,” 1670. THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.' By CARUS STERNE. 179 object of “ bringing to light what is hidden, and exploring the unknown,” Of those persons who make no use of “this so precious prerogative above other animals bestowed upon them, and indeed, as it were, inberited by them,” it is said that they “voluntarily confine themselves within the narrowness of the imbecility and ignorance of irrational brute beasts, from which they differ little if at all.” Among the subjects the investi- gation of which suggests itself to man’s reason, one of the most important is declared to be this : “How did not only man but all other animals also originally come into existence, and then how did they spread over the whole world and all its parts, there to dwell and to take up their abode ?” “ Be it,” says the author in another place, “ that such questions are rather over-curious, still they appear to be not altogether without reason.” In the words above quoted it strikes us as some- thing unusual, in the author’s day, that he speaks of “man and other animals,” thus reckoning man among animals, for a sharp line of demarkation was made between the two, in view of the ques- tion of creation. We readily incline to the supposition that the view held by a Linné, a Cuvier, an Agassiz, ac- cording to which the Creator with his own hands fashioned every living thing, whether plant, or animal, or man, was the originai doctrine of the Church. But this is entirely erroneous. The Christian Church has, ever since the origin of dogmatic theology, reserved exclusively to man the privilege of having sprung directly from the, hands of the Creator, and has characterized as false and contradictory of the Scriptures the sup- position that plants and animals had a like ori- gin. St. Ambrose and St. Basil, in their obser- vations on the “ work of the six days” (hexaem- eron), held that the words “ Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb,” etc., and “ Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,” are to be so understood that water and land have been endowed with the property of bearing all sorts of animals and plants and that this power remains, so that new plants, and animals may still come into existence without any parents. In fact it was even held that the work of the sixth day is as yet by no means com- pleted, and that in particular insects and all

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180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. smaller animals produced from “sweat, transpi- { question in what season of the year the world ration, and putrefaction,” only came into being at a far later period. Cornelius 4 Lapide reckoned even the mouse among these epigoni of the crea- tion. With such outward agreement as this between Christian and heathen philosophy, we are not to be surprised if in the work named above we find arguments in favor of this continued creation. We are informed how from a sod moistened with May-dew one may produce eels to stock his pond, and how from crabs’ claws one may produce scor- pions, to say nothing of the swarms of insects which spring from bodies in the state of decom- position. The Church was in full accord with this doctrine ; indeed, such was her position with regard to the hypothesis of spontaneous genera- tion that when, in 1743, the English priest John Turberville Needham observed the development of the “ wheat-eels” so called, she raised no ob- jection to his quoting the Bible in favor of his doctrine. According to Needham, Adam was pro- duced in the same way from the creative earth, and Eve sprung from Adam’s body like the bud of a polyp. Nay, when about the year 1674, in Florence, Francisco Redi expressed doubts as to the spontaneous generation of maggots in decom- posing flesh, having observed that they entered it in the form of eggs, the clergy raised the ery of “ Heresy |!” because in the book of Judges there is mention of a swarm of bees springing from the carcass of a lion. Thus do men change their positions ! Our author appears to have agreed fully with St. Basil in the doctrine that plants and animals not only were produced in the first in- stance by the power implanted in the earth, but that “even at the present day, and in the same manner, they do still take their rise from the earth.” He believed that he must apply his rea- son even to propositions of faith, and he was deeply concerned as to how this orthodox doc- trine of the spontaneous generation of animals was to be harmonized with the story of Noah’s deluge. “If wild animals and tame animals also are produced by the innate and implanted force of the earth, the Almighty God would never have ordered Noah to take the animals with him into the ark.” There the well-founded scruples of our author’s conscience found expression. It is highly instructive to observe the distinc- tion drawn between literal belief and reason, in the middle of the seventeenth century, by a stanch Christian believer, who thinks it worth while to enter on a profound investigation of the was created, and who adjudges this privilege to the spring-time. He unconsciously rejects faith and clings to reason. One cannot believe, he says, in substance, that Noah and his family con. cerned themselves about all manner of vermin to save them from the flood, so that they might still plague himself and all other men. Nor must we omit to consider how, during the long continu. ance of the deluge, he contrived to feed the rapa- cious animals and to restrain them from rend- ing the tame and the useful animals. True, Origen came to the conclusion that the wiid beasts were nicely separated; and St. Augustine said that their wildness was during this time in abeyance; but, as the author thinks, this could not have come to pass without a further miracle, for wild animals must have sustenance. “This is very questionable. If the case were so, there would not have been pair and pair of the unclean, and seven and seven of the clean animals, as the sacred text says, taken into the ark, but a great multitude ;” so, therefore, he adds in substance, to quiet consciences, we will suppose that they learned by a miracle to do without food. His own opinion he expresses more than once, that “the devout Noah took with him into the ark only his domestic, tame animals,” so that the pains of domestication might not be lost, and the damage from the flood made greater; “ but the noxious and rapacious animals were produced anew from the earth.” That animals can be created anew, the author concludes from the fact that there are many ani- mals that, of a certainty, never were created by God, and nevertheless possess a special form and life, namely, hybrids, as the mule, the lynx, and the leopard. But these animals, because they were not created by God, cannot fulfill the divine command, “Be fruitful and increase!” As is known, the lynx was at that time held to be a hybrid between the wild-cat and the wolf, and the leopard a hybrid between the lion and the pap- ther. The author looks on the phenomenon of hybrids as so strong a proof that creation cannot have taken place immediate, that he investigates the question as to who first raised a mule, coming to the conclusion that it was Ana, son of Sibon, an Idumzan, who lived in the days of Jacob and Esau. The chief objection of our independent Bible expounder against the story of Noah arose out of the impossibility of Noah “ bringing all animals from the uttermost bounds and places of Ameri- ca, and taking them into the ark, seeing that

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world ege to | faith re, he y con. nin to t still st we ntinu- rapa- True, ould Qn, le of ls ri- their species and genera were in former times never to be seen either in Asia or Armenia or other conterminous countries.” This considera- tion further leads our worshiper of reason to entertain doubts as to the myth which locates paradise in the centre of creation, and which rep- resents Adam as there bestowing upon all ani- mals the names they were thenceforth to bear. A multitude of strange plants and animals had then been introduced from America, awakening serious doubts in the minds of believers in the Bible. Every one could not be so complaisant as the painters, who straightway introduced the turkey and the sunflower into Adam’s garden of paradise, as though they had been there from the first. The deep impression made by this enrich- ing of the “ Garden of Paradise” (the name then given to zodlogical and botanic gardens) can be judged from the following passage: “My God, with what wonder do we view these strange ani- mals from so remote countries! How intently we consider all their lineaments, their forms, their colors, their whole bodies! Have they fallen down from heaven? What else are we to think when we see so many diversified plants, trees, roots, and seeds ?” Strong believers took the matter easy, as usu- al. Without more ado they declared the Cana- dian arbor-vite to be the long-sought tree of life of paradise; and in the guaiacum-tree of Brazil was found the tree from whose sacred wood was fashioned the cross of Christ. The passion-flow- er, which is limited to South America, originally bloomed on Golgotha, and so on. Of fishes and birds, as also of the seeds of plants, it was said ‘THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. that they had been carried by the winds or by | the waves from the Old World tothe New. “But gently, gently,” cries the cautious critic to these orthodox Hotspurs ; “ consider the matter a little more, and do not be over-hasty. Are there not to be found, beloved, among birds, many whose feathers are coarse, thick, hard, and heavy, and many that are very slow and, tardy in flight? Nay, are there not many that dread water, so that they will not venture to fly across a brook twelve paces wide, or at all events across a stream that is even a short quarter of a mile in width ? I say nothing at present of those which cannot fly at all, as ostriches, bustards, and the like. How, then, could such birds cross seas, streams, and rivers ?” The author admits that marine fishes might wander to a great distance, but here he notes another difficulty: “ Fishes, like all other animals, do not willingly quit their own place or their 181 usual waters where they have their abode, and being, and sustenance. Each species likes best to remain in its own waters, in its own brook. And as commonly each stream, nay, every little brooklet, has its own peculiar fishes, and as the latter thrive best therein, so, on the contrary, do they soon perish when transferred. Then,” he adds, “ there are many animals on the earth that will not venture to swim atall. Perhaps some one will object, and say that such quadruped ani- mals might have been carried in ships from our countries to the West Indies ; but this is absurd, and hard to believe, for who could ever be so reckless, nay, so crazy, as to tolerate the company of lions, bears, tigers, panthers, and other such ferocious beasts—to trust their cruel nature, and to take such animals on board ship? This, in truth, would be the same thing as taking to one’s bosom venomous snakes and vipers.” This circumspect critic, who clearly descried the outlines of animal and plant geography, then tells us that this experiment, were it to be made, would probably end in failure. He calls attention to the negative results following the attempt to carry “ over sea to New France, otherwise called Canada, different species of domesticated ani- mals.” Of these animals, some were unable to endure the sea-voyage, while others could not ac- commodate themselves to the strange climate ; and thus the experiment failed even with domes- tic animals, though these are far more cosmopoli- tan than wild animals. “ But,” continues the author, “ let us dismiss these vain ideas, and simply put this question to the learned: Are there not to be found in these Western Indies many and varied species, not only of wild and ferocious, but also of tame animals, that have never been seen or described either in Asia, in Europe, or in Africa, whereof it is said ‘ Africa semper aliquid novi’—‘ Africa is ever” presenting something new?’” And the same is true of the birds, fishes, and plants, of those coun- tries : “ Besides, there also exist in America, Mex- ico, Peru, and Magellanica, species of birds that were never seen either in Asia or in Europe until they were brought hither in ships. “ But here, again, some one might ask and say: ‘If, then, from Asia, as the first nurse, no less of mankind than of all the other animals and plants, nothing was carried into the other portions of the world, as Africa, Europe, and America, why then do those regions possess so great an abundance of all these things?’ My reply, which perhaps will to some appear singular, is that even He who created all animals and vegetation, of every kind,

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182 and planted the region round about Eden, in Asia, did the same in America; and there, by the self- same power, created all kinds of vegetables, flow- ers, trees, seeds, roots, and animals, endowing them with the same blessing, and bidding them to increase and multiply.” Thus does our independent expounder of the Mosaic tradition declare in favor of many central points of creation. Nor does the express state- ment of the Bible that all the animals were brought to Adam, so that he might name each, shake his conviction that the animals of America are native to American soil, and that the inhabi- tants of the oceanic islands are at home on those “ large and small isles of the sea.” This convic- tion, be exclaims, in the language of Virgil, is as immovable— “ Quam si dura silex aut stet Marpesia cautes.”’ From all this we see how deep was the impres- sion made by the inexhaustible variety of the plant and animal kingdoms of the New World. The error of the earlier zodlogists and botanists in supposing plants and animals to be the same the world over, so that they sought on the Rhine and in Belgium for the plants described by Theo- phrastus and Dioscorides, was at last exploded, after it had given rise to a voluminous literature, and to no end of confusion in nomenclature. As for the human inhabitants of America, Milius—just as science does in the present day— makes them an exception. He does not believe that they are, “as the ancient Egyptians and Athenians boasted themselves to be, autochthones and aborigines, sprung like mushroms and grass- hoppers from mud and ordure.” Unfortunately, we cannot affirm that this keen-sighted man reached this conclusion by way of ethnological | and anatomical argument. He rather bases his doctrine on curious theological premises, which quiet his scruples of conscience, and enable him | to consider man as something apart “from all other animals.” Like most scholars of his day, Milius could not imagine that to Moses and the other prophets of the Old and New Testament the existence of one-half of the world was all un- known. Accordingly, they sought in the Bible for passages that might have reference to the New World, and they found them in abundance, as is ever the case under like circumstances. But none of these references is anterior to the flood; and, therefore, it was supposed that, prior to that event, the Old World was not so over-populated as to necessitate a migration to the New. But now, since before the flood there were no human THE POPULAR SCIENCE MON THL Y¥.—SUPPLEMENT. beings in America and the islands of the sea, it of course follows that there were no sinners there. “Hence we must firmly hold that the deluge did not extend to all places on the globe; and, in particular, that it did not extend to America, Magellanica, and certain other islands.” This conclusion is also reached from the consid- eration that the fauna and flora of those coun- tries, differing as they do essentially from the fauna and flora of the Old World, could, in ease the deluge extended thither, never have been re- newed, inasmuch as the Creator has rested ever since the end of the sixth day. This argument is so contradictory of the views previously ex- pressed by Milius regarding the origin of plants and animals, that we are inclined to think that here we have an interpolation by the translator. It is not uninteresting to notice that even in those times men thought of the route to America via Japan—a route that must still be esteemed the most probable one, though ever since 1728 it has been known, thanks to Behring’s discovery, that Asia and America are separated by a pretty wide strait, whereas earlier it was supposed that they were united. Even Joseph & Costa, one of the earliest historians of America, gave free play to his imagination in tracking the migration by this route. According to this writer, the first human inhabitants of America emigrated from the Indus ana the Ganges, passing by way of China and Japan, and so reaching the shores of the Western Continent. On reaching land they trav- eled southward as far as the Andes, and there first rested from their weary journeyings. ‘‘ Mon- tanus,” says Milius, “affirms that there still ex- ists in Peru, near the mountains called by the Spaniards the Andes, a very ancient city, Juck- tam, so called after Jucktam or Jecktam, third son of Eber, whose descendants settled in Peru, and there built the first city.” Of Eber, great-grandson of Noah, we read in the Bible (Genesis x. 25-30): “Unto Eber were born two sons; the name of one was Peleg ; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan. . . . And their” (the sons of Joktan’s) “dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the east.” Further geographical determination being disre- garded, it was concluded that by the “ mount of the east” the Andes alone could be under- stood, for that range alone, on account of its height and extent, is worthy of being called par excellence the “ mount of the east.” And the inhabitants of Babylon, from which the migra- tion set out, might well call America the Land

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Sa, it it the lobe ; id to nds,” ™sid- coun- a the nm re- ever ment r eXx- lants of the East. This sagacious hypothesis of Mon- tanus’s is adopted not only by Joseph a Costa and George Horn, author of a work published in 1652, on “The Origin of the Americans” (De Originibus Americanis), but by all those who were concerned about reconciling with the Bible the discovery of America. Indeed, the problem was worthy of the assiduous study of the theo- logians. As we know, the Bible makes Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the ancestors of the Asiatics, the Africans, and the Europeans—America was overlooked; but now we have in Joktan an an- eestor for the people of that continent. The discovery of America must have been highly unpleasant news to the orthodox Church. St. Augustine, that Christian sophist and rhetori- cian who has always been over-estimated, says of the disputed point of the existence of antip- odes: “It is impossible that the opposite side of the earth should have inhabitants, for, among the descendants of Adam, Holy Scripture men- tions no such progeny.” Words fail Lactantius to characterize properly the foolishness of the mathematicians and astronomers of his time (third century), who regarded the existence of antipodes as an open question, and a possibility, nay, even as a probability. “Is it possible,” he exclaims, “for men to be so silly as to believe that on the other side of the earth the trees are turned down- ward, and that the feet of the inhabitants are higher than their heads? If we ask for the proofs of the monstrous opinion that objects on the other side do not fall downward, we get the reply that it is a physical property that heavy bodies, like the spokes of a wheel, tend toward the centre; while light bodies, as, for instance, clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the centre toward the heavenly spaces. Truly, I know not how I shall express myself about men who, walking in the wrong path, still obstinately pursue it, and labor to strengthen one foolish assumption with another still more foolish.” Nothing shows more plainly how severe was the blow suffered by the mystical view of creation, in the discovery of America, than does the stu- dious diligence with which men strove to find America in the Bible. be shown from the Scripture that the Western Hemisphere could not be inhabited, so men strove now to prove that this quarter of the world had been well known to the Jews ; nay, that the Jews had from immemorial time been in commercial relations with the people of America. The name As formerly it used to | THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 1838 of the country from which Solomon derived his treasures of gold, the Ophir of the ancients, was simply an anagram of Peru, the land of gold: Phiro = Peru, a very simple matter. Suddenlya light broke upon Mercurius, Postellus, Goropius, Becanus, Montanus, and other scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they vied with one another in belittling the services of Columbus, who had played them so scurvy a trick. They said that Solomon and all the peo- ples of antiquity had sent their ships to Ophir— the present Peru—and there was no new discov- ery at all. The worthy Milius even sympathizes with these depreciations of Columbus’s services, ex- pressing himself as follows about the American Ophir: “We may conjecture, nay, even with certainty conclude, that the golden land of Ophir, from which, besides the best and finest gold, Solomon also derived a great quantity of valua- ble wood, ivory, apes, péacocks, and parrots, is this very Peruvian province. At the present time we, too, derive from this same country a multitude of the same wonderful animals, precious woods of every kind, as ebony, paradise-wood, red, yellow, and white Brazil-wood; also the holy wood called guaiacum, sassafras, and many others. From the Red Sea, whence Solomon, that wisest of kings, used to fit out and dispatch his fleets, it has been found that the voyage can be conveniently made to America. From all this it very clearly appears that Solomon’s Ophir is the American country, Peru. This conclusion is further confirmed by the Bible text which says that the voyage to and fro took three years, whence it appears that the land of Ophir must have been very distant. But who could suppose that the voyage from the Arabian coast to the islands of Japan and Malacca, or to any other part of the East Indies, would take three years?” The author regards it as very probable that the voyage, then as yet unattempted, “from the Red Sea and its world-renowned port of Thir to Peru” and back again, would have taken three years, and thence draws the gratifying conclusion that the wise Solomon must have enjoyed no contracted geographical outlook. Surely, free research was almost nipped in the bud by the necessity imposed upon the stu- dent of taking account of traditional beliefs. Only after long struggling has it been able to reach that atmosphere of liberty in which alone it can live and thrive.—Kosmos.

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184 — tte ee he One THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ANIMAL DEPRAVITY. “ TT is of no use to talk about reason,” said a friend with whom we had been discussing the subject. “If you wish to establish man’s kin- ship with brutes, you must prove that they, too, are capable of vice, his imagined prerogative.” We could not deny that this was sound counsel. In sermons and platform orations, and in leading articles, man declaims, indeed, in favor of “ vir- tue.” But listen to him in his more confidential moments, when he flings aside his disguises. You will find that he then pronounces such of his own species as make some apparent approach to this official standard “nincompoops or hypocrites.” The faint praise with which he damns goodness but half hides the underlying sneer. Scarcely can you, in the German language, speak of a man in terms which convey a lower estimate of his abilities or his energies than when you call him “ eine gute Haut,” or “eine gute Seele.” On the contrary, “ein béser Kerl” is always understood to be clever and plucky. Even the virtuous English, senior wranglers in the school of hy- pocrisy, have similar idioms. “A good boy,” “amoral young man,” “a very good sort of fellow,” “a man with no harm in him,” are terms used by no means in a complimentary sense. Of all the literary diseases of the day “ goody-goodyism” is the one most despised by cultivated men of the world. On the other hand, when a woman is particularly well pleased with her lover does she not always call him a “ naugh- ty man?” Do all these phrases spring from a secret conviction that human vices are restrained less by conscience and high principle than by weakness or cowardice? Does the world sus- pect that the good man has often merely “ noth- ing in him?” But when we attempt to treat of the morals of brutes in order to find whether in that region lies the much-talked-of but evanescent boundary- line—when we seek to show that vice is, after all, not man’s exclusive attribute, we are met at once with the objection—“ Animals have, and can have, no moral life, as has man. They have no perception of right and wrong, but simply follow their propensities, and obey the laws of their being, from which, indeed, they have no power to depart.' This is, I think, a tolerably fair 1“ Animals, as a rule, do no more than follow their natural instincts..".—(Rev. G. Henslow, ** Theory of Evolution of Living Beings.’’) specimen of the language which demi-savants habitually use when treating of the lower ani: mals. “The kingdoms of freedom and of Na- ture” is an antithesis common in their mouths— the “kingdom of freedom,” forsooth, signifying mankind! It is, of course, exceedingly con- venient to have some imaginary a priori reason which renders any appeal to facts superfluous, or rather altogether impertinent. Being neither lunatics, metaphysicians, Calvinists, nor fallen angels,’ we shall not enlarge upon “ freedom;” we will merely declare that if men’s vaunted free-- dom relates to action it is shared by the gorilla. He is perfectly free to rise up or sit down, to come or go, to crack a nut, or to crush the skull of a “man and a brother,” just as he may think proper. That he is “free” to love or to hate,* to fear or hope, to believe or disbelieve, or in short to experience any emotion, passion, feeling, sentiment, or frame of mind, we deny, just as we deny it of man. Now to the more immediate question. In the first place we must judge every animal from what may be called its own point of view, not with reference to man and his notions of ad- vantage or convenience. He calls the wolf and the tiger cruel, the viper malignant, and the spi- der treacherous. This is idle talk. The wolf can only subsist upon animal food, and is no more to be censured for devouring the lamb—for which he may further plead man’s conduct in precedent—than is the lamb for devouring grass. Why, moreover, should the vegetarian—brute or human—presume to denounce the flesh-eater as cruel? Have plants no rights? Are we sure that, if they could be consulted, they would con- sent to be plucked and eaten? They have, it is true, no demonstrable nervous system. But in view of the manifold ways by which in creation we see one and the same end accomplished—in view, too, of the facts on vegetal sensitiveness now ascertained—can we accept this as conclu- sive evidence? A Society for the Emancipation of Vegetables should be formed at once, and be- gin soliciting subscriptions. Such a movement would not be more unreasonable than certain other phases of modern British humanitarianism. 1 Milton most happily represents his devils dis- cussing on free-will. 2“ It lies not in our power tolove or hate.”"—(Mar- lowe.)

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= =Ve_we~urwwt nuns se se eS It is a great mistake to suppose that herbiv- orous animals are necessarily milder than the carnivora, The contrary is often the case. The fiesh-eater attacks and kills for food. The grass- eater, e. g., the Cape buffalo, and even the do- mestic bull, indulges in wanton outrages and “unprovoked assaults.” His tendency to these peculiarly English offenses is, perhaps, the reason why he has been, under the name of John Bull, chosen as the type of the nation. The true question is, Does a brute, like man, ever violate “the laws of its own nature?” If it is found incapable of departing, whether to the right hand or the left, from one fixed line, we must then pronounce it, according to the commonly-received notion, alike incapable of vice and of virtue, void indeed of moral life, in as far as this is deemed to be dependent upon choice.' But if it can deviate more or less from the norm - of its existence, and especially if by such trans- gression it entails suffering upon itself and oth- ers, we are then, we submit, warranted in regard- ing its actions as morally good or evil—good in as far as it conforms to the laws of its being; evil when it goes astray. We may then judge it, just as man judges his own actions and those of his fellows; the full likeness of the cases justifying usin drawing like conclusions. It will be admitted that “ brutes” have wills of their own which vary in intensity among individuals of any given species in the same manner as in man, if not to the same ex- tent. Among domestic animals there are some which, in spite of kicks and cuffs, and general maltreatment, persevere in their own way. Such creatures man, taking as usual, himself for the law of the universe, pronounces “ vicious.” There are others, again, which, under all circum- stances, unhesitatingly submit their will to his, and these he praises. The same method of judging, by-the-way, is applied to dependents and children. A child deficient in vital power implicitly obeys his par- ents and “betters ’’ from want of energy to dispute their commands. He is, accordingly, held up to general admiration; his early death is pro- nounced a “mysterious dispensation of Provi- dence,” and his virtues and precocity are duly chronicled in a tract. On the contrary, the healthy and vigorous child, full of life and ac- tion, is apt to rebel against authority. It is, therefore, set down as a tiny incarnation of evil, 1 If there were no evil, would there be algo no good f Ifall matter were absolutely transparent and incapa- ble of throwing a shadow, would light cease to exist ? ANIMAL DEPRAVITY. and if it finds its way at all into a pretty story- book, is made to serve as an awful warning for the rising generation. There is wonderful virtue in listlessness, and in impotence lies an incon- ceivable amount of purity. Perhaps if we take the latter term in its modern cant sense the two may be regarded as practically synonymous. The existence of a will, capable of acting at times in defiance of circumstances, is as clearly, manifest in the horse, the ass, and the pig, as in man himself, though in the three former it is little appreciated. Strange that what in animals is branded as stupidity should in man be deemed almost divine. Were brutes devoid of freedom, unable to choose between two lines of conduct, we should find them in all cases simply obedient to their propensities, and intent only upon immediate gratification without any regard to ulterior conse- quences. Were such the case, for man to train them would be an impossibility. Yet we know that dogs, cats, hawks, etc., are trained to con- duct quite different from their natural inclina- tions. A cat, though one of the most self-willed of animals, can be taught to abstain from molest- ing chickens, pigeons, and cage-birds, or from stealing, scratching furniture, etc. A dog can be brought to point to a covey of partridges instead of obeying his natural impulse to rush forward and endeavor to seize them. The following case is very significant: “A fine terrier in the pos- session of a surgeon at Whitehaven about three weeks ago exhibited its sagacity in a rather amus- ing manner. It came into the kitchen and began plucking the servant by the gown, and in spite of repeated rebuffs, it perseveringly continued in its purpose. The mistress of the house, hearing the noise, came down to inquire the cause, when the animal treated her in a similar manner. Being struck with the concern evinced by the creature, she quietly followed it up-stairs into a bedroom whither it led her; there it commenced barking, looking under the bed and then up in her facc. Upon examination a cat was discov- ered there quietly demolishing a beefsteak, which it had feloniously obtained. The most curious feature is that the cat had been introduced into the house only a short time before, and that bit- ter enmity prevailed between her and her canine companion.” ! This is a capital case. “ Instinct ” might un- deniably have led the terrier to attack the cat and attempt to deprive her of her booty. But we find this natural impulse here completely re- 1 Zoblogist, p. 2131.

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186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE strained for the attainment of a definite end. The terrier must have drawn the conclusion that his enemy, if detected in theft, would probably suffer severe punishment—perhaps even death— and he therefore laid an information against her, calcvlating thus to get rid of her without com- promising himself. This incident plainly proves that brutes are capable of self-control—that they do not always blindly and necessarily follow their physical appetites, but can, like man, forego a present indulgence for what appears to them a greater good in prospect. It is as clear a case of self-determination—of appetite and passion gov- erned by the will—as any which human biogra- phy can show. It wil) possibly be objected that we give no instance of self-control except in species which have been brought under human influence. The reply is obvious: if a free-will or a power of self- determination has been created in such animals by man’s intervention, its presence or absence is obviously a matter of small moment and quite in- adequate to establish a “great gulf” between man and “brute.” But if the will has not been thus created, it is probable, or rather certain, that were man better acquainted with the habits of wild animals he would find in their conduct also cases of self-control. It will further be objected that in the vast majority of cases animals merely act in accord- ance with the dictates of their ruling propen- sities. We grant this, and we ask whether this does not hold good to an almost equal extent with man? Analyze the actions of N’Kyg- ntzgm, the blue-nosed baboon, and you will ad- mittedly find little save the manifestations of ruling propensity. Sift in like manner the con- duct of John Nokes, collier, of Hanley, and you will come to the same result. Surely, then, we can regard it as proved that in the matter of self- determination, in the supremacy of will over pro- pensity, there is no difference of kind between man and brute. Were animals really what vulgar human opin- | jon supposes—did they simply and in all cases follow their propensities in the machine-like man- ner so commonly attributed to them—it is difficult to see how any individuality of character could exist. All the members of one species would have the same mental abilities and the same dis- positions. But this is precisely what is not the case. Among a dozen animals of the same spe- cies and even of the same breed differences of character are found as decided as occur among a similar number of men. Any breeder or trainer MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of horses, cattle, dogs, or poultry, would greet with laughter—loud, if not Olympian—the theo. rist who should assert that these animals display anything like identity of disposition. There are the obstinate and the docile, the timid and bold, the open and the treacherous, the placable and the revengeful. In fact, to find two horses or two dogs precisely alike in evety point of charac. ter that man can distinguish would be as difficult as to find two human beings similarly identical. How much greater, then, would be the range of character visible if we could see them with the eyes of their own species ! Perhaps the usual evasion may be attempted that such various development of temper and | disposition is to be found among tame animals | alone. The objection is baseless. Capture a | number of wild elephants, hawks, ravens, parrots, | and try to tame them. You will find still the same variety as you would among animals born | in a state of tameness. The differences are found | by man, not created. We will next endeavor to show—what, indeed, follows as a corollary from the foregoing consid- | erations—that animals are capable of vice, hop- ing that this circumstance may lead man to rec- ognize them as brothers. To eat more than hunger demands merely for | the sake of the sensuous enjoyment thus obtain- able, has been always, in man, branded as a serious vice, and has indeed been classed among the “seven deadly sins” of medieval tradition.' This transgression has been found to impair hu- man health, and to blunt mental action. How is it in this respect with brutes? Do they never | eat more than they can digest and assimilate? | Do they never suffer consequently in their health ? Most assuredly. Cows have been known to gorge | themselves with clover till they have died from | repletion. Ducks often suffer from their own | greediness. Similar cases of gluttony are, of | course, more rare among wild animals, who | neither find food in such abundance nor are £0 * undisturbed in its enjoyment. Yet even they, in _ homely phrase, at times eat more than does them good. Here, then, we see that brutes have a certain liberty of action. They can be either tem- perate or gluttonous. In the former case they 1 It is a remarkable fact that the discharge of any voluntary physical fanction to which no pleasure is at- tached was never pronounced a vice, even if exercised in excess. But those whose importance the Creator has indicated by rendering them pleasant were brand- ed as sinful not merely when discharged in excess, but even when kept within the bounds of moderation —and this in the exact ratio of their pleasarableness.

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Teet play are preserve their health; in the latter case they bring upon themselves disease or perhaps death. If the gluttonous animal gives unchecked play to its propensities, does not the temperate animal, like the temperate man, resist temptation, and exercise a certain amount of self-restraint? Is it not, for so doing, equally entitled to credit ? The Rev. G. Henslow, in his able and inter- esting work on the “ Theory of Evolution of Liv- ing Beings,” makes some remarks which must here be taken into consideration if only for their cool naiveté of assumption. Says this author: “In obeying those laws of self-preservation and propagation which have been impressed upon it, it is extremely probable that wild animals eat and drink not for the purpose of eating and drink- ing, but to maintain bodily life only. The laws of propagation are obeyed, but union is probably not resorted to for mere union’s sake. Animals show no signs of distinguishing the object from the means. Man alone can see that eating is pleasant, and so often eats for the mere sake of eating, and similarly of other pleasures,” If animals eat only to maintain life it is some- what strange that they are so extremely nice in the quality of their food. Birds and wasps, in their visits to our gardens, select fruit with a care sur- passing that of any human epicure. They attack only the finest pears, peaches, etc., and of these they eat only the sunny side. Mr. Henslow con- founds the result of an action with the motive. Man, at least in his adult state, and possibly the higher animals, know that the result of eating is the prolongation of life, and that abstinence would be ultimately fatal. But neither man nor animal, as a rule, eats from any other motive than to avoid the pains of hunger and to secure the pleas- ures of eating. We will even venture to say that the less ultimate results are held in view in the gratification of any physical appetite the more perfectly those very results are obtained. As re- gards the “laws of propagation,” we can bring * forward facts proving that among animals union is resorted to for mere union’s sake. Into what absurdities men are led by their notions of what is “extremely probable!” , It may be urged that the moderation of an animal may spring, not from its greater power of self-control, but from its feebler appetites. We cannot deny that this is a possible explanation. But.it may, with equal right, be extended to man also. Who knows that the temptation which the saint resists is really as strong as that to which the sinner succumbs? Are we not, in cases of reformation of character, frequently left in pain- ANIMAL DEPRAVITY. ful doubt whether the “convertite” is forsaking his vices or his vices forsaking him ? Alcoholic excitement is not one of the pre- vailing vices of brutes, from the satisfactory rea- son that they are under the operation of a natu- ral Maine law.' Two cases of drunkenness, in a cow and a sow respectively, are on record. Both these occurred in Scotland. It is only fair to surmise that the offending animals, like some of their two-legged compatriots, thought fit, in the words of Hudibras, to— * Compound fur sins they were inclined to, By damning those they had no mind to.” A later instance of undeniably “beastly” drunkenness is given in the Greenock Advertiser. Two rats got “that fou” in the shop of a spirit- merchant in the town by dint of consuming the dribblings from a barrel of strong ale, and were killed before they could stagger off to their holes. It is generally known that most of the quad- rumana, when thrown among human society, learn very readily to like a glass of strong liquor —a fact which should go far to establish their title to a place on the right side of the “gulf.” It is no less certain that some of the less reputa- ble monkeys are captured by leaving near their haunts vessels filled with a kind of beer. They come, drink and become drunken, and in that state commit the very venial error of mistaking the negro, who comes to lead them into captivity, for one of their own species. From alcoholism we are naturally led to the love of the narcotics, as tobacco, opium, Indian- hemp, coca, and the like. That man has a widely- spread craving for these so-called “keys of par- adise,” has been sufficiently shown. But apes, also, in captivity have been known to indulge in the “ weed” with evident relish. Imitation, say you? Probably enough; but has imitation no part in the spread of these minor vices among mankind? Nine smokers out of ten first take to the pipe or the cigar from the tendency—common alike to man and brute—of doing what others do. A love for tobacco in the solid form, also, is not peculiar to man, Ata tavern in Bradford there flourished some years ago a goat, whose ex- ploits in tobacco-chewing were not unknown to fame throughout the “land of woolen.” A fre- quenter of the house occasionally won money from strangers, by betting that “himself and another” would eat a pound of tobacco in ten minutes. If the wager was accepted he would 1 This is not literallytrue. Alcohol, in small doses, is being detected in natural productions, in which man has had no part.

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188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. order in a pound of ordinary shag tobacco, put a modest pinch in his own mouth, and call in the goat, who soon disposed of the remainder. It is not on record that Billy suffered in his health or displayed any marks of penitence after these per- formances. Turn we next to dishonesty in the widest sense of the word—the vice most in favor in this virtuous age. The lower animals labor under the disadvantage of having no stock-exchange and of not using bills-of-exchange. But they indulge to the best of their means and opportunities in deceit, affectation, and hypocrisy. The Rev. J. G. Wood, in his recent interest- ing work, “ Man and Beast,” gives an instance of a terrier who, finding that a companion had anti- cipated him in getting possession of a snug seat, suddenly pricked up his ears, dashed into a cor- ner of the room, and began scratching and bark- ing furiously. The other dog, believing that this commotion indicated the presence of a rat, hast- ened to the spot, when the terrier at once ran back and secured the coveted cushion. Mr. Wood — we quote from memory —very justly brings forward this incident as a proof of intel- ligence in dogs. But it is equally a proof of dis- honesty. It is a clear case of obtaining some- thing desirable on false pretenses. Hypocrisy is almost as prominent among the Felide as among men. If a delicate morsel is thrown to a cat, she will, except very hungry, assume an air of utter unconcern. But all the while she knows its position to a hair’s-breadth, and, when no one appears to be looking, it will be at once seized and swallowed. Or, if a bowl of cream is standing in an accessible position, pussy appears lost in the brownest of studies. Her eyes are closed, or, if open, are directed any- where save toward the tempting object; yet all the time she is watching her opportunity. Wheth- erin cats or in man this failing is invariably the “homage which vice pays to virtue,” we leave an Open question. The following instance of deceit and hypoc- risy in a terrier is given by Mr. G. J. Romanes, in Nature (May 27, 1875, page 66) : “ He used to be very fond of catching flies upon the window-panes, and if ridiculed when unsuc- cessful, was very much annoyed. On one occa- sion, in order to see what he would do, I purposely laughed immoderately every time he failed. It so happened that he did so several times in succes- sion — partly, I believe, in consequence of my laughing—and eventually he became so distressed that he positively pretended to catch the fly, going through all the appropriate actions with his lips and tongue, and afterward rubbing the ground with his neck, as if to kill the victim; he then looked up at me with a triumphant air of success, So well was the whole process simulated, that | should have been quite deceived had I not seen that the fly was still upon the window. Accord- ingly, I drew his attention to this fact, as well as to the absence of anything upon the floor, and, when he saw that his hypocrisy had been de- tected, he slunk away under some furniture, evi- dently much ashamed of himself.”’ This last point is most significant, fully over- turning the vulgar notion of the absence of moral life in brutes, and of their total want of con- science. That animals steal is a familiar expression, But we must here distinguish two different cases: we speak of hares stealing our corn, and of blackbirds plundering our cherries; but in neither ease have we any reason to conclude that the offenders can distinguish between the crops in cultivated lands and the spontaneous produce of woods and wastes. But not a few species, both of birds, quadrupeds, and insects, evidently rec- ognize the idea of property. This is proved by the fact that they display far greater courage and pertinacity in defense of their nests, their haunts, and their accumulations, than under other circum- stances. A dog that, when trespassing, is put to flight by a gesture or a shout, becomes a formi- dable opponent in his own yard. If, then, such animals know what property is, and yet at times make free with it, we may justly pronounce them conscious thieves. Rooks are apt to purloin sticks from each other’s nests; but, if the offender is detected and cuffed by the rightful owner, con- science makes a coward of him, and he merely have some rudiments of criminal law. Inveterate thieves are sometimes banished from the rookery, severely beaten, or even killed outright.! But law presupposes the notions of right and wrong, and could never, therefore, have arisen among beings incapable of making this distinction. As another vice, we may take quarrelsomeness —a term which we need surely not define. This attribute is highly conspicuous in the human species, nowhere perhaps more strikingly than in that part of the English nation who inhabit the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire. But cer- tain dogs show the very same disposition, and, without the smallest provocation, take every op- 1 A most interesting account of the habits of rooks was given by Mr. Ashley, of Sheffield, in a lecture delivered before the Mechanics’ Institute of that town about twenty years ago. defends himself by flight. More than this, rooks - ~_e eo ef =e eo CUmDlUeP OC

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portunity of attacking horses, cows, sheep, and human beings. There is a well-authenticated in- stance of a terrier who, in picking a quarrel, contrived, as skillfully as if trained in the Kanz- lei of Prince Bismarck, to place himself techni- cally in the right. He would time his movements so that some passenger should stumble over him, and would then fasten on the calf of his leg. With a most statesmanlike aptitude, he selected the aged, the infirm, and the ill-dressed, as the objects of his cunningly-planned attacks. Lord Lytton tells us that the dog is a gentlemanly ani- mal ! Closely connected with quarrelsomeness is the most fiendish of all man’s failings—overlooked, as it is, by world-betterers and vice-suppressers —his disposition to give pain, bodily or mental, for mere amusement. There are few human be- ings, of the male sex at least, who do not delight in tormenting other creatures, whether of their own or of some different species.' Yet even this kind of malignity is not unshared by man’s poor relations. Fall among wolves, and they will kill you for the straightforward purpose of eating you. Fall among blue-nosed baboons, and they will tor- ment you to death “ just for the fun of the thing.” Could a red Indian, or even a normal English schoolboy, greatly improve upon this ? With the exception of a few genuine—not professional—philanthropists, man is remarkable for persecuting such of his own species as are unfortunate. This diabolical propensity shows itself in a variety of forms. “ Hit him again, he has no friends,” is scarcely a parody on the avowed opinions of the less hypocritical of the species. Those who lay claim to higher culture express their sorrow for the calamities of a neigh- bor by eschewing his society, or perhaps even by asking him whether he does not recognize in his sufferings a well-merited divine chastisement ? Odious as is this trait of human character, man has no monopoly thereof. The wounded wolf is.at once devoured by his comrades. Cattle, both wild and tame, have been observed to gore and trample to death a sick or lame mem- ber of the herd. A rook, accidentally entangled in the twigs of a tree, is pecked and buffeted by its fellow-citizens. This, of course, has been pro- nounced “instinctive.” Animals, we are gravely told, put an end to sufferings which they are powerless to alleviate. They do not wish that the herd should be incumbered with a sickly or 1 When an Englishman talks about amusement, it may be inferred asa general rule that he means kill- ing something. ANIMAL DEPRAVITY. 189 wounded member. Taking these explanations for what they are worth, we still ask whether man’s ill-treatment of his unfortunate fellows is not the ultimate transformation of the very same instinct. But, further, the alleged instinct is not com- mon to all gregarious animals. Monkeys and baboons cherish and defend the young, the help- less, and the wounded, of their own species. Ants will take great pains to rescue a member of their community who is in distress. Looking in a different direction, we must ac- knowledge that among viviparous animals and birds, the females are, as a general rule, no less careful of their young than are human mothers. In thus acting they are undoubtedly obeying one of the “laws” of their nature. But they can also transgress such law, just as we occasionally find a woman who will neglect, ill-treat, or even kill her child. So is it with female brutes. Some- times, though rarely, they will abandon or de- stroy their young. This is a fact well known to the breeders of tame animals. The seller of a mare, a cow, or a sow, is often asked by an intend- ing purchaser, “Is she a good mother?” It must be remarked that neglect of family is by no means the invariable result of want of food, or of danger and annoyance. Birds will, as is well known, sometimes forsake their nests from fear. But a hen has been known to leave her chickens to the mercy of accidents without any conceivable motive save caprice, or the want of ordinary nat- ural affection. Cats, though ordinarily very affee- tionate mothers, and sows, sometimes devour their young. Here, therefore, we find, again, that the lower animals are not bound down by abso- lute necessity to one unvarying line of conduct. Like man, they have the power to deviate from what is for them natural, normal, or right. Oc- casionally they make use of such power. What may be the causes of, or the motives for, such transgression, is not here the question. Enough for us that it exists. We now come to a part of the subject which, though essential to our argument, we cannot en- ter into at any length. Do brutes invariably obey the “law of their being’ as regards the mutual relations of the sexes? Farfromit. Thenearer brutes approach to man, the more they are in- clined to sin against what, in modern cantology, is exclusively styled “ morality.” With animals which pair conjugal fidelity is, indeed, more gen- eral than with mankind. A petty negro chief laughed at the notion of keeping to one wife, “like the monkeys.” Still it is far from being

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‘ 190 THE POPULAR SCIENCE universal, and nowhere are exceptions more fre- quently found than among pigeons, which, with a rare depth of wicked satire, have been selected as types of matrimonial faith. The existence of hybrids shows a departure from what Nature should enjoin. Such beings have been produced respectively, not alone be- tween the horse and the ass, but between the horse and the quagga, the horse and the zebra, the ass and the zebra, the lion and the tiger, the hare and the rabbit (leporides), and between a great variety of birds of the poultry, pheasant, grouse, duck, and finch groups. To the dismay and indignation of certain theorists, some of these hybrids are capable of reproduction. It has been objected that these instances oc- eur only through human intervention. This is by no means the fact. Hybrids between distinct species of grouse have been met with in a wild state. Instances of hybridism are likewise said to have occurred between animals much more widely remote in their respective natures, Such cases are doubtful, and are certainly not essential to our argument. But intercourse not unfrequently takes place between animals of different species where no offspring has been positively proved to result. Many more instances of brute frailty might be given were it needful or desirable. It has been asserted that “ mere brutes ” never commit suicide. This is a wanton, it might be said an impudent, assumption. If a negro, sold into slavery, refuses food and starves himself to death, as sometimes happened in the palmy days of the “ black ivory trade,” men say that he has committed suicide rather than live in bondage; but if an animal, bird, or reptile, taken away from its native haunts and shut up in a cage, persist- ently refuses food and dies in consequence, why should not the same name be applied to conduct precisely similar? Yet cases of this kind, in which the love of liberty and independence as- serts itself in flat defiance of the strongest of all instincts, are by no means rare. There is great difficulty in inducing some animals to eat in captivity, even if supplied with the very kind of food which they select when at large. As an example, we may mention the common viper, which generally starves itself to death in captiv- ity, regardless of the offer of the choicest mice. But there are many instances among domestic animals, proving that life-weariness and the deter- mination to end miseries in a sudden manner are not confined to the human race. MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “ Suicide by a Dog.—A day or two since a fine dog, belonging to Mr. George Hone, of Frinds- bury, near Rochester, committed a deliberate act of suicide by drowning in the Medway, at Upnor, Chatham. The dog had been suspected of having given indications of approaching hydrophobia, and was accordingly shunned and kept as much as possible from the house. This treatment ap- peared to cause him much annoyance, and for some days he was observed to be moody and morose. On Thursday morning he proceeded to an intimate acquaintance of his master’s at Upnor, on reaching the residence of whom, he set up a piteous cry on finding that he could not obtain admittance. After waiting at the house some little time, he was seen to go toward the river close by, when he deliberately walked down the bank, and after turning round and giving a kind of farewell howl, walked into the stream, where he kept his head under water, and in a minute or two rolled over dead. This extraordinary act of suicide was witnessed by several persons. The manner of the death proved pretty clearly that the animal was not suffering from hydropho- bia.”—( Daily News.) “ Suicide of a Horse.—A correspondent writes: ‘A few nights ago a poor creature, worn to skin and bone, put an end to his existence in a very extraordinary manner. His pedigree is unknown, as he was quite a stranger. A very worthy gentleman here met him in a public market, and thinking that he could find an employment for him, put him to work, but it was soon discovered that work was not his forte; in fact, he would do anything save work and go errands. His great delight was to roam about the fields and do mischief. People passing him used to ejacu- late, “ Ugh, you ugly brute” when they saw the scowl which was continually on his face. His master tried to win him by kindness. The kind- ness was lost uponhim. He next tried the whip, then the cudgel, but all in vain. Work he would not. And as a last resort the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar of old was tried. He was turned out, “ but house or hauld,” to eat grass with the oxen. With hungry belly and broken heart he wended his lonely way down by the Moor’s Shore, passed Luckyscaup, turned the Moor’s Point, and still held on his lonely way, regardless of the wondering gaze of the Pool fishermen. At length he arrived at a point opposite the wreck of the Dalhousie, where he stood still; and while the curiosity of the fishermen was wound to the highest pitch as to what was to follow, he, neigh- | ing loudly and tossing his old tail, rushed madly

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into the briny deep, got beyond his depth, held his head under the water, and soon ceased to be. The fishermen conveyed the true, although strange and startling, tidings to the respected owner, that his horse had committed suicide.’ ””—{ Dundee Advertiser.) There are several other authenticated cases on record where dogs have committed suicide by drowning. It is important, as showing inten- tion, that dogs are perfectly aware of the results of prolonged immersion in water, as evinced by their so frequently rescuing children when in danger of drowning. Were dead brutes hon- ored with a searching investigation, we might perhaps find such instances far more frequent than we suspect. They have, however, scantier facilities for self-murdge than man, and possibly slighter temptations, as being, doubtless, upon the whole, less miserable. The various actions above mentioned are all departures from the normal or natural conduct of the species concerned, and of course lead us again to the conclusion that brutes can do wrong, and if wrong, that they are consequently able also to do right. Perhaps it may be argued by the captious that though gluttony, neglect of offspring, sui- cide, and the like, are wrong in themselves, and are hurtful to the offending animal and its spe- cies, yet that brutes have no conscience, and neither feel any satisfaction in “obeying the laws” of their nature, nor any remorse upon transgression. To this we may in the first place reply with a tw qguogue—a retort for once satis- factory, as it withdraws the pretended distinc- BRIEF NOTES. tion. Man does not appear to have any inborn and infallible knowledge of right and wrong. His vaunted conscience, when it is more than a mere figure of speech, is a creature of conven- tions and traditions. There is no vice, no crime even, how horrible soever, which at some time or in some part of the world man has not practised without a shadow of self-reproach. He has suf- fered, indeed, from his errors, but no more than the brutes does he, generally speaking, trace his sufferings to their true causes. Sir J. Lubbock states in his “ Origin of Civilization” that, after inspecting nearly all existing records of savage life, he was unable to find any case of a savage having evinced remorse after the commission of any crime, But, on the other hand, does man really know that brutes are void of all trace of conscience— that they feel no joy when they have acted aright, and no sorrow when they have done amiss? He has no proof—merely wanton as- sumption. Facts prove that certain animals do feel shame, sorrow, or remorse, when they have departed from what to them is the standard of right ; and what more can reasonably or fairly be demanded ? We have thus, we submit, established that the lower animals have a moral life, that they can do right or do wrong, and that, like man, they avail themselves of their power to do the latter. Surely henceforth a fellow-feeling ought to make him wondrous kind to them all. Com- munity in vice, or even in peccadillos, has always been a wonderful leveler of distinctions.—Quar- terly Journal of Science. Funeral Ceremonies at the Nicobar Islands.— We take from the Geographical Magazine the following interesting extract from a letter by F. E. Tuson: “ Last night I went over to Malacca, and found that one of the old men had died suddenly, and been buried just before I got there. A raft of long trunks of trees, with a house on it made of cocoanut-leaves, and with one large leaf placed upright to act as a sail, was lying opposite the dead man’s hut, to convey away his ‘iwi,’ or spirit, when the maulooennas, or medicine-men, had caught it. They are awfully afraid of these ‘iwis;’ and all the inhabitants were sitting in their houses, afraid to move out. They attribute BRIEF NOTES. all fever, and sickness, and calamity, to their ‘iwis.’ I found the maulooennas placing all the property of the deceased round about his tomb, and hanging up his hats, clothes, etc., on a post placed at his head. Everything a man or woman possesses is placed on his or her tomb, and never used again ; the poultry and pigs are killed. The widow was in a house near, which was full of all the women in the place. She has to sit three days in a dark corner, with a cloth over her, and to see and speak to no one during that time. The ‘iwi,’ it seemed, would not come till night-time, when everything was quiet, so I was unable to see the operation of catching it, but I found out

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192 the mode of procedure. The first thing was to eat up all the food in the village, with the excep- tion of a little rice and bread-fruit, ete. The lat- ter was placed in little pottles, like those used at home for strawberries, of a conical shape, about two feet long and eight inches in diameter. These were hung about the dead man’s hut and tomb. At night the ‘iwi’ was supposed to come and enter one of the pottles, to eat the food in it. The maulooennas would then steal up, and close the mouth suddenly and tie it up. It is then car- ried with great care to the raft, which is towed out to sea and let go. I saw the pottles all ready, neatly made of cocoanut-leaves plaited together. I was told that the ‘iwi’ was invisible to all but the maulooennas, an idea started, of course, by the latter. The natives all seem to believe in their powers ; but whether they do so themselves, I do not know. It does not seem necessary to pack the ‘iwi’ off the same day the man dies; for the other day the sister of ‘ London,’ the head-man of Malacca, died, and her ‘iwi’ was not sent to sea till three months afterward. The maulooennas appoint the day. Three months hence they will have a great feast, paint their faces red, and all get drunk and dance for two or three days. At the end of a year the body is dug up, and the skull thoroughly cleaned and reburied. I have not ascertained the reason for this last ceremony. These people are a most interesting race, and very little is known about them.” The Iguana.—Mr. P. L. Simmonds, in a re- cently-published work on “Animal Products,” says of the Iguana delicatissima, the large tree- lizard of Central and South America, that, while certainly not attractive in appearance, yet by most persons in tropical countries its flesh is highly esteemed. The eggs of the iguana, which are somewhat smaller than those of the domestic pigeon, are pronounced by Sir Robert Schomburgh and others to be delicious. One of the lizards will sometimes contain as many as eighty eggs, which, when boiled, are like marrow. The inces- sant destruction of the iguanas for the sake of their flesh has made them very scarce, if not altogether extinct, in localities where they were once abundant. They were formerly so common at the Bahamas as to furnish a great part of the subsistence of the inhabitants. In Costa Rica the large iguanas attain the size of small croco- diles. The usual native mode of cooking is to boil them, taking out the fat, which is melted and clarified and put into a dish, into which they dip the flesh of the iguana as they eat it. It was THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. long before the Spaniards in America could con- quer their repugnance to iguana-flesh, but, hav- ing once tasted of it, they pronounced it to be the most exquisite of all delicacies. Peter Mar. tyr is made to say, in the old English translation of bis work, “‘ De Rebus Oceanicis et Orbe Novo:” “These serpentes are lyke unto crocodiles, saving in bygness; the call them guanas. Unto that day none of owre men durst adventure to taste them, by reason of theyre horrible deformitie and lothsomnes. Yet the Adelantado, being entysed by the pleasantnes of the King’s sister, Anacaona, determined to taste the serpentes. But, then, he felte the flesh thereof to be so delycate to his tongue, and to amayze without al feare. The which theyre companions perceiving, were not behynde hym in greedynesse ; insomuche that they had now none other talke than of the sweet- nesse of these serpentes, which they affirm to be of more pleasant taste than eyther our phesantes or partriches.” In a series of experiments lately made in Eng- land to determine the comparative strength of iron and steel plates, the metal was subjected in each case to the percussive force of a charge of 1} pound of gun-cotton. The steel plates meas- ured # of an inch thick and the iron 7; thick, and the quality ranged from ordinary boiler-iron to the best classes of steel. The plates, thirty in number, were one by one placed on a concave anvil and the charge was fixed about nine inches above. The ordinary boiler-iron was indented to the fullest extent of the cavity of the anvil and fractured. The indentation on a plate of mild Bes- semer steel tempered in cil was only 14 inch, and there was no fracture. A plate of mild steel (Siemens’s), not tempered in oil, was indented 144 inch, and another, tempered, 13 inch, The re- sults appear to show that steel is incomparably superior to iron for boilers, locomotive-tires, rails, and similar purposes. A HIGHLY-INGENIOUS instrument for taking soundings at sea while the ship is in motion has been invented by Sir William Thomson. This instrument consists of a copper tube attached to the lower end of the sounding-wire, and inclos- ing a slender glass tube and a small quantity of sulphate of iron. As the tube descends the press- ure of the water forces the sulphate into the glass tube. It leaves a stain on the glass, and according to the height of the stain is the depth of the sea at that point. The instrument has been tested with entirely satisfactory results.

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id mi F @ ey ee PF Ww FF OR ninety years, since the time when Calonne called together his Assembly of Notables, and when the voice of the Revolution was first heard announcing a reign of hope, love, freedom, and universal peace—for ninety years has France struggled to attain a settled form of constitu- tional government ; and apparently she is farther from it now than she was in 1787—appareutly, but not, we will hope, in reality. In this last crisis the mass of her people have exhibited not only a steadiness of purpose for which we were little prepared, but a self-control which is full of the highest promise. In spite of everything that the conspirators who had seized the government could do to provoke the nation to violence which might have afforded a pretext for using the pub- lic force against the public liberties, the nation has conquered by calmness. Conspiracy and illegality have passed from the side of the people to that of the reactionary government. This shows that considerable way has been made since the days of the Faubourg St.-Antoine. Real progress is to be measured, not by change of institutions, but by change of char- acter. The Revolution made a vast change in French institutions: it could not change French character, which remained as servile under the despotism of Robespierre as it had been under that of Louis XIV. Character seems now, after ninety years of desperate effort and terrible ex- perience, to be coming up to the level of institu- tions. Perhaps France has reason to be grateful to De Broglie and his Marshal for giving her assurance of that fact, though their names will be infamous forever. The reasons of the political failure of 1789 are manifest enough; we need not seek them in any mysterious incapacity of the Celtic race in general, or of the French branch of it in particu- lar, for constitutional government. These mys- terious capabilities and incapabilities of races in truth are questionable things, and generally tend, upon closer inspection, to resolve themselves into the influence of circumstance perpetuated and ac- cumulated through many generations. England, guarded by the sea, has had comparatively little need of standing armies, and she has thus escaped military despotism, since fleets cannot interfere with politics; yet even she might have fallen 49 THE NINETY YEARS’ By Pror. GOLDWIN SMITH. AGONY OF FRANCE. under a military despotism, and foreign critics might now be moralizing on the inherent inca- pacity of her people for any government but that of force, if, when the army of James II. was en- camped on Hounslow Heath, there had not been a William of Orange to come over to our rescue. France has had frontiers ; therefore she has had standing armies, and her rulers have been mas- ters of legions. She was exposed to foreign in- vasion for a whole century, from the time of Ed- ward III. to that of Henry VI. ; and again, at the crisis of her destiny in 1791, she was assailed by the arms of the coalesced powers of Reaction. On each occasion her people, to secure national independence, were compelled to renounce liber- ty, and the Government was inevitably invested with a military dictatorship of defense, which, once acquired, was perpetuated in political des- potism. It would be difficult to prove that, under more auspicious circumstances, the States- General, which, at one period in the fourteenth century, entered on a course of reform as bold and comprehensive as anything done by the of Henry IIL, might not have developed into a British House of Commons. The political crisis of 1789 was in itself one of the most tremendous kind; it was nothing less than the collapse, amid bankruptcy and gen- eral ruin, of the hereditary principle of govern- ment, the only principle which France or the greater part of Europe up to that time had known. But it was desperately complicated by its connection with a social and a religious crisis equally tremendous. It came upon a people totally untrained to political action, without po- litical instruction, without a political press, with- out even the common information which a news- paper gives about passing events; without the means of judiciously choosing its political lead- ers, or even political leaders among whom a judi- cious choice could be made; without any good political writers, except Montesquieu, whose au- thority, as we shall presently see, was practically misleading. At the same time this people had, in common with all intellectual Europe, been ex- cited by visions of boundless and universal hap- piness, of new heavens and a new earth, to be attained by a change of the social system and of framers of the Great Charter or the Parliaments ~

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194 the form of government. Amid such disadvan- tages, and in face of a reaction at once political, social, and religious, the desperate reaction of privilege, both social and ecclesiastical, fighting for its existence, and not scrupling, in its trans- ports of rage and terror at the appearance of liberty and equality, to combine with Robespierre in order to defeat Lafayette, success would have been almost a miracle. But then, to extinguish the last hope, came the coalition of the kings, hounded on by the too eloquent ravings of Burke, whose total failure to understand the difficulties under which the French reformers labored was discreditable to him as a political philosopher, while his frantic invocations of war, and, in his own hideous phrase, of “a long war,” were dis- graceful to him not only as a political philosopher but as a man. The Republican Constitution formed after the overthrow of the Terrorists was not a good one. The institution of two Chambers was a mistake, arising from an illusion of which we shall pres- ently have to speak; a sufficient control over the Executive Directory was not secured to the representatives of the nation; the judiciary was not placed on a proper footing. Still it is prob- able that the Constitution would in time have worked and given to France law and order under a Republic, had it been administered by tolerably honest hands, and had it not been exposed to military violence. But a revolution, especially an abortive revolution, leaves behind it a fearful legacy, not only of disappointment, lassitude, mis- trust among the people, but of depravity among the chiefs. It gives birth to a race of intriguers, utterly selfish, utterly unprincipled, trained to political infidelity in the school of fortunate apostasy, steeped in perfidy by the violation of unnumbered oaths, and at the same time familiar with the revolutionary use of violence. Such was the offspring of the revolutionary periods of ancient history both in Greece and Rome. Thu- cydides saw and painted them; they impressed their character on Roman politics after the civil wars of Marius and Sylla. Such again was the offspring of the English Revolution ; the Lauder- dales and Shaftesburys, the scoundrels who formed the governments and led the factions of the Res- | toration, who carried on religious persecutions | while themselves were infidels, shut up the ex- | chequer, made the treaty of Dover, got up the | Popish Plot, seized the municipal charters, judi- | Gially murdered Russell and Sydney. But never | was there such a generation of these men as that which emerged from the wreck of the dreams of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Rousseau, and from the deadly struggle of fac. tions which ended with the fall of Robespierre— Tallien, Fréron, Barére, Barras, Rewbell, Talley. rand, Merlin, Fouché, and their crew. Politica] corruption was aggravated by the corruption of morals, caused by the outburst of sensualism which naturally ensued after the dreadful repres- sion and the savage Spartanism of the Terror, To this general depravity was added the volcanic fury, still unabated, of party passions raging in the breasts of factions which but yesterday had been alternately reveling in the blood of each other, It was by military violence, however, that the Constitution was at last overthrown, and its fall was the beginning of that supremacy of the army which unhappily has been from that hour, and still is, the fundamental fact of French poli- tics. The hand which, at the bidding of traitors in the Directory, dealt the first blow, was that of Augereau, but the hand which planned it and dealt the final blow was that of Bonaparte. In estimating the result of the first experiment in Republican government, this must always be borne in mind. The appearance of Bonaparte upon the scene with his character and his abilities may be truly called the most calamitous accident in history. An accident it was, for Bonaparte was not a Frenchman; he was made a French soldier by the chance which had annexed his country to France, without which he would have been a Corsican brigand, instead of being the scourge of the world. Little did Choiseul think that the rapacity which added to France Corsica would be the cause a century afterward of her losing Alsace-Lorraine. As to the greatness of the calamity, few doubt it, except the train of mer- cenary adventurers whose existence in France, as a standing and most dangerous conspiracy against her liberties, is itself the fatal proof of the fact which they would deny. What may . have been the extent of Napoleon’s genius, politi- cal or military, is a question still under debate, and one of a kind which it is difficult to settle, because, to take the measure of a force, whether mechanical or intellectual, we must know the strength of the resistance overcome. The Revo- lution had swept the ground clear for his ambi- tion, and had left him in his career of aggrandize- ment almost as free from the usual obstacles without as he was from any restraints of con- science or humanity within. Death removed the only three men who were likely to make a stand, Hoche, Marceau, and Kleber, from his path. He disposed absolutely of an army full of burning

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enthusiasm, and which, before he took the com- mand, though it had recently met with some reverses, had already hurled back the hosts of the Coalition. In Europe, when he set out on his career, there was nothing to oppose him but governments estranged from their nations, and armies without national spirit, mere military ma- chines, rusty for the most part, and commanded by privileged incompetence. England was the only exception, and by England he was always beaten. The national resistance which his tyranny ultimately provoked, and by which, when he had provoked it, he was everywhere defeated, in Rus- sia, in Germany, even in decrepit Spain, was called into existence by his own folly. He ended, not like Louis XIV., merely in reverses and hu- miliatioris, but in utter and redoubled ruin, which he and his country owed to his want of good sense and of self-control, and to this alone, for he was blindly served, and fortune can never be said to have betrayed him, unless he had a right to reckon upon finding no winter in Russia. Be- fore he led his army to destruction, he had de- stroyed its enthusiastic spirit by a process visible enough to common eyes, though invisible to his. Nor was be more successful as a founder of politi- cal institutions. He, in fact, founded nothing but a government of the sword, which lasted just so long as he was victorious and present. The in- stability of his political structure was shown in a lurid light by the conspiracy of Malet. Of its effect on political character it is needless to speak ; a baser brood of sycophants was never gathered round any Eastern throne. At the touch of military disaster, the first Empire, like the second, sank down in ignominious ruin, leav- ing behind it not a single great public man, noth- ing above the level of Talleyrand. The Code sur- vived; but the Code was the work of the jurists of the Revolution. With no great legal princi- ple was Bonaparte personally identified, except the truly Corsican principle of confiscation, to which he always clung. The genius of the moral reformer is to be measured by the moral effect which he produces, though his own end may be the cup of hemlock. The genius of the adven- turer must be measured by his success; and his success is questionable when his career, however meteoric, ends in total disaster. This is not the less manifest to reflecting minds because the per- nicious brightness of the meteor still dazzles and misleads'the crowd. But the greater Napoleon’s genius was, the worse was it for France and man- kind. All his powers were employed in the ser- vice of the most utterly selfish and evil ambition THE NINETY YEARS’ AGONY OF FRANCE. 195 that ever dwelt in human breast. It has been justly remarked that his freedom from every sort of moral restraint and compunction lent a unity to his aims and actions which gave him a great advantage over less perfectly wicked men. As to religion, he was atheist enough to use it without scruple as a political engine, and to regret that the time was past when he might, like Alex- ander, have given himself out as the son of a god. His selfishness is to be measured not merely by the unparalleled sacrifices of human blood and suffering which he offered to it; not merely by the unutterable scenes of horror which he wit- nessed without emotion, and repeated without a pang; but by the strength of the appeal which was made to his better nature, had he possessed one, and the splendor of the reward which was held out to him, if he would have kept his allegiance to the interests of his country and of humanity. What happiness and what glory would have been his if, after Marengo, he had given the world a lasting peace, and with it the fulfillment, so far as fulfillment was possible, of the social and political aspirations for which such immense and heroic efforts, such vast sacrifices, had been made! Never, in all history, has such a part been offered to man. Instead of accepting this part, Napoleon gave the reins to an ambition most vulgar as well as most noxious in its objects, and to the savage lust of war, which seems after all to have been the predominating element in this Corsican’s character, and which gleamed in his evil eye when the cord was touched by those who visited him at Elba, The results were the devastation of Europe, the portentous develop- ment of the military system under which the world now groans, the proportionate depression of industry and of all pacific interests, the resur- rection in a worse form of the despotisms around which the nations were fain to rally for protec- tion against a foreign oppressor, and the new era of convulsions and revolutions which the res- urrection of the despotisms inevitably entailed. Of all the effects of Napoleon’s career, the worst perhaps was the revelation of the weakness and meanness of human nature. What hope is there for a race which will grovel at the feet of sheer wickedness because the crime is on an enormous scale, and the criminal is the scourge, not only of one nation, but of his kind? Next in the order of evil were the ascendency given to the military spirit and the example of military usurpation. The military spirit it was that, ex- cited by the flagitious writings of Thiers,and weak- ly flattered by the house of Orleans, overturned

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196 constitutional government in 1832, The exam- ple of military usurpation was followed by Napo- leon’s reputed nephew, who in his turn was driven by the discontent of the army, combined with the influence of his priest-ridden wife, into the war which overthrew his Empire, at the same time bringing the invader for the third time into Paris. The blow which military passion and the spirit of aggrandizement received in that defeat was to France a blessing in disguise. To it she owes the recovery, however precarious, of free institutions, of which there would otherwise scarcely have been a hope. But, even now, France, after all her efforts and revolutions, is to a fearful extent at the mercy of a stupid and self-willed soldier, a third-rate master even of his own trade, totally devoid of political knowledge and of sympathy with political aspirations, but at the head of the army, and, as his language to the soldiery on the eve of the elections proved, sufficiently wanting in the true sense of honor to admit into his mind the thought of using the public force with which he is intrusted for the overthrow of public liberty. No institutions, however sound and stable in themselves, can afford to a nation security for legal order while there is a constant danger of military usurpation. Nor is it easy to see how the danger can be re- moved, so long as an army strong enough to overpower all national resistance, and blindly obedient to command, is at the disposal of the executive for the time being. Two years hence, if not before, there will be another crisis; and it is idle to conceal the un- happy and ignominious fact, that the decision will rest ultimately with the army and with those whom the army obeys. Whether, under the new system of universal military service, with such influences as that of the Erckmann-Chatrian novels, the soldier has become more of a citizen and the army less of a knife, ready, in any hand by which it may for the moment be grasped, to cut the throat of public liberty, the event will show. The French peas- ant, if left to himself, is not fond of war; he hates the conscription, and has done so from the time of Cesar; the fatal ascendency of the mil- itary spirit is due, not to him, but to a series of ambitious rulers. This is true, but it does not save France from being, as a matter of fact, to a lamentable extent a stratocracy. How the army can be placed in safe hands is a problem of which it is almost impossible to suggest a complete and permanent solution. The re- duction of its numbers by the definite adoption * THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of a pacific policy is the only real security for the continuance of political liberty. In France the peril is greatest, and its manifestations have been most calamitous, but it extends more or less to all the European nations. Everywhere in Eu- rope public liberty and human progress are to a fearful extent at the mercy of the vast standing armies which are maintained by the mutual jeal ! ousies of nations, assiduously stimulated by courts | and aristocracies in the interest of moral and po- litical reaction. He who said that science could not be better employed than in devising means of destroying pretorians gave utterance, in a cyni- cal form, to a melancholy truth. It would be a happier way of escape from the danger if sol- diers could possibly be made to understand their real duty to their country. By the Restoration of the Stuarts, and the temporary recovery of its ascendency by a de- feated and vindictive party, England was thrown back into political discord, violence, and inter- mittent civil law for three-quarters of a century. The same calamity befell France, though in her case the restoration was the work of foreign hands; and the same or even greater allowance for the disturbing influence must be made. As no institutions can be proof against military treason, so none can be proof against passions which go beyond political antagonism, beyond even the utmost violence of party, and are, in fact, the passions of civil war. The factions which encountered each other in the legislative assemblies of the Restoration were the same which not long before had encountered each other on the battle-fields of La Vendée. Their hostility, scarcely diminished since they met in arms, was incompatible with that common alle- giance to the Constitution and its objects, in spite of divergences on special questions, which is the first condition of constitutional government. Both extremes in the assemblies of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. were striving, not to give effect to their respective policies by constitutional means, but to overthrow the Constitution itself, one ex- treme in the interest of absolutism, the other in that of democracy. It was then as it is now, when the monarchical and aristocratic party is manifestly using the Marshalate and the Senate, not to modify legislation in a conservative sense, but to overthrow the Republic, as, if it had been successful in controlling the elections, it would unquestionably have done. In such a case insti- tutions ‘can do no more than prolong for them- selves a precarious existence by being so ordered as to prevent rather than facilitate a pitched bat-

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ity for S have Or less in Eu. e toa BPP eApras BE & a. it- tle between parties which, when it once occurs, causes an outbreak of violence, and leads back to civil war. Napoleon, besides restoring superstition for his political ends, restored aristocracy, though the fear of limiting his despotism made him dis- like creating an hereditary House of Peers. This also has been a hostile and disturbing force, against which the Republic, founded on equality, has always had and still has to contend. The set of upstarts whom Bonaparte bedizened with tinsel dukedoms of course gave themselves great- er airs than the old nobility of France. Such a fellow as Cambacéres was very particular about being called Monseigneur; but a certain union of interest, if not a social union, has by this time been brought about between old privilege and new; and the attack on the Republic under De Broglie has been at least as much an aristocrat- ic conspiracy as anything else. So manifest is this as to found a hope that the army, which is tolerably loyal to equality, if not to liberty, might recoil from supporting what it must see to be an aristocratic reaction. An aristocracy, while it exists, will never cease to intrigue against institu- tions based upon equality ; and the total prohibi- tion of hereditary titles was justly felt by the fra- mers of the American Constitution to be essential to the security of their Republic. Another adverse force against which free in- stitutions have to contend in France, too often noted to need more than recognition in its place, is the tendency, derived from the old régime, but handed on jn an intensified form by the Bona- partes, to administrative centralization, which, notwithstanding the improvement of local insti- tutions, still decidedly preponderates over local self-government. The influence exercised by De Broglie and his accomplices over the elections, through prefects of their appointment, is a fatal proof of the fact. From the same inveterate spirit of encroachment on one side, and submission on the other, arises the want of independence in the judiciary which has been so disgracefully dis- played in the late political trials. The resistance made by the constituencies to the prefects shows that improvement is going on; but a century of effort is not too much to throw off maladies so deeply seated as these. The special influence, however, to which we wish here to point as having interfered with the success of elective government, and as still im- periling its existence in European countries gen- erally, but notably in France, is the ignorant and fallacious imitation of the British Constitution. THE NINETY YEARS’ AGONY. OF FRANOE. 197 We wish we could hope that the few words we have to say on this point would meet the eye of any French statesman, and direct his attention to the subject. Burke denounced the political architects of 1789 for constructing their edifice according to theoretic principles instead of building it on old foundations, and he contrasted their folly with the wisdom of the old Whigs. Considering that the old Whigs were aristocrats who had inherited the territorial plunder of the courtiers of Henry VIIL, and who desired to preserve that inheri- tance, and, with it, the power of an aristocracy, their economy in innovation was as natural as it was wise, But it would have tasked the sagacity of Burke to discover what old foundations for con- stitutional government there were in the France of 1789. France had then been, for at least a century and a half, a despotism with a strictly centralized administration. The semblance of provincial government survived, but it masked without really tempering the action of the satraps of the monarchy; and feudalism, crushed since Richelieu, had left behind no genuine remnant of local liberty, but only the antiquated machinery of social oppression, which Richelieu had done almost nothing to reform. Yet the political ar- chitects of 1789 did build on old foundations, the only old foundations which anywhere pre- sented themselves—the foundations of the Eng- lish Constitution. And it may confidently be said that, compared with that renowned, time- honored, and much-lauded model, the newest cre- ation of the brain of Sieyés would have been a safe and practical guide. The clock-work consti- tutions of Sieyés displayed a fatal ignorance of the real forces; but at all events they involved no incurable self-contradiction. It was not abso- lutely impossible to make them work. But it was absolutely impossible, and had been actually proved to be so by English experience, to make the British Constitution work, as the British Con- stitution was understood by Frenchmen and by Englishmen themselves. The received version of the British Constitu- tion was that given by Montesquieu, in perfect accordance with the forms of British constitu- tional law. Montesquieu, a great genius in his day, while he explained the forms with philosophic eloquence, failed to pierce through them to the real political forces. In this respect he is like De Tocqueville, whose work, admirable in many respects, is still an account of the forms, not of the real forces, and, consequently, is of little value as a practical guide to American politics,

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198 @ and is seldom quoted by American politicians. The legislative power is the sovereign power. But Montesquieu believed that the sovereign power, in the case of the British Constitution, was really divided among king, Lords, and Com- mons. He also believed that the legislative, ex- ecutive, and judiciary powers were not only dis- tinct, but independent of each other, and that the mutual independence of those powers was the palladium of constitutional government. The British Constitution is a single elective assembly, in which the whole of the legislative, and therefore the whole of the sovereign power is really vested. This assembly virtually ap- points the members of the executive, who are the leaders of its majority, and through the execu- tive the ministers of justice. Round it still cling, as it were, the wrecks of an old feudal monarchy and of an old feudal House of Peers, but from both of them the power has long passed away, to centre in the Commons, though, strange to say, not only foreign observers, but English statesmen, long remained unconscious of the fact. Whether the sovereign power, which could not be divided, should be vested in the crown or in the representatives of the people, was the ques- tion which, after vain attempts to settle it by de- bate, was fought out with arms between the Par- liament and the Stuarts. It was decided, after a century of conflict and several vicissitudes of for- tune, in favor of the representatives of the peo- ple, who finally triumphed in 1688. From that time the monarchy has been fainéant, interfering with the government only by means of back-stairs influence, or by forming for itself, underhand, a party in the House of Commons, as it did during part of the reign of George III. William IIL, being the head and the general of a European coalition, kept for his life the Foreign Office and the War-Office in his own hands; but after a slight resistance, ending with bis attempt to veto the Triennial Act, he was obliged to relinquish every other kind of power; and, in the reign of his successor, the transfer of the sovereignty to Parliament was complete. ‘As to the House of Lords, it has no power left in itself but that of obstruction on minor questions; on great ques- tions it merely registers the vote of the majority of the House of Commons. This was settled in 1832, in the case of the Reform Bill, and again in 1846, in the case of the Corn Laws. On both those occasions the measures would notoriously have been rejected by an overwhelming majority, had the House of Lords been an independent as- sembly. The result showed that it was nothing THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. of the kind. King, Lords, and Commons work together harmoniously in England, not because each of them exercises its share of the sovereign power temperately, and with due respect for the rights of the others, which is the common and the orthodox belief, but because two of them are politically non-existent. Restore real sovereignty to the crown, and you will have the Stuarts and the Long Parliament over again. Following, however, as they thought, the suc. cessful example of England, the framers of the French Constitution of 1789 attempted to divide the sovereign power, leaving a portion of it in the king, and vesting the remainder in the represen- tatives of the people. The result, the inevitable result, was collision, and soon a conflict which, though neither party knew it, was essentially in- ternecine. The weaker, that is to say, the mon- archy, fell; but, in the desperate efforts necessary to get rid of the opposing force and to vindicate the sovereignty to itself, foreign intervention add- ing to the fury of the conflict and to the general difficulties of the crisis, the nation fell into con- vulsions, into the reign of violence, into the Ter- ror, and after the Terror into military dictator- ship and despotism. The same fatal situation was reproduced under the restored monarchy; again an attempt was made to divide the sover- eign power between the king and the Assembly which represented the nation. In which of the two that power should rest, was the issue once more really debated through all those fierce sessions of the Restoration Legislature, while the ground heaved with conspiracy, and ever and anon the mutterings of civil war were heard in the streets. At last Charles X. made a desperate effort to cut the knot and render himself sovereign; by his failure and fall the question of sovereignty was decided for the time in favor of the representa- tives of the people. What power Louis Philippe retained was retained not of right (for he sub- scribed to the doctrine that he was to be guided by constitutional advisers assigned him by the majority in the Chambers), but by personal in- fluence and corruption. It was in corruption, in fact, that monarchical power made clandestinely its last stand. Louis Philippe’s fall, as we have already said, was due not so much to political causes, in the proper sense of the term, as to Chauvinism conspiring against a bourgeois king, whose policy was peace, though he yielded too much to the fancied necessity of sacrificing, by military display and menace, to the idol of war. At the same time the fresh impulse given to the revolutionary movement in Europe by the strug-

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and o THE NINETY YEARS’ AGONY OF FRANCE. 199 gles of oppressed nationalities caused an insur- rection in France against the surviving forms of monarchy and the influences by which they were upheld. Chauvinism and the fear of anarchy to- gether gave birth to the second Empire, under which the sovereign power reverted from the rep- resentatives of the nation to the monarch, who was in all but form a despot, as before the Legis- lature had been, in all but form and saving il- licit influence, the king. The second Empire went to the grave of the first by the same road, the military aggressiveness which was the condi- tion of its existence leading it on at last to ruin- ous defeat. Now, again, comes a nominal repub- lie; but, unfortunately, there is still a king, and the hopeless problem of carrying on government with a divided sovereignty presents itself afresh. The marshal, having the command of the army, and being supported by those who desire a re- turn to monarchy, struggles for the sovereign power ; and the question at the late election was, whether that power should belong to him and the ministers of his personal choice, or to the nation. From 1798 onward there has been a chronic though intermittent struggle for the sov- ereign power several times; that power has been transferred and retransferred ; there have been periods in which it was doubtful where it re- sided; but it has never been divided, nor is a di- vision possible in the nature of things. The at- tempt can only lead to a conflict which will prob- ably end, as it did in England, in civil war. Those who found an elective government must not fancy that they can at the same time preserve monarchy. They must be logical, be- cause they will find that in this case not to be logical is to plunge into practical confusion. They must vest the sovereignty absolutely and beyond question in the nation. Their first care must be to establish on an immovable foundation the principles that the nation alone makes and alone can alter the constitution; that to the nation alone all allegiance is due, and against it alone can treason be committed ; that all other author- ity, however high, is merely derivative, responsi- ble, and bounded by the written law; that the sovereignty of the nation is exercised through its representatives duly elected; and that to these - representatives the obedience of all executive officers must be paid. This done, they may af- ford to make any conservative regulations with regard to the election of the National Assembly and the mode of its proceeding that they please ; and, where freedom is young, they will find care- game of the Bonapartists, first to assert the sov- ereignty of the nation, and then to make the na- tion permanently divest itself of its sovereignty by a plébiscite in favor of the Bonaparte family and the brood of adventurers whose instruments the Bonapartes are. Of course, no legislation can prevent a national suicide ; but clear declara- tions of principle are not barren because they are not endowed with force to defend themselves agamst treachery or violence; and it would be important to declare that the national sovereignty is inherent as well as entire, and that no single generation can by its act divest future genera- tions of their right. So long as there 1s a single head to the state there will always be some danger of a revival of monarchical pretensions, and of a dispute as to the seat of the sovereign power—at least in any country where monarchy has long existed and monarchical ideas have taken root. America is republican soil, on which hardly any but demo- cratic ideas can grow; the sovereignty of the na- tion is firmly established, not only in documents, but in the minds of the people; the President is elected for a short term, his powers are clearly bounded by the written law, he has hardly any military force at his command; yet Jackson showed a tendency to encroachment, and the jobbers who plundered the community under Grant betrayed their desire not only of increas- ing but of perpetuating his power. A single head of the state is a fancied necessity; the Swiss Constitution, which, instead of a single man, has a council with a president whose func- tion is only to preside, presents great advantages { ™m this respect, and is the safest model for adop- | tion. It, moreover, gets rid of that which is the scourge even of America, but far more of any country where the questions that divide parties are so fundamental and party hostility is so dead- ly as in France—a presidential election, which periodically stirs up from their depths all the most violent passions, excites the most turbulent ambitions, and brings all questions to a danger- ous head. The framers of the American Consti- tution were in some degree misled, like the fram- ers of the French Constitution, by their British model, which they reproduced in a republican form; they mmagined that it was necessary to have something in place of the king, and the elective presidency with all its evils is the re- sult. Another signal and calamitous instance of mistaken imitation of the British Constitution ful regulations of this kind needful. It is the | is the power of dissolution, which the other

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‘7 * 200 day, in the hands of a disloyal President and Sen- ate, was so nearly the means of overturning the Republic. In the days in which the power of legislation, with the other attributes of sovereign- ty, resided in the crown, and Parliaments were merely consultative, or at most instruments for supplying by the grant of subsidies the occasional necessities of the crown, it was a matter of course that they should be summoned only when the crown needed their presence, and dismissed as soon as their advice had been given and they had voted their supplies. Our modern power of dis- solution is a survival of this original state of things. But with us it is no longer practically in the hands of the king, or of any authority outside Parliament; it has passed, with the other at- tributes of the sovereign power, to the Parliament itself. It is exercised by a parliamentary minis- ter, by whose advice the crown is bound on this as on all other questions to be guided, for the purpose of testing the relative position of parties in the country ; and its exercise is limited to that object by restrictions which, though tacit and to be found in no book on constitutional law, are perfectly understood and observed by both par- ties as the rules of the game. It is in fact the mode by which the House of Commons adjusts itself to the public opinion which is the basis of its power. This has not been seen by those who, thinking to reproduce the British Constitution, have vested in an authority really external to the Parliament, such as the French Marshalate, a power of dissolution, which is in fact a power vf extinguishing for the time, and may in dis- loyal hands be used as a power of extinguish- ing forever, the organ of the national sov- ereignty, and the national sovereignty itself. We know well that, in the case of France, the fault does not lie with the friends of the Repub- lic; but it is not in France alone that the error respecting the power of dissolution has pre- vailed. Dissolutions and general elections are alike obsolete bequests of old feudal polities; and, though by the practical temperament and the po- litical experience of the English they have been tacitly accommodated, like other parts of the historic system, to the requirements of the pres- ent day, they are alike in themselves evil as well as obsolete. The existence of the Assembly, which . is the organ of the national sovereignty, and without which the nation is practically powerless, ought never to be suspended for an hour ; from its supension in any country in which elective institu- tions have still a disputed title, and are threat- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ened by hostile machinations, the most serious dangers may arise. General elections are evil, be- cause they bring on those violent conflicts of opin- ion, and pitched battles between parties, which, when the differences of sentiment are so extreme as they are between the Ultramontanists and the Liberals, the Legitimists and the Radicals, in France, are in the highest degree perilous, and, as the recent crisis has plainly indicated, might, in a very inflamed state of feeling, lead at once to an outbreak of violence and civil war. To avert such conflicts, to avoid pitched battles of opinion, to make the stream of political progress glide within its banks, and with as few cataracts as possible, ought to be the aim of all framers of elective constitutions. An elective assembly re. newed, not all at once, but by installments, and at regular periods fixed by law, independent of the will of any functionary, will fulfill the con. dition of uninterrupted life, without which usurp- ing governments, like that of De Broglie, may always be tempted to suspend its existence or get rid of it altogether; and it will conform steadily, yet promptly enough, to the changes of public opinion, without those violent revolutions which general elections are apt to produce, and without giving the excessive predominance which they are apt to give to the question or the ery of the day. The necessity under which party leaders find themselves of providing a question and a cry for a general election has had a bad effect even on English legislation. Another illusion which has led to strange con- sequences in France, and in all other countries where the building of constitutions has been go- ing on, including the British colonies, is the no- tion that the House of Lords is a Senate moderat- ing by its mature wisdom the action of the more popular House. As we have had occasion to say elsewhere, the House of Lords is not a Senate; it is an old feudal estate of the realm: its action has been, not that of ripe wisdom moderating popular impulse, but simply that of privilege combating, so far as it dared, all change, in the interest of the privileged order. Whether its in- fluence is really conservative may be doubted: in the first place, because its resistance to change, being unreasoning and anti-national, is very apt, as the history of the first Reform Bill shows, to pro- voke the revolutionary spirit rather than to allay it ; and, in the second place, because it operates as a practical ostracism of the great land-owners, who, under the circumstances of English society, would otherwise certainly find seats in the House of Commons. The real stronghold of English

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THE NINETY YEARS’ conservatism is the preponderance of the aristo- cratic, or rather plutocratic, element in the House of Commons. But at all events the House of Lords furnishes no model to any country which has not an hereditary and territorial aristocracy, or a privileged order of some kind, having its base, and presenting a fulcrum of resistance, out- side the body of the nation. If both assemblies emanate from the nation, whatever diversities there may be in the mode of their election, and even if the Senate be not directly elected, but nominated by a government itself the offspring of election, the attempt to make the national sovereignty check and restrain itself by acting through two organs instead of one, and confront- ing its own impulses with its own cooler wisdom, must ultimately fail. So long as the same party has a majority in both assemblies, the double machinery will work smoothly, but at the same time it will be ineffective. But when the party which is in a majority in the popular assembly is in a minority in the Senate, as soon as an important question arises there will be a collision between the two Houses, and the result will bea dead-lock, which will last till the nation compels one of the two assemblies to give way, declaring thereby in effect that the national sovereignty is delegated to the other. Nor is there any real ad- vantage in the delay which the dead-lock causes, sufficient to compensate for the violence of the struggle, and the dangerous excitation of turbu- lent and revolutionary passions. Such is the ex- perience of the British colonies in Australia, while in Canada the Senatc is a cipher, and its debates are not even reported. In Italy the same party was at first in the majority in both Chambers ; but the other day a change took place in the pop- ular Chamber, and at once there were symptoms of collision. In France, the Senate at each great crisis of the constitution has proved impotent or useless, as the historian of parliamentary govern- ment in France admits ; but it is now showing a tendency, as might have been expected, to become the citadel of a party, or rather a group of par- ties, bent on overturning the Republic in the in- terest of some form of government more favora- ble to aristocracy; and in this way it threatens to prove not a nullity, but a danger of the first magnitude, and an instrument of attempts, such aa the attempt of De Broglie, which may plunge the country again into civil war. If the example of the American Senate is cited in favor of a second Chamber, it must be remembered that the American Senate represents the Federal principle as opposed to the principle of population, and AGONY OF FRANCE. 901 that its authority and usefulness, whatever they may be, thus depend on its connection with a Federation. Besides, of what special elements do you wish your Senate to consist? What is to be the spe- cial character of its members compared with those who sit in the Lower House? Till this is dis- tinctly settled, all devices for particular modes of election or appointment are devices without an object; they are machines for producing some- thing which itself is not determined. Do you wish your Senate to consist of old men, in ac- cordance with the literal meaning of the name, and with the habit of primitive nations? It will represent the infirmities of old age. Do you wish it to consist of the rich? It will be the organ of a class interest, odious and the object of sus- picion to all the rest of the nation. Or do you wish it to consist of the best and most trust- worthy of your public men? If you succeed in putting these men into the Senate, you will de- prive the popular Chamber of its guides and of those most able to control its impulses and pas- sions, and in a manner ostracize your legislative wisdom. Something like this happened to Crom- well when he thought to temper the fractiousness of the House of Commons by restoring the Upper House: to supply materials for his Upper House he had to take his best men from the Lower; the lead in the Commons was broken up; the two Houses fell foul of each other; and the Parlia- ment was dissolved in a storm. : Instead of attempting to divide the sovereign- ty, which is really indivisible, and to make the nation perform the chimerical operation of pro- ducing by election a check upon itself, attention should, we venture to think, be directed, more carefully and systematically than it has ever yet been, to the constitution of the representative assembly, to the mode and rate of its renewal, to the securities for its deliberate action and for the exclusion from it of mere passion and impulse, to such questions as that between direct election and election through local councils or other in- termediate bodies, to the qualifications for the franchise in the way of property, age, education, or performance of national duties. It is singular, for instance, that, amid all the discussions about vetoes, absolute or suspensive, to be reposed in kings or presidents, no one has thought of requir- ing an absolute majority of the whole House for the passage of an opposed measure, or of giving to a minority, if it amounts to a certain propor- tion of the House, a limited power of delay. But, of all the things borrowed by France and .

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other nations from the British Constitution, the most palpably absurd and calamitous, in its gen- eral application, is the system of party, which sete up the great offices of state as the prizes of a perpetual conflict between two organized par- ties, and relies upon the perpetual existence of these two parties and the ceaseless continuance of their conflict as the only available means of carrying on constitutional government. It is strange that any one should have fallen into such a trap who had studied the parliamentary history of England. In this country there have through- out been two parliamentary parties, and two only; while the objects sought by both have been so definite and of such importance as at once to in- sure cohesion, and to justify, in some degree at least, allegiance to the party standard. The con- flict of parties has, in fact, been the means of carrying on and regulating a series of organic changes and reforms in a democratic, or at least in a popular, direction. The adherents of each party have been able to say, with truth, that they were contending for the ascendency of certain definite principles in government and legislation. At the same time there have been certain princi- ples common to both parties, which, with the re- markable aptitude of the nation, and the reten- tion of the leadership on both sides by a section of the aristocracy, have always, in modern times, kept the contest within bounds. Even so, party has often shown that it is but a fine name for faction; and in the pauses of progress, when there was no great question before the country, the generous emulation of party leaders has sunk into a personal struggle for place with all its ran- cor and all its meanness. Such, however, as it is, the ground for the existence of the party system is peculiar to England, and has its ex- planation in her political history: the attempt to reproduce the system in other countries, with- out the ground for its existénce, will be not only senseless, but noxious in the highest de- gree. To divide a nation forever into two fac- tions, and to set these factions to wage a per- petual war, such a war as that of factions al- ways is, and with the usual weapons of intrigue, mutual calumny, and corruption, is surely the strangest plan ever deliberately adopted by a political architect ; and, if we could be convinced that this was the only possible mode of carrying on constitutional government, we should regard the case of constitutional government as hopeless. How can our political salvation be found in a system of which it is the inherent tendency, one | might almost say the avowed object, to stir up | THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. discord, to excite unpatriotic passions, to stimu- late selfish ambitions, to deprave political charac- ter, to destroy that reasonable loyalty to the na- tional government on which the very existence of a free community depends? If the absurdity of such a theory is not manifest enough in itself, let inquiry be made into the working of the sys- tem of party in the British colonies, where it has been retained for the personal benefit of groups of politicians, when, all organic questions having been settled, the public grounds for such com- binations and for allegiance to party have ceased to exist ; it will soon become manifest what are its effects upon the efficiency, purity, and stabili- ty of government, on the morality of public life, on the political character of the people. In the United States there was ground enough, and more than enough, for the existence of party while the nation was divided on the question of slavery; and it is not surprising the party spirit should have prevailed over allegiance to the nation, or that there should have been a party conflict of the utmost bitterness, which, being brought toa head by an election to the presidency, ended in a civil war. But the old materials for party having been thus exhausted, and new materials not pre- senting themselves, the combinations are break- ing up, the lines are becoming confused, and the present Government, in undertaking the work of administrative reform, hardly relies more on the support of its own party, the regular managers of which are all against it, than on that of the best section of the other party, and less on either than on that of the nation at large. The historian of parliamentary government in France, M. Duvergier de Hauranne, who tacit- ly assumes throughout his work the necessity of the party system, states its theory thus: “In free countries, where liberty is not of yesterday, there always exist, in the bosom of society, two principal tendencies, one toward liberty, the other toward authority, which manifest themselves in all legal ways, above all in the way of elections, and which usually produce two parties, having each its principles, its opinions, its flag. Of these parties one has the majority, and governs, not directly but indirectly, by the influence which it exercises, the choices which it indicates, the measures which it defends or combats. The other becomes the Opposition, and watches the Govern- ment, controls it, keeps it up to the mark, till such time as faults or a movement of public opinion change the relative position of the par- ties, and give it in its turn the right and the power of governing.” Two tendencies, according

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to this eminent writer, there must always be in the nation, one toward authority, the other toward liberty ; and these tendencies are the foundations of the two parties, by the perpetual conflict of which government is to be carried on. But, sup- pose a man to have an equal and well-balanced regard both for authority and for liberty, to which party is he to belong? Or is he to remain in a state of suspension, and to be eliminated from politics, because he thinks rightly and is free from undue bias? Suppose the nation itself to have arrived at a reasonable frame of mind, to be practically convinced that, while the preserva- tion of ordered liberty is the object for which authority exists, rational allegiance to authority was essential to the preservation of liberty—what then? Because the nation was all of one opinion, and that opinion evidently the right one, would the possibility of good government be at an end? Then, again, do not those who hold the view of M. Duvergier de Hauranne perceive that, while it is essential to their theory that there should be only two parties, that of authority and that of liberty, that of the Government and that of the Opposition, the fact is that in France there are a dozen, that the same is the case in other coun- tries, and that even in England, though the Con- servative party, which is a party of interest, re- tains its unity, the Liberal party, which is a party of opinion, is splitting into sections, which are becoming every day less amenable to party dis- cipline, and therefore weaker as a whole? It is evident that, as intellectual activity and inde- pendence of mind increase, sectional differences of opinion will multiply, and party organization will become more impracticable every day. Noth- ing will be left us but hollow, treacherous, and ephemeral combinations of cliques which have no real principle of union, and which will be torn asunder again by mutual jealousies almost as soon as they are combined. Intrigue and cabal will continually gain force; the hope of a stable government will grow more faint; until at last the people, in sheer weariness and despair, will fimg themselves at the feet of any one who promises to give them stability and security with the strong hand. An executive council, regularly elected by the legislature, in which the supreme power resides, and renewed by a proper rotation and at proper intervals, so as to preserve the harmony between the legislature and the executive, without a min- isterial crisis or a vote of censure, is the natural and obvious crown of an elective polity; and to something of this sort, we venture to think, all THE NINETY YEARS’ AGONY OF FRANCE. free communities will be ultimately compelled to have recourse, by the manifest failure of the par- ty system. If further security for the responsi- bility of the executive to the legislative, and for the maintenance of harmony between the two, were deemed needful, it might be provided that, besides the limitation of office to a certain term, each member of the council should be liable to removal at any time for special cause, by the vote of a certain proportion of the assembly. Such a provision would have enabled the French Legislature to get rid of Barras and his two ac- complices in the Executive Directory as soon as it became manifest that they were conspiring against the Constitution. A national assembly, elected under such con- ditions as may appear to be most favorable to the ascendency of intelligence and public spirit, representing the undivided sovereignty of the nation, always in existence, renewed by such in- stallments as may preserve its popular character without rendering it the sport of temporary pas- sion, legislating under rules the best that can be devised for securing deliberate action, and in its turn electing the members of a responsible execu- tive-—such, once more, seems the natural or- ganization of a community which, in the course of human progress, has discarded the hereditary principle, and adopted the elective principle in its stead. No constitution can protect itself against the external violence of a great army, if the army is willing, at the bidding of a military usurper, to cut the throat of public liberty. No constitution can change the political character of a nation, or cure, as by magic, the weakness and servility contracted by centuries of submis- sion to a centralized and arbitrary administra- tion. No constitution can neutralize the bad ef- fects produced on public spirit and on mutual confidence by the decay of religious belief in the minds of a great part of the nation, and the absence or imperfect development of any new faith. No constitution can eliminate the general vices of human nature, or the special vices of the particular nation. But such a con- stitution as we have indicated would at least not contain in itself the certain seeds of its own destruction ; it would not be liable to legal dissolution by any external power; it would continue to exist, to do its work better or worse, to renew itself by an operation as regular as the seasons, and which there could never be a special temptation to interrupt; without inducing tor- por, it would avoid anything like a violent crisis, such as is brought on by a general election, es-

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204 becially after a penal dissolution ; it would keep the way always open to the reform of what is bad, by means of improved elections, and with- out a revolution; it would give full play to any increase of virtue and intelligence which there might be among the people; its course would no doubt be at first somewhat halting and un- satisfactory among a people whose training has been so unfortunate, but it could hardly fail to the ground, or fail to answer in a tolerable way the ordinary ends of government. Of the present constitution, unfortunately, the contrary is true. It does contain in itself the almost certain seeds of its own destruction. The quasi-monarchical power, presidency, mar- shalate, or whatever it is to be called, and the Senate, which is sure to have an aristocratic character, will probably remain, as they are now, the double basis of a perpetual reaction in fa- vor of the hereditary principle, to which privi- lege, with good reason, clings; and recent expe- rience renders it highly probable that the two, if firmly united, would be able by successive dis- solutions, combined with the exercise of govern- ment influence in the elections, to place in the utmost peril, and practically to annihilate, the organ of the national sovereignty, and the national sovereignty itself. The constitution of “three powers” is a constitution of civil war. In discussing constitutions, however, and the revision of constitutions, we are haunted by the unwelcome apprehension that something of a sterner kind may yet be in store for France. We do not greatly fear that a soldier, whose name is associated with nothing extraordinary or great except defeat, will conceive the design of founding a military empire in his own inter- est. We do not greatly fear the clericals, since the catastrophe of Eugénie and her priests, and when Ultramontanism, in spite of its recent THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. spasm of aggressive energy, is manifestly losing ground throughout educated Europe. We donot even greatly fear Bonapartism in itself, simply as a movement in favor of the restoration of a military despotism for the benefit of a discred- ited dynasty. What we fear is the implacable hostility of aristocracy to a republic based upon equality. In France the three aristocracies, Le- gitimist, Orleanist, and Bonapartist, are now col- lectively strong; their wealth has greatly in- creased ; they begin to feel a common interest, social and political, though they are at present ranged under the banners of different pretend- ers, and have hitherto, by their disunion, saved the Republic. One and all, they instinctively hate equality, and those hate it most bitterly whose nobility is of yesterday. You may de- monstrate as clearly as you please that aristoc- racy has had its hour, that humanity is passing into another phase, that the best and most glori- ous part which a man who inherits the influ- ence of aristocracy can play is to smooth the transition into a new era: some of the finer minds, and of those who can hope to maintain their position by their own character and intel- lect, will perhaps listen to you; the mass will obey the bias of class, cling to privilege, and constantly conspire against equality and any in- stitutions by which equality is upheld. Their feelings toward the democratic masses are not those of mere political difference, but of hatred more bitter than-that which is felt by a foreign enemy, and aggravated by contempt. The aris- tocratic conspiracy, for such at bottom it was, of De Broglie and Fourtou has for the moment failed; but the attempt will be perpetually re- newed: and it will be fortunate, indeed, if the question between the republic and the aristocracy is finally decided without adding another convul- sion to the ninety years’ agony of France.—Con- temporary Review.

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By LOUIS T will not be amiss to ventilate a little the Eastern question. Not as if I could say anything new, but because purified notions may consolidate instinctive aspirations into convic- tions, and longings into purposes. The Eastern question is a European question. There is no power in Europe that would not feel that the phases of that question are connected more or less, mediately or immediately, with its own interests. Whence comes the importance of this question ? How and when did the Eastern question be- come a European question ? By the increase of the Russian power, and since the time when Russia—by the diminution of the Turkish Empire and the dismemberment of Poland—increased to formidable proportions, and thus became dangerous to the freedom of Europe. I feel thankfully indebted to the Porte; and I do not, like many people, consider gratitude to be a burden, but to be a dear obligation. I learned to esteem highly the noble qualities of the Turkish national character; and I learned it the more from the admirable phenomenon that this people of tenacious morals could not be cor- rupted in their rich social virtues even by the pestiferous air which has floated over them from Constantinople through a period of several cen- turies, during which this capital has been con- verted into a witch-kettle of European intrigues, fighting for the maintenance of the equilibrium. This corrupt influence has found among the higher circles around that kettle individuals ac- cessible to bribery; but the country people re- main attached to the moral feelings and to the holy relics of social virtues, in the same way as in Hungary the eternal holy flame of nationality has been kept burning around the hearths of our people, while it has been extinguished in the palaces. It is true that the Turkish people re- main still far behind in what we call civilization. This is not the fault of their susceptibilities, nor of their willingness; but it is quite certain that only national morality can supply a good soil for the roots of liberal institutions, and that they decay or become false without it. Quite as cer- tain is it that the world would admiringly con- RUSSIAN AGGRESSION. RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, AS SPECIALLY AFFECTING AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND TURKEY. KOSSUTH. template how easily the most liberal institutions would take root, how naturally they would be- come acclimatized among the Turkish people, if Europe would but prevent the hereditary foe of the Turkish Empire from interfering with the spread of endeavors inspired by the warnings of time. But these are my personal views, my indi- vidual sympathies. Sympathies, however, are no centre of attraction for the politics of the world, but self-interest is; and, though for a long time the conservation of the Turkish Empire was a dogma of the politics of the European equilib- rium, and is still so in foro conscientia, it does not follow that Europe is in love with the Turks, but only that it abhors the increase of Russian preponderance. And rightly so. The Eastern question is a question of Russian power. “Hinc omne principium, huc refer ex- itum.” This is the summary of European in- terests, considered from the European point of view. Every policy is either a cheat or a fallacy which does not take this fact as a starting-point. The Eastern question is a question of Russian power. If this line be struck out, the Eastern question ceases, ipso facto, to be a European question. It descends at once to the level of in- ternal questions, whose changing phases may be followed sympathetically or antipathetically, ac- cording to the inspiration of political principles or instinctive feelings; but they will never dis- turb the sleep of any European power. The Turkish Porte may succeed (and I wish from my innermost soul that she may succeed) in concil- iating all her nationalities of diverse races and creeds, either on the ground of equality of rights, surrounded by constitutional institutions, or by personal union, or on the ground of a strict fed- erative system; or, if she does not succeed, and on the ruins of her fallen power the nationalities of her empire should rise to autonomy, assert- ing their national individuality, all this will not threaten the peace or the liberty of Europe—all this will never be converted by anybody into a European question. On the contrary, the Eastern question lies in the actual situation. Every aggression, either on

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206 the integrity of the Turkish Empire or on her sovereignity, will always threaten the peace of Europe, because every direct or indirect increase of Russian preponderance in Europe will be a step to the fulfillment of that prophecy of Na- poleon, that “‘ Hurope will become Cossack.” They speak of humanity. Good God! where is the Christian power in Europe that has not unscrupulously disowned human feelings, not only when its own interests were concerned, but very often from mere revenge? What bitter feelings and remembrances crowd into my brains with fe- verish beat when I think that I am a Hungarian ! and how many other terrible examples could I quote, through the long line of historical atroci- ties, down to the insane brutality of the French Commune, and to the subsequent reprisals of loosened fury! And I ask, Where and when has the trampling down of humanity, the traces of which are visible all over the world, been made a European question ? But it is impossible not to feel indignation in our human bosoms when we see that the very same power which rose by trampling down the freedom of its people, from the Vistula to the Behring Strait, from the Euxine to the glacial sea, covers its dangerous schemes with the veil of humanity, and increases continually the giant stature of its power by such systematic consist- ency and pitiless cruelty as stand unequaled in history. There is no question of humanity here, but simply of the increase of Russian preponderance. | The one is only dust thrown into the eyes of man- kind that they may not see the other. And they speak of freedom, of self-govern- ment! But the thing stands thus, that while Russian power presses upon the southeastern part of Europe, the Christian nationalities of the Turkish Empire will never be reconciled to the suzerainty of the Porte, nor can they become free and independent. They can only be instruments of Russian policy—sometimes by force, sometimes willingly, but always serviceable instruments. Look at Servia. As far as the Porte is con- cerned Servia was a free country, quite as much so as any other European nation, and she wanted nothing but the mere title to be entirely indepen- dent. She was more independent than Hungary is at present with respect to her political, finan- cial, and economical administration, in every point of view, even as regards the tribute payable to the Porte. But she was not free, she was not independent, with respect to Russia; she could ‘not be so. Whoever has a protector has a mas- ‘THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ter too. Not that the Servians would not prefer to be free Servians, rather than vassals-under Russian rule; but because they are unable to re. sist Russian pressure. This is tlie fatal necessity of the situation. The dust of verbal assurances was thrown into the eyes of Europe from St. Petersburg. It was said that the czar kept back Prince Milan from waging war. But Russian agents stirred up the fire of war; the easily in. flammable passions of the Servian people were fanned by the prospect of securing Bosnia, and by the phantasmagoria of a “ great Servia.” Rus- sian money overflowed Servia, a Russian general was placed at the head of the Servian army; Rus. sian officers, and even such as were in active military service, were sent expressly on furlough ; and thousands of Russian soldiers crowded to Servia. And thus under the Servian mask it was that Russia began war against the Turks, in order to get a pretext to continue the war un- masked. The Servians were intoxicated with the war-cry of Slavonian liberty (which liberty blooms of course in Russia very nicely !) without perceiv. ing that they fought, bled, and died not for free- dom, but in the interests of Russian preponder- ance. And what has become of “ free” Servia ? There she hangs on Russia’s pleasure. She is at present a vassal of Russia. Russian military patrols keep the Servians “in order” at Belgrade, These are very edifying things, and very instruc- tive too. Or, let us look at Roumania. I have here no room to draw up an epitome of history, but it would be very advisable if the diplomatists would do so and study it a little. They would learn therefrom what is meant when Russia guarantees “ self-governmental reforms” by “occupation of territory.” I wish only to recall to mind that, since the time of the capitulation between Mircea and the Sultan Bajazet on the part of Wallachia, and between Bogdan II. and Selim I. on the part of Moldavia, the Porte has always respected the liberty and self-government of Roumania. She has respected them in such an unheard-of liberal way that the mighty Porte, the sovereign power, conceded to her vassals the most unbounded re- ligious liberty, excluding even from these vassal provinces her own creed, and did not grant to her own Mohammedan subjects even the right of possessing there any landed property. The Turks have never violated that treaty. Never/ Rou- mania was free; she is indebted for all her trou- bles and misfortunes (and, alas, how much has she suffered!) to the meddling of Russia. And every Roumanian patriot feels that, if Russian

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nder D re- sity nces ack sian 7 in- — —w Vr ae i i, a 8 =6 power surrounds Roumania—this island in the midst of a Slavonian sea—his fatherland will be broken to pieces by the folds of the boa-constric- tor. Every Roumanian dog knows it! And it was Europe that guaranteed the freedom and neutrality of Roumania! And still Roumania is the high-road by which Russia marches to wage war against Turkey. Roumania is still the basis of the Russian war- operations against the Porte, as it was in the year 1849 of those against the Hungarians. The Rou. manian Government prayed, with clasped hands, to the guaranteeing powers that they would pro- tect her neutrality. But the Russians are very clever politicians ; they chose the right moment in which to stir up anew the Eastern question. England is powerful. She can defend Con- stantinople and sweep the Russian flag from the seas. But she is not a Continental power. She alone cannot send an army of some hundred thou- sand men to Roumania. , France is still maimed; she begins to recover, but she suffers from her past losses. If she were not maimed, Russia would not dare what she dares now. The German Imperial Government has polite words for every one, but it is its policy not to al- low an alliance of any European power with Tur- key against Russia, in order to localize the war. If this succeeds, it will be of the greatest service to Russia, as she will thus have an opportunity of preparing for the occupation of additional ter- ritory by raising internal convulsious in the Turk- ish provinces. And she will do it at the given time as well in Hungary as in Austria, And what is the key to this policy of Prince Bismarck ? Nothing else but that he is afraid to offend Rus- sia, as she might think of giving to France an aiding hand to procure revenge. Lucky Italy, who deserves her luck for her constancy centuries ago, and who wins provinces by losing battles, is on the lookout to see whether there is visible on the horizon a completing ray of light for the “ Stella d'Italia.” In the councils of Austria the traditional de- mon of “ rapine”’ goes about, and, where he does not appear, the paralysis of irresolution “ hums and haws” from one day to the other. Hungary is a province, and not a state; she cannot follow an independent policy. She has given up herself. She is treatied to death. They counted on all this at St. Petersburg, ere the “ pacific” Czar Alexander became such a resolute “‘ champion.” For Roumania the end will be that the free RUSSIAN AGGRESSION. Roumania whose neutrality has been guaranteed by the powers will be held in dependence by Russia, as she has been so many times before. The Roumanian-Russian alliance is an accom- plished fact, and by it Roumania has become the auxiliary of Russia. What could the Roumanians have done? Could they, left alone to themselves, have resisted the Russian pressure ? Could they, wolf-like, have shown their teeth to her whom the European powers regarded with lamb-like patience ? The situation coerced them. This is the philosophy of the Eastern ques- tion. As long as Russia is conscious of her over- whelming power, and knows that she may press with all her might upon the Turkish Empire, nobody can there become free or independent. They may change masters, get a new patron, but the new patron’s vital power consists in an autoc- racy in whose outspread arms Freedom dies, and only the weeds of the Nihilismus pullulate secret- ly. Such a “ patron” they may get, but nobody can become free under “ Russian protectorship.” And it is right that I should mention here what misconceptions there are as to the meaning of the tide of feelings and apprehensions that shakes the nerves of the Hungarian nation. They say the Hungarians are afraid of the freedom of their neighbors, the Slavonians. This is not true. It is only intrigue that can say so, only blindness or silliness that can believe it. Hungary and the Hungarians’ love of liberty are “twins born the same day.” They have lived together a thousand years. The Hungarians no- where and never feared, and do not fear liberty. And they were never exclusive in their love of liberty; they never accommodated even their privileges to certain races. And we are the less afraid of the liberty of our Eastern neighbors, since I feel thoroughly convinced that if these nations were to become free—really free, not Russian serfs—then Hungary (if she may still keep the mastership of her own destiny) would be quite ready to inaugurate with them such de- fensive combinations as, though in the interest of the European equilibrium, would also uphold and secure their individual national independence. And I am convinced also that such a combi- nation, in which the Turkish nation may very naturally join, is one of the chief necessities of the logic of history. Only in this order of ideas can be found security for the independence of minor nations against the pressure of the greater aggrandizing powers. We are not afraid of liberty, but of the in- crease of Russian power. That is what we Hun- .

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208 garians are afraid of. We fear that, if the Turk- ish Empire should be dismembered, if its sover- eignty should be undermined previous to the re- moval of this danger, and if this dismemberment and undermining should be provoked by Russia, and turned to her profit, the result would not be that free nations would rise out of the ruins of the Turkish Empire ; but rather the result would be Russian occupation, or else (which is the same thing, though more dangerous) Russian servitude, accompanied, as a compensation, by the “ grand idea” of affinity of race as a honeyed cake; and the Slavonian nations would be fettered to the Russian yoke. This would, in some inevitable way, have a tendency to enslave Hungary as well, and we should finally, after many and great struggles, be brought to perdition, as Poland was a century ago. And I must observe that the danger that threatens us threatens still more the Austrian Empire. There is between us such a community of interests as gives the power to secure the re- moval of this danger; and the Government can thus count on the whole nation, which would rise as if her millions were only one man, not merely in blind obedience, but with all the power which a nation can exert when it defends its existence, its very life. This is the danger that shakes the heart- strings of the Hungarian nation. This makes it ready for every exertion, for every sacrifice, in order that the integrity of the Turkish Empire and the sovereignty of the Porte may not become a prey to Russian tyranny and aggrandizement. Remove this danger, and we shall always ap- prove the regenerational endeavors of the Turkish nationalities, and shall feel great pleasure if this regeneration succeed without destruction of races, language, or creed—the old internal hatreds being superseded by equal laws and equal freedom. We Hungarians shall thus acquire in the Turkish Empire such friends as could not be found else- where on the surface of the whole earth. But if Fate, whose skein is composed of the thread of the immutable past, should decide that all these endeavors shall be fruitless, owing to so many impediments being thrown in the way of their fulfillment by foreign intrigues, egotism, meddling, and passion, then we are very much afraid of the liberty of our neighbors. If the contrary happen, however, we will welcome them at the round table of free and independent nations; we will offer them our hands, and aid them so that their liberty and independence may be secured against every THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Far from my fatherland I live in solitary se. clusion, and shall die there. But if I am forced to forget much, there is something I can never * forget ; it is that I know the Hungarian heart, on whose throbbing my hand has so often rested. I shall now state why I think that Hungarian public opinion should occupy a determinate posi- tion on this Eastern question, It was diplomatically acknowledged, during the crisis of 1854, how dangerous Russian power had become to the liberty of Europe, and it was then seen that the future could only be secured against the renewal of this question by that power being reduced to lesser proportions, such as would not endanger Europe. This was what England aimed at in the Cri- mean war of 1854. But her programme could not be carried out then in consequence of the attitude of Austria, as may be seen from some of the articles in the French Moniteur, containing those officiai revelations with which Napoleon III. tried to soothe English public opinion, the fluctuations of which I then strove to direct, and which strongly demanded the restoration of Po- land. And the programme not being carried out is the reason why this question now shows itself in a still more dangerous form than it has ever done since that time. In a more dangerous form, I say, because the Russian preponderance of power has assumed such a character as against the liberties of Eu- rope generally, and against those of our country particularly, as shows her aim to be new territo- rial annexations. The Emperor of Russia has written upon his banner “The Slavonic Cause.” This was the phrase used by him on the occasion of his war- like speech at Moscow. This phrase had hith- erto been paraded only in the Slavonian diction- aries for private use; it had not before appeared in the plan of the confessed policy of the Rus- sian Government. It now appears from beneath the ground, where it had before worked mole- like—rising, on the arms of the absolute auto- crat of 82,000,000 serfs, to the daylight as an active power. The czar now occupies the posi- tion of the declared champion of Panslavism. And what is this Panslavism? This is no merely national matter, no affair of national free- dom. It absorbs the different Slavonic nations into one single race. It substitutes race for na- tionality ; power of race for liberty. external aggression. The signification of “The Slavonic Cause ’

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as a Russian war-cry is this: that the cabinet of St. Petersburg seeks, wherever there are Slavo- nians, instruments wherewith to paralyze the policy of some other power, to cripple its force, and to find in the Panslavists wedges with which it may split states asunder, if they stand in the way of Russia’s extension of power; and to cre- ate new combinations, either as her tools or her objects, for the sake of her aggrandizement. At present it is the Turkish Empire that is the anvil upon which Russia strikes with her Panslavistic hammer. Her first object is the country which forms an angle betwixt the vital artery of our fatherland and Austria—the Dan- ube, and her estuary on the coast of the Euxine. That after the Turks we and Austria would next be struck upon is quite clear. Not to see this is blindness. To see and not to prevent it is suicide. This is no mere question of sympathy or an- tipathy. It is a matter of vital importance for Hungary that the integrity and sovereignty of the Turkish Empire should be secured, and that Rus- sia, who is the enemy of the liberties of Europe, should have her poison-fangs torn out before she can consolidate end increase her annexations for her own advantage. This is the philosophy of the situation. It is a fact that, with respect to this danger, the workings of diplomatists afford to us Hunga- rians no comfort. They dissimulate; they will not even show that they are aware of the real danger. The traditions of the past are very disquiet- ing. It is an historical fact that there is not a single example of Austria having taken the part of Turkey against Russia. She has al- ways been biased in favor of Russia. She has always, indeed, declared openly for her. There have been cases when she acted as media- tor, as at Nimierow; and, as soon as she heard of the capture of Cracow by the Russians, and their invasion of the Crimea, she attacked with armed force the oppressed Turks. She made a treaty with the Russians for the dismemberment of Turkey. She had a share in the prey. She accepted the half of Moldavia (Bukovina) as a compensation for Poland, of which she got only a small part. So it was planned by Kaunitz and Gallitzin. These are the traditions of Viennese policy on the Eastern question. That a continuation of this traditionary pol- icy would be dangerous in the highest degree to our fatherland and to the monarchy is clear. To An RUSSIAN AGGRESSION. 4 permit Russia to become either the direct lord or the dictator of the southern Slavonians, to be the steel hoop which compresses them, is equiva- lent to multiplying the splitting wedges. I cannot believe that these dangerous traditions can be continued within the circles of a constitu- tional government. But there are very influential circles, apart from constitutional bodies, that stick to this traditional policy. They are fond of those siren songs which are always heard when Austria has lost something, and whoge burden is, “Go for compensation to the East.”’ These are very disquieting things. And it is a fact that the Hungarian Government has till now done little to soothe or to appease the mind of the nation. Its reservedness has transgressed the farthest limits. Though reservedness may be safe in some cases, when it overreaches itself it is a fault, a blunder. Now, as the situation is full of danger, as di- plomacy gives no comfort, as the traditions of the past are disquieting, and as the Government does nothing to appease the people, it is not only a natural consequence, but it is also a postulate of self-preservation, that the nation should now occupy such a position on the Eastern question as should make the whole world aware what is the political tendency most conformable or most contrary to our national interests. The interruption of the manifestations of pub- lic opinion, caused by the very sinister proroga- tion of the Hungarian Diet, was explained, if not as a change of mind, at least as a loss of interest, and gave rise to the apprehension that in the councils of the Viennese cabinet certain influ- — ences, whose existence is an open secret, might gain the preponderance. This apprehension was very well founded. The “taking up” of a position preparatory to becoming a sharer in the booty was nearly ac- complished when, fortunately, the Turkish vic- tories stopped these dangerous preparations, and Hungarian patriotism watchfully called out, “Be on thy guard, Hungarian! who will keep watch for thee, if thou thyself doest it not for thy father- land?” And it spread all over the country, loud. ly proclaiming to friends and foes that the Hun- garian nation wakefully watched. When I speak of the Hungarian nation, I do not mean the Magyar race, but every faithful son of the fatherland, without distinction of race, tongue, or creed, who sticks patriotically to that type of government which has belonged to Hun- gary for a thousand years, and who wishes to see also Hungary remain as Hungary in the future,

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210 with her unity and indivisibility forever se- cured. This it is that serves as a criterion of the public opinion of the Hungarian nation. This, and not an inflamed sentimentality, sympathetic or antipathetic, is the starting-point of the con- viction, that dikes should be raised against the Russian extension ; for, if we do it not, we expose our fatherland and the monarchy, whose interests in this respect are identical, to the necessary con- sequence that the Russian power, increased al. ready by the dismemberment of Poland to formid- able proportions, would attack, after this new aug- mentation of force, the Austro-Hungarian mon- archy as a boa-constrictor that compresses her giant folds around the body of her prey, or as a hundred-armed polypus that screws itself into the flesh. That this would be the unavoidable conse- quence of Russian extension cannot be doubted, considering the geographical position and ethno- graphical situation of the Austro-Hungarian mon- archy. Then it will no more be a question of the Hungarian race—reduced by the Russophiles only to four millions of inhabitants ; it will be a question whether Hungary shall remain Hungary. And now it is necessary to point out a dan- gerous network which already hangs around us. This network is knitted out of that erroneous conception that the power of Russia can only be- come dangerous to us by territorial occupation. They say: “The czar has given his word that he will not occupy; and the czar is an honest man” (Brutus is an honorable man); “let him then manage” (I very nearly wrote mismanage) “in the East. The present vocation of the Aus- tro-Hungarian monarchy is to remain in readi- ness”’ (and, of course, only in the south, where we can do mischief to the Turks, but in no ima- ginable case to the Russians), “and only to step into action if the ezar should break his word, and want to occupy while the peace negotiations last. Oh! then we shall draw out the sword from the scabbard, and then we shall do—this and that.” The nation should be on its guard against this network. It is a very dangerous network. 1. I say, if the czar should come out victo- riously from this war, then the Vienna cabinet will not draw the sword to impede the czar in his occupation, but only that it may participate in the booty. God save our poor country from this suicidal tingling of swords, where infamy would cover the suicide! But let us keep also THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. in mind that God protects only those who defend themselves. 2. I say, even if the Viennese cabinet would impede at such a time the Russian occupation, it would not find a single ally to assist it to over- throw an accomplished fact, such as it could se. cure at present if it wished it, for the far easier task of preventing Russian occupation from be- coming an accomplished fact. Prussia would not help her out of this difficulty with Russia ; France would not help her; Italy would not help her, The Vienna cabinet would then have, not an ally more, but a mighty ally less, one who under given circumstances would prove better than any other, and this is the Turk. We should lose him by yon . network policy; we should lose him without re- placing him by any other. We should lose him, whether the ezar occupied territory or not. In the case of his raising army after army against the forsaken Turks, and finally conquering them —then, of course, a Turkish alliance would be out of the question. Or if the Turk, losing pa- tience at the foul play of Europe, and above all of the Vienna cabinet, should say, “ Well, if Eu- rope, and especially the Vienna cabinet, does not care for me, I do not care for them either,” and should sign a separate peace with Russia—then the Vienna cabinet might stare at yon wooden | idol, chiseled by its own political wisdom, and write protocols, which would be “set aside” by the “world’s judge,” History, as has always hap- pened. Thus this policy of looking out for the keep- ing or not keeping of the eczar’s word is either bad calculation or criminal calculation; either crime or folly. Take your choice. But there is a still more decisive view for us. This is, that the menacing danger for the Austro- Hungarian Empire would not be removed even if the czar kept his word and did not occupy ; for, even if he did not occupy, but terminated the war Victoriously, the fact that he had conquered would secure for him the power of leadership— that dictatorial influence which is his designed aim, and is written on his banner as “The Sla- vonic Cause.” And for the Austro-Hungariar monarchy the danger is not greater from the czar extending his power by occupation than it would be if he showed by victory that he can be a mighty stronghold of “ The Slavonic Cause,” and thus extend his influence over the Eastern Slavo- nians and over those that are with them in the same camp—viz., our neighbors on the left hand, as well as those on the right hand, and also in our own country. These he could dispose of as

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their leader, their lord, their protector. The Muscovite papers do not conceal that, as the ban- ner of “ The Slavonic Cause” is unfurled, so, after the Turkish “Slavonic Cause,” the “ Slavonic Cause” of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy will follow. And this is no idle boast; it is logic, This latter kind of Russian extension is really more dangerous for us and for Austria than any occupation of territory—a mode of extension which does not win over, but alienates, those whose country is occupied. It is not a desirable fate to be a Russian subject, and an occupation is, at the worst, but a boa-constrictor, against which it is still possible to struggle; but the oth- er one is the polypus: if he pierces into our flesh, there is no possibility of extrication left for us. The danger which arises from the Russian movement cannot be averted effectually from the Austro-Hungarian Empire by watching the czar’s promise ; for in either case he will occupy a con- spicuous place on the page of history as the vic- torious leader of Panslavism. The Slavonian aspirations toward a universal monarchy will gather around czarism ; this will be the star that will lead the way, the Messiah to whose call they will listen, the idol they will adore, the lord who will command them, and whose obedient serfs they will be; and thus Panslavism will develop into Panslavo-czarism. But, if we send the czar who unfurled the Pan- slavonic banner back as a loser, then the wings of his Genghis-Khanic flight will be clipped, the charm broken, and the Panslavic aspirations will lose their force. The Slavonians will per- ceive that it is not safe to carve for themselves an idol in order to adore him as the god of lib- erty. The prop will be found broken, and the support will fall asunder like loosened sheaves. The different Slavonic nations will not seek sal- vation in the worshiping of the czarism that leads to Russification, and therewith to the fetters of slavery, to drunken misery, and dreams of bru- tality ; but, in the conservation of their individ- ual nationality, in the elevation and maintenance of the vestal-fire of their self-esteem, they will find the road that leads to freedom. And we Hungarians will welcome them heartily on this road, accompany them with warm sympathy, as we accompanied them in past times, and, as far as we are able, aid every pulsation of the vital power of you miraculous Slavonic “ living statue,” whose national consciousness has never been bro- ken, either by seduction or by the storm of long- sufferings. RUSSIAN AGGRESSION. 211 Really, if there be any situation that is clear, the present one is. The Turk has understood the signs of the time. He gave a constitution to the communities of his empire, without distinction of race, tongue, or creed, on the basis of equality before the law. His enlightened statesmen provided that all the excrescences. of exclusiveness, which had been successively added to the morally pure civilization of Mohammedanism, should be buried in the grave of the past. The Czar of all the Russias threw his army into the midst of this peaceable undertaking to prevent the Turks from realizing this liberty. He was afraid that, when even the half-moon should reflect the glare of the sun of liberty, this glare might penetrate into the dark. ness of his servile empire, as the beams of the Hungarian peasant-emancipation had penetrated the night of Russian slavery. The Austro-Hungarian Government must reck- on with itself as to what can be claimed legally and fairly from the Turkish Government in the interests of its Christian subjects, without under. mining thereby the existence of the Ottoman Em- pire. Let them come to a mutual understanding with each other. It will not be so difficult, since the Porte has intelligence and good-will as well. They should conclude a treaty of alliance on the basis of this understanding, for the repulse of the Russian attack which threatens our fatherland and the Austrian monarchy very dangerously. With this alliance consummated, let Austria-Hun- gary say to Russia: “ Well, the Turks have ad- ministered justice to their subjects, and thou wouldst still continue the war. This can have no other meaning than that thou strivest to extend thy power. This we cannot permit in the inter- ests of our monarchy, and we are firmly re- solved not to allow it. Then let the bloodshed cease,.”’ And it would cease. The Russian would not expose himself to the chance that, while the Turkish lion stood in front of him, the Austro- Hungarian military force should take up a posi- tion bebind his back and cut off his retreat. The fatherland and the monarchy would be saved without striking a single blow, or at a proportion- ately small sacrifice; which sacrifice might be reduced to the concentration of a conspicuous army-corps. This demonstration should of course be made on the Danube and in Transylvania, but not in Dalmatia, nor on the Croatian military frontier, which would be very ridiculous if it were not at the same time very suspicious. And with the safety of the fatherland and of the monarchy

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212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the demands of humanity would be considered also, for it is indeed very shocking that there should be a war in the nineteenth century, which, in its horrors, exceeds the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century. And the protection of the Eastern Christians would also be vouchsafed, without crippling the integrity and independence of the Turkish Empire or the dignity of the state. These results, which can be attained thus, but only thus, would secure the weight, the authority, the splendor, and the fame of our monarchy in the highest degree. I have only tried to show the political bear- ings, not to lay down precise schemes of action. I feel convinced that the looming danger can only be averted from our country and from the monarchy by a policy having the above-named tendency. And it is certain that, with such a tendency, the Government could securely count on the self- sacrificing readiness of the entire Hungarian people without exception of party. And why does not the Government attempt it? Such a chance is very rare. Why not use it? These circumstances open up to Count Julius Andrassy the opportunity of covering himself with great and lasting glory. Hecan become the savior of his fatherland, of the monarchy, of the reigning dynasty, if he will understand the work of the hour. He will be their grave-digger if he does not do it, or if he dares not do it. What hinders him from doing it ? I hear Prussia mentioned. Yes, ten years ago the nation was frightened into the delegations by the Russian hobgoblin, and now she is like to be driven into the arms of Russia by the terror of Prussia. I will not deny the Russian inclinations of the Berlin cabinet. The personal leanings of the Emperor William have a share in this, possessing undoubtedly great weight in the decision of the Berlin policy. And the false position of Germany has also a share therein, into which false position she has been thrown by the conquest of Alsace and Lorraine, which seems even to push into the background a consideration which should never be lost sight of by Germany, at present the first ‘power of Europe. This consideration is that every increase of the Russian power must neces- sarily compromise the primatial position of the German Empire in Europe; and that, in the last analysis — against which personal inclinations struggle in vain—it may lead to a collision be- tween the German and Slavonian races, the like of which has not yet been witnessed by the world. Rome and Carthage cannot exist side by side for long. But, however strong the present inclinations of the Berlin cabinet may be, they cannot go so far as to compel Prussia to take Russia for her patron, and become the client of the latter. And, in the last resort, the German Imperial policy has to reckon with the other German princes and with the German nation; and among the former, as well as in the ranks of the latter, there are those who recollect Russian patronage and the significance of clientship for Germany under Rus- sian rule. And those who recollect this would soon warn the Berlin cabinet that German blood belongs to Germany, and not to the Russians. The knowledge of the logic of history, which I have acquired by long study and painstaking (and the cares that whitened my hair have their own tale to tell), and, at last, experience, have taught me that the German Emperor might give advice in the shape of Russian inspirations, but that, whatever be the policy of the Vienna cabi- net in the Eastern question, it is certain that, to favor Russia, the German Empire will never de- clare war against the Austro-Hungarian mon- archy. I take all that they say about Prussian threats for mere claptrap, originating from yonder cam- arilla, that strives—and, alas! strives with great effect — that the Vienna cabinet should do the same things in aid of the aggressive Russian policy against Turkey that it did against Poland, when Russia undertook to annihilate the independence of that unhappy country, and for the same end—viz., that she should become a sharer in the robbery, in- stead of allying herself with Turkey, as she ought to have done with the Poles, to frustrate the rob- bery. This is the danger which I see, like a death- prophesying bird, with outstretched wings, flut- tering over my country; and my patriotism stim- ulates me to call to mind other things in connec. tion with certain premonitory reflections on the rising manifestations of public opinion. I repeat that the important point for the Hungarian nation in this question is this: that by the warwhich rages in our neighborhood the vital interests of our fatherland, as well as those of Austria, are jeopardized. I place weight on the fact that at present the vital interests of Austria are in harmony with our vital interests. My views on the subject of the connection be- tween Austria and Hungary are known. These ~~ —_— >. -— = ee — —- -|5§ fe eh 2

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> her interests are in such opposition with reference to reciprocal state-life and mutual state-economy, that it is utterly impossible even to fancy any form of connection that would be satisfactory to both countries. It is for this that I remain in exile—a living protest against this connection. I do not, therefore, consider it to be my duty to feel sad forebodings for the special interests of Austria when its danger does not at the same time threaten the interests of our fatherland. But, when the danger of the one walks arm in arm with that of the other, I put great weight there- upon, in order that Austria should feel the danger in unison with Hungary. We stand in the face of a war that threatens our country and Austria with mortal dangers if we do not aid the Turks in impeding the exten- sion of Russian power. This war has found Aus- tria in a state-connection with Hungary. I do not think that Russia would listen to us if we should tell her she should delay the war till this connection be dissolved. She would surely not delay. Then things stand thus: that the same King of Hungary whom our nation asks to frus- trate the Russian aggressive policy is also Em- peror of Austria. This Austrian emperor stands very often in opposition to the King of Hungary. This time he is not so. And I think that the wishes of our nation can only gain in weight when she asks her sovereign to fulfill his duty as savior of the country, by acting as he ovght to do as King of Hungary ; also, in the mean time, pointing out that this is his interest as Emperor of Austria as well. It is for this reason—namely, that I like toappeal also to Austrian vital inter- ests—that I repeat emphatically that the vital interests of Hungary and of Austria are identical. This view is perfectly justified by the political significance and far-reaching importance of the Eastern question as it stands with reference to us. If the Turkish Empire were to be under no pressure from the power that threatens the lib- erty of Europe—a colossus increased to formida- ble proportions by the dismemberment of Poland —then the Eastern question would be nothing else than a home question between the Turks and the other peoples of different races in the Turkish Empire. And if this question stood thus, neither the integrity nor the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, nor the reforms conceded or denied to the nations of that empire, would affect in the least, not the more distant countries of Europe, but not even us or Austria, who are her neigh- RUSSIAN AGGRESSION. bors, except from a humanitarian, sympathetical, or antipathetical, point of view. We have learned to appreciate justly the fun- damental features of the Turkish character. We are aware, as I have said, that we possess in the Ottoman nation such reliable friends as we could not find anywhere else in the world, because our interests are so identical that there is not only no opposition, but not even a difference between us. We recollect gratefully the generosity shown to us by the Turks in the days of our sorrow; and it is honorable on our part to remember this warmly just now in the days of their sorrow. And so it is certain that we Hungarians should follow all regenerational endeavors of the Turks with heartfelt sympathy and blessing. We should feel gratified if they succeed in removing the ob- stacles in their way to liberty. On the other hand, if in consequence of Russian pressure the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire should be identical with the aggrandizement of Russia, there would not be a single Hungarian who would not consider the territorial integrity of Turkey, and the upholding of its sovereignty, as a conditio sine qua non of the maintenance of our own in- tegrity and independence. No one would think of shedding his blood nor offering aid to the Turks if it were not for the threatening attitude of Russia; but for that we should not look with anxiety on the aspirations of the Slavonic na- tions. Though all the provinces of Turkey should gain such an “autonomy” (!) as that which is prepared for the Bulgarians by Prince Cherkaski after the Russian pattern and in the Russian lan- guage, still the Eastern question would not be solved, but would then be revived in the face of Europe, and especially in that of Hungary and Austria, in such tremendous proportions as it has not yet reached. Yes, because the Eastern question, I repeat again, is a question of Russian power; clearly, distinctly, a question of Russian aggrandizement. And it will remain so until Europe, after a tardy repentance, shall at last determine the res- toration of Poland, and thus avert the curse from herself which she has incurred by the crime of that partition. Only by the restoration of Poland can Russia be pushed back upon her ancient boundaries, where she could in her still vast empire let her subjects become free men, and thus occupy a still glorious and prominent place at the round table of civilized nations, but a place whence she could no more threaten us, and Austria, and Europe, /

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214 with her Panslavo-czaristical and universal-mo- narchica] ambitions. Only when it shall be made sure on the banks of the Vistula that she can never more suffocate Turkey—only then will the Eastern question step down to an internal and, if you like it, to a humanitarian level, and be solved in such a way as not to be dangerous to Europe. But so long as this does not happen, the East- ern question will always remain a Russian ques- tion of power. If the Turkish Empire should be dismembered in consequence of Russian pressure, or even if it shouid be crippled, I repeat that every inch lost by the Turks would only increase Russian power. The diminution of Turkish sov- ereign independence would increase Russian in- fluence, which would act as a dissolving poison on us and on Austria; and the unavoidable con- sequence would be that the nations which had been severed from the Turkish rule would not become free, but Russian serfs—forming the tail of that boa-constrictor which presses us closely, the arms of that polypus which clings to our flesh. These are the conditions which induce the Hungarians to adopt the view that their very ex- istence is endangered by the war in their neigh- borhood. And these considerations are so momentous that, if we Hungarians should continue to look on in cowardly inactivity at the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, or, which is identical, at the aggrandizement of Russian power—if we should look on in cowardly inactivity while the boa-constrictor gathers material to form a new tail from the southern Slavonians, while the poly- pus makes out of them new trunks—it would be such suicidal insanity that I cannot find a word to designate it. We should be worse than the worms creeping upon the ground if we did not protect ourselves against it. These are sad times. After so much blood has been spilt that the nations might become in- dependent, we are still in the position that the fancy and the will of two or three purple-clad mortals are decisive, and not the will of the peo- ple. But the Hungarian people will live—they will not go so far in their resignation as to com- mit suicide for the sake of any mortal man what- ever. We must raise a dike against the extension of Russian power, And, to do that, we must con- serve and uphold the unity and the independence of the Turkish Empire ; for at present that is the practical way to construct a dike. This view is firmly upheld by the Hungarian nation, whatever form of expression they may use to state their THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. will ; and in this respect all the Hungarians are of the same opinion without difference of party. They are of the same opinion, for they are con- vinced that this is a vital interest of our father. land. And justly, therefore, Hungary feels indig. nation, and disavows—the whole Hungarian nation does it—that immoral and impolitic idea, that the Austro-Hungarian monarchy should become an ac- complice in the occupation of any part of Turkey Sor the sake of the enemy of our country’s vital in terests, Governments should never be in opposition to the popular wishes when governments wear the constitutional toga. It is the worse policy if they are. On the present occasion the wishes of the nation show themselves so unmistakably plain, that it would be a dangerously daring feat if the Government should try to elude them by some parliamentary trick. It is a question of exist- ence. The nation knows this well. And ours is a loyal nation. Therefore, I say to those in au- thority: Comply with her wishes. Don’t force her to take in her own hands the insurance of her life. She will do it if she is forced to it, be- cause she will not die. The Hungarian nation will not be a worm to be trampled upon by the heel of the trampler. She will not suffer that the bowing diplomatists of czars and Czsars should convert Hungary into a powder-barrel to be exploded by Russian intrigues with a Pansla- vonic match. They told thee, Hungary: “Be reconciled with Austria that thou mayest be safe from the Russian.” Thou hast been reconciled: Ict us see the conciliator, where is he? Almighty Father! if the Hungarians were but independent ! “De profundis ad te, Domine, clamavi.” I know that what I have been saying is noth- ing new. But still I thought it right to speak my mind, as the Prime-Minister of Hungary has made a very startling declaration. When it was resolved in a public meeting of citizens that the integrity of the Turkish Empire should be upheld even by armed force, the Prime- Minister of Hungary gave the following answer : “ That it is not allowable to shed Hungarian blood for the interests of any other power, and that the Government will never give its consent that the he- roic sacrifice of the Hungarian nation should be made for others.” So the Hungarian prime-minister still consid- ers the upholding of the Turkish Empire against the Panslavonic standard-bearer, the Russian czar, as being for the interests of “ others.”

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or > Po ™* RUSSIAN A Every inhabitant of Hungary, who wishes the conservation of our country, and those, also, who speculate on her overthrow, know that our cown- try’s existence is at stake. The prime-minister is, perhaps, the only man in Hungary who does not see this. But, since the crippling of the integrity of the Turkish Empire is identical with the aggrandize- ment of Russian power, nobody in the world has the right to say that Hungarians are sacrificing Hungarian blood for the sake of others, when they offer to shed it for the upholding of the in- tegrity of the Turkish Empire. The prime-min- ister ought to know that this willingness is a flower that has grown in the soil of self-preser- vation, and opened its cup under the shining of the purest patriotic sunbeams. The Hungarian prime-minister has spoken a startling word. If this is to be the standpoint of the Government, I declare most emphatically that the interests of Hungary are in dangerous hands. Whoever, in this war, considers the uphold- ing of the Turkish Empire to be a foreign cause, will not raise a dike to the extension of the Russian power: for he is not far from the thought of shar- ing with the Russians in the Turkish booty. But I should like to believe that this most unlucky expression was only an unconsidered pistol-shot, which went farther than it was in- tended. I do not say that the Hungarian Gov- ernment has deliberately thrown itself into the arms of those who are undoubtedly stirring dan- gerous questions in the regions of diplomatic circles. I can doubt, I can foresee, but I cannot assert, for I don’t knowit. But alas! I know that neither in the declarations of the Hungarian Government, nor in the actions of the leader of the foreign policy, can a Hungarian patriot find comfort. It will not be amiss to call to mind now, when the representatives of the country are as- sembled again, that the nation, without difference of parties, expects that they will rise above party spirit and secure the fulfillment of the nation’s will. The most weighty declaration of the Hunga- rian prime-minister has been that in which (I quote it word by word) he assured the House of Representatives that there is not a single person among the leaders who thinks it ought to be the aim of our foreign policy that the power and sover- eignty of Turkey should be changed. This declaration has been greatly applauded, because (as I know positively) on both sides of the House many persons who were present at GGRESSION. 215 | the first hearing interpreted the speech, full of diplomatically -clever phraseology, as assuring them that the directors of the foreign policy of the monarchy would hold it to be their task to see that the power and sovereignty of Turkey should remain unchanged. Alas! the Hungarian prime-minister did not only not say this, not only did he not want to say it, but, on the contrary, when some days later two of the representatives ascribed this sense to the declaration of the prime-minister, the latter contradicted that explanation of his words, “ Quesivi lucem, ingemui que reperta.” The far-famed ministerial declaration comes to nothing else but this: “The house of our neighbor is so situated with reference to our house, that if his catches fire ours will catch fire too. The house of our neighbor has been at- tacked by robbers and incendiaries with torches. Our household takes fright for our dwelling, and the responsible watcher of the Hungarian house- hold says, ‘ Don’t be anxious ; I give you the as- surance that among us, your watchmen, there is pone who would hold that it is his task to burn down our neighbor’s house !’” The other declaration of the prime-minister has been, that “the Government has not given to any one, in any sense whatever, a promise what it will do; nor have they assumed any obligation, but they possess their full freedom of self-decisjon.” From this declaration we learn two things, but neither of them is comforting. We learn that the Government does not know yet what it will do. It has no fixed aim. Its policy has no certain tendency. It sails about without a com- pass. It expects good luck wherever the wind shall blow. If this be policy, it is a very im- provident one. “The hour brings its own counsel ” (Kommt Zeit, kommt Rath). This is the summary. Such determination according to the occasion may be a very good thing in itself, it is well to know how we shall reach the aim we have in view; but I don’t think, in the present international im- broglio of affairs, which endangers the vital in- terests of the country, that to relegate the ten- dency of policy (not the how, but the what /) to the chance of future decision, can be advisable or even permissible. And I am very fearful that the prime-minis- ter has told the truth. I see that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, by the consent of the leaders of both parties, has constructed for himself a scheme wherein he can indeed place many things,

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216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. but what are these things i i ona rata > pao py geen phatically as the confederacy of the three em- signification of the plan is the following : 5 Let 5 a "0 np optics — the Russians do whatever they like. Our posi- | is - czar. Su = ore at ae tion toward them is a friendly neutrality.” New- | deed in great heat My pe 7 Pesci ps trality, and friendly: a steel hoop, made of | tude which in fe ape = wood! Contradictio in adjecto,. Bu Jas! still | R i Hi oh on eee ae he arene rh a a ” st ; cro Hitherto it has acted in that way. I Turkey ; but no neutrality. When a ne | single fed a affected in her vital interests by a war, as our | The Government says it has no obligati country is now, neutrality is an absolute impossi-| What! Has it not entered int + oe bility. Inaction is no neutrality. That this hith- to let Roumania be occupied na pate : . . =: eet 2 ape ag = ee _— a | furled the banners of “ The Slavonic Cause,” and ae oop op tat s ‘ on o a0 to convert this province into a place for her nina repent echeme. If military operations, notwithstanding that the neu- pepe eo on — of that country has been guaranteed by ing the final negotiations in order that ae ' Turk | . rg etry te ie te = press too hardly on the Rasslens, with | renias ag apa Pap tows pr w ‘ . , | . . = a nay 4 acts 0. If, - tas have —— stipulated, as a reward, that A riou ia i ‘we shall take up a position’ in behalf of ee | ” this fatal moka goa conquered Turks; we shall strive to moderat | vils which h a Site wpe regener attempt neater a e | = 4 ic = happened hitherto and which iations ; | W but, in any case, if the Russians sie will sb | pea — re . v a ~ down “ ~sougroed fat Gm we} But the thing does not end here. The world stn oath vy oho —— Well, we | is filled with anxiety lest even this stipulation Te tay denon on of monarchy in the | should be omitted, and lest the Viennese cabinet ussian extension-policy. The Rus- should not try to prevent the czar from taking sians have annexed, but we have annexed also; Servia into action. Lo! because the Turkish or es erie I one by robbery has | lion has struck the czar over the fingers, the mage ang EID ae czar ni in want of the perjury of little Societe inoh rb ~ Sree. : rvia, to whom Turkey the other day granted —— ong Pee m0 a oo corr the untrammeled attitude be boasting. glad if the | leans again toward Russia. triotism of th i i i i _ oo. e eed pa ent should The representatives of Hungary will, no doubt, oe a sovechga e fu ment of the | without party difference, feel the danger that eS ~ other y oe 3 suspicion—I menaces them through this new aggravation of . circumstances The second thing we learn from the quoted I must now advert to a third declaration is this, that our G i i i a a saan — a = ae “ om ap and I find it very weighty. there are two things which are the chief duties Paes tos Sole ey yon — ‘of a government. The one is that it shall see | of confessi a i = : 0 — — its way clearly with reference to the tendency of | tion b declan hoy nog sire yy bo ope am romans y declaring the interests of the Austro- y ve spoken already; the | Hungarian monarchy have led and will lead thei other is that, in order to secure this policy, it | policy, and that the interests of the vi should think of getting allies. It i ape i carn " is a bad case | der every circumstance will be considered. that the Government has no allies. I could even The Government, in fact, al call this also neglect of duty, beca i : "whether It fo Sch = eet gain y; use they could | the same dish, nobody knowing whether it is fish set ey had a good policy. or flesh, not even the butler who serves it. This g > ch soo that the untrammeled at- | is the question, in what direction (not by what itude, of whi the prime-minister has boasted, | means, but in what direction) the minister seek Savors the Russians, S inni i otek ooageh : ince the beginning of the his policy ? and whether he seeks it in a direction plications we have heard of nothing so em- | conformable to the interests of the monarchy ?

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If they should again serve a dish, which is neither “fish nor flesh,” in the House of Repre- sentatives, and if the House should be contented with this assurance (as we heard out-of-doors), that “the Government keep before their eyes the wish of the nation that the interests of the mon- archy—in opposition to the Russian policy of ex- tension—should be secured,” the ambiguity of the situation would not be at all changed, and the door would still be left open; so that, if events took another turn, the water would be turned to grind the mill for those “ influences that wish to get a share,” and our nation would some morn- ing awake to find that, under the pretense of se- curing the interests of the monarchy, things had happened which the nation abhors as it does damnation. I do not speak so because I have forebod- ings; it is not my object to enter into questions of principles. I don’t want to quote the sad pages of our own history, nor the examples of Polignac or MacMahon, to show that it has al- ways been so; and that there has never been any impiety without the reigning power invoking interests of state when committing it, But, as we stand in view of the danger of Russian exten- sion, I pray my countrymen to look for that page of history where they will see it written how the Viennese cabinet understands the securing of the interests of the monarchy when face to face with Russian aggressive policy! This has such an actuality of interest that I nearly shudder when I think of it. Whoever looks at those pages must feel con- vinced that the Viennese cabinet never did under- stand the securing of the interests of the monarchy so that the Russian extension should not be per- mitted ; but it so understood them as that, whenever the Russians commit robbery, Austria must rob as well—that, when Russia extends herself, Austria ought to do the same. So, I repeat for the third time, it understood them at the division of Poland, and so it has un- derstood them ever since, without exception, when face to face with the Russian policy of extension. This is an awful remembrance. And this they call the policy of restoring the equilibrium ! And what has history said of that awful pol- icy? Ido not speak even of morals, of honesty which is always the best policy in the end, though it was a long time ago struck out of the vocabu- lary of diplomacy. I point to facts. By this policy the Russian power has been swollen to giant-like proportions, which now RUSSIAN AGGRESSION. menace the whole world. The consequence of this policy is the war.of to-day, and Russia now smooths her way, through the Turkish “ Slavonic cause,” to the Hungarian and Austrian “ Slavonic cause.” On the other hand, this policy of sharing bas not saved the Austrian dynasty from withering. Russia has grown up; Austria has dwindled. And what will be the result if the Vienna cabinet should again follow this damnable policy of expediency ? In the past it has put a razor in the hand of Russia; now it would put this razor to the throat of Hungary, and also of Austria. “Duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem.” There can be no doubt that what the Rus- sians would rob from the Turks, what their influ- ence would win on both shores of the Lower Danube and on the Balkan peninsula, would form a real increase of their power, an augmentation of their strength; and the influence thus ac- quired would act upon the Slavonians of the Austrian Empire, and upon those of the Hunga- rian crown, like the loadstone on iron. Those Slavonians that would be caught by Russia, she would take with her. On the contrary, what the Viennese cabinet would pilfer, under the shadow of the Russian highwayman, from the Turkish Empire, would only weaken ug, and become eventually our death ; be- cause it would eternally multiply and put into further fermentation all the already fermenting and dissolving elements. The Slavonians who would be caught by the Viennese cabinet would take the latter with them. And what would be the infallible final result ? The punishment of éalio. If St. Petersburg and Vienna should divide the rags of the torn Turk- ish Empire, twenty-five years would not elapse be- fore the Russians, the Prussians, and the Italians, would divide Austria and Hungary among them- selves, perbaps leaving something of the booty to Wallachia, as the reward of subserviency to Russia. This is as true as that there is a God. Well, I feel no call to be anxious about the dismemberment of Austria, if free nations might step into her place; but I do feel it my duty to be anxious about a dissolution by which Rus- sian power and Russian influence would be in- creased. I feel it so much my duty that, if our fatherland were connected with Austria only by the ties of good neighborly friendship, and if Austria were threatened by the Russians, I would most determinedly say to my countrymen, “ Defend thy Austrian neighbor to the last drop

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218 of thy blood against Russia,” just as I say now, “Defend thy Turkish neighbor to the last drop of thy blood against Russia.” The reigning dynasty of Austria must reckon with the logic of history. A time may come— it must come—when her German provinces— will go home. Well, well, I say: the royal throne of the palace at Buda is a very glorious seat. It will be good to think about how, after its thousand years’ history, it may not be men- aced by the Russian monster—neither in the form of a boa-constrictor, nor in that of a hun- dred-armed polypus. The time is come to think of it, now that the Turkish lion is fighting his life or death struggle so gloriously. Let us not lose the opportunity. ‘“Sero medicina paratur.” “Mene! Mene! Tekel! Upharsin!” I do not say that the Hungarian Government has given itself up to the impulses of robbery; I say only that this is not excluded from the “scheme.” This vampire sits on its bed, on its chest, on its arms. Shake off the vampire, I say. Free your arms, and step at the head of the na- tion. It is a glorious place. In such a great crisis it is a very small ambition to aim, by the cleverly-construed phrase of “ taking notice,” at getting a vote of confidence from your party. You should act so that the confidence of the whole nation should surround you. You can do it. You should adopt the policy that has been pointed at by the whole nation. You should THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. not contradict yourselves, for you said that your hands were free. To the representatives of the nation I would like to ery out from my remote solitary place: “The fatherland is in danger—in such danger as it has never been in before, viewing the ir. revocability of the consequences. Then let the fatherland not be made a party question among yourselves, my countrymen! Let the genius of reconciliation hover over you when you stand arm-in-arm around the altar of our fatherland. I do not ask you to upset the Government, but I beg of you to place it in such a situation that its stability would be guaranteed by the fulfill- ment of the nation’s wishes. The action of Ser. via has supplied you with an opportunity which answers even diplomatical considerations. Don’t let this occasion escape you.” The fulfillment of the nation’s will is the purest loyalty. Isay so—I, who never yield. It is true, I do not like the Austrian eagle in our fatherland. But I wish not that this eagle should be consumed in flame by the Russian; and I shudder at the thought that Hungary may be the funeral stake. I am a very old man. I long ago over- stepped the line assigned by Scripture as the limit to human life. Who knows whether this be not my last word? Mey it not be the voice of one who cries in the desert !—Contemporary Review, HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. By Sim THOMAS WATSON. N the May number of this Review I con- tended, successfully I think, that the group of diseases rightly included among those called zymotic may, by means of wise legislation, and the equipment of suitable machinery, be eventu- ally banished from this island. The favorable reception of my paper by many competent judges of its subject-matter encourages me to speak of another disease, also very destructive of human life, though numerically not so destructive as these, but even more dreadful and alarming to the mind than any of them. This plague, also, I hold to be one of which we might get perma- nently rid. The disease, or rather the pair of diseases, to which I advert consists of hydro- phobia in the human species and rabies in the canine. It is well to keep in mind the distine- tion between these two. There would be no hydrophobia were there no rabies; there can be no rabies unless it be communicated by a rabid animal; but they are not identical diseases. To use the concrete form of speech, rabies in the dog is quite different and distinct from hydro- phobia in the man. The term hydrophobia is often erroneously applied to both diseases, but the rabid dog is never hydrophobic. There has been an astonishing increase of hy- drophobia in this country within the last half- century. Mr. Cesar Hawkins, writing in 1844, says that only two cases of the disease had been

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a i i ol admitted into St. George’s Hospital since he first knew it twenty-five years earlier. Now, mention of such cases is constantly being made in the newspapers, Since the beginning of the present year, no less than thirteen deaths from hydro- phobia have been recorded within the limits of the London Registration. So many erroneous notions are afloat on this subject, that it may be neither uninteresting nor useless to the general reader to have a plain, un- technical history of the two diseases, which are inseparably connected by reciprocal relationship, the one being the parent of the other. In the canine race rabies can propagate rabies; but hy- drophobia does not (as I believe) ever reproduce itself. The first thing to be noticed about hydro- phobia is, that, frequent as it has become, many medical men pass through life without witnessing the disease at all. Hence there has, strangely enough, sprung up in some minds a fancy that no such disease has ever happened. Sir Isaac ‘Pennington, who was in my time the Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge, and who had never seen a case of hydrophobia, could not be persuaded that any one else had seen anything more than a nervous disorder, produced by the alarmed imagination of persons who, having been bitten by a dog reputed to be mad, and having the fear of feather-beds before their eyes, have been frightened into a belief that they were la- boring under bydrophobia, and ultimately scared out of their very existence. It was at that time currently believed, at least by the vulgar, that any one afflicted with this terrible disorder was dangerous to those about him; and it was cus- tomary for his neighbors, or associates, to put an end at once to his woes and to their own cowardly dread of him by smothering him between two feather-beds, . But a far more eminent man than the Cam- bridge professor, even Sir George Cornewall Lewis, was possessed with a similar incredulity on this subject, until convinced of his error by Mr. Hawkins, who had then seen eleven or twelve cases of hydrophobia—a larger number than per- haps any man in this country ever saw before or since. One reason for this was that he had re- ceived from Sir Robert Ker Porter, our minister in South America, specimens of a substance called guaco, a supposed preventive and cure of hydro- phobia and of snake-bites, and had on that ac- count been summoned to cases of hydrophobia by various other practitioners. I have myself seen four cases of that fear- HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. ful malady, and I feel sure that no one who has even once watched its actual symptoms could fail to recognize it again, or could mistake any other malady for it, or wish to witness it thereafter. What these truly remarkable symp- toms are I shall explain presently. It would, @ priori, seem incredible that so many persons who have been bitten by mad dogs should have suffered so precisely the same train of symp- toms, and have at last died, from the mere force of a morbid imagination. But a single fact con- clusive against such a belief is that the disease has befallen infants and idiots, who had never heard or understood a word about mad dogs or hydrophobia, and in whom the imagination could have had no share in producing their fatal dis- temper. The steady increase in the population of this kingdom implies a corresponding, though per- haps not proportional, increase in the number of its dogs. In this way the area is ever growing larger of a field ready for the reception of the poisonous germ of rabies, and for the production in due time of a more or less copious crop of hydrophobia. The report for this year of the Postmaster-General contains the strange state- ment made by the local postmaster of a large town in the north of England, that in the year 1876 twenty per cent. of his men—one in every five—were bitten by dogs. A parliamentary re- turn of last session tells us that in the year end- ing with last May, 973 sheep and lambs were killed by dogs in ten of the counties of Scotland, and in most cases the owners of the dogs could not be discovered. There is in London a Home for stray and lost dogs. It has been affirmed in print by the well-known Secretary to the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals, that upward of 1,500 dogs are taken to this Home every month. It is notorious that the tax on dogs is evaded to an enormous extent. ll this serves to disclose the presence among us of a national nuisance, and & growing source of national dishonesty and of serious national peril. It is grievous to me to have to write in a strain so depreciatory of a race of animals that I love so well. But corruptio optimi pessima, It is an illustrative fact that, ac- cording to the Reports of the Registrar-General, no less than 334 persons died in England of hydrophobia in the decade of years ending with 1875. Like other specific contagious diseases, hy- drophobia has its period of incubation; and it is a somewhat variable period, lying for the most part between six weeks and three months. From

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. @ tabular account of 130 cases of the disease referred to by Mr. Hawkins, it appears that five- sixths of the whole number occurred between eighteen days and three months. Mr. George Rigden, of Canterbury, has lately stated in the Lancet the following remarkable fact: He saw many years ago in one of the hospitals in London two patients who had been bitten at the same time by a cat which had been bitten by a rabid dog. Although the two patients had severally received their bites within a few minutes of each other, the respective outbreaks of hydrophobia were separated by an imterval of two weeks. A like uncertainty of the access of the disease has been noticed among infected dogs. On the night of June 8, 1791, the man in charge of Lord Fitz- william’s kennel was much disturbed by fightings among the hounds, and got up several times to quiet them. On each occasion he found the same dog quarreling; at last, therefore, he shut that dog up by himself, and then there was no further disturbance. On the third day afterward the quarrelsome hound was found to be unequivo- cally rabid, and on the fifth day he died. The whole pack were thereupon separately confined, and watched. Six of the dogs became subse- quently mad, and at the following widely differ- ent intervals from the 8th of June, namely, 23 days, 56, 67, 81, 155, and 183 days. Much longer periods, however, than any that I have hitherto mentioned are on record. In one instance, which was treated in Guy's Hospital, and the particulars of which were carefully inves- tigated by Doctor (now Sir William) Gull, the disorder broke out more than five years after the patient had been bitten by a pointer-bitch below his left knee. There a scar was visible, and the hydrophobic outbreak was preceded by pain in that spot. In the first volume of the Lancet the ease is narrated by Mr. Hale Thompson of a lad who died hydrophobic seven years after a bite by a dog on his right hip, where there remained a cicatrix. For twenty-five months before his death this patient had been in close confinement in pris- on, and out of the way of dogs altogether. Long periods of this kind cannot reasonably be regarded as periods of genuine or normal in- cubation. In explanation of them I some forty years ago published certain views of my own, but I do not know that they have been (to use a bar- barous modern term) indorsed by any of my pro- fessional brethren. I imagine that the virus im- planted by the rabid animal may remain lodged in the bitten spot, shut up perhaps in a nodule of lymph, or detained somehow in temporary and precarious union with some one of the animal tissues, without entering the blood itself for a longer or shorter time—in some cases, perhaps, never.! Some curious facts, fortifying this hypoth- esis of mine, have been noticed respecting. an- other animal] poison—the vaccine virus. The fol- lowing statement is quoted by Mr. Grove, in the Monthly Journal of Medical Science for Novew- ber, 1855: “A girl, aged fourteen years, was seized with influenza. She complained of pain in each arm at the spots where, when an infant, she had been vaccinated ; and, in fact, in these places vaccine vesicles now became perfectly developed. An elder sister was revaccinated with lymph thence obtained; beautiful vesicles formed, and ran a natural course.” At the Obstetrical Society of London in 1860, Dr. Hodges stated that— “In May, 1854, he vaccinated a little boy three years of age, but the arm did not ‘ rise’ within the usual period. In the following May, however, a vesicle spontaneously formed, with an areola on the seventh and eighth days, gradually declining on the eleventh and twelfth ; a permanent cicatrix, marked by pits, remaining and giving evidence of the genuine vaccine disease.”’ If my hypothesis be well founded, it may account for some of the cases in which persons bitten by a rabid dog escape hydrophobia altogether. The well-known fact that the bitten spot, wound, or scar, very often becomes the seat of some fresh morbid phenomena (variously spoken of as pain, redness, swelling, coldness, stiffness, numbness, tingling, itching), which spread tow- ard the trunk of the body just before the par- oxysmal symptoms of hydrophobia show them- selves, is strongly in favor of the belief that the poison may lie inert in the place of the original hurt for some time, and then, in some obscure way, get liberated and set afloat in the circulat- ing blood. Pain, sensations of pricking, and other pe- 11 find that Dr. Anthony Todd Thomson, in the thirteenth volume of the * Medico-Chirurgical Trans- actions,"’ 1826, has been tiresome enough to forestall me in this suggestion. He is commenting upon a case of hydrophobia caused by the bite of a cat, and he conjectures “that the virus remains dormant in the part where it is deposited by the tooth of the rabid animal, until a certain state of habit renders the nerves in its vicinity susceptible of its influence, and this being communicated, a morbid action is be- gun in these nerves, and extended to the respiratory nerves, which induce the whole train of symptoms constituting the disease.”

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| HYDROPHOBIA culiar feelings, preceded the manifestation of the hydrophobic condition in three of the four cases seen by myself; in the fourth case no inquiries appear to have been made on that point. In another instance which Mr. Herbert Mayo wit- nessed and examined after death, he found the inner part of the cicatrix blood-shotten, and a gland in the armpit had swelled at the coming on of hydrophobic symptoms ; and I find among my notes of Mr. Abernethy’s lectures another striking case still more to the purpose. A very intelligent boy had been bitten in the finger by a dog. He was taken into St. Bartholomew’s Hos- pital. Caustic had been freely used, affecting the sinewy parts, and producing a terrible sore ; yet the boy was recovering himself, and the sore was healing. One day, as Mr. Abernethy was going round the hospital, he saw and spoke to the boy, who said he thought he was getting well, but that he had on that day an odd sen- sation in his finger, stretching upward into his hand and arm. Going up the arm were two red lines like inflamed absorbents. Doubtless they were such. Mr. Abernethy made light of the matter, ordered a poultice and some medicine. Early the next morning he again visited the ward, pretending that he had some other patient there whom he wished particularly to see; and when going out again he asked the boy, in a careless tone, how he was. The boy said he had lost the pain, but felt very unwell, and had not slept all night. Mr. Abernethy felt his pulse, told him he was rather feverish, as might be expected, and asked him if he was not thirsty, and would like some toast and water. The boy said he was thirsty, and that he should like some drink. When, however, the cup was brought he pushed it from him ; he could not drink. In forty-eight hours he was dead. The symptoms of hydrophobia, stated in broad outline, are these: excessive nervous irri- tability and terror, spasmodic contractions of the muscles of the throat, excited by various exter- nal influences, and especially by the sight or sound of liquids, and by attempts to swallow them, and sometimes absolute impossibility of swallowing them, earnest attempts to do so not- withstanding. When fluids are offered to and pressed upon the patient, he will take the vessel containing them into his hand, but draws back his head to a distance from it with a repelling and apparently involuntary gesture ; meanwhile he makes a suc- cession of hurried gasping sighs and sobs, pre- eisely resembling those which occur when one _~_. “ALA 7-2) ’ 967% 6) AND RABIES.- 221 wades gradually and deeply into cold water. The sound of water poured from one vessel into an- other, gusts of air passing over his face, the snd- den access of light, the waving of a mirror before his eyes, the crawling of an insect over his skin— these are things which in an hydrophobic patient suffice to excite great agitation, and the peculiar strangling sensation about the fauces. He goes on rapidly from bad to worse; in most cases more or less of mania or delirium is mixed up with the irritability. Iusions of the senses of sight and of hearing are not uncommon. The sufferer is very garrulous and excited. In some cases, but not in all, there is incontinence of urine. Foam and sticky mucus gather in his throat and mouth, and he makes great efforts by pulling it with his fingers, and by spitting, blowing, and hawking, to get rid of it; and the sounds he thus makes have been exaggerated by ignorance and credulity into the foaming and barking of a dog. In the same spirit the palsy of his lower limbs, which sometimes takes place, rendering him unable to stand upright, has been miscon- strued into a desire on his part to go on all-fours like a dog. Vomiting is a frequent symptom. The pulse in a short time becomes frequent and feeble, and the general strength declines with great rapidity. Death occasionally ensues within twenty-four hours after the beginning of the spe- cific symptoms. Most commonly of all, it hap- pens on the second or third day; now and then it is postponed to the fifth day; and in still rarer instances it may not occur till the seventh, eighth, or ninth day. Usually, the paroxysms, becoming more vio- lent and frequent, exhaust the patient; but occa- sionally the symptoms undergo a marked alter- ation before death. The paroxysms cease, the nervous irritability disappears, the patient is able to eat and drink and converse with ease, those sights and sounds which so annoyed and distressed him before no longer cause him any disquiet. The late Dr. Latham had an hydropho- bie patient under his care in the Middlesex Hos- pital. On going one day to the ward he fully expected to hear that the patient was dead, but he found him sitting up in his bed quite calm and free from spasm. He had just drunk a large jug of porter. “ Lawk, sir!” said a nurse that stood by, “ what a wonderful cure!” The man him- self seemed surprised at the change ; but he had no pulse ; his skin was as cold as marble. In half an hour he sank back and expired. It has been alleged that tetanus may be mis- taken for hydrophobia, but the differences be-

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222 tween the two are very clearly marked. It is true that slight touches of the body will excite the tetanic spasm, but it is the rigid or abiding form of spasm, which relaxes gradually and slowly ; whereas in hydrophobia the spasms are sudden and frequent, such as are popularly called convulsions. In tetanus there is no thirst, sel- dom any vomiting, no accumulation of tough and stringy mucus in the mouth and throat. The mental faculties are clear, and the patient is se- rene, and what is called heart-whole, to the last. The symptoms of rabies, as witnessed in the dog, have been well described by Mr. Youatt. The earliest is a marked change in the animal’s habits. Of course this will be more perceptible by those acquainted with the dog, and cognizant of his habits. The dog becomes sullen, restless, his eyes glisten, there is often slight squinting, and some twitching of the face, with a continual shifting of posture, a steadfast gaze expressive of suspicion, an earnest licking of some part on which a scar may generally be found. If the ear be the affected part, the dog is incessantly and violently scratching it; if the foot, he gnaws it till the skin is broken. Occasional vomiting and a depraved appetite are also early noticeable. The dog will pick up and swallow bits of thread or silk from the carpet, hair, straw, and even dung. Then the animal becomes irascible, flies fiercely at strangers, is impatient of correction, which he receives in sullen silence, seizes the whip or stick, quarrels with his own companions, eagerly hunts and worries the cats, demolishes his bed, and if chained up makes violent efforts to escape, tearing his kennel to pieces with his teeth. If at large he usually attacks such dogs as come in his way, but if he be naturally fero- cious he will diligently and perseveringly seek his enemy. About the second day a considera- ble flow of saliva begins, but this does not long continue, and it is succeeded by insatiable thirst, He appears to be annoyed by some viscid matter in his throat, and in the most eager and extraor- dinary manner he works with his paws at the corners of his mouth to remove it, and while thus employed frequently loses his balance and rolls over. A loss of power over the voluntary mus- cles is next observed. It begins with the lower jaw, which hangs down, and the mouth is par- tially open; the tongue is less affected ; the dog is able to use it in the act of lapping, but the _ mouth is not sufficiently closed to retain the water; therefore, while he hargs over the vessel THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. | } eagerly lapping for several minutes, its contents are very little, or not at all, diminished. The palsy often affects the loins and extremities also; the animal staggers about, and frequently falls. Previously to this he is in almost incessant mo- tion. Mr. Youatt fancies the dog is subject to what we call spectral illusions. He starts up and gazes earnestly at some real or imaginary object. He appears to be tracing the path of something floating around hin, or he fixes his eyes intently on some spot on the wall, and suddenly plunges at it; then his eyes close, and his head droops, Frequently, with his head erect, the dog ut- ters a short and very peculiar howl; or if he barks it is in a hoarse, inward sound, totally un- like his usual tone, terminating generally with this characteristic howl. The respiration is al- ways affected ; often the breathing is very labori- ous ; and the inspiration is attended with a sin- gular grating, choking noise. On the fourth, fifth, or sixth day of the disease, he dies, occa- sionally in slight convulsions, but oftener without a struggle. It is a common and misleading mistake to think that the rabid dog, like the hydrophobic man, will shun water, and that if he takes toa river it may safely he concluded that he is not mad, On the contrary, as I have already hinted, there is no dread of water, but unquenchable thirst; the animal rushes eagerly to water, plunges his muzzle into it, and tries to drink, but often is unable to swallow from paralysis of his lower jaw, which prevents him from shutting his mouth. Another opinion not at all uncommon is, that healthy dogs recognize one that is mad, and fear him, and run away from his presence, in obedi- ence to some mysterious and wonderful instinct, warning them of their danger. According to Mr. Youatt, this is quite unfounded. Equally mis- taken is the notion that the mad dog exhales a peculiar and offensive smell. I do not know whether the period of incuba- tion in a dog which has been infected with rabies by the bite of another rabid dog has been accu- rately ascertained; but that the disease may be imparted by a dog so infected before the symp- toms of rabies become manifest is clear from the following instance, with which I have been favored by Mr. Wrench, of Baslow, in Derbyshire: “A small terrier” (he writes) “ belonging to myself was bitten by an undoubtedly rabid dog, and was consequently destroyed about a fortnight after- ward, and before it had shown any symptoms of disease. In the mean time it had licked the cropped

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mad about eight weeks after his ears were licked.” From what animals may the infection be re- ceived? We are sure that the disease, by the inoculution of which hydrophobia may be caused in man, is common in the dog; and that it has often been communicated to the human animal by the fox also, the wolf, the jackal, and the cat. The death from hydrophobia of a boy after being bitten by a raccoon is recorded by Dr. Russell, of Lincoln, Massachusetts, in the “ Transactions of the American Medical Association” for 1856. Mr. Youatt declares that the saliva of the badger, the horse, the human being, has undoubtedly pro- duced hydrophobia; and some affirm that it has been propagated even by the turkey and the hen. The same author mentions a case in which a groom became affected with bydrophobia through a scratch which he received from the tooth of a rabid horse. This would seem to settle the ques- tion as respects that animal ; but as horses, cows, and fowls, do not usually bite, we have not many opportunities of furnishing a positive answer to the general question. The grandfather of the present Duke of Rich- mond died, in Canada, of hydrophobia, communi- eated, it was then thought, by a fox. But I was told in 1862, on the authority of a person who was living at Montreal at the time of the duke’s death, and was acquainted with his family, that his disease was caused by the bite of a dog; and I was afterward informed by Mr. Lawrence Peel, the duke’s son-in-law, that it was uncertain whether the bite was made by a fox or by a dog. The duke was interfering in a fray between a tame fox and a pet dog—the fox retreating into his kennel. It is not certainly known which of the animals had rabies. The disease is said to have been caused by the scratch of a cat. Now, we know that cats, as well as dogs, frequently apply their paws to their mouths, especially when the latter part is uneasy, as it clearly is in mad dogs. The fact, therefore, of the production of the disease by a scratch from the claws of a cat, if thoroughly made out, would afford no proof, nor scarcely even a presumption, that the disease can be introduced into the ani- mal system in any other way than by means of the saliva. Several important questions at once present themselves respecting these two diseases : First, is a man who has been bitten by a mad HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. ears of a bull-dog puppy which had not been near | the first-named rabid dog, and this puppy went dog, and in whose case no preventive measures have been taken, a doomed man? I have an- swered this question in the negative already. Few, upon the whole, who are so bitten become affected with hydrophobia. John Hunter states that he knew an instance in which, of 21 persons bitten, one only fell a victim to the disease. Dr. Hamilton estimated the proportion to be 1 in 25. But I fear these computations are much too low. In 1780 a mad dog in the neighborhood of Senlis took his course within a small circle, and bit 15 persons before he was killed ; three of these died of hydrophobia. The saliva of a rabid wolf would seem to be highly virulent and effective. These beasts fly always, I believe, at a naked part. Hence, probably, the fatality of their bites. The following statement relates exclusively to the wolf: In December, 1774, 20 persons were bitten in the neighborhood of Troyes; 9 of them died. Of 17 persons similarly bitten in 1784 near Brive, 10 died of hydrophobia. In May, 1817, 23 per- sons were bitten, and 14 perished. Four died of 11 that were bitten near Dijon; and 18 of 24 bitten near Rochelle. At Bar-sur-Ornain 19 were bitten, of whom 12 died within two months. Here we have 114 persons bitten by rabid wolves, and among them no fewer than 67 victims to hydrophobia ; considerably more than one-half. There is no doubt, however, that the majority of persons who are bitten by a mad dog escape the disease. This may be partly owing to an inher- ent inaptitude for accepting it. There are some upon whom the contagion of small-pox has no influence. This peculiarity exists apparently — even among dogs. There was one dog, at Cha- renton, that did not become rabid after being bitten by a rabid dog; and it was so managed that at different times he was bitten by thirty mad dogs, but he outlived it all. Much will de- pend also upon the circumstances of the bite, and the way in which it is inflicted. If it be made through clothes, and especially through thick woolen garments, or through leather, the saliva may be wiped clean away from the tooth before it reaches the flesh. In the fifth volume of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal there is a case described by Mr. Oldknow, of Nottingham, in which a man was bitten in three different places by the same mad dog, namely, in the groin, the thigh, and the left hand; the bite on the hand was the last. Now, it seems that but for this last bite, on a naked part, he might have escaped. It is noteworthy that the local sensations preliminary to the fatal outbreak of hydrophobia occurred only in the hand and arm. The attacking dog probably shuts his’ mouth oS a

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after each bite, and thus recharges his fangs with the poisonous material. In a report from Amer- ica, it is stated that, of 75 cases, the injury was received on the hand in 40 instances, on the face in 15, on the leg in 11, on the arm in 9. Jt is this frequent immunity from the disease in persons who have been bitten that has tended to confer reputation upon so many vaunted meth- ‘ods of prevention. Ignorant men and knavish men have not failed to take advantage of this. They announce that they are in possession of some secret remedy which will prevent the virus from operating; they persuade the friends of those who die that the remedy was not rightly employed, or not resorted to sufficiently early ; and they persuade those who escape that they escaped by virtue of the preventive remedy. If the plunder they reap from the foolish and the frightened were all, this would be of less conse- quence ; but, unfortunately, the hope of security without their undergoing a painful operation leads many to neglect the only trustworthy mode of obtaining safety. A still more anxious inquiry next arises. Whoever has been bitten by a rabid or by a sus- pected animal must be considered, and will gen- erally consider himself, as being in more or less danger of hydrophobia. This dread is not en- tirely removed even by the adoption of the best means of prevention. Now, how long does this state of hazard continue? When is the peril fairly over? After what lapse of time may the person who has sustained the injury lay aside all apprehension of the disease? To this inquiry no satisfactory reply can be given. In a vast ma- jority of instances, indeed, the disorder has broken out within two months from the infliction of the bite. But the exceptions to this rule are too numerous to permit us to put firm trust in the immunity foreshadowed by that interval. Cases are recorded in which five, six, eleven, nineteen months have intervened between the insertion of the poison and the eruption of the consequent malady. Nay, there are well-authen- ticated instances, as I have already said, of the lapse of twenty-five months, of more than five years, or even of seven years. In these cases it is most probabie that some unsuspected reinocu- lation, some fresh application of the peculiar virus, has taken place. If not, then we must conclude that the poison really lies imprisoned in the bitten part, and only becomes destructive when, under certain obscure conditions, and at indefinite periods, it gets into the circulation. I say nothing about the morbid appearances THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. | found in persons dead of hydrophobia, for I am not addressing professional readers. But, as a help toward determining whether a dog which may have been destroyed under equivocal cir. cumstances was indeed rabid, it may be useful to state that in the stomach of a really mad dog there are always to be found very unnatural con- tents—straw, hay, coal, sticks, horse-dung, earth—as well as a quantity of a dark fluid, like thin treacle, altered blood in fact. And here it may be well to deprecate and de- nounce a practice much too common with us, that, namely, of at once destroying a suspected dog, by which some one has been bitten, but about the true condition of which there exists no absolute certainty. Tbe dog should be securely isolated and watched; a day or two will be suffi- cient for solving the anxious question. If he should prove really mad, he should then of course be put to death, as mercifully as may be. If, on the other hand, he remains well, not only will the life of a possibly useful and favorite animal be saved, but, what is of incomparably greater importance, the mind of the bitten per- son will be freed from a harassing sense of dread, with which it might otherwise be haunted for years to come. The most important question of all in rela- tion to my present purpose, is whether rabies can be excited by any other cause than inoculation of the specific virus; in other words, whether it has any other source than contagion. Many persons believe that the disease may, and does often, arise de novo ; and causes have been assigned which certainly are not true causes. Thus it has been ascribed to extreme heat of the weather. It is thought by many to be especially likely to occur during the dog-days; and to be in itself a sort of dog-lunacy, having the same rela- tionship to Sirius that human insanity has to the moon—which in one sense is probable enough. But abundant statistical evidence has been col- lected in this and in other countries, that the disease occurs at all seasons of the year indiffer- ently. The cautions, therefore, which are annu- ally put forth in hot weather, as to muzzling dogs, etc., whatever may be their value, would be as opportune at any other time. The disorder has been attributed to want of water in hot weather, and sometimes to want of food, but MM. Dupuy- tren, Breschet, and Magendie, in France, caused both dogs and cats to die of hunger and thirst, without producing the smallest approach to a state of rabies. At the Veterinary School at Alfort three dogs were subjected to some very

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cruel but decisive experiments. It was during the heat of summer, and they were all chained in the full blaze of the sun. To one salted meat was given, to the second water only, and to the third neither food nor drink. They all died, but none of them became rabid. Nor does the sus- picion that the disorder may have some connec- tion with the rutting period in these animals ap- pear to rest on any better foundation. Some very interesting points still remain to be considered as to the communication of these diseases from one person or animal to another. Mr. Youatt, whose experience on this sub- ject was very large, did not think that the saliva of a rabid animal could communicate the disor- der through the unbroken cuticle. He believed that there must be some abrasion or breach of surface. He held, however, that it might be communicated by the mere contact of the saliva with the mucous membranes. Of its harmless- ness On the sound skin he offered this presump- tive evidence—that his own hands had many times been covered with the saliva of the mad dog with perfect impunity. He has recorded some singular instances in which hydrophobia and rabies were caused by contact of the mor- bid saliva with the mucous membranes. A man endeavored to untie by the help of his teeth a knot that had been firmly drawn in a cord. Eight weeks afterward he died undeniably hy- drophobic. It was then recollected that with this cord a mad dog had been tied up. A wom- an was attacked by a rabid dog, and escaped with some rents in her gown. In the act of mending it she thoughtlessly pressed down the seam with her teeth. Shealsodied. Horses are said to have died mad after eating straw upon which rabid pigs had died. Portal was assured that two dogs which had licked the mouth of another dog that was rabid were attacked with rabies seven or eight days afterward. Mr. Gil- man, of Highgate, in a little pamphlet on Hydro- phobia, quotes an instance from Dr. Perceval, in which a mad dog licked the face of a sleeping man, near his mouth, and the man died of hydro- phobia, although the strictest search failed to discover the smallest scratch or abrasion on any part of his skin. These facts, if authentic, settle the question; unless, indeed, the lips of those who perished happened to have been chapped or abraded. It is a fearful question whether the saliva of a human being afflicted with hydrophobia is ca- pable of inoculating another human being with the same disease. Mr. Youatt says it is, that 51 HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. the disease has undoubtedly been so produced. If this be so, the fact should teach us—not to desert or neglect these unhappy patients, still less to murder them by smothering, or by bleed- ing them to death—but to minister to their wants with certain precautions; so as not to suffer their saliva to come in contact with any sore or abraded surface, nor, if it can be avoided, with any mucous surface. On the other hand, all carefulness of that kind will be superfluous if the disease cannot be propagated by the human saliva. Certainly many experimenters have tried in vain to inoculate dogs with the spittle of an hy- drophobic man ; but there is one authentic experi- ment on record which makes it too probable that the disease, though seldom or with difficulty com- municated, may yet be communicable. The experi- ment is said to have been made by MM. Magendie and Breschet, at the Hétel Dieu, in Paris, and to have been witnessed by a great number of medi- cal men and students. Two healthy dogs were inoculated on June 19, 1813, with the saliva of a patient named Surlu, who died the same day in the hospital. One of these dogs became mad on the 27th of the following month. They caused this dog to bite others, which in their turn be- came rabid also ; and in this way the malady was propagated among dogs during the whole sum- mer. Now this, though a very striking statement, ought not to be considered conclusive, for it is pos- sible that the disease in the first dog might have had some unknown and unsuspected origin. We have enough, however, in this one experiment to make us observe all requisite caution when en- gaged in attending upon an hydrophobic pa- tient. In an elaborate and valuable treatise on “ Rabies and Hydrophobia,” Mr. George Fleming adduces conflicting evidence as to the safety or danger of drinking the milk of a rabid animal, and he wisely advises the avoidance of such milk. Pertinent to this question I have received from Mr. Wrench, of Baslow, even while this pa- per is passing through the press, the following history, which shows that the disease is trans- missible from the mother to her offspring through the medium of her milk : “In the middle of May, 1876, on Mr. Twigg’s farm, Harewood Grange, near Chatsworth, a mad dog bit eighteen sheep out of a flock of twenty- one, which were at the time suckling thirty lambs. The sheep were all bitten about the face, and had evidently been defending their lambs during the greater part of the night in which the attack was made, Mr. Twigg examined both sheep and

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. lambs, and could not find a single wound on any of the latter. In about a month both sheep and lambs began to die at the rate of two or three a day. The sheep ran wildly about, sometimes carrying stones in their mouths, and the lambs ran away. Of the eighteen sheep that had been bitten sixteen died; and of the thirty lambs, not one of of which was believed to have been bitten, four- teen died. On the next farm the same thing hap- pened to a smaller extent.” What can be said of the treatment of hydro- phobia or of rabies? There is no authentic case on record that I am aware of in which an hydro- phobic person has recovered. As it has been so it is still. "larpds iara: @dvaros—the Physician that cures is Death. It would be idle to discuss any curative measures after the peculiar symp- toms of the disease have once set in. Not so, however, with respect to prevention ; that is the most important object of our practice —that and the euthanasia. The early and complete excision of the bitten part is the only means of prevention in which much confidence can be placed ; ard even that is open toa source of fallacy. In the majority of cases no hydrophobia would ensue, though noth- ing at all were done to the wound. No doubt many persons undergo the operation needlessly. But in no given case can we be sure of this. If excision should for any reason be impossible, the wound should be cauterized. Of the efficacy of the latter plan we have this evidence: Mr. You- att, who trusted to it, and who had himself been bitten seven times, tells us that he had operated with the lunar caustic—nitrate of silver—on more than four hundred persons, all bitten by dogs unquestionably rabid, and that he had not lost a case. One man died of fright, but not one of hydrophobia. Moreover, a surgeon of St. George’s Hospital told him that ten times that number had undergone the operation of excision there after being bitten by dogs (all of which might not, however, have been rabid), and it was not known that there had been a single fatal is- sue. Excision, in my judgment, must, when prac- ticable, be the most trustworthy and eligible pro- cedure. Trousseau recommends, as a ready and quick preventive, the actual cautery—that is, the destruction of the poison and the tissues of the bitten part by searing them with a red-hot iron. They might be as readily and thoroughly de- stroyed by brushing the interior of the wound, by means of a glass brush, with nitric acid. But if the wound be of such a size’ and in such a place that it can be excised, what is the best method for its excision? This is the advice of my old master, Abernethy : “ The cell” (he says) “into which a penetrat- ing tooth has gone must be cut out. Leta wooden skewer be shaped as nearly as may be into the form of the tooth, and then be placed into the cavity made by the tooth, and next let the skewer and the whole cell containing it be removed to- gether by an elliptical incision. We may examine the removed cell to see if every portion with which the tooth might have had contact has been taken away: the cell may even be filled with quicksil- ver to see if a globule will escape. The efficient performance of the excision does not depend upou the extent, but upon the accuracy, of the opers- tion.” Early excision, then, is almost a sure preven- tive; but in all suspicious cases, if the operation have been omitted in the first instance, it will be advisable to cut out the wound or its scar within the first two months, or at any time before pre- liminary feelings in the spot foreshow the coming outbreak. Later would be too late. Dr. Rich- ard Bright has recorded a case in which the arm was amputated upon the supervention of tingling and other symptoms in the hand on which the patient had been bitten some time before; but the amputation did not save him. The new power which we have happily ob- tained of suspending sensation generally by the inspiration of certain vopors, or locally by the ether-spray, will contribute at least to the pre- vention of hydrophobia by divesting the process of excision or cauterization of its pain, and there- fore of its terrors. For my own part, if I had received a bite from a decidedly rabid animal upon my arm or leg, and the bite was such that the whole wound could not be cut out or thoroughly cauterized, my reason would teach me to desire, and I hope I should have fortitude enough to endure, ampu- tation of the limb above the place of the injury. As to the euthanasia, it may best be promoted by some narcotic drug ; and I know of none more eligible than the chloral hydrate, administered in such doses and at such intervals as may suffice, without shortening life, to quiet the restless agi- tation, and to mitigate the sufferings, of its in- evitable close. Should the patient be unable to swallow that remedy, recourse may be had, under similar limitation, to its subcutaneous injection, or to some anesthetic vapor. What, it may be asked, should be done by or for a man who has been bitten by a rabid animal,

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rat- den the the wer ine ich cen si]- ent oe a - Oo and has no access to immediate medical help ? Should he, the wound being within reach of his lips, or should another person for him, try to suck out the inserted venom? That would prob- ably be his first instinctive thought. But when I call to mind what Mr. Youatt has said of the danger attending the contact of the poisonous saliva with even sound mucous membranes—and, further, the risk that the sucker’s lips might, whether he knew it or not, be chapped or abraded —I dare not counsel the expedient of suction. By adopting it the sufferer might be rushing, or bringing his helping neighbor, into the very peril he was anxious to avert. A cupping-glass would be a safer application of the same principle, provided that the place and size of the wound would admit of its being covered by the glass. But, at best, a cupping- glass extemporized and clumsily used under ur- gent and agitating circumstances can scarcely be advisable. What I should most strongly recommend, and fortunately it is very easy of performance, is this: First, that a bandage tight enough to re- . Strain the venous circulation should be applied just above the wound, between it and the heart; and next, that without any delay a continuous stream of tepid or cold water should be poured from a height, and therefore with a certain degree of force, upon and into the wound. This might be done from the spout of a tea-kettle, or better from a water-tap, and it should be persevered with even for an hour or two, or until the arrival of medical aid. In this way the implanted poison would, in all likelihood, be thoroughly washed away, and the safety of the sufferer secured. Nevertheless this process need not exclude sub- sequent excision’ or cauterization, should one or the other be feasible or thought desirable, “ to make assurance doubly sure.” The opinion which, as my readers must have anticipated, I entertain, that rabies has at present no other source than contagion, has been com- bated with the same arguments as have been used in the analogous case of small-pox ; such as that the disease must at some time have had a begin- ning, and therefore why not now? that it often springs up where no contagion can be traced, and sometimes where contagion seems to be im- possible. These arguments were discussed in my former paper, and their futility fully demonstrated. I refrain, therefore, from reconsidering them here. But as I then related two striking instances in which contagion had been deemed impossible, but in which its operation was at length detected by HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. some very singular evidence, so I will here give a condensed account of a like result under similar circumstances in respect of rabies. Mr. Blaine, Mr. Youatt’s partner, was con- sulted about a gentleman’s dog, and pronounced it undoubtedly rabid. But the dog, it was al- leged, had never for many months been out-of- doors, nor, indeed, out of the sight of its master, or, in the master’s absence, of his valet, who had especial charge of the dog. Concurring with Mr. Youatt in opinion, and anxious to learn the truth in a matter so important, Mr. Blaine examined the servants very closely; and it was at length remembered by the footman that he had had to answer his master’s bell one morning when the valet, whose business it was to take the dog from the bedroom, was accidentally absent; and he also distinctly recollected that the dog accom- panied him to the street-door while he was re- ceiving a message, went into the street, and was there suddenly attacked by another dog that was passing, seemingly without an owner. The wan- dering dog was, no doubt, rabid. Again, a Newfoundland dog, which was chained constantly to his kennel during the day, and suf- fered to be at large during the night within an inclosed yard, became rabid; and as no dog was known to have had access to the yard, the owner felt sure that the disease must have arisen spon- taneously. Mr. Blaine, however, elicited the facts that the gardener to the family remembered to have heard when in bed one night an unusual noise, as if the Newfoundland dog was quarreling with another. He recollected, also, that about the same time he saw marks of a dog’s feet in his garden, which lay on the other side of the yard, and the remains of hair were noticed on the top of the wall. About the same time the neighborhood had been alarmed by the absence of a large dog belonging to one of the inhabitants, which had escaped from confinement during the night under evident symptoms of disease. Here also was a ready solution of the previous mys- tery. I can pretend to no originality on this sub- ject. Mr. Youatt believed that rabies in the dog, and in all creatures, results always from the in- troduction of a specific virus into the system. He maintained that a well-enforced quarantine —every dog in the kingdom being confined sep- arately—for seven months would extirpate the disease. And the late Sir James Bardsley pro- posed a plan which he thought would prove effi- ceacious for getting rid of the pestilence.

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“ It consists’ (he wrote) “‘ merely in establish- ing a universal quarantine for dogs within the king- dom, and a total prohibition of the importation of those animals during the existence of this quaran- tine. The efficacy of this preventive scheme rests upon the validity of the following propositions : First, that the disease always originates in the ca- nine species ; secondly, that it never arises in them spontaneously ; thirdly, that the contagion, when received by them, never remains latent more than few months. If these propositions have been established, it clearly follows that by destroying every dog in which the disease should break out during strict quarantine, not only would the propa- gation of the malady be prevented, but the absolute source of the poison would be entirely suppressed.”’ It is much to be wondered at that these wise suggestions should have remained so long neglect- ed by our sanitary authorities. No reference has been made either by Mr. Youatt or by Sir James Bardsley to the possi- ble perpetuation of the disease by rabid cats. Mad cats, however, are far less common than mad dogs. A cat is not an aggressively fight- ing animal. At any time, it would rather fly from than resist an attacking dog ; and, if there were no dogs to receive and to impart the dis- ease, rabies would soon, so far as the cat is con- cerned, die out of its own accord. I have now set forth to the best of my abili- ty—and, perhaps, too much in detail—the amount of our knowledge upon a subject which is at present painfully engrossing the attention of the public. I have shown that we possess no valid evidence of the spontaneous origin, nowadays, of rabies in the dog or in any other animal ; and that hydrophobia owes its parentage exclu- sively to the poison furnished in the first instance by the rabid dog, or by rabid animals of the same species with the dog. I propose next to fortify my position by pointing out that large portions of the habitable world, abounding in dogs, are now, and have always been, entirely free from those dreadful twin pests, rabies and hydrophobia. It is my good fortune to have found among my owr. friends and acquaintances several per- sons able to give me authentic and valuable in- formation on this subject. Thus the Bishop of Lichfield, who lived more than twenty-five years in New Zealand, tells me that he never heard of a mad dog in those isl- ands, and that Bishop Abraham’s experience, who was for seventeen years resident there, agrees with his own. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Bishop Macdougall writes me word that there is in Borneo a native dog, like a small jackal, but with a curly rather than a bushy tail, kept in numbers by the Dyaks for hunting deer and pigs. These dogs never bark, but when on the scent for game howl with a very musical note, The Chinese settlers also have brought in a dog, resembling the Pomeranian breed. These bark abundantly, and among the settlers, who eat the puppies as a delicacy, they are so numerous as to have become a general nuisance; yet, during the twenty years in which the bishop resided at Sarawak, he never heard of a single instance of rabies. I was told a few years since, by Sir Henry Young, that in Tasmania, of which he was for seven years the governor, although there were plenty of dogs, there had been no mad dogs, and therefore no hydrophobia. Evidence to precisely the same effect has been furnished to a friend of mine by Sir Valentine Fleming, who left Tas- mania in 1874, after a residence there of about thirty-two years. He testifies to the great num- ber of dogs in that colony, and to the total ab- sence of hydrophobia. Again, I have it under the hand of Sir George Macleay, who, with Cap- tain Sturt, diligently explored, for other pur- poses, all the settlements of what has been well called the “ insular continent” of Australia, that the dogs there are troublesomely plentiful, that hydrophobia is utterly unknown, and that rabies has never been witnessed in the dingo, or wild- dog of those parts. It had been stated by Dr. Heineken that curs of the most wretched condition abound in Madei- ra; that they are afflicted with almost every dis- ease, tormented with flies and heat, and thirst and famine, yet no rabid dog was ever seen there ; and I have quite recently been assured by Dr. Grabham, whose personal knowledge of Madeira covers sixteen years, and who states that he is well acquainted with the local traditions, and the writings of medical men there, that rabies and hydrophobia are, and always have been, un- known in that island. Mr. Thomas Bigg-Wither spent three or four years in South Brazil, within the tropics. He and his party hunted there the wild-dog and the jaguar (a species of tiger) with a pack of fifty smooth-haired dogs of various breeds, which gave tongue during their hunting. Mr. Bigg-Wither has assured me that hydrophobia and rabies are quite unheard of in that part of the world. We have seen that conditions of temperature have nothing to do with the prevalence of these

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HYDROPHOBIA AND RABIES. diseases. It is interesting, however, to compare | and feeling a dog, but his appearance is that of this tropical experience with what has been ob- ! a wolf—a dog in wolf’s clothes. He has short served in the opposite climate of the arctic regions. Dr. John Rae, who has been good enough to write to me on these subjects, was for twenty years in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Territory, ten of which years were spent at Moose Factory, on the shore of Hudson’s Bay, and a year or two each at various other stations as far north as the arctic circle, at all of which dogs in greater or less number are kept for sledging purposes, yet he cannot remember to have seen or heard of a single case of the diseases in question, either in dog or in man. “My knowledge,” Dr. Rae says, “ of the Esquimaux is much more limited, for, al- though I have seen these interesting people at various parts of the arctic coast, I have win- tered only twice among them, on both occasions at Repulse Bay. But I never saw or heard of any disease resembling hydrophobia.” My distinguished friend, Admiral Sir George Back, who is cognizant of Dr. Rae’s testimony in this matter, fully confirms it by his own expe- rience gathered in five expeditions of discovery to the arctic regions during a period of eleven years’ service. A portion of Dr. Rae’s information, although it has no direct bearing upon my main purpose, may prove as interesting to my readers as it has been to myself: “The food of the dogs in Hudson’s Bay consists wholly of meat or fish, or of a mixture of both; meat being the chief diet in the prairies, while fish are almost universally given (except when on a journey) in other parts of the country. In the summer, when not required for sledging, the dogs are sent in charge of a man or two to a fishery, where they can be well and cheaply fed. The usual ration is a fish weighing three or four pounds, eatenraw. The best and lightest food for the dogs when at work is dry buffalo or deer meat, about two or two and a half pounds of which is a day’s allowance.” ! Colonel Home, C. B., an engineer officer living last year for some months at Constantinople, in- forms a friend of mine that, having a horror of hydrophobia, he made repeated and special in- quiries there, and was assured that no instance of the disease was ever known in that city. He describes the scavenger-dog “as being in temper 1 All those who have been personally conversant with the arctic sledge-dogs agree in stating that they are subject to a fatal kind of insanity quite distinct from true rabies, and accordingly not productive of hydrophobia. pricked ears, and a bushy tail which looks as if it had lost a couple of joints. Usually he is of a foxy hue, but occasionally dark and almost black on the back, where a sore is often to be seen. His fur is very thick and shaggy, and he is of the same size as a wolf.” There are in the Zodlogi- cal Gardens two Syrian wolves which present an exact fac-simile of the Constantinople scavenger- dog. These dogs, as is well known, form an im- portant institution in Constantinople, clearing the streets and eating all the offal there to be found. Colonel Home speaks of them as friendly and fa- miliar, and in no way a nuisance, unless some tribe of “civilized” dogs quarrel and fight at night with them or with each other, when the noise they make is fearful. These civilized dogs —country or shepherds’ dogs—seem to be badly named, for they are fierce and dangerous, and Colonel Home had to shoot one of two which had pursued and attacked him. In the Zimes newspaper for the 23d of Octo- ber, Mr. Ch. Kroll Laporte, of Birkdale Place, Southport, writes that he never heard of a single case of hydrophobia in Africa during travels there extending over two years. With more time and opportunity at my dis- posal I might doubtless find further examples of the entire absence of rabies, and therefore of hy- drophobia, from certain places; but of this I have surely said enough; and should it be alleged that in other places, where these diseases had pre- viously been unknown, they have at length ap- peared, my argument will be only strengthened if I can account for this by specia) circumstances. To take a single instance by way of sample: I have been assured upon unquestionable authority that Demerara had not within the memory of man been afflicted by the presence of hydropho- bia till the year 1872, when rabies was imported by the influx of a large number of dogs from Bar- badoes, in avoidance of a tax which had there been imposed upon those animals. If it be admitted that hydrophobia never oc- curs except from the reception of the specific poison from a rabid animal, it follows that, rabies being expunged, hydrophobia would necessarily disappear. For this end it would seem to be re- quired that all dogs in the kingdom should be sub- jected to a rigid quarantine of several months, as recommended by Mr. Youatt and by Sir James Bardsley. In order to the effectual enforcement of such quarantine, some legislative measures, and the planning and strict observance of certain

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230 regulations on the part respectively of our sani- tary authorities and our police-officers, are pre- sumably prerequisites. These are matters with which I am neither called upon nor competent to deal. There will be difficulties in the way, but I am persuaded that, if resolutely grappled with, they will not prove invincible. Here, then, my share toward the accomplish- ment of the great object of this paper comes nat- urally to a close. Meanwhile, until the needful steps for the extirpation of rabies can be fully organized and brought into operation, great vigi- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. lance will be necessary to keep in check the ex- isting evil. The superfluity of dogs in the king. dom must be abated by the unshrinking destruc. tion of many; and all dogs should be narrowly watched, most especially dogs known to have been bitten or to have been quarreling, sick dogs, wandering and ownerless dogs, and such as are the playthings of dog-fanciers and others; and all such other measures as may be legal should be taken for lessening the peril and the panic which is at present said to be “ frighting the isle from her propriety.” —Nineteenth Century. penter has treated his readers to a collection of what he terms “ Psychological Curiosities of Spiritualism.” Throughout his article he takes Mr. Crookes and myself as typical examples of men suffering under “ an epidemic delusion com- parable to the witchcraft epidemic of the seven- teenth century,” and he holds up our names to wonder and scorn because, after many years of inquiry, observation, and experiment, and after duly weighing all the doubts suggested and ex- planations proposed by Dr. Carpenter and oth- ers, we persist in accepting the uniform and con- sistent testimony of our senses. Are we, indeed, “ psychological curiosities ” because we rely upon what philosophers assure us is our sole and ulti- mate test of truth—perception and reason? And should we be less rare and “ curious” phenomena if, rejecting as worthless all our personally ac- quired knowledge, we should blindly accept Dr. Carpenter’s suggestions of what he ¢hinks must have happened in place of what we know did happen? If such is the judgment of the world, we must for a time submit to the scorn and ridi- cule which usually fall to the lot of unpopular minorities, but we look forward with confidence to the advent of a higher class of critics than our present antagonist, critics who will not con- descend to a style of controversy so devoid of good taste and impartiality as that adopted by Dr. Carpenter. PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. A REPLY 70 DR. CARPENTER. By ALFRED R. WALLACE, F. R. 8. N the last number of this periodical Dr. Car- | discussion so purely personal as this has become, It is with great reluctance that I continue a | but I have really no choice. If Dr. Carpenter had contented himself with impugning my sanity or my sense on general grounds, I should not think it worth while to write a word in reply. But, when I find my facts distorted and my words perverted, I feel bound to defend myself, not for the sake of my personal character, but in order to put a stop to a mode of discussion which ren- ders all evidence unavailing, and sets up un- founded and depreciatory assertions in the place of fair argument. I now ask my readers to allow me to put be- fore them the other side of this question; and I assure them that, if they will read through this article, they will acknowledge that the strong language I have used is fully justified by the facts which I shall adduce. Those who believe in the reality of the ab- normal phenomena whose existence is denied by Dr. Carpenter and his followers have, for the most part, been convinced by what they have seen in private houses and among friends on whose character they can rely. They constitute a not uninfluential body of literary and scientific men, including several Fellows of the Royal So- ciety. The cases of public imposture (real or imaginary) so persistently adduced by Dr. Car- penter do not affect their belief, which is alto- gether independent of public exhibitions; and they probably, with myself, look upon the learned doctor, who tilts against facts as Don Quixote

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did against windmills, and with equally preju- dicial results to himself, as a curious example of fossilized skepticism. Thus Sergeant Cox, who often quotes Dr. Carpenter, and is now quoted by him with approval, speaks of the learned doctor, in his recent address to the Psy- chological Society, as being “ enslaved and blind- ed” by “ prepossession,” adding : “There is not a more notable instance of this than Dr. Carpenter himself, whose emphatic warn- ings to beware of it are doubtless the result of self- consciousness. An apter illustration of this human weakness there could not be. The characteristic feature of his mind is prepossession. This weak- ness is apparent in all his works. It matters not what the subject, if once he has formed an opinion upon it, that opinion so prepossesses his whole mind that nothing adverse to it can find admission there. It affects alike his senses and his judgment.” I propose, therefore, as a companion picture to that of Messrs. Crookes and Wallace, the vic- tims of an epidemic delusion, to exhibit Dr. Car- penter as an example of what prepossession and blind skepticism can do fora man. I shall show how it makes a scientific man unscientific, a wise man foolish, an honest man unjust. To refuse belief to unsupported rumors of improbable events, is enlightened skepticism; to reject all second-hand or anonymous tales to the injury or depreciation of any one, is charitable skepticism ; to doubt your own prepossessions when opposed to facts observed and reobserved by honest and capable men, is a noble skepticism. But the skepticism of Dr. Carpenter is none of these. It is a blind, unreasoning, arrogant disbelief, that marches on from youth to age with its eyes shut to all that opposes its own pet theories; that believes its own judgment to be infallible; that never acknowledges its errors. It is a skepticism that clings to its refuted theories, and refuses to accept new truths. Near the commencement of his article Dr. Carpenter tells us that he recurs to this subject as a duty to the public and to assist in curing a dangerous mental disease; and that he would gladly lay it aside for the scientific investigations which afford him the purest enjoyment. But he also tells us that he honestly believes that he possesses “unusual power of dealing with this subject ;” and as Dr. Carpenter is not one to hide the light of his “ unusual powers” under a bushel, we may infer that it is not pure duty which has caused him, in addition to writing long letters to Nature and announcing a “ full answer” to my- self and Mr. Crookes in the forthcoming new edi- PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. 231 tion of his “ Lectures,” to expend his valuable time and energy on an article of forty-eight col- umns, founded mainly on such a very shaky and un-scientific foundation as American newspaper extracts and the unsupported statements of Mr. Home, the medium ;' while it is full of personal animosity and the most unmeaning ridicule. With extreme bad taste he compares a gentleman, who, ' as a scholar, a thinker, and a writer, is Dr. Car- 1 Mr. Home has always been treated by Dr. Carpen- ter as an impostor: yet now he quotes him as an authority, although Mr. Home's accusations against other mediums are never authenticated in any way, and appear to be in many cases pure imagination. Dr. Carpenter will no doubt now disclaim any imputa- tion against Mr. Home, and pretend to consider him only as the victim of delusion. But this is abeurd. For does he not maintain that Mr. Home was never * levitated,” although in several cases the fact was proved by his name being found written in pencil on the ceiling, where it remained? This must have been imposture if the levitation were not, as claimed, a reality. Do not the hands, other than those of any persons present, which have often appeared at Mr. Home's séances and have been visible and even tangi- ble to all present, prove (in Dr. Carpenter's opinion) imposture? Do not the red-hot coals carried about the room in his hands prove chemical preparation, and therefore imposture!? Is not the increase or decrease of the weight of a table, as ascertained by a spring- balance, which I have myself witnessed in Mr. Home's presence, a trick, according to Dr. Carpenter? Is not the playing of the accordion in one hand, or when both Mr. Home’s hands are on the table, a clever im- posture in Dr. Carpenter's opinion? But if any one of these things is admitted to be, not an imposture, but a reality, then the whole foundation of the learned but most illogical doctor's skepticism is undermined, and he practically admits himself a convert to the facts of modern spiritualism. But he does not admit this; and as Mr. Home has carried on these alleged impost- ures during his whole life, and has imbued thousands of persons with a belief in their genuineness, Dr. Car- penter must inevitably believe Mr. Home to be the vilest of impostors and utterly untrustworthy. Yet he quotes him as an authority, accepts as true all the malicious stories retailed by thie alleged impostor against rival impostors, and believes every vague and entirely unsupported statement to a like effect in Mr. Home's last book! This from an ex-professor of medi- cal jurisprodence, who onght to have eome rudiment- ary notions of the value of evidence, is truly surprising. It may be said that, although Dr. Carpenter thinks Home an impostor, we believe in him, and therefore ought to accept his evidence against other mediums. But this is a fallacy. We believe that he is a medium, that is, a machine or organization through whom cer- tain abnormal and marvelous phenomena occur; but this implies no belief in his integrity or in his judg- ment, any more than the extraordinary phenomenon of double individuality exhibited in the case of the French sergeant (which formed the subject of such an interesting article by Prof. Huxley some time ago) im- plies that the sergeant was a man of high moral char- acter and superior judgment.

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i) ', penter’s equal, to Moses & Son’s kept poet; while with a pitiable inappropriateness he parodies the fine though hackneyed saying, “See how these Christians love one another,” in order to apply it satirically to the case of a rather severe, but not unfair, review of Mr. Home’s book in a spiritual periodical. I will now proceed to show, not only that my accusations in the Quarterly Journal of Science for July last—which in Dr. Carpenter’s opinion amount to a charge of “ willful and repeated sup- pressio veri” —are proved, but that a blind reli- ance on Mr. Home and on “ excerpts from Ameri- can newspapers” has led him to make deliberate statements which are totally unfounded. I will first take a case which will illustrate Dr. Carpenter’s wonderful power of misstatement as regards myself: 1. In a letter to the Daily News, written im- mediately after the delivery of Dr. Carpenter’s first “ Lecture on Mesmerism” at the London In- + stitution a year ago, I adduced a case of mesmer- ism at a distance, recorded by the late Prof. Gregory. The lady mesmerized was a relation of the professor, and was staying in bis own house. The mesmerizer was a Mr. Lewis. The sole au- thority for the facts referred to by me was Prof. Gregory himself. 2. While criticising this Mr. Lewis in his “ Lectures” (p. 24), Dr. Carpenter says, referring to my Daily News letter : “ His (Mr. Lewis’s) utter failure to produce either result, however, under the scrutiny of skeptical inquirers, obviously dis- credits all his previous statements ; except to such as (like Mr. A. R. Wallace, who has recently ez- pressed his full faith in Mr. Lewis's self-asserted powers) are ready to accept without question the slenderest evidence of the greatest marvels.” (The italics are my own.) 3. In my “ Review” of Dr. Carpenter's book (Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1877, p. 394) I use strong (but, I submit, appropriate) language as to this injurious and unfounded statement. For Dr. Carpenter’s readers must have understood, and must have been intended to understand, that, in sole reliance on this Mr. Lewis’s own statements, I placed full faith in them without any corrobora- tion, and had also publicly announced this faith ; in which case his readers would have been justi- fied in thinking me a credulous fool not worth listening to. 4. Writing again on this subject (in last month’s issue of this Magazine, p. 545), Dr. Car- penter does not apologize for the gross and inju- rious misrepresentation of what I really said, THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. neither does he justify it by reference to anything else I may have written; but he covers his re. treat with a fresh suggestio falsi, and ridicules me for using such strong language (which he quotes) merely (he says) because he had reflected on my “too ready acceptance of the slenderest evidence of the greatest marvels”—a phrase of Dr. Car- penter’s which I never objected to at all because it was a mere expression of opinion, while what I did object to was a misstatement of a matter of fact. This is Dr. Carpenter’s idea of the way to carry on that “calm discussion with other men of science” to the absence of which he imputes all my errors. (Note A, p. 705.) Dr. Carpenter is so prepossessed with the dominant idea of putting down spiritualism, that it seems impossible for him to state the simplest fact in regard to it without introducing some purely imaginary fact of his own to make it fit his theory. Thus, in his article on “The Falla- cies of Testimony ” (Contemporary Review, 1876, p. 286) he says: “A whole party of believers will affirm that they saw Mr. Home float out of one window and in at another, while a single honest skeptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting in his chair all the time.” Now, there is only one case on record of Mr. Home having “floated out cf one window and in at another.” Two of tke persons present on the occasion—Lord Adare and Lord Lindsay—have made public their account of it, and the third has never declared that Mr. Home was “sitting in his chair all the time,” but has privately confirmed, to the extent his position enabled him to do so, the testimony of the other two. Is this another case of Dr. Carpenter “ cere- brating” his facts to suit his theory, or will he say it is a purely hypothetical case? Yet this can hardly be, for he goes on to argue from it: “And in this last case we have an example of a fact, of which,” ete., etc. I ask Dr. Carpenter to name the “honest skeptic” of this quotation, and to give us his precise statement ; or, failing this, to acknowledge that he has imagined a piece of evi- dence to suit his hypothesis. (Note B, p. 706.) It is only fair that he should do this because, in another of his numerous raids upon the poor deluded spiritualists, he has made a direct and, as it seems to me, completely unsupported charge against Lord Lindsay. In his article on “ Spirit- ualism and its Recent Converts” (Quarterly Re- view, 1871, pp. 335, 336) Dr. Carpenter quotes Lord Lindsay’s account of an experiment with Mr. Home, in which Lord Lindsay placed a power- ful magnet in one corner of a totally dark room, and then brought in the medium, who after a few

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~ moments said he saw a sort of light on the floor; and to prove it led Lord Lindsay straight to the spot, and placed his hand upon the magnet. The experiment was not very remarkable, but still, so far as it went, it confirmed the observations of Reichenbach and others. This Dr. Carpenter cannot bear; so he not only proceeds to point out Lord Lindsay’s complete ignorance of the whole subject, but makes him morally culpable for not having used Dr. Carpenter’s pet test of an electro-magnet ; and he concludes thus: “ If, then, Lord Lindsay cannot be trusted as a ‘faithful’ witness in ‘ that which is least,’ how can we feel assured that he is ‘faithful also in much?’” By what mental jugglery Dr. Carpenter can have convinced himself that he had shown that Lord Lindsay “ cannot be trusted as a faithful witness,” I am ata loss to understand. But the animus against the friend of and believer in Mr. Home is palpable. Now that Lord Lindsay has achieved a scientific reputation, we presume there must be two Lord Lindsays as well as two Mr. Crookeses: one the enthusiastic astronomer and careful ob- server, the other the deluded spiritualist and “psychological curiosity.” As these double peo- ple increase it will become rather puzzling, and we shall have to adopt Mr. Crookes’s prefixes of “Ortho” and “ Pseudo,” to know which we are talking about.’ It will be well, also, to note the Scriptural language employed by Dr. Carpenter in making this solemn and ridiculously unfounded charge. It reminds one of the “I speak advised- ly” (in the celebrated Quarterly Review article now acknowledged by Dr. Carpenter) which Mr. Crookes has shown to be in every case the prefix of a wholly incorrect statement.’ Dr. Carpenter heads a section of his article in. last month’s iasue of this periodical, “‘ What Mr. Wallace means by Demonstration ;” and endeav- ors to show that I have misapplied the term when I stated that in certain cases flowers had appeared at séances, “demonstrably not brought by the medium.” His long quotations from Mr. Home, giving purely imaginary and burlesque accounts of such séances, totally unauthenticated by names or dates, may be set aside, as not only irrelevant, but as insulting to the readers who are asked to accept them as evidence. Dr. Car- penter begins by confounding the proof of a fact and that of a proposition, and, against the view of the best modern philosophers, maintains that the latter alone can be truly said to be “ demon- 1 See Nature, November 1, 1877, p. 8. 2 Quarterly Journal of Science, January, 1872: “A Reply to the Quarterly Review.” PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. 233 - strated.” But this is a complete fallacy. The direct testimony of the educated sensés, guided by reason, is of higher validity than any complex result of reason alone. If I am sitting with two friends, and a servant brings me a letter, I am justified in saying that that letter was “demon- strably not brought by one of my friends.” Or if a bullet comes through the window and strikes the wall behind me, I am justified in saying that one of my two friends, sitting at the table, “de- monstrably did not fire the pistol "—always sup- posing that I am proved to be in the full posses- sion of my ordinary senses by the general agree- ment of my friends with me as to what happened. Of course, if I am in a state of delusion or insani- ty, and my senses and reasoning powers do not record events in agreement with others who wit- ness them, neither shall I be able to perceive the force of a mathematical demonstration. If my senses play me false, squares may seem to me triangles and circles ellipses, and no geometrical reasoning will be possible. Dr. Carpenter next asserts that I “complain” of his “not accepting the flowers and fruits produced in my own draw- ing-room, and those which made their appearance in the house of Mr. T. A. Trollope, at Florence.” . This is simply not the case. I never asked him to accept them, or complained of his not accept- ing them; but I pointed out that he did accept the evidence of a prejudiced witness to support a theory of imposture which was entirely negatived in the two cases I referred to.! I implied that he should either leave the subject alone, or deal with the best evidence of the alleged facts. To do otherwise was not “scientific,” and to put anony- mous and unsupported evidence before the public as conclusive of the whole question was both un- scientific and disingenuous. Now that he does attempt to deal with these cases, he makes them explicable on his own theory of imposture only by leaving out the most essential facts. He first says that “in Mr. Wallace’s own case no precautions whatever had been employed!” and he introduces this with the remark, “ Now it will scarcely be believed,” to which I will add that it must not be believed, because it is untrue. I have never published a detailed account of this séance, but I have stated the main facts with suf- ficient care* to show that the phenomenon itself was a test surpassing anything that could have been prearranged. The general precautions used by me were as follows : five personal friends were 1 See Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1877, pp- 410-412, 2“ Miracles and Modern Spiritualism,” p. 164.

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! 934 present besides myself and the medium, among them a medical man, a barrister, and an acute colonial man of business. The sitting was in my own back drawing-room. No cloth was on the table. The adjoining room and passage were fully lighted. We sat an hour in the darkened room before the flowers appeared, but there was always light enough to see the outlines of those present. We sat a little away from the table, the medium sitting by me. The flowers appeared on the polished table dimly visible as a something, before we lighted the gas. When we did so the whole surface of the four-feet circular table was covered with fresh flowers and ferns, a sight so beautiful and marvelous that, in the course of a not uneventful life, I can hardly recall anything that has more strongly impressed me. I begged that nothing might be touched till we had care- fully examined them. The first thing that struck us all was their extreme freshness and beauty. The next, that they were all covered, especially the ferns, with a delicate dew—not with coarse drops of water as I have since seen when the phenomenon was less perfect, but with a veritable, fine dew, covering the whole surface of the ferns especially. Counting the separate sprigs, we found them to be forty-eight in number, consist- ing of four yellow and red tulips, eight large anem- ones of various colors, six large flowers of Pri- mula japonica, eighteen chrysanthemums, mostly yellow and white, six fronds of Lomaria a foot Jong, and two of a Nephrodium, about a foot long and six inches wide. Not a pinnule of these ferns was rumpled, but they lay on the table as perfect as if freshly brought from a conserva- tory. The anemones, primroses, and tulips, had none of them lost a petal. They were found spread over the whole surface of the table, while we had been for some time intently gazing on the detected a hand and arm moving over it. But that is not so important as the condition of these flowers and their dewiness ; and—Dr. Carpenter notwithstanding—I still maintain they were (to us) “demonstrably not brought by the medium.” I have preserved the flowers and have them now before me, with the attestation of all present as to their appearance and condition; and I have also my original notes made at the time. How simple is Dr. Carpenter's notion that I tell this story, after ten years, from memory! How in- genious is his suggestion of the lining of a cloak as their place of concealment for four hours—a suggestion taken from a second-hand story by Mr. Home about a paid medium, and therefore THE POPUSAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. not the lady whose powers are now under discus. sion! How utterly beside the question his sub. sequent remarks about conjurers, and hats, and the mango-trees, produced by Indian jugglers! In the case certified by Mr. T. A. Trollope, the medium’s person (not her dress only, as Dr. Carpenter says) was carefully searched before sitting down; but now it is objected that “an experienced female searcher” would have been more satisfactory, and the fact is ignored that phenomena occurred which precluded the neces- sity of any search. For, while the medium’s hands were both held, a large quantity of jon- quils fell on the table, “ filling the whole room with their odor.” If Dr. Carpenter can get over the “sudden falling on the table” of the flowers while the medium’s hands were held, how does he | explain the withholding of the powerful odor | “ filling the whole room ” till the moment of their appearance? Mr. Trollope says that this is, “on any common theory of physics, unaccountable,” | and I say that this large quantity of powerfully- | smelling jonquils was “ demonstrably not brought | by the medium.” I have notes of other cases | equally well attested. In one of these at a friend’s house, to which I myself took Miss Nicholl, | eighty separate stalks of flowers and ferns fell on | the table while the medium's hands were both | held. All were perfectly fresh and damp, and | some large sprays of maiden-hair fern were quite | perfect. On another occasion, I was present when twenty different kinds of fruits were asked | for, and every person had his chosen kind | placed before him on the table or put at once into his hands by some invisible agency. These | cases might be multiplied indefinitely, and many | are recorded which are still more completely be- yond the power of imposture to explain. But all such are passed over by Dr. Carpenter in silence. He asks for better evidence of certain facts, and, when we adduce it, he says we are the | victims of a “ diluted insanity.”: In the sup- posed Belfast exposure by means of potassium ferrocyanide, I objected that the only evidence was that of a prejudiced witness, with a strong animus against the medium. Dr. Carpenter now prints this young man’s letter (of which he had in his lecture given the substance), and thinks that he has transformed hia one witness into two by means of an anonymous “ friend ” therein men- tioned. He talks of the “immediate detection of the salt by one witness and the subsequent con- firmatory testimony of the other’ —this “ other” 1Dr. Carpenter's “ Mental Physiology,” second edition, p. 362. sheen of its surface, and could have instantly |

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lope, | Dr. “an that being the anonymous friend of the “ one witness ” letter! Unfortunately, this “friend” wrote a letter to the papers in which he brought an ad- ditional accusation, which I have proved, by the testimony of an unimpeachabje witness, to be utterly unfounded. (See Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1877, page 411.) We may, there- fore, dismiss the “‘ exposure” as, to say the least, not proven, e Dr. Carpenter heads one of his sections, “What Messrs. Wallace and Crookes regard as ‘Trustworthy Testimony ;’” and, before I re- mark on its contents, I wish to point out the literary impropriety of which Dr. Carpenter is guilty, in thus making Mr. Crookes responsible *for the whole contents of my article in the Quar- terly Journal of Science because he happens to be the editor of that periodical. I might with equal justice charge upon the editor of Fraser all the misstatements and injurious personal im- putations which Dr. Carpenter has introduced into an article, accepted, doubtless, without ques- tion on the strength of his high scientific stand- ing. Under the above heading, Dr. Carpenter at- tempts to show that Colonel Olcott (whose inves- tigation into the character of Mrs. White and her false declaration that she had, on certain occa- sions, personated “ Katie King,’”’ I quoted in my review) is an untrustworthy witness ; and his sole proof consists in a quotation from a published letter of the colonel’s about bringing an “ Afri- can sorcerer’’ to America. This letter may or may not be injudicious or foolish—that is matter of opinion. But how it in any way “blackens” Colonel Olcott’s character or proves him to be “untrustworthy” as a witness to matters of fact, it must puzzle every one but a Carpenter or a Home to understand. The next example I shall give of Dr. Carpen- ter’s “unusual power of dealing with this sub- ject” is, a most injurious misstatement referring to my friend Mr. Crookes. Dr. Carpenter heads a section of more than eight columns, “ Mr. Crookes and his Scientific Tests,” and devotes it to an account of Eva Fay’s performances, of Mr. Crookes’s “ inconsiderate indorsement of one of the grossest impostures ever practised,” and of the alleged exposure of the fraud by Mr. W. Irvine Bishop. The following quotation contains the essence of the charge, and I invite particular at- tention to its wording : “. ... her London audiences diminishing away, Eva Fay returned to the United States, car- rying with her a letter from Mr. Crookes, which PSYCHOLOGICAL OURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. 235 set forth that since doubts had been thrown on the spiritualistic nature of her ‘ manifestations,’ and since he, in common with other Fellows of the Royal Society, had satisfied themselves of their genuineness by ‘ scientific tests,’ he willingly gave her the benefit of his attestation. This letter was published in fac-simile iu American newspapers.” I can scarcely expect my readers at once to credit what I now have to state; that, notwith- standing the above precise setting forth of its contents, by a man who professes to write under a sense of duty, and as one called upon to re- habilitate the injured dignity of British science, such a letter as that above minutely described never existed at all! A private letter from Mr. Crookes has indeed, without his consent, been published in fac-simile in American newspapers ; but this letter was never in the possession of Eva Fay ; it was not written till months after she had left England, and then not to her, but in answer to inquiries by a perfect stranger; moreover, it contains not a word in any way resembling the passages above given! Sad to say, Dr. Carpen- ter’s kind Boston friends do not appear to have sent him a copy of the paper containing the fac- simile letter, or he would have seen that Mr. Crookes says nothing of “ the spiritualistic nature of her manifestations;” he does not mention “ other Fellows of the Royal Society ;” he does not say he was “ satisfied of the genuineness of the scientific tests,” but especially guards himself by saying that the published account of the ex- periments made at his own house are the best evidence of his belief in her powers. He does not “ give her the benefit of his attestation,” but simply says that no one has any authority to use his name to injure her, The number of the New York Daily Graphic for April 12, 1876, containing the letter in fae- simile, is now before me. An exact copy of it is given below, and I ask my readers to peruse it carefully, to compare it with Dr. Carpenter’s pre- cise summary given as if from actual inspection, and then decide by whose instrumentality the honored distinction of F. R. 8. is being “ trailed through the dirt,” and who best upholds his own reputation and that of British science. Is it the man who writes a straightforward letter in order to prevent his name being used to injure another, and who states only facts within his own personal knowledge ; or is it he who, for the express pur- pose of depreciating ' the well-earned reputation 1 “In the United States more especially .. . . the names of the ‘eminent British scientists,’ Messrs. | Crookes and Wallace, are ‘a tower of strength.’ And

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236 of a fellow-man of science, publishes without a word of caution or hesitation a purely imaginary account of it ? MR. CROOKES’s “‘ FAC-SIMILE”’ LETTER. ** Nov, 8, 1875. “ To R. Cooper, Esq. “o/o C. Maynard, Esq. ‘* 2238 Washington Street, “* Boston, Mass., U.S. A. * Dear Sir, “In reply to your favor of Oct. 25, which I have received this morning, I beg to state that no one has any authority from me to state that I have any doubts of Mrs. Fay’s mediumship. The pub- lished accounts of the test séances which took place at my house are the best evidence which I can give of my belief in Mrs. Fay’s powers. I should be sorry to find that any such rumors as you mention should injure Mrs. Fay, whom I have always found most ready to submit to any conditions I thought fit to propose. Believe me, very truly yours, “ Witt Crooxzs.”’ Notwithstanding this attack, all the evidence Dr. Carpenter can adduce as to the alleged ex- posure of Eva Fay has really no bearing whatever on Mr. Crookes’s position. Long and wordy let- ters are given verbatim, which only amount to this: that the writers saw a clever conjurer do what they thought was an exact imitation of Eva Fay’s performances, and of those of mediums generally. Buta most essential point is omitted. Neither of the three writers says he ever saw Ewa Fay’s performance, Still less do they say they ever saw her in private and tested her them- selves; and without this their evidence is abso- lutely worthless. Mr. Crookes has said nothing, good or bad, about her public performances ; but she came alone to his own house, and there, aided by scientific friends, in his own laboratory, he tested her by placing her in an electrical circuit from which she could not possibly escape or even attempt to escape without instant discovery. Yet when in this position books were taken from the bookcase twelve feet away and handed out to the observers. The beautiful arrangements by which these tests were carried out are detailed by Mr. Crookes in the Spiritualist newspaper of March 12, 1875, and should be read by every one who wishes to understand the real difference be- it consequently becomes necessary for me to under- mine that tower by showing that in their investigation of this subject they have followed methods that are thoroughly unscientific, and have been led, by their * prepossession,’ to accept with implicit faith a num- ber of statements which ought to be rejected as com- pletely untrustworthy." —Fraser’s Magazine, Novem- ber, 1877, p. 548. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. tween the methods of procedure of Mr, Crookes and Dr. Carpenter. Not one word is said, either by Dr. Carpenter’s correspondents or by the Daily Graphic, as to this test having been ap. plied to Mr. Bishop by an electrical engineer or other expert, and till this is done how can Mr, Crookes’s position be in any way affected? A public performance in Boston, parodying that of Miss Fay, but without one particle of proof that the conditions of the two performances were really identical,’ is to Dr. Carpenter’s logical and skeptical mind a satisfactory proof that one of the first experimenters of the day was imposed on in his own laboratory, when assisted by trained experts, and when applying the most absolute tests that science can supply.? (Note C, p. 289.) - I bave now shown to the readers of Fraser (as I had previously shown in the Quarterly Journal of Science) that whatever Dr. Carpenter writes on this subject, whether opinion, argument, quotation, or fact, is so distorted by prejudice as to be untrustworthy. It is therefore unnecessary here to reply in detail to the mass of innuendo and assumption that everywhere pervades his ar- ticle; neither am I called upon to notice all the alleged “‘ exposures” which he delights in placing before his readers. To “expose” malingerers and cases of feigned illness does not disprove the existence of disease ; and if, as I believe has been 1 The account in the New York Daily Graphic almost proves that they were not. For the clever woodcuts showing Mr. Bishop during his performances indicate an amount of stretching of the cord which certainly could be at once detected on after-examination, es- pecially ifthe knots had been sealed or bound with court-plaster. Yet more: according to these illustra- tions, it would be impossible for Mr. Bishop to imitate Eva Fay in “ tying a strip of cloth round her neck” and “ putting a ring into her ear,” both of which are specially mentioned as having been done by her. It may well be supposed that the andience, delighted at an “ exposure,” would not be quite so severely criti- cal as they are to those who claim to possess abnormal powers. 2 As hardly any of my readers will have seen the fall account of these tests, and as the whole is too long for insertion here, I give a pretty full abstract of all the essential portions of it in an Appendix to this pa- per. This is rendered necessary because Dr. Carpen- ter declares that he is going to give, in the new edi- tion of his Lectures, “the whole explanation” of the “dodge” by which these “ scientific tests” could be evaded—“ a dodge so simple that Mr. Crookes’s highly- trained scientific acumen could not detect it.” These are Dr. Carpenter's own words, in his article last month (p. 558), and it is necessary that he should be called on to make them good by really explaining Mr. Crookes’s actual experiments, and not some other ex- periments which “ American newspapers ” may sub- stitute for them.

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demonstrated, the ._phenomena here discussed are marvelous realities, it is to be expected that there will be impostors to imitate them, and no lack of credulous persons to be duped by those impostors, But it is not the part of an honest searcher after truth to put forward these detected impostures while ignoring the actual phenomena which the impostors try to imitate. When we have Dr. Carpenter’s final word in the promised new edition of his Lectures, I shall be prepared to show that tests far more severe than such as have resulted in the detection of imposture have been over and over again applied to the genuine phenomena with no other result than to confirm their genuineness. This is not the place to discuss the reality of the phenomena which Dr. Carpenter rejects with so much misplaced indignation, and endeavors to put down by such questionable means.: The care- ful observations of such men as Prof. Barrett, of Dublin, and the elaborate series of test experi- ments carried out in his own laboratory by Mr. Crookes,' are sufficient to satisfy any unpreju- diced person that the phenomena are genuine; and, if so, whatever theory we may adopt con- cerning them, they must greatly influence all our fundamental ideas in science and philosophy. The attempt to excite prejudice against all who have become convinced that these things are real, by vague accusations, and by quoting all the trash that can be picked out of the literature of the subject, is utterly unworthy of the men of science who adopt it. For nearly thirty years this plan has been unsparingly pursued, and its failure has been complete. Belief in the genuine- ness of the phenomena has grown steadily year by year; and at this day there are, to my per- sonal knowledge, a larger number of well-educated and intelligent, and even of scientific men, who profess their belief, than at any former period. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that this body of inquirers have obtained their present convictions by what they have seen at public séances only. In almost every case those convic- tions are the result of a long series of experiments in private houses; and it would amaze Dr. Car- penter to learn the number of families in every class of society in which even the more mar- velous and indisputable of these phenomena oc- eur. The course taken by Dr. Carpenter of dis- crediting evidence, depreciating character, and retailing scandal, only confirms these people in their belief that men of science are poWerless in 1 Quarterly Journal of Science, October, 18T1, and PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. January, 1874. face of this great subject ; and I feel sure that all he has written has never converted a single ear- nest investigator. It is well worthy of notice, as correlating this inquiry with other branches of science, that there is no royal road to acquiring a competent knowl- edge of these phenomena, and this is the reason why so many scientific men fail to obtain evi- dence of anything important. They think that a few hours should enable them to decide the whole thing ; as ifa problem which has been ever be- fore the world, and which for the last quarter of a century has attracted the attention of thousands, only required their piercing glance to probe it to the bottom. But those who have devoted most time and study to the subject, though they be- come ever more convinced of the reality, the im- portance, and the endless phases of the phenome- na, find themselves less able to dogmatize as to their exact nature or theoretical interpretation. Of one thing, however, they feel convinced: that all further discussion on the inner nature of man and his relation to the universe is a mere beating of the air, so long as these marvelous phenomena, opening up as they do a whole world of new in- teractions between mind and matter, are disre- garded and ignored. APPENDIX. Abstract of Mr. Crookes’s Experiments above re- Serred to. The apparatus used consisted of an electncal circuit with a reflecting galvanometer showing the slightest variations in the current, designed and ar- ranged by one of the most eminent practical electri - cians. This instrument was fixed in Mr. Crookes’s laboratory, from which two stout wires passed through the wall into the library adjoining, and there terminated in two brass handles fixed ata considerable distance apart, and having only an inch or two of play. These handles are covered with linen soaked in salt and water, and when the person to be experimented on holds these handles in the hands (also first soaked in salt and water) the current of electricity passes through his or her body, and the exact “ electrical resistance” can be measured ; while the reflecting galvanometer ren- ders visible to all the spectators the slightest vari- ation in the resistance. This instrument is so delicate that the mere loosening of the grasp of one or both hands or the lifting of a finger from the handle would be shown at once, because by alter- ing the amount of surface in contact the “ elec- trical resistance”? would be instantly changed. Two experienced physicists, both Fellows of the Royal Society, made experiments with this instru- ment for more than an hour before the tests began,

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238 and satisfied themselves that, even with an exact knowledge of what was required and with any amount of preparation, they could not substitute anything connecting the two handles and having the same exact resistance as the human body with- out a long course of trial and failure, and without @ person in the other room to tell them if more or less resistance were required, during which time the index spot of light of the galvanometer was flying wildly about. Comparative steadiness of the index could only be secured by a steady and con- tinuous grasp of the two handles. Having thus described the apparatus, let us now consider how the test was carried out. The gentlemen invited to witness it were three Fellows of the Royal Society, all of special eminence, and three other gentlemen. They examined the libra- ty ; fastened up the door to the passage as well as the window with strips of paper sealed with their private seals; they examined all the cupboards and desks; they noted the position of various articles, and measured their distances as well as that of the bookcase from the handles to be held by the medium. The library was connected with the laboratory by a door close to where the me- dium sat, and this door was wide open, but the aperture was closed by means of a curtain. Every- thing having been thus arranged, Eva Fay was in- vited to enter the library, having up to this time been in the drawing-room up-stairs, and having come to the house alone. She then seated herself in a chair placed for the purpose, and, having moistened her hands as directed, took hold of the two handles. The exact “electrical resistance” of her body was then noted, as well as the deflec- tion shown by the galvanometer: and, the gas in the library having been turned down low, the gen- tlemen took their places in the laboratory, leaving Eva Fay alone. In one minute a hand-bell was rung in the li- brary. In two minutes a hand came out at the side of the door farthest from the medium. During the succeeding five minutes four separate books were handed out to their respective authors, a voice from the library calling them by name. These books had been taken from the bookcase twelve feet from Eva Fay: they had been found in the dark, and one of them had no lettering on the back. Mr. Crookes declares that although he, of course, knew the general position of the books in his own library, he could not have found these books in the dark. Then a box of cigars was thrown out to a gentleman very fond of smoking, and finally an ornamental clock which had been standing on the chimney-piece was handed out. Then the circuit was suddenly broken, and, on in- stantly entering the library, Eva Fay was found lying back in the chair senseless, a condition in which she remained for half an hour. All the above phenomena occurred during the space of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ten minutes, and the reflecting galvanometer was steady the whole time, showing only those smal] variations which would occur while a person con- tinued to hold the handles. On two other occasions Mr. Crookes carried out similar tests with the same medium and always with the same result. On one occasion several musical instruments * »vlayed on at the same time, and a musica)-! — «as wound up while the luminous index of .». galvanometer continued quite steady, and many articles were handed or thrown out into the laboratory. On the other oc- casion similar things happened, after all possible precautions had been taken ; and in addition Mr. Crookes’s desk, which was carefully locked before the séance, was found unlocked and open at its conclusion. Every one must look forward with great in- terest to Dr. Carpenter’s promised “‘ explanation” of how all these scientific tests were evaded by an unscientific impostor. Nore A.—Since this article was in the printer's hands, a proof-sheet of the new edition of Dr. Carpen- ter’s Lectures has been forwarded to me at the an- thor’s request, in order that I may see what further explanations he has to give to the above case. Dr. Carpenter now attempts to justify his assertion that I had “recently expressed my full faith in Mr. Lewis's self-asserted powers,’ by a statement of what Dr. Simp- son told him several years ago, a statement which appears to have been never yet made public, and which, therefore, could not possibly have been taken into account by me, even had it any real bearing on the question at issue. It is to the effect that Mr. Lewis might have received information of the exact hour at which the lady he had promised to try to meemerize at a distance fell asleep in Prof. Gregory's house, and that he might have afterward given a falee statement of the hour at which he attempted to mesmerize her. Dr. Carpenter is exceesively indignant when any doubt is thrown by me on the truthfulness or impar- tiality of any of his informants, but it seems the most natural thing in the world for him to charge false- hood or fraud against all who testify to facts which he thinks incredible. But even admitting that Dr. Car- penter’s memory of what was told him many years ago is absolutely perfect, and admitting that Mr. Lew- is (against whose moral character nothing whatever is adduced) would have told a direct falsehood in order to magnify his own powers, how does this account for the fact that the lady was overcome by the mes- meric sleep at all, when her mind and body were both actively engaged at the piano early in the after- noon? And how does it account for the headache which had troubled her the whole day suddenly ceas- ing? It is not attempted to be shown that Mr. Lew- is’s statement—that he returned home at the hour named, and at once proceeded to try and mesmerize the lady—is not true; so that, except for the sup- posed incredibility of the whole thing in Dr. Carpen- ter’s opinion, there would be no reason to doubt the exact correctness of the statements made. But, even if the reader adopts the view that Mr. Lewis was really an impostor, that does not make Dr. Carpenter's oe

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mal] -on- out ays assertion—that I had “expressed” my full faith in his “ self-asserted powers**—one whit more accurate. If Dr. Carpenter had then in his memory this means of throwing doubt on the facts, why did he not mention it in his Lectures or in his article, in- stead of first charging me with the “‘ expression” of a faith which I never expressed or held, and then at- tempting to change the issue by substituting other words for those which I really complained of? Norz B—In the new edition of Dr. Carpenter's Lectures (the proof of part of which has been sent me) he supports his statement that “there are at the present time numbers of educated men and women who have so completely surrendered their ‘ common- sense’ to a dominant prepossession as to maintain that any such monstrous fiction (as of a person being carried through the air in an hour from Edinburgh to London) ought to be believed, even upon the evidence of a single witness, if that witness be one upon whose testimony we should rely in the ordinary af- fairs of life’—by saying that “the moonlight sail of Mr. Home is extensively believed on the testimony of a single witness." Even if it were the fact that this particular thing is believed by some persons on the testimony of a single witness, that would not justify Dr. Carpenter's statement that there are numbers of educated men and women who maintain as a principle that any such thing, however monstrous, ought to be so believed. As, however, there are, as above shown, three witnesses in this case, and at least fen in the case of Mrs. Guppy, also referred to, it appears that Dr. Carpenter first makes depreciatory general state- ments, and, when these are challenged, supports them by a misstatement of facts. Such a course of proced- ure renders further discussion impossible. Nore C.—A letter of Dr. Carpenter's has alao, “‘ at his own request,” been forwarded to me, in which he attempts to justify the conduct narrated above. In Nature, for November 15th, Mr. Crookes printed the letter which was given in /fac-simile in American newspapers, with remarks of a somewhat similar character to those I have here made. Dr. Carpenter, writing three days afterward (November 18th), wishes it to be stated in Fraser, as his “own correction,” that this letter was not carried away from England by Eva Fay; adding, “ What wae carried away by Eva Fay was a much stronger attestation, publicly given in full detail by Mr. Crookes in a communication to the Spiritualist **°—of which communication I give an ab- stract in an appendix to this article. This obliges me to add a few further particulars. In Nature, October 25th, in a note to a letter about the radiometer, Dr. Carpenter says: “‘ On the strength of a private letter from Mr. Crookes, which has been published in facsimile in the American newspapers, a certain Mrs. or Miss Eva Fay announced her “ spirit- PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. 289 | ualistic” performances as indorsed by Prof. Crookes and other Fellows of the Royal Society.’” This sup- posed letter was “‘ set forth” in detail in last month's Fraser as above stated. In Nature, November 8th, Dr. Carpenter says: “ And the now notorious impostor, Eva Fay, has been able to appeal to the ‘indorsement’ given to her by the ‘ scientific tests * applied to her by ‘ Prof. Crookes and other Fellows of the Royal Society,’ which had been published (I now find) by Mr. Crookes himself in the Spiritualist in March, 1875.” From the above it follows, that it was between October 25th and November 8th that Dr. Carpenter first became acquainted with Mr. Crookes’s account of his experiments with Eva Fay ; and, fiuding (from Mr. Crookes’s publication of it) that his own detailed account of the contents of the fac-simtie letter was to- tally incorrect, he now makes a fresh assertion—that Eva Fay “ carried away with her” a copy of the Spir- itualist containing Mr. Crookes’s experiments. This is highly probable, but we venture to doubt if Dr. Carpenter has any authority to state it asa fact ; while, even if she did, that article does not, any more than the fac-simile letter, justify Dr. Carpenter's allega- tions. It contains not one word about the “ spirit- ualistic nature of her manifestations"—it does not state that he “in common with other Fellows of the Royal Society had satisfied himself of their genuine- ness "—it does not say that he “‘ willingly gave her the benefit of his attestation.” It is a detailed account of a beautiful scientific experiment, and nothing more. Yet Dr. Carpenter still maintains (in his letter now before me) that his statements are correct, “except on the one point—one of form not of substance—that of the address of the letter in which Mr. Crookes attested the genuineness of the mediumshbip of Eva Fay!” It thus appears that, when he wrote the article in last month's Fraser, and the letter in Nature of Oc- tober 25th, Dr. Carpenter had not seen either the fac- simile letter or the account in the Spiritualist, and there is nothing to show that he even knew of the existence of the latter article ; yet, on the strength of mere rumor, newspaper cuttings, or imagination, he gives the supposed contents of a letter from Mr. Crookes, emphasizing euch obnoxious words as “ spir- itualistic” and “* manifestations,” which Mr. Crookes never once employed, and giving a totally false im- pression of what Mr. Crookes had really done. So enamored is he of this accusation, that he drags it into a purely scientific discussion on the radiometer, and now, in his very latest communication, makes no apology or retraction, but maintains all his state- ments as correct “in substance,” and declares that he “cannot see that he has anywhere passed beyond the tone of gentlemanly discussion.” —Fraser’s Magazine.

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240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. DR. PLOSS ON “THE CHI™D.” Br EDWARD B. TYLOR. R. PLOSS’S monograph on “ The Child” at once takes its place among the handbooks of the science of Culture. Its plan is to bring to- gether and discuss in a systematic way the ideas and habits of all nations as to the birth and early treatment of their offspring. How have different peoples come to fix their various rules for the dieting, clothing, cradling, carrying, doctoring, naming, consecrating, diverting, and teaching of children, and which ways are best for the public welfare? Here are two sets of inquiries, which are too generally carried on separately, as though one belonged, so to speak, to the Anthropological Institute, and the other to the Social Science Con- gress. Dr. Ploss’s work is to be commended for the way in which the ethnological and practical sides are worked together and made to throw light on one another. He is, no doubt, right also in following the principle that all such customs had originally a practical intention, however ab- surd the purpose or the way of carrying it out may seem from our point of view. Itso happens that the treatment of babies, being everywhere in the conservative hands of grandmothers and old nurses, has to an extreme degree kept up archaic ideas, even in modern Europe. It is the old wives who, in spite of the doctors’ protests, still swad- dle infants in Germany like live mummies, to pre- vent their growing crooked. It is they who give the children medicine to prevent their being ill, and keep up the use of nostrums which curious inquirers may trace back through the middle ages to Hippocrates and Galen, and wonder how old they were then. Nations, dynasties, faiths, may rise and fall, but old wives’ tales hold on. Some- times, indeed, a new name and adaptation is fit- ted to the old idea, as when the Three Fates or Norns give up to the “ Three Maries” the task of spinning the child’s thread of life; but there need not even be this change—in Albanian folk- lore the three classic Moirai (Mire) still deal out its destiny. Of all the many relics of early re- ligion mentioned in the present book, perhaps none carries us so far back into the region of primitive animism as the Swiss peasant custom when a mother dies in child-birth, of putting a pair of shoes into her coffin that she may come back for six weeks to tend the child, for else she may appear and complain that she has to walk barefoot through the thistles and thorns. If moth- er and child both die, they give her needle and thread and soap, that she may do her sewing and washing forit. North American Indians or Soutb- Sea Islanders could hardly go beyond this, or do it with much clearer intent. If, then, ideas so ancient can be kept up in the midst of modern cultured nations, how much further may the nur- sery customs of the barbarians have carried on unbroken clews to guide our minds back into the prehistoric world ! The plan of looking for practical purpose at the origin of every custom is particularly appli- cable to those which may have been at first sani- tary rules settled by habit for the public benefit, but which now present themselves under the more solemn aspect of sacred rites, and are even claimed as enjoined on man by divine revelation. On these customs our author, in his double capacity of physician and ethnologist, gives an opinion of some weight. Thus, he insists on the hygienic useful- ness of the widely-distributed customs and ordi- nances as to the separation and purification of mothers (chapter iii.). North and South Ameri- cans, Polynesians, Tartars, African negroes, are alike in having as to this matter severe rules se- verely enforced, though they often can give no further reason for them than ancestral tradition, and fear that harm would come if they were set aside. From the similarity of the rules ordained in the great Old World religions, such as Brahmanism and Parsism on the Aryan side, and Judaism and Mohammedanism on the Semitic side, it can hard- ly be doubted that what the law-givers of these faiths did was to adopt, with more or less modifi- cation, an already existing customary law, reénact- ing it under new religious sanction. It is curious to notice how nearly this particular group of so- cial rules has disappeared, at any rate as express ordinances, from Christendom, where little is left except a few popular superstitions and the rite of “churching,” which is the scarcely recogniza- ble descendant of the Jewish purification, An- other wide-lying custom, familiar to us from its forming part of the Levitical law, is circumcision, but the study of its distribution over the world makes it probable that here again we have a case of prehistoric custom being adopted into national law (chapter xiv.). There is no reason to assume

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ind th- aS YS FS S its first origin even in Egypt, the country where its earliest traces appear in the great Old World district it now occupies. How it reached Austra- lia, Feejee, perhaps even South America, before Eu- ropeans visited these countries, or whether it was invented there, there is no evidence. But as to the reason of it, there is a fair case in favor of those who agree with Dr. Ploss that it was adopt- ed from belief in its being a practically beneficial operation. At any rate, those who find in it the more mystic purpose of a symbol or a sacrifice must find it harder to explain why as such it has come to prevail over so large and distant regions. Among customs derived from early stages of culture in Europe one deserves especial notice, which probably dates back far beyond the crom- lechs and dolmens. Though the memory of its original purpose may be lost among the peasants who keep it up, it may still be interpreted among the tribes of the savage and barbaric world, to whom it properly belongs. This is the practice of deforming the skulls of infants (chapter xiv.). Within the last generation or so, medical observ- ers have put on record its extensive prevalence in France, the custom of Normandy being for the nurses to give the baby’s skull the approved sugar-loaf shape by means of bandages and a tight cap, while in Brittany the long shape of the new-born child’s head is disapproved of, and press- ure is applied to make it round. This latter ap- pears to have been the old Swiss custom, to judge from a passage in the seventeenth-century “ He- bammenbiichlein” of Muralt: “ As soon as the nurse has the child on her lap she looks it all over to see if it is well shaped, then gives its lit- tle head the round form, and puts on a scarlet fur and cap to preserve it.” It is interesting to find the nurses not only shaping the babies’ skulls, but shaping them to different types in different districts. One is reminded of the two contrasted portraits in Wilson’s “ Prehistoric Man,” repre- senting heads from two tribes of Northwest America, one (the Newattee) shaped into a cone, the other (the Chinook) with the forehead flat- tened and broadened, so that the unfortunate child looks in front like an aggravated case of water on the brain. So in New Caledonia some tribes prefer a long-head and others a flat-head type, and compel the infants’ plastic little skulls to grow accordingly. This difference of opinion as to the desirable form of skull helps to explain the origin of the custom, as having arisen from the type of the dominant race, being artificially produced or exaggerated. On this supposition we should expect to find, as we actually do, flat- 52 DR. PLOSS ON “THE CHILD.” beaded or round-headed conquerors and nobles set up as models in different districts. Such a state of things is well shown among the Fiat- head Indians, who enslave the neighboring tribes with undistorted skulls; the children of these captives are not allowed to have their skulls band- aged in the cradle, so as to imitate the badge of nobility, and even white men are despised for having round heads like slaves. Just as natu- rally the nurses in Turkey in the sixteenth cen- tury, as the famous surgeon Vesalius mentions, gave the children bullet-heads, and among the Asiatic population of Constantinople it seems to be done still. The motive popularly assigned is that a round head suits best for wearing a turban, but the real reason probably lies much deeper in the imitation of the round skulls of the conquer- ing Tartar race. The details, which show how large a part of mankind have habitually prac- tised cranial deformation, suggest the ques- tion whether any nations have been perceptibly injured by it. There are remarkable cases to the contrary, such as that of the Chinooks, whose monstrous deformation is said not to increase the mortality of the children, or even to prevent their growing up fully to the savage level of strength, bravery, and cleverness. On the other hand, trayelers have set down some races with compressed skulls as exceptionally stupid. It is more to the purpose that in modern France medi- cal observers, such as Foville and Lunier, have noticed among the insane an unusual proportion of patients with artificially distorted skulls, and have also remarked a prevalence of mental dis- ease in those districts where the nurses still most persistently keep up the practice of skull-shaping. That the origin of ceremonies is to be sought in practical proceedings is a principle not only accepted by Dr. Ploss, but particularly well illus- trated by several of the topics he deals with. Thus, in connection with so practical a matter as the feeding of the child, there have sprung up ceremonial customs of giving it the first taste of milk and honey, or butter and honey ; with this, again, comes to be associated a peculiar mean- ing, that it confers the right to live, it being a well-known rule that the child, having once tasted milk and honey, is not to be killed or exposed (chapter xiii.). Again, what can be more prosa- ically practical than cutting a child’s hair? Yet hair-cutting, especially for the first time, appears on both sides of the world as a high ceremonial act. It was so among rude American tribes such as the Abipones ; in New Zealand the shaving of the child’s head with an obsidian knife was done “os

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242 by a grandfather or priest, fasting and with sol- emn accompaniment of chants; among the hill- people of India hair-cutting is a ceremony con- nected with the naming of the child and its re- ception into the tribe; with the Chinese it is one of the principal formalities of the festival held when the mother brings out the three-months-old child and the father gives it a name. Not to quote too many cases, we need only refer to the ancient Greek and Roman customs, recollecting that relics of the classic rite may still be seen in Europe within the limits of the Greek Church, where clipping and offering locks of the child’s hair is associated with the baptismal ceremony (chapter xiv.). The best-known and most per- fect example of a practical dietetic proceeding giving rise to a religious ceremony may be seen among the various nations who have consecrated the act of bathing, especially the bathing of the child, into a rite of lustration or baptism. A tolerably full collection of details is given by Dr. Ploss (chapter xiii.). This principle that we must seek practical purpose as the foundation of custom, even among the lowest savages, must be qualified by remem- bering that the means may be such as we know to be ill adapted to their ends, while these ends themselves may be useless or even very harmful. They are none the less to be classed as practical if they show distinct purposes, pursued by means believed to be effective. Viewed in this light, the repulsive details in Dr. Ploss’s dissertation on infanticide (chapters . xxiii.-iv.) are mostly in- telligible. The actual food-question among rude and half-starved wandering tribes, whether an- other child can be kept; the dislike of the par- ents to add to the troubles of life; the difficulty among many tribes of disposing of female chil- dren in marriage, which leads to girls being so often killed or abandoned, while boys are brought up; are among the reasons operating in the most practical way, especially in the lower culture, where the question of infanticide is not one of right and wrong at all, but it is for the parents to decide whether a child is to live or not. Few changes in the moral code are more remarkable than that which separates the Australian, the Chinese, the ancient Roman or German in this respect from the nations of Christendom, It is true that European practice shows an evil discrep- ancy from principle. England is worse than other countries for the poisoning of children with opium while the mothers are away at factory- work, while German slang has the hideously-sug- ' gestive name of “ angel-maker” ( Zngelmacherin) THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. for the women in whose charge such babies are left. In studying the motives of infanticide, however, we have to separate those which, to our judgment, are practical—such as want, indolence, or sbhame—from other motives, happily incapable of producing such results in the civilized world, but which at lower grades of culture have a con- siderable effect in bringing about infanticide. These are the sacrifice of children to propitiate deities, and the opinion that children ought not to live if they show unlucky symptoms, such as cutting the upper front teeth first. Among the most remarkable puzzles of superstition in the world is the wide-spread practice of killing twins, one or both (chapter xxiv.). Not suffi- ciently accounted for by the reason sometimes assigned that the mother cannot rear both, this set of customs probably finds its real explanation in magical ideas. Magic is, indeed, among the most important factors in generating custom, as the present book would amply prove if it proved nothing else. To magic belongs the “ couvade,” which, as one of the most remarkable habits still lingering within the pale of civilization, is here elaborately treated in a chapter by itself (chapter v.). Toa modern European it may at first seem strange that any intelligible train of ideas should have made it customary for a father, on the birth of his child, to fast or otherwise diet himself, ab- stain from violent exertion, or even lie up alto- gether. Yet the modern savages who do these things often have a distinct notion of what they mean, and Dr. Ploss is inclined to accept their main explanation as the correct one, much as his present reviewer did in investigating the subject years ago (Tylor, ‘‘Early History of Mankind,” chapter x.). The native explanation in question is that the child is sympathetically affected by the actions of the father, who abstains accordingly from certain food and work which might not suit the baby. From this point of view the couvade is simply one case of that system of superstitious belief which may be called sympathetic magic. Savage parents, in fact, begin to take these precautions against sympathetically injuring the child long before it is born. Thus, we hear of the father fasting or abstaining from particular food, lest the child should suffer; while some- times the precise magical motive comes clearly into view, as where a Dyak avoids killing any creature or using a knife, lest he should hurt the unborn child—or where a Carib will not eat wild- hog lest his baby should be born with a snout. That the couvade proper has the same origin

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DR. PLOSS ON “THE OHILD.” with these prenatal fancies, of which it is, in- as tothe history of the couvade, the difficulty lies deed, a continuation, seems plain when we ob- serve that, after the children in question bave been born, and the fathers have accordingly en- tered on due course of couvade, the Dyak diets himself on rice and salt, lest other food should hurt the child’s digestion ; while the Carib father in deciding whether its appearance in districts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, is to be ac- counted for by supposing that it sprang up inde- pendently in several regions ; or whether, having been once invented in some one magic-seeking tribe, it spread thence over the world. The pres- gives as his reason for not eating sea-cow that if | ent reviewer has been unfortunate as to this dis- he did the child might grow up like it, with little | cussion, his remarks having led first Sir John round eyes. Attempts have been made by eth- | Lubbock, and now Dr. Ploss, to think that he ven- nologists to account for the couvade on other tured on the utterly rash inference that all peo- grounds, but they break down on wide compari- ples practising the couvade are thereby proved to son of the evidence, while this strengthens thesym- | be of one and the same race. All that he ever real- pathetic explanation given by the couvaders them- ly argued on this line was to make a very modest | selves. The details of the couvade are not, in- inference, that the existence of the custom among deed, all accounted for ; as, for instance, it is not , the old Corsicans mentioned by Diodorus Siculus clear how even a Carib can think his child to be | tended to show that they might be a relic of the benefited by himself being, not only half starved, | same population with the Basques. That tribes but profusely bled, and having cayenne pepper in the Chinese hills, or in Asia Minor, or in rubbed into his wounds. But there is abundant Navarre, should practise a curious custom like evidence to prove the tendency of the pre-scien- | that usual among the wild tribes of Brazil, may tific mind to the main principle of the couvade, be a reason for thinking that the ancestors of the that children are sympathetically affected by what Old World races were once in a stage of culture happens to persons with whom they are anyhow connected. So well does this fit even with the European peasart’s state of thought, that a whole group of superstitions ‘based on it have estab- lished themselves in German folk-lore, which Dr. Ploss (vol. i., p. 141) may well consider analo- gous to those of the couvade-observing savages, who hold that a baby’s health may be affected by its father taking a pinch of snuff. These Ger- man superstitions apply to the godparents, whose close social connection with the godchild has led to the popular superstition that it will grow up with their peculiarities, and especially be affected by their conduct at the baptismal ceremony; therefore the godfather must wash himself prop- erly, and the godmother put on a clean shift, or the child will grow up dirty; the godfather must not look round on his way to church, or the child will be an idle stare-about ; nor must the god- father carry a knife about him, lest the child should be a suicide; and so on through other provisions, to be found in Dr. Ploss’s book, or in the copious collection of German folk-lore whence they are quoted, the enlarged second edition of Prof. Adolf Wuttke’s “ Deutsche Volksaber- glaube der Gegenwart.” In forming an opinion | like that of the Brazilian savages, or that there had been communication between them, but it is , hardly a ground of speculation as to blood-rela- | tionship between such unlike varieties of our | Face. At any rate, care will be taken in the next | edition of “The Early History of Mankind” to guard against this misapprehension in future. The ethnological argument respecting the Basques will be upset if the recent assertion of M. Vin- son (“ Basque Legends,” p. 282) proves true, that Francisque-Michel, Quatrefages, and others, have been mistaken in believing the Basques to be couvaders at all, the practice really belonging only to Romance populations such as the Béar- nais. Among corrections desirable in the next edi- tion of Dr. Ploss’s valuable work it may be no- ticed that the printer has come to grief conspicu- ously in the Hebrew of vol. i., p. 95, and that it might be wise to drop altogether the mention a‘ page 21 of the idea that certain crescent-shaped objects found in the Swiss lake-dwellings are proofs of moon-worship. Dr. Ploss asks any who are disposed to help him in his inquiries with new information to write to his address, “ An der Pleisse 7, Leipzig.” — Academy. _ 7

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GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. Br WALTER C. PERRY. HERE are now twenty-one universities in the German Empire, with 1,250 professors, and some what more than 17,000 students. Of the German universities in other countries, seven are in Austria, with 676 professors and 7,700 stu- dents ; four in Switzerland, with 230 professors and 1,091 students; and one in the Baltic Prov- inces of Russia, with 66 professors and 874 students. The salaries of the professors in ordinary range from £120 to £450, exclusive of fees. In the case of very distinguished men they rise to £500 or even £600 per annum. Referring to the amount expended on the universities, Mr. Gladstone, in a recent speech at Nottingham, says: “I think about £70,000 is the sum expended by the Germans and the Govern- ment of Northern Germany in producing that which is absolutely necessary in order to give efficiency to the higher education of the coun- try.” Ido not know what “ the Government of Northern Germany” exactly means, but Prussia alone spends 5,343,000 marks (£267,150) a year on her universities ; and the extraordinary expenses of the present year amount to 3,000,000 marks (£150,000), chiefly for new university buildings. The total annual sum expended for educational purposes in Prussia is 38,068,000 marks (£1,903,- 400), and the minister Falk asks for an additional grant of 12,000,000 marks (£600,000). The German university consists : I. Of the Ordinary professors, appointed by royal patent and paid by government; the Zz- traordinary professors, named by the king’s min- ister, who are not entitled to any salary, but often receive a small one; and the Privatim docentes, who derive their Licentia docendi from the Fac- ulty to which they belong, and depend on fees alone. II. Of the various directors and officers of the institutions connected with the university— the museums, observatories, anatomical theatres, laboratories, ete. III. Of the matriculated students. IV. Of the academical police, and the infe- rior officials, as secretaries, questors, bedells, etc. The professors and students are divided into the four Faculties of Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine, and Philosophy (Arts), under which last head are included, not merely Mental and Moral Philosophy, but the Ancient and Modern Languages, History, Archeology, Mathematics, the Physical Sciences, the Fine Arts, Political Philosophy, Political Economy, and Diplomacy, etc. The Minister of Education is represented at some universities by a resident “ Curator and Plenipotentiary,” who acts as a sort of resident chancellor, and is the connecting link between the university and the government. The imme- diate government of the university is carried on by a Senate, composed in some cases of all the ordinary professors, in others of a certain num- ber chosen by and from them, with an annually- appointed Rector at their head. The Senate gen. ° erally consists of the Rector, the ex-Rector, the four Deans of Faculty, some, or all, of the ordi- nary professors, and the University Judge. The Rector is chosen by the ordinary professors, and is president of the Senate. He still retains the old title of “ Magnificence,” and derives a salary from a percentage on fees for matriculation, and the granting of testimonials and degrees. The University Judge is appointed by the Minister of Education, and transacts the legal business of the university. He is not a professor, but a prac- tical lawyer, whose office -it is to see that all the transactions of the Senate are in accordance with the laws of the land. He is also the connecting link between the academical authorities and the town police. The courses of lectures (Collegia) delivered by the professors are of three kinds : I. Publica.—Every ordinary or extraordinary professor is expected to deliver, gratis, two courses (of at least two lectures a week), extend- ing through the whole of each “ Semester,” on some material point of the science he professes; and these are the “ Publica Collegia.” They are but thinly attended by the students. Il. Privata.—The arrangement of which is entirely left to the different Faculties. These are the principal lectures, and the professors re- ceive fees (honoraria) from those who attend them, varying according to the number of hours in the week which they occupy, the labor re- quired in their preparation, the cost of apparatus, etc. These lectures generally occupy an hour a day, four, five, or six times a week. The most usual fee is about eighteen shillings.

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Ill. Privatissima.—These are delivered to a select number, in the private houses of the pro- fessors, on terms settled between them and their hearers. No single thing has contributed more to in- jure the reputation of the German universities in the eyes of our countrymen than the unprincipled manner in which some of the most insignificant of them have exercised their right of conferring degrees. Those who are unacquainted with Ger- many naturally involve all her universities in the same condemnation with the two or three dishon- orable corporations who have virtually sold their worthless honors to aspirants as base as them- selves. A short account of the manner in which degrees are obtained in the more respectable uni- versities of Germany may help to rescue them from unmerited reproach. Each Faculty has the exclusive right of grant- ing degrees in its own sphere, although this pre- rogative is exercised under the authority of the whole university. The Theological Faculty grants two degrees, those of Licentiate and Doctor. The Philosophical Faculty also grants two, “ Master of Arts” and “Doctor of Philosophy,” which are generally taken together. The Medical and Judi- cial Faculties give only. one degree each, that of Doctor. Whoever seeks the degree of Licentiate in Theology, and of Doctor and Master of Arts in Philosophy, must have studied three years at a university, and must signify his desire to the Dean of his Faculty in a Latin epistle, accompanied by a short curriculum vite. Before he can be ad- mitted to the viva-voce examination, he is expected to send in a Doctordissertation, an original trea- tise, generally written in Latin, in which he must manifest not only his proficiency in the subjects in which he intends to graduate, but some power of original thought and independent research. The dean sends this treatise round to the other members of the Faculty, who have to declare in writing their opinion of its merits. If this be favorable, a day is appointed for the grand ex- amination, which is generally carried on in Latin, and which all the members of the Faculty are expected to attend as examiners. The Doctor- andus is then subjected to a viva-voce examination by each professor in turn, after which it is de- cided by simple majority whether the candidate has satisfied the examiners or not. If he suc- ceeds, he is directed to hold a public “ disputa- tion” (in Latin), in presence of the dean and Faculty, on theses of his own selection, which are posted at the gates of the university. After the GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. disputation the dean addresses the corona, in a Latin speech, and hands the diploma to the new graduate, To obtain the degree of Doctor of Theology, the candidate must have finished his academical studies six years, and have written some work, which, in the opinion of the Faculty, is a valuable contribution to theological literature. The degree of Doctor utriusque juris is taken in nearly the same way as those in Theology and Philosophy, except that the law-student is some- times subjected to a written examination previ- ously to the oral one. The Medical Faculty is the only one in which it is imperative on the student to take the degree of Doctor. In the other Faculties admission to the privileges and honors of a profession is ob- tained solely by passing the so-called state or government examination. The foregoing outline may suffice to show the world-wide difference between the academical institutions of England and Germany in external form ; yet they differ far more essentially in the spirit which animates them, in their modus ope- randi, and in the objects which they respectively pursue. The term university is hardly applicable to our great academies; for they do not even profess to include the whole circle of the sciences in their programme, and their mode of teaching differs in hardly any respect from that of a school. The German university, on the other hand, looks, at first sight, like a mere aggregate of technical schools, designed to prepare men for the several careers of social life. Something analogous would result from bringing together in one place our universities of Oxford and Cambridge, our the- ological training-schools, Inns of Court, medical schools and hospitals, and our British and Ken- sington Museums, with their schools of art, and then dividing the whole body of teachers and students into four faculties, and bringing it under the control of her Majesty’s Government. Yet such mere juxtaposition would not alone suffice to form a German university. Such a collection in one place of professional training-schools, whose only object is the rapid preparation of young men for their future callings, does exist in Paris ; and yet Gabriel Monod could say, with- out contradiction, that, with the exception of Turkey, France was the only country in Europe which possessed no university in the proper sense of the word. The German Faculties are. also technical schools, but they are intimately and in- separably united by a common scientific method, which makes the practical studies of each a me-

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246 dium of the highest scientific training. Prepara- tion for a profession is indeed the main object of a German university; but it is not, as in France, the only one. The great principle of teaching in the former is the continual blending of instructian and research, and the German uni- versities are such good schools, because they are not only places of instruction but workshops of science. The enlargement and strengthening of the mind which the English systems aims at ex- clusively, the Germans endeavor to combine with preparation for the practical business of life. Their professors have to supply the state with a gufficient number of young men capable of under- taking the duties of clergymen, schoolmasters, lawyers, physicians, civil servants, etc., and we know that this practical end is fully attained. But the successful result is a matter of perpetual astonishment to us, with our ideas and our ex- perience, when we come to consider the nature of the means employed. The professor announces a course of lectures, which the student may at- tend or not as he pleases; and these lectures are not, as we might expect, a compendium of prac- tical knowledge, which his pupils may commit to memory and reproduce at their examinations, and use at their first start in their professional career, but generally an original scientific inves- tigation of some new field of thought, a peering from the heights of accumulated knowledge into the dim and cloud-shadowed horizon. In every lecture the professor is supposed to be engaged in the act’ of creation, and the student to be im- bibing the scientific spirit and acquiring the sci- entific method—watching the weaver at his loom and learning to weave for himself. Whether the latter does his part or not is entirely his own concern. He is never questioned in his class or examined at the end of the term or year, and may pass his whole university life without any intimate personal acquaintance with the man whose business it is to cultivate his powers and fit him to serve his generation. The sources of the practical knowledge he needs are, of course, pointed out to him for private reading, but he is left to use them when and how he pleases, and to prepare himself alone, or in company with his fellow-students, for his distant examination. Nor is the higher work of the professor supplemented, as with us, by private tutors, “ coaches,” or “crammers.” In fact, there is no part of our collegiate system which is more universally rep- robated by the Germans. ‘“ What we want for our students,” they say, “is not the assistance of private tutors, but private independent study THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. without assistance. . . . Away with all supervision and drilling! If you were to subject our men to private tuition, and regulate and inspect their studies, you would destroy at a blow the scien. tific spirit in our universities. The main object of a university, as distinguished from a school, is to foster independent thought—the true founda- tion of independence of character. The student must, of course, be fitted to gain his livelihood, but show him where the necessary information is to be acquired, and place an examination in full view at the end of his curriculum, and he will prepare himself far better than if he were crammed by others, in a manner not suited, per- haps, to his mental constitution.” I will now recapitulate the principal charac- teristic differences between the German and the English university. The former, as we have seen, is a national institution, entirely supported by the state, sub- ject to the supervision and control of the central government, frequented by all but the poorest classes of the community, and therefore immedi- ately and directly influenced by political and social changes. The latter is a wealthy corpora- tion enjoying a very large measure of indepen- dence, frequented chiefly by the higher and more conservative classes, but little influenced by po- litical changes or the prevailing opinions and customs of the masses, dwelling in empyrean heights remote from the noise and heat of con- tending factions and all the changes and chances of the work-a day world. “ Semota ab rebus sejunctaque longe, Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, Ipea suis pollens opibus nihil indiga nostri.” Again, the internal government of the Corpus Acad. in Germany is almost entirely in the hands of the actual teachers; and the most eminent professors are also the chief rulers of the uni- versity, as rectors, deans of faculty, or members of the Senate. In Oxford and Cambridge, on the other hand, the lecturers and tutors, the working bees of the community, have but a small share of its wealth and power, which is for the most part in the hands of learned and dignified “Heads” and irresponsible Fellows, who are not expected to take much part in the actual teaching. The natural result is, that we have many admirable teachers, and many very learned men, but few writers. No impulse of rivalry or hope of pro- motion irresistibly impels our scholars to give the fruits of their labor to the world, and they too often enjoy them alone. We have always the un- easy feeling that there are men at our universities

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who might well compete with German professors, who yet do little for the advancement of science, , and are almost unknown beyond their college walls. According to the German view of the matter, the professor ought to be a learner even more than a teacher. He is engaged in a constant race and rivalry with competitors, not only at his own university, but throughout the great republic of letters to which he belongs, and in which he seeks for fame, position, and emolument. In the choice of a professor, therefore, the university (which has the right of proposing names to the Minister of Education) and the government are guided al- most entirely by the comparative merits mani- fested in the published writings of the aspirants. The questions asked are: “‘ What work has he done?” “What is he doing?” A vague repu- tation for mere learning, a good delivery, or a pleasing style, will avail him little. They prefer, not the best teacher, as they would for the gymna- sium, but the greatest thinker, the most creative genius, and leave him to make himself intelligible to thestudents as hecan. They are not disturbed at hearing that Prof. M—— or N—— has but few hearers, and “shoots above their heads ;” or by such cases as that of the-philosopher Hegel, who said that “only one of his pupils understood him, and he misunderstood him.” A light set on a hill, they think, cannot be altogether hidden, and some few may catch the prophet’s mantle as he rises. They care far more for substance than form, for native gold than current silver coin; and hence it comes that so many German profess- ors and authors are, as compared with their French and English brethren, dull and awkward lecturers, obscure and unreadable writers. And thus the German scholar works directly under the eyes of the government, the lettered public, and indeed the whole nation.. Every sound that he utters is immediately heard in the vast whisper- ing-chamber of the temple of knowledge— weighed and discussed at a thousand centres. A new discovery in science, a new edition of a clas- sic author, a light thrown on the history of the past, any proof, in short, of superior genius or talent, may not only give him the much-coveted Sitz und Stimme (seat and voice) in the general council of the republic of letters, but insure him a higher place in the social scale, and offers of a more lucrative post. The English head, professor, or tutor, when Once appointed, enjoys a kind of monopoly of authority or teaching, and may do his ministering zealously or gently, without fear of rivalry, with- GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. out any immediate or certain gain or loss of rep- utation or emolument. He stands in no relation either to the government or the public, to both of which he may be almost unknown. He has no broadly-marked career before him, in which dis- tinction and reward necessarily wait on great abil- ity and great exertion, and if he is ambitious he generally leaves the university for some more ex tensive and promising field of labor. The difference between the character of the English and German student is, if possible, still more striking. When an English boy leaves school for the university, he is not conscious of avery sharp break or turning-point in his life; he is only entering on another stage of the same high-road. He goes to pursue nearly the same studies in very nearly the same way as before. He expects to meet his old companions, and to indulge in his dearly-loved boyish sports on the river and in the field. He enjoys, of course, a greater degree of freedom, and receives a much higher kind of instruction, in accordance with his riper age and greater powers ; but the subjects of his study are still chosen for him, and prosecuted, not for their so-called “utility,” but for their value as gymnastic exercises of the mind. As at school, he is directed in his course, and the in_ struction is still catechetical. Throughout the whole of his career at college he is subjected to examination in certain fixed subjects, and even books, by the study of which he can alone escape reproof and obtain distinction and reward. His mind is still almost exclusively receptive, bound to take the food and medicine prepared and pre- scribed for him by duly-authorized purveyors and practitioners. He is still, in short, in general training for the race of life, and is allowed no free disposal of his time and energy, no free in dulgence of his peculiar tastes. How different the feelings and experience of the German gymnasiast, as he passes from the purgatory of school to the paradise of college! In his boyhood he has been mentally schooled and drilled with a strictness and formality of which we have no conception. Every step he takes is marked out for him with the utmost care and precision by the highest authority, and he has scarcely a moment that he can call his own, It is continually dinned into his ears that he is not to reason or to choose, but to learn and to obey; and he does obey and learn with incredible docil- ity and industry, and toils joylessly along the straight and narrow path, between the high and formal walls, from stage to stage of his arduous school-life, clearing one examination-fence after

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] SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. 248 THE POPULAR another, or falling amid its thorns, till the last is surmounted which separates him from the Ger- man’s heaven. And what a change awaits him there! The cap of the student is to him the cap of liberty ; his bonds are loosed, his chains struck off, he is introduced into the Eden of freedom and knowl- edge, “ furnished with every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,” and told that he “ may freely eat of all.” The very same author- ities, central and local, who have hitherto demand- ed from him dumb and blind obedience, and con- trolled his bodily and mental freedom in every possible way, now loudly proclaim to him that his chief duty, the chief principle and law of his be- ing, is—to be free. The professors contend for his applause and patronage, society allows him the greatest latitude as suited to his age and pro- fession; the very police, so terrible to other men, looks indulgently on him, as a privileged being, and mutters as it sees him kicking over the traces, “* Bs ist ja ein Student.” For three or four long years no one has the right to dictate to him, or to ‘bind him by any tradition or any rule. He must, of course, prepare for the inevitable exami- nation at the end of his university career, but he may do so how and when he pleases, and in the mean time he can rest from the exhausting toils of his school-life, and cultivate at leisure the powers of which he is most conscious, and in the exercise of which he most delights. He has sev- eral universities from which to choose, and if one professor does not please him he can generally find another who is lecturing on the same subject ; and he is by no means slow in recognizing which are the rising and which the setting stars in the academic firmament. When we come to compare the results of the two systems, we find them such as we might ex- pect. The Germans are the explorers in the world of thought, and the first settlers in the newly-discovered regions, who clear the ground and make it tillable and habitable. At a later period the English take possession, build solid houses, and dwell there. The Germans send their students out into the fields of knowledge, like working-bees, to gather honey from every side. The English lead their pupils into well-stored hives to enjoy the labors of others. The German student cares little for the accumulated learning of the past, except as a vantage-ground from which to reach some greater height. He has little reverence for authority, and, if he does set up an idol, he is very apt to throw it down again. His chief delight is to form theories of his own, and he can build a very lofty structure on a very insufficient foundation. As compared with the “ first-class” Oxford man or Cambridge wrangler he has read but little, and would make a very moderate show in a classical or mathematical tripos examination; but he has the scientific method ; he is thorough and independent master of a smaller or larger region of thought; he knows how to use his knowledge, and in the long. run outstrips his English brothers. The English system produces the accomplished scholar, ‘‘ well up in his books;” the reverent and zealous dis- ciple of some Gamaliel; the brilliant essayist, whose mind is filled with the great thoughts and achievements of the past, who deals with ease and grace with the rich stores he has gathered by extensive reading; the ready debater, skilled in supporting his arguments by reference to high authority, and by apt quotations. But he is re- ceptive rather than creative, bis feathers, though gay and glossy, are too often borrowed, and not so well fitted for higher flights as if they were the product of his own mental organism. In the lan- guage of Faust, we might say of him— **Erquickung hast du nicht gewonnen, Wenn sie dir nicht aus eigener Seele quillt.” The German has read less, but he has thought more, and is continually striving to add to the sum of human knowledge. He is impatient and restless while he stands on other men’s ground, or sojourns in other men’s houses; directly he has found materials of his own, whether they be stones or only cards, he begins to build for him- self, and would rather get over a difficulty by a rickety plank of his own than by the safe iron bridge of another. The same furor Teutonicus (the tendency to drive everything to extremes), which urges on the powerful intellect to great dis- coveries in the regions of the hitherto unknown, also goads the little mind to peer with fussy, fe- verish restlessness into every chink, to stir every puddle, “ to dig with greedy hand for treasure.” The Englishman, meanwhile, looks on, and patiently waits until the new intellectual structure has been well aired and lighted, and fitted up for comfortable habitation. The German theologian or philosopher is often astonished, and not a little amused, to see some theory or system taken up by English scholars, who have just learned Ger- man, which has long become obsolete in the land of its birth, and been disowned, perhaps, by its very author, In contemplating the past history and present state of the German universities, the question

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> naturally arises whether the extraordinary mental fertility which characterizes them has been owing to peculiar political and social conditions ; wheth- er it is likely, as many think, to be injuriously affected by recent important changes, and es- pecially by the amalgamation of the different German states into one great empire, under the hegemony of Prussia, The literary fertility of their universities is generally accounted for by crediting the Germans with a certain disinterested love of knowledge for its own sake, as contrasted with our low material hankering after loaves and fishes, We need not seriously endeavor to refute 80 preposterous a theory, but only point to the facts that, while the encouragement of learning and research at the universities has been one of the main objects of the state in Germany, there is no country in Europe in which science (in the widest sense of the word) has received so little encouragement from government, has been left so entirely to reward itself, as in England. In fact, since there is no career in our universities for men of learning and science, no reward for lilerary activity and successful research, the wonder is that they have done so much, and can count so many great names among their members. The preéminence of German learning is owing to no natural superiority in the Germans, either mental or moral, To understand the intense activity which prevails in their universities, we must re- member that the academic career has, for more than a century, exercised a very powerful attrac- tion on the most active and gifted minds of the nation. Debarred by the despotic nature of their government from the arena of politics, and by class-distinction from any fair chance of promo- tion in the army or the service of the state, with few opportunities of acquiring wealth in com- mercial or industrial pursuits, the more ambitious spirits in the German bourgeoisie have sought the only field of honor in which the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong. We may smile at the small salaries of the German pro- fessor, but, when compared with other govern- - ment officials in his own country, he is, or rather was, well paid, and his position in other respects is a singularly enviable one. He is in the most independent position in which a German can be placed, and enjoys a freedom of speech which is permitted to no other official, whatever his rank may be; a freedom which increases in exact pro- portion to his abilities and fame. His peculiar privileges are owing partly to the natural scarcity of great men, and the respect which they inspire in their countrymen, and partly to the keen ee asco Be . are : "a GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. competition for the possession of the most illus- trious scholars between the universities of the numerous independent states into which Ger- many was, until recently, divided. This active rivalry enabled the distinguished professor to hold his own even against kings and ministers. When the late Duke of Cumberland, as King of Han- over (whose motto was that “ professors and har- lots can always be had for money”), expelled the seven greatest men in Gottingen for a spirited protest against his coup d'état, they were received with open arms even by despotic Prussia. When the great Latin scholar Ritschl shook off the dust ~ of his feet at Bonn, he was welcomed with the highest honors by the King of Saxony, and in- stalled at Leipsic. ; The maintenance of the scientific spirit is en- dangered by the very extension of the bounda- ries of science of which that spirit is the chief agent. The mass of strictly professional knowl- edge in each faculty is increasing every day, and the task of assimilating this engrosses more and more of the student’s time and energy, and leaves him fewer and fewer opportunities for the inde- pendent prosecution of pure science. We hear it said on all sides that young men must spend at least four years at the universities, if they are not to sink into mere “ bread-students ; ” and appeals have been made to the liberality of the German public to enable the more gifted students, by the establishment of small Stiftungen, to spend a longer time in study. Such appeals, by-the-way, meet with very little response in Germany. The liberality which has filled England with benevo- lent institutions of every kind appears to be al- most unknown elsewhere. Complaints are heard in many quarters that the “Nachwuchs,” the after- growth, the rising generation of professors, is not likely to equal its predecessors. It is not long ago since a minister of education in Prussia com- plained of the difficulty of filling up vacant posts in the universities in a manner satisfactory to himself and the students. How far this falling off is attributable to the causes mentioned above, or the general dearth of great men observable, at the present time, in every country in Europe, re- mains to be seen. One thing, however, is abso- lutely certain: that neither in Germany nor Eng- land can a university be sustained by the exer- tions of “ disinterested ” votaries of science. With the exception of the Dis geniti, the born priests of science, men will not spend long years in labori- ous study without hope of adequate reward in the shape of money or position. Science has flourished at the German seats of learning be-

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250 cause it has been carefully fostered and judiciously rewarded by the state. It has not flourished at our universities because, while they richly reward THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the first fruits of the youthful intellect, they offer no career to the man.— Condensed from Macmil- lan’s Magazine. THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. HE weakness of a great man is often that feature of his character or that particular inclination in him which has most interest for the student of humanity. That Cesar was the first general and statesman of his age—that he con- quered Gaul and laid the foundations of an em- pire which in name at least was to subsist for more than 1,800 years—these are no doubt facts of the utmost importance ; but, after all, they are the dry bones of history. The Shandean philoso- pher is much more interested to learn that Cesar loved to oil his hair; that he sincerely regretted its scantiness ; and that he was excessively pleased when the Senate conferred on him the privilege of wearing a laurel crown, and thus enabled him partially to conceal the injury which Nature or hard living had wrought. Dress has been one of the commonest weaknesses of great men, many of whom were not the less careful of their per- sonal appearance because they affected an osten- tatious simplicity. In the national songs of France, Napoleon is the little Corporal in the plain gray coat; but we may be sure that the gray coat was earefully arranged, even as the cocked hat was designedly worn in a fashion till then unknown. And, as a matter of fact, the emperor did not always array himself in that sober-colored vesture which Mr. Tennyson has described as the sym- bolic robe of freedom. An English traveler who visited Paris during the brief interval of the Peace of Amiens, and was introduced to the First Consul, has left on record his astonishment at seeing the great enemy of England in scarlet (richly laced, by-the-way, with gold). It may interest some to know that Napoleon set apart £800 a year for dress. Unfortunately, he had a weakness for white kerseymere breeches; and, being often wholly absorbed with cares of state (as courtly chroniclers apologetically observe), he would constantly spill ink, or gravy, or coffee, upon the aforesaid garments, which he hastened to change as soon as he perceived the mishap. This circumstance cost the blameless but timid Comte de Rémusat his place as Master of the Robes. For the emperor soiled his clothes, and especially his white breeches, so frequently and so grievously, that the imperial tailor (M. Léger) was constantly receiving fresh orders, and £800 a year became quite insufficient to meet that functionary’s little bills. Now, the Comte de Rémusat, who knew that the emperor hated any disorder in his accounts, was foolishly afraid to speak to him on the subject. Meanwhile M. Léger became pressing in his demands for payment. At: first he sent in his bill every month, then every fortnight, then every week, then twice a week, then every day; but the Master of the Robes continued to return unsatisfactory answers, At length M. Léger, whose patience was exhausted, took the bold step of complaining to the emperor in person, at the very moment that his Majesty was trying on a new uniform. With astonish- ment and anger Napoleon learned that he owed his tailor £1,200. The same day he paid the bill and dismissed M. de Rémusat from his post, which was given to M. de Montesquiou-Fezensac, a cham- berlain in the imperial household. “I hope Mon- sieur le Comte,” said Napoleon, between a smile and a frown, to the newly-appointed master, “ that you will not expose me to the disgrace of being dunned for the breeches I am wearing.” Frederick the Great regulated this department of expendi- ture in a much simpler way: he had but one fine gala-dress, which lasted him all his life, for he took care not to soil it. His work-day suits were shabbier than those which gentlemen abandon to their valets—the waistcoat-pockets crammed with snuff, and the rest of the apparel liberally sprinkled with the same pungent powder. The king’s most amiable weakness—if, indeed, it can be called one —was his partiality for dogs. Several of these favorites were allowed to occupy the best arm- chairs in the royal study, and were not teased when they acted as dogs will act. “ After all,” said Frederick, “‘a Pompadour would cost me much more.” But Frederick had other weaknesses which were not equally amiable. On the whole, the Great Slovens have prob- ably been as numerous as the Great Dandies ; and few will deny that utter carelessness as to personal appearance is at least as much of a weakness as its opposite. The well-known text

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ee at * which some worthy people have put forward on this subject does not, when properly translated, enjoin us to “take no thought,” but only “not to be over-anxious,” in respect of what we shall put on. Johnson, perhaps the greatest sloven of all ages, said one of the best things ever uttered against the puritanical view of this matter. “Let us not be found, when our Master calls us, strip- ping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues. Alas! sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.” Slovenliness seems to have been rather a weakness of lawyers, as well as of liter- ary men—pace the bar and the press of to-day. If in society we except “present company,” so in writing we exclude persons living. Lord Ken- yon was so terrible a sloven that one wonders George III. never scolded him about his personal appearance, as his Majesty once did in respect of his unlucky habit of misquoting classical authors. “T wish, my lord,” the king was pleased to remark, “that you would leave off your bad Latin and stick to your good law.” Kenyon’s law was certainly good; but the jadge had a weakness as wellas the man. As his biographer puts it, “Lord Kenyon trusted too much to the power of the terrors of the law in guarding the right of property from fraud or violence ; and he inflicted death (a great deal too often) as the most terrible, and therefore the most preventive, punishment.” The weakness, however, was of the understanding, and not of the heart; the chief-justice being very far from a man of cruel disposition, as the following anec- dote, at once ghastly and affecting, bears witness : He had passed sentence of death upon a young woman who had been found guilty of theft, but had intimated that he meant to recommend her to mercy. The young woman only heard the formula of the sentence, in its horrible precision of language, and fainted away. Lord Kenyon, evidently much agitated, called out: “I don’t mean to hang you. Will nobody tell her that I don’t mean to hang her?” For the disciple of Mr. Carlyle the word Clothes has acquired a wide extension of mean- ing; and Herr Teufelsdrick might have smiled approval of the Monacan irreconcilable’s warn- ing, “ Rabagas, on commence par une culotte, et on finit par une décoration.” Ever since titles and ribbons were invented, a desire for them has been the weakness of great minds, and of minds that seemed in all things else the very types of THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. common-sense, Our rugged Cromwell longed to be called King Oliver; and Louis Philippe, with all his liberalism, was grieved at heart because his subjects would not let him take the style of Louis XIX., and because they made him King of the French, instead of King of France and Navarre. M. Guizot has told us of the genuine pleasure expe- rienced by his sovereign when the Queen of Eng- land conferred on bim the order of the Garter. Once he had the blue ribbon, Louis Philippe fan- cied he could no longer be sneered at as “ King of the Barricades,” but would be looked on as a thoroughly orthodox monarch, and a member of the most select society in the world. A similar weakness is said to have been displayed by a man who was, perhaps, one of the main-stays of the Orleans dynasty. He was the first member of a famous house of bankers, who settled in Paris; and is said to have taken very seriously to heart the title of baron, conferred on him by the Em- peror of Austria. According to M. Larchey, the great financier never traveled without a certain purse in Russian leather, on which a baron’s coronet was more than conspicuous. In the course of a certain journey he stopped at Lyons, and, it being early in the morning, entered a res- taurant, where he asked for a bowillon, which French-bred persons think a cheering thing to begin the day with. Having dispatched the bouillon, M. de R——— took out the famous purse, and asked for the bill. The waiter, espying the coronet, and not being versed in heraldic lore, thought it safest to address the stranger as “Monsieur le Duc.” M. de R—— gave but five sous of pourboire, and observed, with that aceent of which the secret has died with him, “Che ne suis pas tuc.” By-and-by he came back to lunch. The same waiter served him, and proved quite as attentive as in the morning. Only this time he addressed the customer as “‘ Monsieur le Comte.” The banker gave him five francs for himself, but observed, at the same time, “Che ne suis pas gonte.” A couple of hours later, on his way to the station, M. de R—— stepped in once more, to take a cup of coffee. The waiter, much mys- tified, ventured to call him “ Monsieur le Baron,” and received a louis d’or by way of tip, while the giver added, with an air of grave satisfaction, these words, “ Oui—che suis paron.” Altogether, the number of great men, who seemed hardly to understand how much above the symbols of external greatness they stood, is painfully large. In that list is our William IIL, of all persons, who took a strange pleasure in wearing the actual corporeal crown of England,

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° > ‘ | | | | | | i | i | . 252 "and the royal robes in which majesty is entitled to wrap itself, when to majesty seemeth good. Sir William Hamilton, again, devoted too many of the best hours of his early manhood to fishing a baronetcy (which he fancied necessary to his well-being) out of the obscurity of the seven- teenth century. But for those lost hours, the Philosophy of the Conditioned might have been more completely thought out. Bacon and (ina lesser degree) Scott afford melancholy examples of a similar weakness, and its vexatious, not to say tragic, consequences. Again, though a contempt for titles and deco- rations (especially since their relative value has changed) has been common enough for many a day, one cannot help thinking that the refusal of them has in not a few cases proceeded from the same motive which made others seek them. The weakness of false pride was shown not more by the Macedonian conqueror who proclaimed him- self a god, than by the philosopher in the tub who was rude to him. Indeed, it was an excel- lent answer that Alexander made when some one praised Antipater in his hearing tecause that officer refused to follow the Asiatic fashions which were being adopted by his colleagues, and continued to wear black while they wore purple. “ Yes,” said the king; “ but Antipater is all pur- ple within.” The virtue of some persons is un- pleasantly ferocious. One cannot help regretting, for instance, that Bentham, when the Czar Alex- ander sent him a diamond ring, did not decline it —if he must have declined it—with less of a flourish of trumpets. There is something that jars on one’s mind in that message about its not being his mission to receive diamond rings from emperors, but to teach nations the lessons of wis- dom—or words much to that effect. Who had ever supposed it was his mission to receive diamond rings from anybody? The humility of men who are much talked about is seldom a perfectly genu- ine article. Did they really think nothing of themselves they would be more than human. Anent this matter, there is a curious story told of St. Philip Neri, who was commissioned by the pope to inquire into the truth of certain miracles alleged to have been worked by a nun. St. Phil- ip employed a very simple test. He resolved to ascertain whether the nun had true humility, which, as one of the cardinal virtues, must be possessed by any one before he or she can re- ceive the gift of performing signs and wonders. Entering her cell with a pair of dirty boots on, he pulled them off, threw them at her head, and ordered her to clean them. Vehement and shrilly THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. expressed was the indignation of the lady; where. ~ at St. Philip reported to his holiness that a new saint had not arisen to edify the Church. Among the rare instances of true Christian humility with which we meet in that long record of struggles for precedence designated as history, is one singularly affecting. Madame Mailly, the first mistress of Louis XV., is said, after her loss of the king’s favor, to have led a life of unaffect- ed piety and devotion. As the French annalist quaintly puts it,“ She loved God as she had loved the king.” One day, being late for church, she had some difficulty in reaching her usual seat. Several persons had to rise to let her pass, chairs had to be pushed back, and some little confusion resulted. An ill-tempered man snarled out, “that it was a pretty noise to make fora —.” “Since you know her,” replied Madame de Mailly, “pray the good God for her.” Still, Madame de Mailly would have done better to be punctual, It is to be feared that the most common weaknesses of great men are of the same kind as those of little men. Formidable indeed would be the full and accurate list of illustrious glut- tons, illustrious tipplers, and illustrious persons who smoked more tobacco than was good for them. In some rare cases, their weakness occa- sionally brought forth their strength: the con- versation of Addison, many a speech of Sheri- dan’s and of the younger Pitt’s, a few songs of Schiller’s, were doubtless instances of the power of wine to stimulate the mental faculties. In- deed, Schiller seems to have for a long time habit- ually written under the influence of a bottle of Rhenish, with which he would lock himself up in the evening, and write cheerily through the hours of the night. But unquestionably the most as- tonishing feat of this kind was Blackstone’s com- position of his “ Commentaries” over successive bottles of port. One feels almost respect for the hardness of a head which could think out so clearly under such an influence some of the stiff- est points of a jurisprudence which, so to say, had neither head nor tail. In speaking of the classic age of English eloquence, one must ex- cept the greatest name of all from the list of Bacchic orators. Fox could drink, and alas! get drunk ; but, as a rule, he appears to have post- poned his sacrifices to Dionysus till after the de- bates, which he could the more easily do as he lived chiefly by night. Pitt would jestingly com- plain that in this respect his rival took a mean advantage of him. He himself rose tolerably early, and being generally prime-minister—the

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expression sounds strange in these days, but is strictly accurate—he was occupied with official business till it was time to go to the House of am Commons, when he was, perhaps, already fagged eon and jaded with work. ory, Very different was Fox’s mode of life during : No the session, At noon, or one o'clock, his friends 1 would call on their chief and find him in bed, or vad lounging about in his night-shirt, looking ex- nto tremely unkempt, and (if the truth must be told) dirty. A conversation would follow, plans rch, would be arranged, and, by-and-by, his toilet pal done, and a cup of tea swallowed, Fox would oh stroll down, fresh and vigorous, toward St. Ste- led phen’s, to speak as no orator ever spoke since Demosthenes. she Tobacco has not till lately been so common a “4 weakness of the great as the fermented juice of wl, the grape; but famous smokers would still make a a mighty and revered company. Among the ear- liest of Britain’s worthies whose devotion to the - weed was excessive, may he cited Hobbes. In Dr. ” Kennet’s “‘ Memoirs of the Cavendish Family” ld will be found a very interesting account of the “i way in which the author of the “ Leviathan” ‘sl loved to spend his day. “His professed rule of vg health was to dedicate the morning to his exer- - cise, and the afternoon to his studies. At his ” first rising, therefore, he walked out and climbed ¥ any hill within his reaching ; or, if the weather was e not dry, he fatigued himself within-doors by some a exercise or other, to be in a sweat... . After 4 this he took a comfortable breakfast, and then went round the lodgings to wait upon the earl, j the countess, and the children, and any consider- . able strangers, paying some short addresses to “ all of them. [He was then living with Lord x Devonshire, sometimes at Chatsworth, and some- : times at Hatdwicke.] He kept these rounds till ? about twelve o'clock, when he had a little dinner ‘ provided for him, which he ate always by him- self without ceremony. Soon after dinner he re- tired to his study, and had his candle, with ten or twelve pipes of tobacco, laid by him ; then, shutting his door, he fell to smoking, thinking, and writing, for several hours.” Whatever may have been the abstract merits of Hobbes’s regimen, it appears to have agreed with him, for he lived over ninety-one years. The worst effect of the ten or twelve daily pipes was probably to intensify the natural irritability of his disposition; for the soothing influence of tobacco is only temporary, while its permanent effect is the opposite of calming. So at least more than one distinguished physician has THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. averred. That Hobbes was terribly peevish in his old age there can be nodoubt. We read that = “he did not easily brook contradiction.” And, oa to put it mildly, he had a somewhat excessive opin- _. ion of his own powers. It was one of his boasts, ‘— for instance, that, “though physics were a new science, yet civil philosophy was still newer, since it could not be styled older than his book ‘De Cive.’” One hardly remembers a more con- ceited observation, unless it be Cobbett’s advice to young people as to the best books for them to 3 read: “‘ Read my books. This does, it will doubt- “y less be said, smell of the shop. No matter, Ex- a perience has taught me,” etc. Among Cobbett’s = weaknesses seems to have been a love of ale; or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, a be- lief that ale was preordained by the celestial pow- ers as the natural and fit liquor for Britons to quaff. The drinking of tea, which was becoming common with every order of society in his time, : moved him to the fiercest indignation, as it had 2 in a former generation excited the fears of Dun- ‘- can Forbes, who conceived that the brewing in- - terest would be ruined by the general adoption y of the new beverage. The lord president of the a Court of Session is reported to have rigorously ae forbidden the consumption of tea by his own a servants—even to have dismissed a housemaid who was taken pot-handed in the act. Duncan Forbes little dreamed that the day would come J when statesmen would be loudly urged to sup- . i port the tea interest and discourage the beer 3 interest. To return for a moment to Cobbett, it , would be unjust not to acknowledge that he was himself of exemplary sobriety in an exceedingly tipsy age. Indeed, he recommends pure water as well as ale. But these two were, he thought, the only rational drinks. His opinion may remind some of Sydney Smith’s statement that, when he : went to reside in Somersetshire, the servants he : had brought with him from Yorkshire seemed.to y think the making of cider a tempting of Provi- dence, which had clearly intended malt, and not apples, as the legitimate produce out of which , man should find the means of intoxication. . After all, there were some grave reasons for Cobbett’s objection to the habitual consumption of tea and coffee (he denominated them both un- der the generic term of “slops”); more than one writer on the science of diet being of opinion that Nature destined them rather as medicines than as daily beverages. Both the one and the other have been the weakness of hundreds to whose intellects the world owes some of its choicest treasures. Sir James Mackintosh went so far as

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254 to say that the power of a man’s mind would gen- erally be found to be in proportion to the amount of coffee he drank. How well Cowper loved tea, and how well he sang its praises, we all know. As to Dante, so to him, the evening brought the pleasantest hours of the twenty-four : “ Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast ; Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round ; And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in!” Yet one may suspect that frequent cups of tea did not improve the nervous system of the un- happy poet; though he had other weaknesses which were of themselves sufficient to account for the final ruin of his mind. Innumerable have been the varieties of human weaknesses in respect of things edible and pota- ble. We forget the name of the French lady who said she would commit a baseness for the sake of fried potatoes. More than one person may have only wanted her candor to make a similar avowal of excessive affection for a particu- lar dish. The English king who died of a surfeit of peaches and new ale was hardly a great man; but the king who died of lampreys was in the first rank of the statesmen and warriors of his age, to say nothing of being something of a scholar into the bargain. Englishmen have small affection for the memory of Philip II., who irreparably ruined his digestion by immoderate indulgence in pastry ; but he is still regarded by Spaniards as one of their greatest monarchs. To turn to men of un- questioned genius, Byron’s most innocent passion seems to have been for soda-water, on which at one time he almost subsisted, with the aid of dry biscuits. Apparently Beckford had a similar weakness for the gaseous fluid. During the three days and two nights of continuous work in which he composed “ Vathek,” soda-water was his prin- cipal sustenance. The names of Byron and Beckford, unequal as they are, both call to mind one of the most frequent and most troublesome failings of the great, and of those who for their brief day were thought great. “ England’s wealthiest son ” and England’s cleverest son were, the one and the other, incorrigible posers. In spite of Mr. Mat- thew Arnold’s fine lines, one may suspect that Byron did not allow “ the pageant of his bleeding heart” to lose iu effect from want of careful ar- rangement. “It is ridiculous to imagine,” ob- served the blunt common-sense of Macaulay, “ that a man whose mind was really imbued with THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. scorn of his fellow-creatures would publish three or four books every year in order to tell them so; or that a man who could say with truth that he neither sought sympathy nor needed it, would have admitted all Europe to hear his farewell to his wife, and his blessings on his child.” Among other distinguished farceurs, as the French plain- ly term persons who act off the stage, everybody will readily place Louis XIV. and Napoleon I. (perhaps also Napoleon III.); and, reluctantly, Chatham, together with Burke, whose dagger ex- hibition is hopelessly indefensible. Rousseau is perhaps the prince of the tribe; though Diderot has not inconsiderable claims to occupy that bad eminence. Devaines, indeed, gives a wonderful account of the latter’s genius for what might be called domestic tragedy. As the statesman knew the writer well (and was always accounted a vera- cious chronicler), there is no valid reason for refusing him credence. On the eve of Diderot’s departure for Russia, Devaines went to say good- by to him. Diderot, as he assures us, received him with tears in his eyes, and led him into his study ; where, in a voice choked with sobs, he broke forth into a monologue in these terms: “You see before you a man in despair! I have passed through the most cruel possible of scenes for a father and a husband. My wife... . My daughter. . . . Ah! how can I separate myself from them, after having been a witness to their heart-rending grief! We were at table; I sat with one on either side of me: no strangers, as you may be sure. I wished to give to them and to them alone my last moments. What a dinner! What a spectacle of desolation! .. . We could neither eat nor drink. . . . Ah! my friend, how sweet it is to be loved by beings so tender, but how terrible to quit them! No; I shall not have that hateful courage. What are the cajoleries of power compared with the outpourings of nature ? I stay; I have made up my mind; I will not abandon my wife and daughter; I will not be their executioner ; for, my friend, believe me, my departure would be theirdeath.’’ As the philoso- pher spoke, he leaned over his friend, and be- dewed M. Devaines’s waistcoat with his tears. Before the friend had time to answer with a few words of sympathy, Madame Diderot suddenly burst into the rbom. The impassioned address which she proceeded to deliver had at least the merit of sincerity: “And pray, M. Diderot, what are you doing there? You lose your time in talking stuff, and forget your luggage. Nothing will be ready to-morrow. You know you ought to be off early in the morning ; yet there you are

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at your fine phrases, and your business taking care of itself. See what comes of dining out in- stead of staying at home. You promised me, too, that you wouldn’t go to-day! But everybody can command you, except us. Ah! whataman! My goodness, what a man!” Devaines with dif- ficulty kept his countenance, and lost no time in beating a retreat. Next day he was not surprised to learn that Diderot had managed to tear him- self from his wife and daughter, and that they ap- peared to be bearing his absence with resigna- tion. The truth is, that, on a careful survey of the facts, one is forced to the conclusion that Diderot made the journey partly in order to escape from the beloved one, who was a model of constancy and devotion, but had a shrill voice, which, again, was the exponent of a quick temper. He was very poor, and had advertised his library for sale, Catherine II. generously purchased it at its full price ; then appointed Diderot its custodian, at a handsome salary, fifty years of which was paid in advance. It was not even required that the books should be brought to St. Petersburg. Diderot, however, determined to go and thank the empress in person, which was no doubt a graceful resolution on his part. Only there was no especial reason why he should have staid several months in Holland on the way, even if we admit that the most direct route to the capi- tal of the czars lay through that country. Once at the court of Catherine he was petted and made much of, as may well be believed; and his de- light knew ne bounds. From St. Petersburg he wrote to Mdlle. Voland that “ while in a country called the land of freemen, he felt as a slave; but now, in a country called the land of slaves, he felt like a freeman.” Either Diderot saw things Muscovite through rose-colored spectacles, or a certain orthodox empire has been progress- ing backward, as Americans say, for the last century. “The first step toward philosophy,” said Di- derot, on his death-bed, “is incredulity.” What- ever may be the worth of this axiom, one is tempted, after a perusal of “The Religieuse,” to think that an excessive credulity was among the author’s intellectual weaknesses. At any rate, it is clear that no scandal in respect of monks or nuns was too black or too improbable for Di- derot to give it credit. Of course, the wish was father to the belief. The credulous suspicion with which Diderot regarded a numerous class of his fellow-beings is supposed to bave been the feeling with which THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. Talleyrand regarded the whole human race. As a matter of fact, the prince does not seem to have thought so ill of our common nature ; but he had a weakness for saying “ good things,” which may be defined as bad things, about other people. And one of his happiest mots was mere- ly a witty reproof of that spirit which greedily catches at the suggestion of a hidden motive for the plainest action. Some one told him that M. de Sémonville had a bad cold. “ What interest can M. de Sémonville have in catching cold?” quoth Talleyrand. Yet, if Napoleon’s greatest minister had been a more suspicious person than he really was, there would have been some excuse for him. His youth was passed in a very hot-bed of intrigue and back-stairs influence ; and, if we are to admit as trustworthy the evidence of Chamfort (as there seems no reason why we should not), Talleyrand’s own mother may have given him some strange lessons in the art of getting on. Certainly, there was no very healthy moral to be drawn from such a history as the following : A woman was plaintiff or defendant— it matters not which—in an action about to be tried by the Parliament of Dijon. To gain her cause, it seemed to her the most natural thing in the world to try and get some great person to say a word to the judges in her favor. With this end in view she went to Paris, and begged the Keeper of the Seals to intercede for her. On the keeper’s refusal, she applied to the Countess of Talleyrand, who, taking an interest in the woman, wrote her self to the minister, but with no better success than her protégée. Madame de Talleyrand then remembered that her son, the Abbé de Périgord (the future Bishop of Autun), was somewhat of a favorite with the Keeper of the Seals; to whom, accordingly, at his mother’s request, the hopeful young ecclesiastic was induced to write. A third refusal was the result of this third application. The fair litigant, with an energy worthy of a better object, now determined to go to Versailles, and seek to see the minister. The coach in which she went was so uncomfortable that she got down at Sévres, intending to walk the rest of the way. She had not proceeded far before she fell in with a man who, on her asking to be shown the way, offered to take her by a short cut. They began to talk, and she told him of her trouble. He said, “ To-morrow you shall have what you re- quire.” She looked at him, astonished, bat made no answer. Arrived at Versailles, she succeeded in obtaining the same day an audience of the minister, who, however, declined to comply with her request. Meanwhile her new friend had

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256 waited for her outside. On her reappearance he begged of her to stay at Versailles for the night —next day she would hear tidings of him. On the following morning he brought her just such a letter from the Keeper of the Seals as she had prayed for. Who was this walking Providence ? A clerk’s clerk, named Etienne. Whence his power. The father of mischief only knew. A propos of the administration of law in olden France, it is a mournful confession to have to make that Henri IV. was not a sufficiently wise and virtuous ruler to refrain from tampering with the independence of his own judges. On one occasion, for instance, he sent for M. de Turin, who was to give judgment in the case of M. de Bouillon vs. M. de Bouillon la Mark, and, without preamble, said, “ M. de Turin, I wish M. de Bouillon to win his suit.” “ Very well, sire,” replied the judge; “there is nothing easier: I will send you the papers, and you shall decide the case yourself.” With which words he with- drew ; when some one observed to the king, “ Your Majesty does not know that man—he is quite bold enough to do what he has said.” The king sent after him ; and, sure enough, the messenger found the worthy magistrate loading a porter with brief-bags, and directing him to take them to the palace. Tallemant des Réaux is responsi- ble for the story. Henri’s grandson naturally in- herited this royal weakness for being to his sub- jects all in all; but even Louis IV. occasionally found a man who could face him. Thus, the Chancellor Voisin positively refused to affix the seals to a pardon, the proposed object of the monarch’s clemency being known to the minister to be an irreclaimable scoundrel. The king took the seals and acted for the nonce as his own chancellor ; then returned them to their regular custodian. “I cannot accept them,” replied Voisin; “they are polluted.” “ What a man!” exclaimed Louis, half impatiently and half admir- ingly, as it should seem, for he threw the pardon | into the fire; upon which the chancellor con- sented to resume the seals. Louis’s idea that he might, at a pinch, seal his own ordinances, was not unworthy of Fred- erick the Great, who was ready himself to dis- charge every possible function of the body poli- tic, and was at once the eye, the tongue, and the right hand, of the state—occasionally, if one might push the simile so far, its foot, and booted foot, as the shins of the judges who would not take their sovereign’s view of Miller Arnold’s case might have testified. Probably Frederick’s | love of doing even the official drudgery of his THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. . dominions may have proceeded, if we examine its final cause, from much the same reason as that which impelled him to labor at the com- position of French verses. It was an ambition (and no mean ambition had it been attainable), not only to be first of all, but to be first in all ' things. As the Homeric chieftain was proud to | be a stout spearman as well as a skilled leader, so Frederick apparently longed to be the intel- | Jectual as well as the civil head of the common. wealth which he had almost reconstructed to its foundations. Mr. Irving mentions a trait of Oo- | lumbus which is sufficient evidence of a very | similar weakness in the discoverer of the New World. Columbus had somewhat childishly set his heart on being the first to see land with the human eye, as if it were not enough glory to have discovered it with the eye of science, en- lightened by imagination. Such as it was, Co- lumbus fancied he had achieved the lesser as well . as the greater distinction. His claim, however, was ‘disputed by a common sailor, who, as may well be imagined, had small chance of being be- lieved before the admiral. Maddened with dis- appointment at the loss of the splendid reward which had been promised, and which he had hoped to obtain, the unhappy man is said to have forsworn at once his country and his faith, and to have taken service with the Moors. One can only hope he was never made prisoner by his compatriots, for the Inquisition would have. made short work with him. But Columbus does not come well out of the story. Other weaknesses of great men for doing | little things have proved less harmful to others | and to their own reputation. Among them may | be cited Rossini’s passion for making macaroni | after a peculiar and, it must be admitted, an ex- cellent fashion. He seemed as proud of his cu- linary accomplishments as of having composed “ William Tell,” which masterpiece, as will be remembered, closed his operatic career. The reason Rossini alleged for passing the last forty years of his life in almost complete idleness was akin to that weakness of timidity which made Gerard Hamilton ' silent after his single speech. “An additional success,” said Rossini, “would | add nothing to my fame; a failure would injure it. I have no need of the one, and I do not | choose to expose myself to the other.” 1 It may not be generally known that, once across St. George’s Channel, Hamilton became more coura- ; geous. He often spoke with effect in the Irish House | of Commons ; it was only at Westminster that he re- | mained mute.

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THE EDUCATION OF AFTER-LIFE. Goldsmith's fond belief that he possessed a knowledge of medicine is known to all. Possibly it hastened his death, for he would prescribe for himself. Eugene Sue labored under a delusion of the same kind; only for his there was some slight ground in fact, the author of the “ Mys- teries of Paris” having actually been a regi- mental surgeon in his youth. It must be ad- mitted, too, that a droll anecdote about Sue’s performances in his later years indicates rather that he was sometimes very drunk than that he utterly lacked professional skill. He had one day dined with his friend Romieu at the Café de Paris, and had dined well—in fact, they had both dined well; and as they sauntered along the boulevards, by way of aiding digestion, Remieu slipped, fefl down, and hurt his leg. Sue called a eab, put his friend in, and drove home, where he dressed the wound. He then put Romieu to bed, and settled himself into an arm-chair for the 257 night. Next morning he hastened to examine the wound, only to discover that he had tended the wrong leg! Few, indeed, are the men who have been great in more than one department of human knowledge and skill; though (if one may avail one’s self of the Oxford terminology) there have been a respectable number who have combined a first-class reputation in one field of distinction with a second-class in another. It is pleasant, in this year of the Rubens Tercentenary, to re- member that the famous painter acquitted him- self with credit in a diplomatic capacity. <A lady once asked Casanova “ whether Rubens had not been ah embassador who amused himself with painting.” ““I beg pardon, madam,” replied the artist; “he was a painter who amused himself with embassies.” One shudders to think of the depths of ignorance or impertinence the lady’s question reveals.—Cornhill Magazine.

THE EDUCATION OF AFTER-LIFE.’ By ARTHUR I is said that the late King of Prussia, on see- ing Eton College, exclaimed, “ Happy is that country where the old is ever entwined with the new, where the new is ever old, and the old is ever new.” That is most true; but, if he had come to Bristol at this time, he might have even improved on his remark, and said, “ Happy is that country where the old is ever giving birth to the new, where the new is ever springing from the old.” For inthe cathedral he would have seen the Abbey Church of Robert Fitzharding, the fine old descendant of the wild sea-kings, awak- ening into a new life, and stretching forth a gigan- tie arm which had seemed to be paralyzed to its very socket. And he would have seen the new start of a young institution of teachers sent into this commercial city, in large measure by the en- 1 An address delivered by Dean Stanley on the oc- casion of the new session of University College, Bris- tol, October 27, 1877.2 2 University College, Bristol, was founded in 1876, ‘to supply for persons of both sexes above the ordi- nary school age the means of continuing their stud- ies in science, languages, history, and literature; and more particularly to affurd appropriate instruction in those hes of applied science which are employed in the arts and manufactures.’ The funds of lege are chiefly derived from local contributions ; but the college receives subsidies from Balliol College and New College, Oxford, and from the Worshipful the Clothworkers’ Company of London. 53 e col- | P. STANLEY. ergies of two ancient colleges, which a hundred years ago would have been thought the most retro- grade and the most exclusive of all our academi- cal communities. I have spoken of the Cathe- dral of Bristol in the proper place. Let me now say a few words on its new college. T will not go back to the question of the util- ity of such institutions themselves. This was sufficiently set forth some years ago by my excel- lent friend the Master of Balliol, who has done so much for Oxford and for Bristol, and by those many other distinguished persons who then ad- dressed you. The college has been begun, and it is not of the college, but of its work, that I have to speak. And, in so doing, it has been suggested to me that it might be useful to make a few general remarks on a commonplace subject —‘The Education of After-Life.” It is closely connected with the special functions of this in- stitution, and it has this further advantage, that its consideration may not be altogether without profit to the more miscellaneous public. In what sense can education be said to be car- ried on at all in an institution so rudimentary, so | slightly equipped as this? You have no build- | ings, you bave no antiquity, you bave no tradi- | tions, you have no discipline, you have none of

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258 those things which in our older institutions are almost the atmosphere in which education lives, and moves, and has its being. You have them not; and we do not for a moment underrate the loss. But there are here, at any rate, two mate- rials of education, which may continue through- out life, and which are, perhaps, after all, the only two indispensable elements—the teachers and the taught. 1. The teachers—let me say something of them. When at Oxford, in my younger days, there were discussions about the reforms of the university ; there was one want which we regarded as supremely felt, and this was the want of pro- fessors, that is to say, of teachers, who night be “as oracles, whereat students might come” in their several branches of knowledge. These were in consequence called into existence, and among you also they exist already. I am not now speak- ing personally of the actual professors, though doubtless your practical experience of them would bear out much of whatI say. But I speak of the advantage to any community, to any young man or woman, of being brought into contact with higher intelligences. No operation in the way of external impulse, or stimulus, or instruction, in our passage through this mortal existence, is equa] to the impression produced upon us by the contact of intellects and characters superior to ourselves. It is for this reason that a college like yours must always have the chance of contributing, directly and forcibly, to the elevation of those among whom it is placed. A body of men, brought to- gether by the enthusiasm of teaching others, with a full appreciation of great subjects, with an ardent desire of improving not only others but themselves, cannot fail to strike some fire from some one soul or other of those who have the opportunity of thus making their acquaintance. It need not be that we follow their opinions ; the opinions may vanish, but the effect remains. Soc- rates left no school behind him ; the philosophers who followed him were broken into a thousand sections, but the influence and stimulus which Socrates left, never ceased, and have continued till the present hour. If we look for a moment at the records, on the one hand, of aspirations en- couraged, of great projects realized; or, on the other hand, of lost careers, of broken hopes, how often shall we find that it has been from the pres- ence or from the want of some beneficent, intel- ligent, appreciative mind coming in among the desponding, the distressed, the storm-tossed souls of whom this world contains only too many. To take the example of two poete—one whose grave THE POPULAR SOIENOE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. is in the adjacent county, one belonging to your own city—how striking and how comforting is the reflection of the peaceful, useful, and happy close of the life of George Crabbe, the poet; for eighteen years pastor of Trowbridge! All that happiness, all that usefulness, he owed to the single fact that, when a poor, forsaken boy in the streets of London, he bethought himself of addressing a letter to Edmund Burke. That great man had the penetration to see that Crabbe was not an impostor—not a fool. He took the poor youth by the hand, he encouraged him, he pro- eured for him the career in which he lived and died. He was, it is hardly too much to say, the instrument of his preservation and of his regen- eration. On the other hand, when, with Words- worth, we think of Chatterton, “the ‘marvelous boy, the sleepless soul that perished in his pride,” how impossible it is to avoid the reflection that, if he had met with some congenial sphere, such as this college now presents, some kindly hand to lead him forward, some wise direction (over and above the kindness which he met from per- sonal friends) that might have rescued him from his own desperate thoughts, we should have been spared the spectacle of the premature death of one whose fate will always rank among the tragi- cal incidents of the history not only of Bristol but of England. It is too much to expect that there may be a Burke among your professors, or a Chatterton among your pupils. But the hopeful and the melancholy lesson are both worth remembering. 2. And now, leaving the body of teachers, these two instances remind me to turn to the body of students. I can but plunge in the dark to give any advice, but this much is surely ap- plicable to all of them. I will do my best, and perhaps here and there a word may be useful, Bear in mind both the advantages and the disadvantages which the voluntary education of students in after-life involves, by the mere fact of the freedom of choice—freedom in studies, freedom in subjects, freedom of opinions. A self-educated man is, in some respects, the bet- ter, in some respects the worse, for not having been trained in his early years by regular routine. We have an illustration of both the stronger and the weaker side of self-education in the case of Mr. Buckle, the author of the “ History of Civili- zation.” At the time of his greatest celebrity, it was often remarked that no man who had been at regular schools or universities could, on the one hand, have acquired such an enormous amount of multifarious knowledge, and such a

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THE EDUCATION OF AFTER-LIFE. 259 grasp of so many details; while, on the other | for example, to overstate the advantage which it hand, no one but a self-educated man, feeding his mind here and there, without contradiction, with- out submission, without the usual traditions of common instruction, could have fallen into so many paradoxes, so many negligences, so many ignorances. It is enough to state this fact, in order to put you on your guard against the dan- gers of your position, and also to make you feel its hopes and opportunities. Over the wide field of science and knowledge it is yours to wander. The facts which you acquire will probably take a " deeper hold on your minds from having been sought out by yourselves; but not the less should you remember that there are qualifying and con- trolling influences derived from the more regular courses of study which are of lasting benefit, and the absence of which you must take into ac- count in judging of the more desultory and the more independent researches which you have to make. A deaf person may acquire, and often has acquired, a treasure of knowledge and a vigor of will by the exclusion of all that wear and tear, of all that friction of outer things, which fill the atmosphere of those who have the possession of all their senses. But, nevertheless, a deaf per- son, in order not to be misled into extravagant estimates of his own judgment, or of the value of his own pursuits, should always be remind- ed that he has not the same means of correct- ing and guarding his conclusions and opinions as he would have if he were open to the insensi- ble influence of “the fibres of conversation,” as they have been well called, which float about in the general atmosphere, that for him has no ex- istence. Self-education is open both to the ad- vantages and disadvantages of deafness; knowl- elge is at some entrances quite shut out, while such knowledge as gets in occupies the mind more completely, but always needs to be remind- ed that there is a surrounding vacuum. With this general encouragement, and this general warning, let us proceed. 8. There are in connection with this institu- tion two chief departments of human knowledge open to those who educate themselves—Science and Literature. Of Science, which provides for the larger part of your instruction, I can unfor- tunately say but little, for the simple reason that, from my own ignorance, I have nothing to con- tribute on the subject. Still, I cannot be insen- sible to the immense enjoyment which every branch of it must furnish to those with whom it enters, not merely into the pleasures, but into the actual work, of their daily life. It is hard, must be to those who are immersed in the busi- ness and the commerce of a great town like this, that, amid the fluctuations of speculation, and the interminable discussions of labor and capital, they should have fixed in their minds the solid principles of political economy. It was with a thrill of delight, quite apart from agreement or disagreement, that I read not long ago of one of our chief pablic men in Parliament taking his stand aloof from his party, and despite his own interests, in defense of the dry and arid sci- ence of political economy, which he thought was unduly depreciated among large classes of our countrymen. Dry and arid it may be, but I can- not doubt that it is, as it were, the backbone of much of our social system, and it gives a back- bone to all into whose minds it has thoroughly entered. Then in geology, astronomy, chemistry, and the natural sciences generally, what a large field is open before you for your pleasure and profit! When Wordsworth said in his fine ode that there had passed away “a glory and a freshness” from the earth, he littie thought that there was another freshness and glory coming back, in the deeper insight which science would give into the wonders and the grandeur of Nature. I have heard people say who have traveled with Sir Charles Lyell, that to see him hanging out of the window of a railway-carriage, to watch the geological forma- tions as he passed through a railway-cutting, was as if he saw the sides hung with beautiful pict- ures, 4. Then, when we come to literature, what a world of ideas is opened by a public library, or even a private library—by such libraries, great or small, as have, by individual or corporate mu- nificence, been opened in every quarter of Bris- tol! What a feast there is in a single good book! We sometimes hardly appreciate sufficiently the influence which literature exercises over large phases of the world. By literature, I mean those great works of history, poetry, fiction, or philoso- phy, that rise above professional or commonplace uses, and take possession of the mind of a whole nation, or a whole age. It was pointed out to me the other day how vast an effect had been wrought by the famous Persian poet Ferdusi, in welding together into one people the discordant races of the Mussulman conquerors and the in- digenous Persians, by his great poem on Persian history, which he, belonging to the Mussulman conquerors, wove out of the legendary lore of the conquered race. But, indeed, it is not necessary

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260 to go to Persia for an example. How vast an in- fluence for good has been exercised on this cen- tury by the novels of Sir Walter Scott! It is not only that, by superseding the coarser though often vigorous fictions of the last century, they purified the whole current of English literature— it is not only that they awakened an interest in the past, and also gave a just view of the present and the future, beyond almost any writings of our time, but that they bound together, in an indis- soluble bond, the two nations, Scotland and England, which before that time had been almost as far asunder as if one of them had been on the other side of the Channel, instead of on the other side of the Tweed. Often it has been said, and truly, that no greater boon could be conferred on Ireland than that a genius as wide-spreading, as deeply penetrating, and as calmly judging, as Sir Walter Scott, could be raised up to give a like interest to the scenery, the history, the traditions, and the characters of Ireland. I have given these two examples of the na- tional influence of literature, because they show, on a great scale, what can be effected by the finest thoughts put into the finest words. To be conversant with them is an education of after-life which never ceases. We read such books again and again, and there is always something new in them. Spend, if possible, one hour each day in reading some good and great book. The num- ber of such books is not too many to overwhelm you. Every one who reflects on the former years of his education can lay his finger on half a dozen, perhaps even fewer, which have made a lasting impress upon his mind. Treasure up these. It is not only the benefits which you yourself derive from them—it is the impression which they leave upon you of the lasting power of that which is spiritual and immaterial. How many in all classes of life may say of their own experience that which was said in speaking of his library, by one of your most illustrious towns- men, who was my own earliest literary delight, Robert Southey : “* My days among the dead are past; Around me I behold, Where’er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old: My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. “ With them I take delight in weal And seek relief in woe ; And while I understand and fee). How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedewed With tears of thonghtful gratitude. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ** My thonghts are with the dead ; with them I live in long-past years, Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears, And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with an humble mind.” And even perhaps some of the youngest or homeliest among us need not scruple to add : ** My hopes are with the dead; anon My place with them will be, And I with them shail travel on Through all futurity ; Yet leaving here a name, I trust That will not perish in the dust.” 5. But it is not only by books, whether of literature or science, that the self-education of after-life is assisted. When Joan of Arc was ex- amined before her ecclesiastical judges, and was taunted with the reproach that such marvelous things as she professed to have seen, and heard, and done, were not found written in any book which they had studied, she answered in a spirit akin, and in some respects superior, to the well- known lines in which Hamlet replies to Horatio. She replied, “ My Lord God has a book in which are written many things which even the most learned clerk and scholar has never come across.’’ Let me take several examples, showing how edu- cation may be carried forward apart from books. Let me touch on the experiences presented to our eyes and ears by travel. In this age it isone of the peculiar advantages offered to all classes, or almost all classes, which, in former times, was the privilege only of a few, that the great book of foreign countries and the phenomena of Nature have been opened to our view. We hardly ap- preciate how vast a revelation, how new a crea- tion has been opened to us in these respects within the last fifty years. A century ago not only were the scenes to be visited closed against us, but the eye by which we could see them was closed also. The poet Gray was the first human being who discovered the charms of the English lakes which are now able even to enter into a battle of life and death against the mighty power of a city like Manchester, because of the enthusi- astic interest which they have enkindled in the hearts of all who visit them. The glories of the valley of Chamounix werg first made known to the European world by two Englishmen at the close of the last century. Before that time the cherished resorts of such gifted personages as Voltaire and Madame de Staél were so selected as carefully to exclude every view of Mont Blanc and his great compeers. But in our time all these various forms of beauty and grandeur are

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THE EDUCATION OF AFTER-LIFE. appreciated with a keenness, and sought with an enjoyment, which must add new life and new vigor even to the most secluded among us. 6. Besides the education which distant travel may give, there is also a constant process of self- education which may be carried on nearer home. It is not only that in each successive age, or at least in the age in which we live, a new eye or faculty has been created by which we are en- abled to see remote objects which to our fore- fathers were absolutely unknown ; but, according to the familiar story which we read in our child- hood, every human being may pass through the most familiar scenes with “eyes” or “no eyes.” Let me illustrate this by the instruction which can be conveyed to an inquiring and observant mind by the city in which our lotis cast. “‘Whata book!” as Joan of Arc would have said—“ what a book of endless interest is opened to us in Bris- tol!” How it tells its own story of the long uv- broken continuity of importance in which it stands second among British cities only to Lon- ‘don! It is, as Lamartine says of Damascus, a predestinated city. Why was it of such early political eminence? Because, if I may use knowl- edge imparted to me since I came among you, it was the frontier fortress of the English race in the south, as Chester was in the north—to keep a watch on the wild Welshmen in their hills be- yond the Severn. Why was it of such early com- mercial eminence, before the birth of Manchester, or Liverpool, or Birmingham, or Glasgow? Be- cause it stood near the mouth of that great est- nary by which alone at that time England was able to hold communion with the unknown West, with the Atlantic, and with the transatlantic world. At the mouth of the Severn, yet what in those early days was even yet more valued, not quite at the mouth—parted only by that marvel- ous cleft of the Avon, up which the ships of old time came stealing, as by a secret passage, on the bavk of the enormous tide of the Bristol Channel, beyond the grasp of the pirate or buccaneer of the open sea.! And why did it become the scene of all those pleasant tales of Miss Burney, or Miss Edgeworth, or Miss Austen, in later days, which made its localities familiar to the childhood of those who, like myself, knew Bristol like a household word fifty years before they explored it for themselves? It was the gush of mineral springs, the “hot wells,” now forgotten, but then the rallying-point of fashion and society, beneath 1“The ancient cities of Greece, on account of the piracy then prevailing on the sea, were built rather at a distance from the shore.’ (Thucydides, 1., 7.) 261 your limestone-rocks. And what makes it such an ever-growing, ever-inspiring centre of institu- tions, such as Clifton College, already venerable with fame, and this new University College? It is the unrivaled combination of open downs, and deep gorges, and distant views, and magnificent foliage—magnificent still, in the wreck and de- vastation which cause even a stranger almost to weep, as he passes through the carnage of gigan- tic trunks with which the late hurricane has strewed the park of King’s Weston. These are among the lessons which the education of after- life may bring out from the pages of this vast il- luminated book of the natural situation of Bris- tol, which, more even than the Charter of King John or the Bishopric of Henry VIIL, have given to it its long eventful history and its never-ceas- ing charm. 7. Apart from the education to be derived from inanimate objects, there is the yet deeper education to be derived by those who have senses exercised to discern between true and false, between good and evil, from the great flux and reflux of human affairs, with which the pe- culiarity of our times causes all to become more or less conversant. One of the experiences which the education of life brings with it, or ought to bring with it, is an increasing sense of the difference between what is hollow and what is real, what is artificial and what is honest, what is permanent and what is transitory. “There are,” says Goethe, in a proverb point- ed out to me long ago by Lord Houghton as a@ summary of human wisdom, “many echoes in the world, but few voices.” It is the business of the education of after-life to make us more and more alive to this distinction. Think of the popular panics and excitements which we have outlived—of the delusions which we have seen possess whole masses of the people, educated and uneducated, and then totally pass away. You have, many of you, I doubt not, heard the story of the conversation of the most famous of all the Bishops of Bristol as he was walking in the dead of night in the garden of the now de- stroyed episcopal palace. “ His custom,” says his chaplain, “was, when at Bristol, to walk for hours in his garden in the darkest night which the time of year would afford, and I had frequent- ly the honor to attend him. He would take a turn, and then stop suddenly short, and ask the question: ‘Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity as well as individuals? Nothing but this prin- ciple, that they are liable to insanity equally at v

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262 least with private persons, can account for the major part of those tragedies of which we read in history.’ I thought little,” adds the chaplain, “of the odd conceit of the bishop, but I own I could not avoid thinking of it a great deal since, and applying it to many cases.” Yes, Bishop Butler was right. Such mad- nesses have occurred many and many a time be- fore, and they have indeed been enacted many and many a time since. The madness of the peo- ple of London in the riots of Lord George Gor- don ; the madness of the people of Birmingham when they burned the library of Dr. Priestley ; the madness of the people of Bristol, which laid waste, in 1831, the very garden in which Bishop Butler made the remark one hundred years ago; the innumerable theological panics which I have seen rise and fall away in my own day—are all examples of the danger to which we are exposed in public agitations unless by the stern education of after-life we deliberately guard ourselves against it. It is with no view of producing an undue dis- trust either of human nature or of popular judg- ments that I dwell on the deep conviction of the instability of temporary judgments which this experience of life impresses upon us. Like all insanity it is best met by sanity. Like all false- hood and hollowness, it is best resisted by a determination on the part of those who know better, not to give way by one hair’s-breadth to what they know in their own minds to be a fic- tion or acrime. If we all of us, as communities, as parties, as churches, are liable to these fits of madness, it is the more necessary that we should educate ourselves to be our own keepers. And, as in actual insanity, so in those metaphorical in- sanities, it is encouraging to remember that one keeper, one sane keeper, is often quite enough to control many madmen. When one verger, by his own stout arm and resolute speech, saved Bristol Cathedral from the raging mob, he did what many a magistrate, or politician, or ecclesi- astic, under analogous circumstances, might do, and what they have often failed to do, and so have wellnigh ruined the commonwealth. In these illusions of which we are speaking, it is not so difficult after all to detect the ring of a true or of a hollow word, it is not impossible to scent out with an almost infallible instinct the savor of the rotten or decaying or acrid element in human opinion, or to see wherein are to be found the light and glory and sweetness of the eternal future. 8. And this leads me to speak of that educa- tion which is given in our age and in our country THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. more than in any other, namely, education in public affairs or politics. I remember when in Russia that a Russian statesman was spéaking of the important effects to be hoped from the endeavor to give more instruction to the people ; “but,” he said, “there is one process of educa- tion which has been more effectual still, and that is the reform in the administration of our courts of law and the introduction of trial by jury. This, by bringing the peasants into the presence of the great machinery of the state, by making them understand their own responsibility, by enabling them to hear patiently the views of others, is a never-failing source of elevation and instruction.” Trial by jury, which to the Russian peasant is as it were but of yesterday, to us is familiar by the growth of a thousand years. It is familiar, and yet it falls only to the lot of few. Ihave myself only witnessed it once; but I thought it one of the most impressive scenes on which I had ever looked. The twelve men, of humble life, enjoying the advantage of the instruction of the most acute minds that the country could furnish ; taught in the most solemn forms of the English language to appreciate the value of exact truth ; seeing the whole tragedy of destiny drawn out before their very eyes—the weakness of passion, the ferocity of revenge, the simplicity of inno- cence, the moderation of the judge, the serious- ness of human existence—this is an experience which may actually befall but a few, but to whomsoever it does fall the lessons which it im- parts, the necessity of any previous preparation for it that can be given, leap at such moments to the eyes as absolutely inestimable. But what in its measure is true of the education which a jury- man receives, and of the necessity of education for discharging the functions of a juryman, is true more or less of all the complex machinery by which the duties, the hopes, and the fears, of English citizens are called into action. And here again the past history of Bristol furnishes so ad- mirable an example of an important lesson of political education that I cannot forbear directing your attention to it. I mean Mr. Burke’s speech in the Guildhall at Bristol, in which he refers to certain points in his parliamentary conduct in the year 1770. In making this reference you will not suppose that I am so indiscreet as to be entering on any political question, or taking the side of any political party. I am not favoring either the Anchor or the Dolphin. I am not giving any ad- vice to either of your respected members, nor to any distinguished persons who may come here on the day of your great benefactor Colston.

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THE EDUCATION OF AFTER-LIFE. No; but I am trying to impress upon you all the value of the education of after-life in raising you to the height of that great argument in which you have to confront the grave emergen- cies of our time and country. Burke is speaking against the folly of electors trying to engage their representatives in matters of local or peculiar in- terest, as distinct from the great questions of na- tional policy. “Look, gentlemen,” he says, “ to the whole tenor of your member’s conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice has jostled him out of the straight line of duty, or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master-vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth, has made him flag and languish in his course? This is the object of our inquiry. If your member’s conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have fallen into errors; he must have faults; but our error is greater and our fault is radically ruinous to our- selves if we do not bear, if we do not even ap- plaud, the whole compound and mixed mass of such a character. Not to act thus is folly, I had almost said it was impiety. He censures God who quarrels with the imperfections of man. . . . When we know that the opinions of even the greatest multitudes are the standard of rectitude, I shall think myself obliged to make those opin- ions the masters of my conscience. But if it may be doubted whether Omnipotence itself is com- petent to alter the essential constitution of right and wrong, sure I am that such things as they and I are possessed of no such power. No man carries further than I do the policy of making govern- ment pleasing to the people. But the widest range of this politic complaisance is confined within the limits of justice. I would not only consult the interest of the people, but I would cheerfully gratify their humors. We are all a sort of chil- dren that must be soothed and managed. I think I am not austere or formal in my nature. I would bear, I would even myself play my part in, any innocent buffooneries to divert them. But I never will act the tyrant for their amusement. If they will mix malice in their sports I shall never con- sent to throw them any living, sentient creature whatsoever—no, not so much as a kitling to tor- ment.. . . I could wish, undoubtedly, to make every part of my conduct agreeable to every one of my constituents. But in so great a city, and so greatly divided as this, it is weak to expect it. In such a discordancy of sentiments it is better to look to the nature of things than to the humors of men. The very attempt toward pleasing every- body discovers a temper always flashy, and often 263 false and insincere. Therefore, as I have proceed- ed straight onward in my conduct, so I will pro- ceed in my account of those parts of it which have been most exvepted to. But I must first beg leave just to hint to you that we may suffer very great detriment by being open to every talker. It is not to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits full of activity and full of energy, who are pressing, who are rushing forward, to great and capital objects, when you oblige them to be continually looking back. While they are defending one service they defraud you of a hun- dred. Applaud us when we run; console us when we fall; cheer us when we recover; but let us pass on—for God’s sake, let us pass on!” I venture to quote these words of everlasting wisdom from one of the greatest masters of the English language and of English political science, because they well express that kind of public edu- cation which the mere experience of life ought to give us, quite irrespective of the special political party to which one may be attached. No doubt, as Mr. Burke says, itis extremely difficult to know how far to concede to popular feeling, or, indeed, how far popular feeling is likely to be correct. We must all work with such instruments as are at hand. Yet not in politics only, but in all public affairs, not on one side only, but on both sides of public life, it is a peculiar danger of the genera- tion in which our lot is cast, that we are often tempted to abandon the lofty and independent line which Mr, Burke and the electors of Bristol then assumed. Often, more often, I fear, than in the days of our fathers, we meanly abdicate the function of leading the opinion of those whom we ought to lead, and prefer to follow the opinion of those who are no better—who are, it may be, worse than ourselves. Sometimes, instead of choosing courses which we believe to be for the good of the country, or for the good, even, of the particular principles which we represent, we are weak enough to bow to the temporary exigencies of some passing war-cry on which we ourselves have no conviction at all, and which we only en- courage for the purpose of acquiring power or in- fluence to ourselves or our friends. It would be easy to illustrate this branch of public education by examples nearer home; but let us take the ca- reer of that distinguished French statesman who has just gone to his rest. M. Thiers had, no doubt, many faults, and upon his memory will always rest the burden of one or two of the greatest misfor- tunes which have overtaken his country; but it is to the later years of his course that I would call your attention. When during the German War

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264 of 1870 the condition of France had become well- nigh desperate; when the passions, whether of the people or of their leaders, still refused to ac- cept even the slightest proposals of peace, it was predicted by sagacious persons, both in France and in England, that the difficulty of arriving at any termination of that disastrous conflict was en- hanced by the circumstance that any statesman, who ventured so far to resist the torrent of na- tional frenzy as to make overtures to Germany, would be certain to forfeit every chance of future political success. One man, however, in that ex- treme emergency, was found sufficiently patriotic to sacrifice the objects of his own ambition—vast as it was—to what he believed to be the good of his country, That man was Adolphe Thiers. And what was the result? All the predictions of which I have spoken were signally falsified. The act of pacification, by which it was believed that his personal career was ruined, became the stepping- stone by which, without dissent, and with almost universal applause, he mounted to the highest place in the government of his country. And yet, once more, bardly had he been there seated, when a second catastrophe overtook the nation, before which, some of those who usually under- took to inspire and lead the masses, turned and fled in dismay. The Commune was in possession of Paris ; the working-classes of that great me- tropolis had seized the citadel of the state. Again it was predicted that no minister who undertook the terrible task of suppressing that formidable insurrection could ever regain the confidence or the affection of the mass of the Parisian people. And yet, what was the result? After a recon- quest of the capital, accompanied by severities which I do not presume to judge, but which cer- tainly were not calculated to conciliate the regard of those whose power was thus summarily broken, the same statesman was conveyed to his grave— lamented not merely by the upper classes of soci- ety, which he had preserved from ruin, but with a singular and mysterious silence and solemnity of grief through the midst of the very population which he had thus rudely vanquished. I repeat that I do not refer to these incidents as an advo- cate of that remarkable man—he has much to an- swer for; and I am not here either to defend or to condemn—but these acts in the last great epoch of his life are an encouragement to all those who, in the spirit of Edmund Burke, are steadfast to the dictates of their own consciences, confident that they will reap their reward before God and posterity, but not without the just hope that they may even reap it in the gratitude of those whose THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. folly they have resisted. These and the like acts are lessons to us that the people have, at the bot- tom of their hearts, more sense and more justice than we give them credit for. We may trust that the mass of our fellow-countrymen, if we have had the courage in a good cause to thwart their unreasoning frenzy, will acknowledge at last that they were mistaken, and that we were right. This is the education of public life, on which much more might be said—on which I could not say less; but on which, perhaps, I have said enough. 9. There is one more general remark on the education of experience which brings us back to our college. We live in these days more rapidly than our fathers did; we see more changes; we live, as it is said, many lives in one. Now, of this rapid growth and various experience, there is one important lesson. It shows us how great are the possibilities and capabilities of human ex- istence, A friend of mine last year with singular courage accomplished the rare and difficult task of ascending Mount Ararat. Two days after he had come down, his companion explained to an Armenian Archimand¢rite at the foot of the moun- tain what my friend had done. The venerable man sweetly smiled, and said, “It is impossi- ble.” “But,” said the interpreter, “this travel- er has been up and has returned.” “ No,” said the Archimandrite, “no one ever has ascend- ed and no one ever will ascend Mount Ararat,” This belief in the impossibility of what has been done is uncommon, but the belief in the impos- sibility of what may be done is very common ; and it is one delightful peculiarity of the history of Bristol that it enables us to bear up against this natural prejudice. It might have been thought impossible that there should have been discov- ered a North America as well as a South America. Yet it was discovered by a Venetian seaman, who sailed from the harbor of Bristol. It was thought that no steamer could ever cross the Atlantic, Dr. Lardner proved to demonstration in this very city of Bristol that such an event could never take place; and the late Lord Derby said that of the first steamer which crossed he would en- gage to swallow the boiler! Yet such a steamer started from the docks of Bristol, and safely reached New York. Jt might have been thonght that there was something impossible in the idea of a beneficent institution, living from hand to mouth, supported by the indomitable faith of one man, living on Providence. Yet this also has been fulfilled on Ashley Down. It might have been thought impossible that the rough lads of

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THE GREEK MIND IN Kingswood should ever be reformed, or that the women of India should ever be moulded by Eu- ropean influences. Yet this also was accomplished in our own day by the faith and energy of a wise and gentle woman, dear to Bristol—Mary Carpen- ter. It might have been thought impossible that an institution like this should ever have sprung into existence, that Oxford should ever have come to Bristol—that three hundred Bristol stu- dents should have been listening to lecturers from Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin. Yet it has been done. All these discoverers have ascended Mount Ararat ; and, though the most incredulous Archimandrite may shake his head and sweetly | smile, and say that it cannot be, yet these things, | great and small, have been achieved—and achieved | in safety. PRESENCE OF DEATH. 265 all of us Merchant Venturers—we all of us must venture something, if we would leave something worth living for—nay, if we would have something to look forward to hereafter. Nil desperandum must be written, as in the porch of the Redcliffe Church, so over the entrance of every stage of our existence. Yes, over every stage. For this is the last word I will venture to say concerning the educa- tion of life. In the transformation of opinion which is imperceptibly affecting all our concep- tions of the future state, and in the perplexities and doubts which this transformation excites, the idea that comes with the most solid force and abiding comfort to the foreground is the belief | that the whole of our human existence is an edu- | cation—not merely, as Bishop Butler said, a pro- This is one of the best fruits of the education | bation for the future, but an education which of after-life. It encourages the hope that impos- sibilities may become not only possibilities but actualities. There is a great company here of the “ Merchant Venturers,” called so, I am told, because they made some of those mighty vent- ures in former times by which new lands were found—new wealth and knowledge poured into this ancient city. But there are still many voy- ages to be made, still much wealth to be ex- pended, still new Ararats to be scaled. We are shall reach into the future. The possibilities that overcome the impossibilities in our actual expe- rience show us that there may yet be greater possibilities which shall overcome the yet more formidable impossibilities lying beyond our expe- rience, beyond our sight, beyond the last great change of all. Through all these changes, and toward that unseen goal, in the words of Mr. Burke, “let us pass on—for God's sake, let us pass on!” —Macmillan’s Magazine. THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH, INTERPRETED FROM RELIEFS AND INSCRIPTIONS ON ATHENIAN TOMBS. By PERCY T Athens the gravestones of the ancient inhabitants are not only among the most interesting, but among the most extensive, re- mains. Near Pireus, through all the Ceramicus, and in many other parts of the city, excavations have constantly brought to light a vast quantity of inscribed and sculptured slabs and columns, which have mostly, unlike antiquities of many other classes, remained at Athens, and now fill one wing of the new museum and the whole space in front. But there is a group of gravestones of even greater interest which are left standing, just where they were disinterred, by the old road _ which led through the gate Dipylon, from Athens to Eleusis, the road annually trodden by the pro- cession at the Eleusinia. These tombs, in size and beauty superior to the rest, are preserved for GARDNER. us, as is supposed, by a fortunate chance.’ Sulla, when he attacked Athens and remorselessly mas- sacred the miserable inhabitants, made his ap- proach close to the gate Dipylon. There he erected the long aggeres by which his engines were brought close to the wall, and there his sol- diers threw down several hundred yards of the city ramparts, which were formed of sun-baked bricks. Hence a vast mass of ruin which com- pletely overwhelmed and buried the lines of tombs immediately without the gate, and pre- served them almost uninjured until one day when they were once more brought to the light by a French archeological expedition in the year 1863. The suddenness with which these monuments were overwhelmed is indicated by the fact that 1 See F. Lenormant's “ Voie Eleusinienne,” vol. 1,

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266 some of them were and remained unfinished ; the completeness of their disappearance is proved by the silence of Pausanias the traveler, who, pass- ing through all quarters of Athens in the time of the Antonines, would appear to have seen no trace of them. All of the monuments in this group are of course indubitably Athenian, and furnish the best materials for the present paper. Of the stones in the museum it is sometimes im- possible to trace the find-spot ; some are Beeotian, some from Peloponnesus, some from the islands. But this uncertainty need not debar us from free- ly referring to almost any as instances, for there is no great or essential difference between Athe- nian and other gravestones. It will be quite fair to treat, for the present purpose, all monuments preserved at Athens as Athenian, unless they be known to have come from a distance. Of the longer inscriptions a large proportion are from the tombs of foreign residents at Athens. To the readers who are likely to peruse these pages, there are but two points in gravestones likely to prove very interesting: 1. The reliefs which they bear;' 2. The inscriptions engraven on them. The earliest of Athenian sepulchral monu- ments, if we leave out of account buildings like the Cyclopean tombs of Mycenz, or mounds like those recently opened with such splendid results at Spata, in Attica, is the often-cited stélé of Aristion. It represents the deceased on a scale somewhat larger than life, as standing clad in full armor, spear in hand. The ground of the relief is red; traces of color may be seen, or rather might at the time of discovery be seen, on many parts of the body, and holes may be observed made by the pegs which fastened armor of bronze on to the body. The design or idea of this slab differs not much from that of a portrait statue. Clearly in early Greek times, for this statue is given to the very beginning of the fifth century B. c., the survivors wished to see in the monument the dead, as it were, still living among them, still to be seen in his daily dress, and about his daily business. But it is from the fourth and succeeding cen- turies before the Christian era, that we inherit the great mass of the sculptured tombstones which crowd the museums. No one can spend a few hours among these without perceiving that the 1 On the subject of these reliefs there is no complete work, but several monographs, the best of which are those of Friedlinder and Pervanoglu. Where my own notes fail I have quoted the descriptions of the latter writer. THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. representations fall naturally into four or five classes. The first class and the most extensive consists of forma] groups wanting in distinctive character, which display the dead either alone or in com- pany with others. The companions, where there are such, are sometimes other members of the family, sometimes slaves or attendants, who, in accordance with the well-known canon of Greek art, which gives larger stature to the person of more importance, are always represented as of diminutive size. Sometimes the companion is not @ person at all, but a favorite animal, a pet dog or bird. Such subjects are common im Mace- donian times. The grouping is usually simple and graceful, the attitudes natural and unforced, the movements, if movement there be, measured. But the execution is not of the best, save in a few remarkable cases, and there is a want of inven- tion, nay, there is even vulgarity, in the designs. Like our modern photographers, the inferior Greek artists who condescended to this kind of work had a few cardinal notions as to possibilities of arrangement, and could not easily be induced to depart from them. I will give the details of a few reliefs of this class: 1. A seated lady, who with her left hand holds the end of the veil whieh covers her face; before her stands a man, facing her. 2. A pair of sisters, Demetria and Pamphile. Pamphile is seated, and turns her head toward the spectator; with her right hand she grasps the end of herveil. Demetria stands over against her, her right hand folded across her breast, and grasps her veil with her left hand. 3. A man clad in long imation stands, in his hand a scroll. In front of him stands a small male figure, naked, holding a vessel, perhaps an oil-flask. The scroll which the master holds and the flask of the slave seem here to have as little meaning as the books . and the flower-baskets of photographie rooms. 4. A mother clad in flowing Ionian drapery is seated to left. Her left hand rests on the seat; with her right she lifts something from a little toilet-box which a servant holds out. Round her knees clings a little girl. 5. A lad stands clasping to his breast a bird which a snake at his feet threatens and springs upward to reach. In other reliefs we find a dog in the place of the snake ; sometimes a dog is standing elsewhere in the picture. Tame birds would seem to have been the usual playmates of Athenian children, and tame dogs the constant companions of young men, while in many houses a favorite which would be rarely appreciated in England, a snake, was nurtured.

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® ~~ Feaweenmvrrweecere & — SE! Sl lO As this is the commonest class of reliefs, so evidently it is the least original and interesting. Here most is left to the sorry invention and feeble sympathy of the sculptor, who knew naught of the deceased, and allows us to know no more than could be ascertained from the sources of information which among the old Greeks corre- sponded to the first column of the Zimes or the pages of Burke with us. But it is by po means rare to find on sepulchral slabs a more exact ref- erence to the past life or the habits of the dead. Sometimes we are told more than the bare fact that the departed was father, mother, wife, or sister—was young, old, or in the prime of life. I select the following: 1. A youth, naked, or wear- ing the light chlamys only, stands holding in his hand the strigil and oil-flask, those invariable ac- companiments of gymnastic exercises among the Greeks. No doubt the survivors, who chose the design, wished to indicate that their friend was prominent in manly sports and labors. In this, the field of his best energies, they wished him still to seem to live. 2. A young man, clad in a chlamys, charges with spear advanced a wild-boar, which is coming out of its lair; at his side is a dog, which leaps forward at the quarry. Above, on arock, standsadeer. We see ata glance that this is the tomb of one who loved the chase. 3. On a rock sits a man in an attitude of grief; be- neath is the sea, and on it a boat with or without sailors. It is a generally-received opinion that monuments of this character were set up over those who had been wreckedatsea. 4. A young rider, clad in the light chlamys of the Athenian cavalry, charges, at once trampling beneath his horse’s hoofs and transfixing with his spear a fallen foe, who tries in vain with his shield to ward off the attack of his triumphant enemy. From the accompanying inscription we know that this monument was erected in honor of Dexilaus, one | of the five horsemen at Corinth—that is to say, as is supposed, one of the five horsemen who fell in the battle under the walls of Corinth, in which the Athenians were engaged in the year B. c. 394. The relief thus dates almost from the best time of Attic art, and it is worthy of its time. It does not, of course, represent the moment of the death of the young warrior; we see him strong and triumphant, such as his friends would fain have seen him always; to show him fallen would have suited an enemy rather thanafriend. 5. Another relief, although set up in honor of a man of Ascalon, is clearly of Athenian handiwork and design. A sleeping man rests onacouch. Close to his head rises on its hind-paws a lion, who is | THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. — 267 clearly ready to slay or carry him off. On the other side of the couch is a warrior who attacks and repels the beast. In the background appears the prow of aship. From a Greek metrical in- scription which accompanies this relief, it would appear that the Pheenician stranger here buried had incurred great peril at some previous period of his life from the attack of a lion, who seems to have surprised him resting on the shore, but who was driven off by the timely arrival of friends just landed from their ship. 6. A man and his wife, both muffled in ample garments, advance toward the spectator. Between them advances a priestess of Isis, clad in the dress of her calling, holding in her right hand the sistrum, in her left the ves- sel of sacred water. It is possible, the inscrip- tions which accompany this representation being illegible, that the monument was erected to a father and mother, and to their daughter devoted to Isis. Or it is possible that we have here ex- pressed in a symbolical form the devotion of a man and woman to that mysterious worship which spread in Ptolemaic times from the bank of the Nile over all lands, and their firm trust that in the next world Isis would recognize and protect her worshipers. | Such are a few specimens of the reliefs which give us more precise information with regard to the lives and habits of the dead. In the same way, those who had devoted themselves to a pro- fession appear on their tombs with the badges of that profession ; physicians, for instance, with the cupping-glass and other instruments of their daily use. So the priestesses of Apollo and Aphrodite appear with the symbols of their guardian dei- ties. And in this matter it is clear that the Athe- nians merely followed one of the most natural of all instincts leading to a custom common among all nations. Thus in the “Odyssey,” the ghost of the drowned oarsman, Elpenor, begs Ulysses, when he reaches the island of ea: “ Raise thou a tomb upon the shore beside the hoary sea, Memorial of my blighted life for future times to be ; Make thou my tomb beside the sea, and on it fix the oar, Which once among my comrades dear, while yet I lived, I bore.” And thus, even in our own day, what device is commoner on a soldier’s grave than sword and cannon, or on a painter’s than palette and brush? But although the sculptors of tombs usually designed references to the past life of those they commemorated, such was not always the case. After all, past was past, and it were idle to deny

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268 that the moment of death brought a vast change over everything. The next class of reliefs have reference to the fact and the moment of death. Among the Romans that fact was symbolized in art frequently by sleep; and among all Christian naticns it has become usual to speak of death in metaphorical language borrowed from the rest of night. But it was not usually merely as a deeper sleep that death presented itself to the imagi- nation of Athenian sculptors, They considered death rather as a departure, a going far away from and losing sight of one’s family and friends. Scenes of leave-taking are among the most fre- quent of all sepulchral reliefs. I am not, how- ever, sure that this leave-taking is quite con- sciously adopted as the image of death. Indeed, all images of death were somewhat distasteful to the joyous sensuousness of Athenian taste. But when an artist had to represent the dead and the surviving friends of the dead in a group, this post- ure of farewell, which must have been one of the most usual and natural to think of, seems to have frequently suggested itself, and, in virtue of its inherent appropriateness to the occasion, to have become more and more common. This leave-taking presents itself in the least intrusive and gentlest form in those representations where a lady appears dressing herself with the assist- ance of her maids for an out-door journey, throw- ing over her head the ample veil, and perhaps handing to an attendant nurse the babe whom she cannot take out into the open air with her. Some- times the preparations are more advanced; the lady sits or stands veiled and prepared for a jour- ney, and gives her hand to husband or father who stands opposite. Sometimes two men grasp hands as if about to travel in different directions. Occasionally a horse appears in the background, or the head of a horse is seen through a window, which is destined to carry away the master of the house. In this very introduction of the horse we see how much the notion of travel preponder- ates in those scenes over that of death. For the horse was in no way connected by the Greeks with death. The rider on the pale horse had yet to be introduced to the popular imagination by the writer of the Apocalypse, who must have horrowed from a non-Hellenic source. Dwelling closely hemmed in by the sea, they never thought of the dead as traveling to other worlds by land, but usually as going over the waves mysterious and vast to some distant island, or perhaps as penetrating into deep abysses of the land. But, for journeys from town to town in Hellas, the horse was the appropriate conveyer, from which THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. fact he hecomes the symbol of all moving and journeying. The old opinion of archeologists with regard to these scenes of farewell, an opinion grounded on insufficient induction, was that in them the dead were represented as seated, the survivors as standing and taking leave of them. It is now acknowledged that this is not thecase. It is true that most commonly in the groups one is seated, while of the standing figures one grasps his or her hand. But a careful study of the accompanying inscriptions proves that it is sometimes the dead person who stands while the survivor sits; and, again, in other cases both the dead and the living stand, while sometimes, again, of the several dead persons commemorated some stand and some are seated. The fact is that any pedantic rule of uni- formity is put out of the question by the circum- stances under which sepulchral reliefs were de- signed and executed. It was essential to the composition of a group, thought the artists, that some of the figures should stand and others sit ; but the question which should do each was set- tled, not by a desire to convey a careful meaning to the eyes of beholders, but by the study of a little graceful variety, within somewhat narrow limits, and the influence of every-day custom which made it far more natural and usual that a woman should be seated when taking leave of a man, than a man when taking leave of a woman. Sometimes a little life breaks in on the cold for- mality of the group. Children cling about their mother’s knee, or daughters stand by in an atti- tude betokening their grief; but those circum- stances which might move emotion in the specta- tor are quite banished or kept sedulously in the background. Here, as ever, the Greek abode by that motto, “Nothing in extremes,” which ex- presses the ultimate law of all his art. Another set of representations introduce us to a scene of banqueting.' 1. A man reclines on a couch in the posture adopted by the Greeks at their meals—before him a three-legged table. Near his head sits a woman on a chair, holding in her hand the end of her veil. 2. Similar two fig- ures appear to those in the last relief, but in ad- dition there is in the foreground a slave pouring wine from a larger into a smaller vessel. 8. A man reclining at table holds a cup in his right hand; near him sits his wife, behind whom is a slave pouring wine from an amphora. Behind the 1M. Albert Dumont has published a volume on this class of monuments. The work has been crowned by the French Institute, but I have been unable to finds copy in English libraries.

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TCeROSOREKPseo da ssoad & F oe - SS VS Se wae F ee THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 269 couch stands a draped bearded figure ; beneath it is a dog gnawing at some fragment of food. In the place of this dog we elsewhere find a snake. 4. Two men recline side by side on a couch; in front of one is a three-legged table laden with food. At the two extremities of the couch sit two women. In the foreground is.a galley, of which the oars, but not the rowers, are visible, in which is seated a weird figure with matted locks, clad in a short, rough cloak, who stretches his hand toward one of the reclining banqueters. This latter figure has usually been taken for the ferryman of the dead, Charon, come to claim the feasters as his passengers into the next world. In scenes of this character, also, it is not unusual to find in the background a horse, or at least the head of one; here, too, the coming journey throws its shadow over the group. With the sculptures of this class are frequent- ly associated a set of representations, which would seem to have something more than a casu- al connection with them, though the exact nature of such connection is very obscure. I refer to the ez voto tablets commonly set up in Greek temples by those who had escaped from disease, peril, or death, in honor of the deity to whom they attributed their deliverance, and for a lasting me- morial of their gratitude. Such tablets have been found in special abundance in the temeni, sacred to Hades or Sarapis, as god of the nether world, and of Asklepius and Hygieia. When Sarapis is the deity this honored, he appears on the tablet as reclining on a couch, on his head the modius, which is the symbol of his dominion in realms be- low, and sometimes as accompanied by his bride Isis or Persephone. A train of worshipers ap- proaches from the side of the tablet, bringing in animals for sacrifice. Of the ez voto tablets dedi- cated to the deities of healing, perhaps the clear- est specimen appears copied on certain coins of the city of Perinthus, in Thrace. On these we see Asklepius reclining on a couch. Beside him sits his daughter Hygieia, and in front is a three- legged table laden with food, at the feet of which is a serpent. From the side enters a train of vo- taries dragging in a sacrificial pig. Above, a cluster of arms hangs on a peg, and through a window appears the head of a horse who stands without. It is not easy to understand the sym- bolism of all parts of these pictures, but the gen- eral meaning cannot be doubtful. We see in them representations of the gratitude of those whose health was restored in the temples of the deity Asklepius, the hospitals of antiquity. The train of worshipers represents their family, and the pig of the reliefs had, doubtless, his original in an animal actually sacrificed to the god. Why the horse and the arms appear in the background we need not try to ascertain. It will be easily understood how difficult it sometimes becomes, in the absence of inscriptions, to tell whether a relief is to be classed among the ez voto tablets of deities or among sepulchral scenes. In many cases we seem to be near the border-line between the two classes of monuments, as in the following: Two men recline on a couch, each of them holding a drinking-horn. By them sits a woman, while a slave in the foreground is engaged in pouring wine into a vessel, In front appears a three-legged table, beneath which is a snake ; in the corner is seen a horse’s head. Here horse’s head and snake remind us of the ez voto tablets, although there can be little doubt that the subject is from a tomb. Both horse’s head and snake reappear in the following, which seems to belong to the ez voto class of monuments: Two men recline on a couch, one holding a drinking- horn. On either side a woman is seated. Three figures approach in the attitude of worshipers. Now, the greatest perplexity has arisen from the confusion of two classes of reliefs, which may, indeed, have something in common, but are wide- ly different in meaning. To separate finally the classes, and to trace out their ultimate connec- tion with each other, is a work still to be done, and one which will require patience and judgment. Meantime we may perhaps be permitted to ex- press doubt whether there is a single relief proved by inscription or other circumstance to be from a tomb in which worshipers appear in the act of sacrifice or adoration. Wherever these are seen it seems reasonable, in the absence of evi- dence to the contrary, to assume that the monu- ment is erected in honor of a deity, not in mem- ory of aman. But all the scenes where simple feasting is going on, where servants are decant- ing wine, and wives seated, according to the Greek custom, near the couch on which their feasting husbands recline, may be presumed to be sepulchral until proved to be otherwise. There are three theories, all well supported by the voice of learned men, as to the meaning of these scenes of feasting on tombs. According to the first view, what is represented is the dead supping in Hades. This theory was mainly based upon the confusion above pointed out. The per- son reclining on the couch was thought to be fre- quently receiving worship and sacrifice. Some- times on his head he was supposed to bear the modius, the emblem worn by Sarapis in his char-

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270 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. acter of deity of the lower world. Therefore it was assumed that the dead man was deified and represented as receiving high honor from the living. If, however, we allow as sepulchral only the scenes whence worshipers are excluded, then there remains nothing godlike or manes-like in the banqueting figure; we lose all reason for supposing the scene of the banquet to be Hades. Moreover, where the husband reclines there sits the wife; if this be in Hades, how is it that the wife was usually surviving, in fact often erected the tomb to the husband’s memory? And, in- ’ deed, nothing could be more dissonant with Greek ideas than to ascribe a glorified existence after death to mortals indiscriminately; at the best Hades was shadowy and cold, and a banquet there would be but a faint and feeble echo of earthly banquets, quite untouched by any high exaltation or any worship from the happier liv- ing. The second theory is that we have in these scenes, in emblematic form, pictures of those feasts at the tomb which the Greeks in ancient, as in modern days, spread from time to time, lest the departed should suffer hunger in the next world, That.the dead have the same needs as the living is a notion widely spread among bar- barians and semi-civilized peoples. For this rea- son the savage buries with the dead chief his horse, perhaps his wife: for this reason many of the nations of antiquity stored bread and wine in the tombs with the corpse. The early Greeks not only buried weapons with the dead, but even whetstones to keep the edges of those weapons bright ; and commonly placed in the mouth of each corpse a piece of money to defray the ex- penses of his journey to the next world. Thus, too, on certain days the survivors held a feast at the tomb of a departed friend, leaving place for the dead and supposing him to partake in the spirit. It is quite possible that this may be the true account of the matter. Nevertheless, I am more inclined to accept the third of the suggested ex- planations, namely, that what we see before us on these reliefs is neither more nor less than a daily scene from the ordinary life of the dead person. If the toilet be represented on the tomb, why should not the family meal, that most charming and most characteristic of all daily scenes ? How could husband and wife be shown us in more close and amiable proximity than when feasting together, and feeling the same thrill of pleasure from the enjoyment of earthly good? A priori we should have expected eating to be a favorite subject with the composers of sepulchral groups, and should beware of seeking a far-off explana- tion of our scenes when a nearer one will suffice. It is true that there are, even in the scenes un- doubtedly sepulchral, some adjuncts which seem scarcely in keeping with the ordinary dinner- table—the snake, for instance, in the foreground and the horse in the background ; but of these an explanation is possible. The snake was com- monly domesticated among the Greeks, and so may appear only as a domestic animal. But I prefer the explanation which is ready to see in it an allusion to the future death of the banqueting master of the house, the snake being in many countries, on account of its habit of living in the ground, looked upon as the companion and rep- resentative of the dead. In the same way the horse may only convey a delicate allusion to fu- ture departure on a long journey. Such slight allusions would seem to suit Greek taste better than more direct references. More direct refer- ences, however, do sometimes appear, as in the relief mentioned above as No. 4, where Charon in his bark appears to summon the feasters from their wine. There are still other ways in which, on the sepulchral reliefs which, so to speak, introduce us into the midst of life, a faint allusion to death, a slight flavor of mortality, is introduced. We often see an urn placed in a corner, such an urn as when a body was burned received its ashes, or such as was set up, as we learn feom Demos- thenes, over those who died unmarried. Like the skeleton at an Egyptian feast, this urn would seem meant to show that in the gayest moment of life death hovers near, waiting to strike. The same moral is conveyed in other cases, by the ap- pearance at the side or in the foreground of a snake entwined round a tree; the snake being, as I have already remarked, the companion of the dead, sometimes even the embodiment of the dead man’s spirit or ghost. And in scenes where there is no allusion to death so concrete or con- ventional as the above, there is over all an aspect of grief and dissatisfaction. Children or slaves are weeping without apparent cause, or women stand with an arm folded across their breasts, their head resting on a hand, in an attitude con- secrated by the Greeks to sorrow, not as among us to mere reflection. All the scenes of which I have spoken have this in common, that they represent to us the de- ceased, with or without the living. But some- times, though rarely, the Greeks substituted for these groups a merely symbolical figure of an

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wTrwrreeTre Te a ee ed THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 271 animal or some fabulous creature. On a tomb at Athens, erected in memory of one Leon, stands a marble lion, evidently in punning allusion to his name. Over the tomb of the celebrated courte- san Lais, in the suburbs of Corinth, was a group representing a lioness standing over a prostrate ram—a symbol the reference of which to the ex- traordinary career and splendid success of the woman is evidently appropriate. Stone snakes often guarded a tomb, in imitation of the living snakes sure soon to glide about it, on the same principle on which, when the Athenians sought a floral decoration for # stélé, they selected the acanthus, which is notorious for freely growing among stones. But it was especially the forms of female monsters—sirens, sphinxes, and har- pies—which were selected for the adornment of tombs. All these were spoken of in legend as fatal evils, carrying off to death young men and maidens. The sirens especially slew the young after attracting them by the sweetness of their singing, and so well became the graves of those who were lost in the mid ardor of their pursuit of the delights of youth. Battles of heroes and Amazons, Dionysiac revels, and mythological scenes, occurring on sarcophagi, belong invariably to Roman times, and represent phases of thought quite other than those suggested by the reliefs inspired by genuine Greek feeling. It is extremely seldom that any mythological subject is found on Greek tombs at all. Indeed, I am aware but of two instances. Charon is allowed, by the general consent of archeologists, to be represented in a scene above described. And in another very interesting rep- resentation—which, however, is not Athenian— Hermes appears as the conductor of souls, lead- ing gently by the hand a young girl to the future world. So small is the part played by the gods im sepulchral scenes. Not a trace appears of scenes of future happiness or misery, no allusion to that future judgment of souls which is so prominently brought before us in Egyptian pict- ures, Only, in times when the Egyptian worship of Sarapis and Isis had penetrated to Athens, and served there to impart purer and higher views as to future punishment and reward, we do some- times find the priestess of Isis going before the departed with all pomp of worship to guide them through the perils of the last journey, and lead them to a safe resting-place. But these scenes only illustrate the triumph of the religious no- tions of the Egyptians over the susceptible Greeks at a time when their national city life was extinct, and they were driven by the fewer attrac- tions of the present life to think more about the possibilities of the next. It seems to be desirable, in view of the un- founded assertions so frequently set forth on the subject of Greek art, to gather what light we can on that most interesting subject from the facts above summarized. In doing so, however, it is above all things necessary to bear in mind the conditions under which sepulchral monuments were designed and executed. And, first, it is quite clear that, where several persons who died at intervals are buried in one tomb, they cannot all have been adequately represented in the re- lief which would naturally be the production of a single time. A citizen dies, and a relief is erected over his body, perhaps representing him as taking a farewell of his wife, while his infant son stands by. This same son, maybe, dies in middle life and is buried with his father, and an epigram is inserted on the monument stating the fact. It may thus happen that a man of thirty or forty may appear in the sepulchral relief as an infant. Such slight inconsistencies are insep- arable from the nature of these monuments. But it must be confessed that sometimes between in- scription and sculpture there are contradictions which cannot be thus easily explained, and which raise serious reflections, The fact is that the conviction is forced upon us, by the comparison of a multitude of instances, that very often the relief placed on a tomb did not possess much ref- erence to its contents. There can be no doubt that the more ordinary sorts of representations were made in numbers by the sculptors, and, as we should phrase it, kept in stock by them for customers to choose from. And, if the would-be buyer found a group of which the general out- line and arrangement suited him, he would searce- ly decline to purchase it because it was not en- tirely appropriate, because it made his wife look twenty years too young, or even turned the boys of his family into girls. Like a true Athenian he would probably be more disposed to make use of such a discrepancy as an argument to induce the seller to Jower his price than to incur the expense of having a new slab executed on purpose for him. Those who are let into this secret will not be surprised if they occasionally find a subject repeated exactly on two tombs without variation, nor if a sculptured group is little in harmony with the inscribed list of the dead. Even in those cases in which a relief was executed by special order on the death of a per- son, a relief adapted in plan and intended in de- tails to represent the deceased happy amid his

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272 family or pursuing his favorite avocation, we must not expect too much. Even here, the sculptor confines himself to a generalized or idealized representation. Probably he knew naught of the dead, almost certainly he took no pains to exactly imitate the living. Hence the same conventional types, the bearded man, the veiled woman, the girl, the infant, repeat them- selves almost without variety, through all the Macedonian period of Athenian graves. The men who appear on sepulchral reliefs of the same period are as much alike one to another as the horsemen of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the fighting heroes of the “gina pediments. In Roman times this is far less the case ; but, among the Greeks of the fourth and third centuries B. c., the artist was careful only of the type, and care- less of the individual peculiarities; so far at least as existing remains enable us to judge. Nevertheless, it is quite an error to suppose that the Athenians were all cast in one mould. They differed one from another quite as much as an equal number of Englishmen taken at random. And of this the proof is conclusive. For there still exists at Athens a remarkable series of por- traits of those citizens who in succeeding years undertook the office of gymnasiarch. This series stretches over a long period, and while it is true that that period belongs to the decline, not the flourishing greatness of the city, yet there is no reason to believe that at the time Athenian blood had been very much mixed with that of other races, or the type deteriorated. Taking these statues, then, as portraits of some of the most prominent Athenian citizens, and probably some of the purest-blooded, what do we find? One head is almost African in type, with thick lips and woolly hair ; one might be taken for that of an English judge; one for that of an Italian street-musician. Looking on these faces, one can scarcely believe that the artists did not grossly exaggerate the salient characteristics of the faces of those they had to portray. And even if it were 80, we may safely affirm that an Athenian crowd of the period must have contained as many widely-divergent types as an English or French one. So of the Greek princes who reigned dur- ing the third and second centuries before the Christian era over the disjecta membra, the frag- ments of the empire of the Great Alexander, we possess quite a portrait-gallery in their numerous and excellent coins. Here, too, we find the widest variety of type, many coins presenting to us heads which no one, whose knowledge of Greek art was superficial, would suppose to be Greek at all. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. But although individual Greeks differed thus widely one from another, and although, in the Alexandrine times of Greek art, artists quite un- derstood the art of taking portraits, yet through. out the forms and features of those sculptured on tombs are quite conventionally rendered. And in nothing does one see more clearly than here the blending of Attic good taste with Attic super. ficiality, and dislike of too deep or too persistent emotion. For a tombstone calling up in a gen- eral way past life and past happiness would be a constant source of emotion, gentle and melan- choly, but not too intense in degree; while the sight of the very features of dead father, mother, wife, or child, would be too startling, and cause far more pain than pleasure. We moderns are less afraid of pain, and, when we place on tombs any representation of the dead at all, make it as exact a likeness as we can. But most, even now, prefer a mere slab in the graveyard, and a por- trait in the family-room or the bedroom. The sources of these generalized types of man, youth, woman, and child, are of course to be found in the common feeling of the Hellenic nation, working through the brains and hands of the ablest statuaries. As in the accepted type of Zeus, the Greek sculptures embodied all that seemed to them most venerable, wise, and majes- tic ; as in the accepted type of Apollo, they com- bined youthful beauty with supreme dignity ; so in the accepted type of matron they strove to embody all the matronly virtues, in the young girl all childish grace and promise, in the beard- ed man the dignity and self-control of 2 worthy citizen, such as Aristides or Epaminondas. The type was fixed in the case of human beings, as in the case of the Hellenic deities, by the sculptures of the generation which succeeded those who had fought at Marathon and Platee, and altered but little after that until the collapse of Hellenic in- dependence and Hellenic art. Goethe has expressed, in a passage which cannot be too often quoted, the ultimate truth about Greek sepulchral reliefs : ‘The wind which blows from the tombs of the ancients comes with gentle breath as over a mound of roses. The reliefs are touching and pathetic, and always represent life. There stand father and mother, their son between them, gazing at one an- other with unspeakable truth to nature. Here a pair clasp hands. Here a father seems to rest on his couch and wait to be entertained by his fami- ly. To me, the presence of these scenes was very touching. Their art is of a late period, yet are they simple, natural, and of universal interest.

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THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 273 Here there is no knight in harness on his knees awaiting a joyful resurrection. The artist has with more or less skill presented to us only the persons themselves, and so made their existence lasting and perpetual. They fold not their hands, gaze not into heaven ; they are on earth, what they were, and what they are. They stand side by side, take interest in one another, love one another; and that is what is in the stone, even though some- what unskillfully, yet most pleasingly depicted.” ! It is a proof at once of the genius of Goethe, and of his keen sympathy with all that is truly Greek, that, at a time before Greek art was half understood, he was able to judge from the few inferior specimens known to him of the general character of these sepulchral reliefs. That on which he lays his master-hand is certainly their most essential character. Their whole aspect is turned, so to speak, from the future to the past, and from heaven to earth. We whose ancestors have been, for some twelve hundred years, taught constantly that death is but the entrance to wider life, that the world is a place of probation and preparation for eternity, can scarcely place our- selves in thought in the position of men who seemed to have found the world charming and delightful, and to have been well satisfied with it, preferring to let their minds dwell on the enjoy- ments of the past, rather than on a future which at best was a cold and gloomy echo of the pres- ent world. It is not that they disbelieved in the unseen world, or thought that the soul died with the body ; such skepticism was perhaps rarer in antiquity than in modern times, and confined in antiquity as in modern times to a few of the highly-educated. But that inevitable future oc- cupied comparatively very little of their time and thought; it was a cold shadow to be kept out of sunny life as much as might be. And when it was thought of, it was thought of without very much either of hope or fear. Terrible pun- ishments in it were reserved for terrible crimi- nals, supreme pleasures for the supremely good, but for ordinary mortals an ordinary fate was reserved, a sort of ghost or echo of their mor- tal life, made up, like that, of pleasure and pain, but with both pleasure and pain diluted and made ghostly. From discontent with life and repining at the lot assigned by Fate, the Greeks would seem to have been singularly free, and no nation ever thought life better worth living. I shall have more to say on this subject further on. It remains to speak of the inscriptions which 1“Ttalienische Reise,” @ propos of the museum at Verona. 54

accompany, or even take the place of, the re- liefs, and which have sometimes a considerable interest for us. It will be convenient to quote these inscriptions in English; those who wish to compare the original Greek can easily do so in the complete work of Kumanudes.' There are in the British Museum two sepul- chral inscriptions on public tombs* of consider- able interest. Of these one contains lists of all the citizens who fell in a single year at the va- rious places where Athens was carrying on war. We learn from Thucydides and Pausanias that it was the Athenian custom thus annually to honor with a public monument all those who had in the previous year fallen in the battles of their country—a custom which must have nerved for death many a soldier's heart, as he reflected that he was sure, if he fell, of a sort of immortality before the eyes and in the memory of his coun- trymen. The other inscription, which was writ- ten under a relief representing three warriors, commemorates those Athenians who fell before Potidea, in the year 3. c. 432. It runs thus: “ Thus to the dead is deathless honor paid, Who, fired with valor hot, in arms arrayed, Felt each our fathers’ valor in him glow, And won long fame and victory o’er the foe. “ Heaven claimed their spirits, earth their bodies took, The foemen’s gate their conquering onslaught shook ; Of those they routed some in earth abide, Some in strong walls their lives in terror hide. “ Erechtheus’ city mourns her children’s fall, Who fought and died by Potidewa’s wall, True sons of Athens, for a virtuous name They changed their lives, and swelled their coun- try’s fame.” The smallness of the number of public epi- taphs at Athens is well compensated by the abun- dance of private ones, of which upward of 4,000 have been already published, while every year brings a multitude of fresh ones to light. I will attempt to class these, as I did the reliefs. The commonest inscriptions by far are those which simply record, in the case of a man, his name, his father’s name, and his deme or clan; in the case of a woman, her name, that of her father, husband, or husband and father, with their re- spectivedemes. Of the numerous epitaphs which remain, perhaps nine out of ten are of this sim- ple character. Probably in most cases they are 1 "Arrucis "Ewvypadal "Ewurvufior. Athens, 1871. 2 “ Corpus of British Musenm Inscriptions,” i., pp. 102-107. The reading of the firet few lines is very doubtful. I follow Messrs. Newton and Hicks.

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274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE of the poor, but not in ‘all, for sometimes they accompany reliefs of an elaborate character, or are placed on tombs of great size and preten- sions. Than such an epitaph nothing could pos- sibly offend less against good taste, and it was probably thought somewhat sentimental and gushing at Athens to indulge in a longer met- rical sepulchral inscription. When longer in- scriptions occur, they seldom bear much sign either of taste or education, Their grammar is often doubtful, and, when in metre, they halt terribly. They clearly belong to the same class of compositions as the lame verses which abound in English graveyards. It would seem that the swans who sang thus only found their voice at death, but the death of friends, not their own. The chance of such publicity for one’s verses as may be gained by placing them on a tomb proved too attractive for them to forego. In the case of early reliefs we find usually not only the name of the dead, but also of the artist who did the work. In later times this cus- tom dropped, and we have scarcely in any case a clew to the name of the sculptor. This fact is the more curious, inasmuch as in other remains of antiquity, vases, gems, and coins, to insert the artist’s name becomes more usual as we approach the best time of art. Not many epitaphs of an earlier period than the year B. c. 400 are pre- served, nor are these, except in the case of pub- lic tombs, of special importance. One is inter- esting to students of epigraphy, as it bears an exact date, the year B. c. 430, when the plague, following in the wake of the Peloponnesian army, invaded Attica: “I am the tomb of Myriné, who died of the plague.” Another, of an ordinary Attic type, has a grace and charm which is sel- dom absent from the productions of Attica while yet unsubdued : “Let the reader pass on, be he citizen or stranger from afar, having pitied for a moment a brave man who fell in battle, and lost his young prime. Having shed a tear here, go by, and good go with you.” To the period between the falling of Athens into Lysander’s hands and the times of the Roman Antonines belongs the vast body of the epitaphs. For a more exact chronological classification the materials at present scarcely exist, it being espe- cially hard to determine the period of those in- scriptions which are not accompanied by reliefs. It is best, therefore, to divide them into classes, not by a determination of date, but rather by a consideration of drift and content, and to con- MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. sider all as belonging to one long period, a period when the Athenian Empire had indeed passed away, and external conquests were not to be hoped for; but when Athens still ruled in the realm of mind, and attracted to herself the flower of the culture of Hellas and the world. I have already said that the commonest sort of inscrip- tions comprised cnly the name of the dead, his father’s name, and that of his deme. But not un- frequently a few words of comment were added. The person who paid for the erection of the tomb liked to see some record of his liberality. Thus, a stone marks the spot where “ His sons buried Julius Zosimianus, the head of the School of Zeno,” that is, the head of the Stoics of Athens. Another records that “ Polystratus set up this portrait in memory of his brother.” We fre- quently find the trade or calling of the deceased mentioned in his epitaph. One Herakleides is stated to have been the greatest master of the catapult, a warlike machine, which seems to have required some skill in the handling. Many other trades are mentioned in connection with the dead. One was a bathing-man, another a midwife and physician, another a priestess of the all-producing Mother, probably Kybele, another second in rank in joyous comedy, another a bull-fighter. On one tomb the record ends quaintly, after mentioning that the grave contained one or two named per- sons, with the phrase, “also the others who are represented in the relief,” where the stone-mason or his instructor seems to have grown tired of a bare list of names, and stopped short in the midst. All the longer inscriptions which are found on Attic gravestones, if we except only the class of minatory or deprecatory epitaphs, which I re- serve to the last, are in metre. To this rule there are few, if any, exceptions, so that the ancient epitaph-writer could, at least, unlike the modern, claim the dura necessitas as a reason for attempt- ing a metrical composition. I shall, however, render into English prose rather than verse the specimens of these selected for purposes of illus- tration, as it would convey quite a false impres- sion if I were to disguise their oddities and crudi- ties under the smooth mantle of the English he- roic verse. The metrical epitaphs are of four kinds. Those of the first kind are in the form of a dia- logue between the dead and the surviving friend, or in some cases of a mere direct address to the dead. The simplest form which such an address can take is the zpyer? yaipe—“ Farewell, lost friend ’—which is so usual on tombs of a certain | period, but which does not, apparently, appear op

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Soro sa 398 3 = — oe. ae orlUC we we wYyrS om 6. a — eS — = Fe = |S THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 275 any which belongs certainly to an Athenian. Of this simple and touching phrase we find a num- ber of metrical amplifications : ‘“* Farewell, tomb of Melité; the best of women lies here, who loved her loving husband, Onesi- mus; thou wert most excellent, wherefore he longs for thee after thy death, for thou wert the best of wives. Farewell, thou too, dearest husband, only love my children.” But an inscription of this kind is necessarily of a late period, and but little in accord with the canon of Greek taste. No doubt, when it was set up, it was at once condemned as vulgar by people of culture. Far more usual and less extravagant is the following, which details a conversation, not with the dead, but with his tomb: “ Whose tomb are we to call thee? That of famous Nepos. And who of the children of Cecrops begat him? say. He was not of the land of Cecrops, but from Thrace.” Another epitaph, after proceeding in verse, suddenly breaks into prose: “And if you seek my name, I am Theogeiton, son of Thymo- chus of Thebes.” Of course, it is quite natural that the tombstone should thus speak in the first person in the name and on behalf of the deceased. In some of our commonest English epitaphs, such as “ Affliction sore long time I bore,” we find the same peculiarity; but that a gravestone should give information in reply to cross-questioning is less usual. The second kind of metrical inscriptions, which is by far the most numerous, speaks of the past life and history of the deceased. Thus, over the grave of a soldier we find: “Of thy valor stands many a trophy in Greece and in the souls of men; such wert thou, Nicobo- lus, when thou leftest the bright light of the sun and passedst, beloved of thy friends, to the dwell- ing of Persephone.” Other triumphs, besides warlike ones, are else- where recorded; on the tomb of one Praxinus, the doer, we read the punning epitaph : ** My name and my father’s this stone proclaims, and my country; but by my worthy deeds I at- tained such a name as few may obtain.” We are not aware in this case to what special kind of deeds the inscription refers; often it is more explicit, as in the following, erected over a young statuary : “T began to flourish as a statuary not inferior to Praxiteles, and came to twice eight years of age. My name was Eutychides,' but that name fate mocked, tearing me so early away to Hades.” On the tomb of one Plutarchus, who seems to have been a merchant, we find a brief history of his life: “This is the tomb of the discreet Plutarchus, who, desiring fame which comes of many toils, came to Ausonia. There he endured toils on toils far from his country, although an only child and dear to his parents. Yet gained he not his desire, though longing much, for first the fate of unlovely death reached him.” Sometimes out of a whole life one event or cir- cumstance of peculiar interest was taken, and commemorated as well by inscription as relief, as in the case of that Phoenician stranger, already mentioned, who narrowly escaped the jaws of a lion. The inscription on his tomb describes that escape, and explains the meaning of the repre- sentation it accompanies. The virtues of the dead must always in all countries form the most frequent and suitable subject of sepulchral inscriptions. Athens is no exception to the rule. We find on the grave of @ young man: “ Here Euthycritus, having reached the goal of every virtue, lies entombed in his native soil, dear to father and mother, and loved by his sisters and all his companions, in the prime of his life.” A copper-smelter from Crete has the simple and pleasing epitaph : “ This memorial to Sosinus, of his justice, his prudence, and his virtue, his sons erected on his death.” The following is from the tomb of one Sotius : “ Here in earth lies Sotius, superior to all in the art he practised, virtuous of soul, and dear to his fellow-citizens ; for ever he studied to please all, and his heart was most just toward his friends.” Such are a few of the panegyrics bestowed on men after their death; those bestowed on women are fewer in number, but not less interesting. A young girl is commended for her serious and staid disposition : “She who lies here coveted not, while alive, garments or gold, but desired discretion and virtue. But now, Dionysia, in place of youth and bloom, the Fates have awarded thee this sepulchre.” More than once we find epitaphs which speak of the virtue and kindness of nurses, evidently set up by young men who had never ceased to care ? Child of good luck.

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276 for and respect them. The ancients evidently felt for the wet-nurse who cherished their in- fancy, slave as she might be, something of last- ing and filial affection : * Here is laid in earth the best of nurses, whose foster-child still misses her. I loved thee, nurse, when alive, and still I honor thee though thou art laid in the ground, and shall honor as long as I live.” More characteristic of the Greek disposition than mere praise of the dead are those praises of the good-fortune of the departed, which sound almost mocking to modern ears, and yet on a little reflection do not displease. Of one, Sym- machus, of Chios, we read on his tomb that through life his joys were many and his sorrows few, that he reached the extreme limit of old age, and lies in Athens, the city dear to gods and men. On the tombs of women it is often stated that they were in comfortable circumstances, and that they lived to see children’s children, All the happiness of past life seemed to the Greeks a gain, and even when it was over was to be re- garded, not with bitter regret, but gentle sympa- thy. In one inscription, though a late one, we find an elaborate description of the beauty of the young wife buried below—of her yellow hair, her bright eyes, her snow-white forehead, the ruddy lips and ivory teeth of her lovely mouth. These things were past, it is true, but even so they were something better to look back upon than ugli- ness. Sometimes, however, through the general level of cheeriness a sadder note breaks : ‘“‘ My name is Athenals, and with grief I go to my place among the dead, leaving my husband and my darling children. A grudging web the Fates spun for me.” When youthful promise is early cut off it is searcely possible that it should be spoken of without a sound of sad regret, Even the state- ment of the fact produces this impression : “Tf fortune had continued thy life, Macareus, and brought thee to manhood, strong wert thou in the hope that thou wouldst become the guiding spirit of tragic art among the Hellenes. But thou diest not without fame for discretion and virtue.” Even here consolation comes in to modify regret, so true to the happy disposition of the Greeks was the charming saying of Spenser— “A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre!” As in sepulchral reliefs, so in epitaphs, the Greek mourner usually turns his thought to the THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. past, and dwells on the life which is over rather than on any which may be beginning. Neverthe- less we do find, here and there, some allusions to the state of the departed which are of great in- terest, and which furnish us with evidence on a subject still obscure and much discussed, the be- liefs of the ordinary minds among the Greeks as to the future life, and as to reward and punish- ment in it. The small space which these allu- sions occupy, compared with the whole body of epitaphs, shows how snfall a corner of the Greek thought was taken up with meditation on mat- ters outside the present life. But the materialism of the Greeks was rather natural and practical than speculative, and we nowhere find any posi- tive denial of future existence. In one or two epitaphs there is an appearance of such denial, but its meaning must not be pressed. Thus, in one case, we find the phrase, “ Rising out of earth I am become earth again,” and in another epitaph, one Nicomedes, who calls himself the servant of the Muses, says that he is “clad in wakeless sleep.” Here we probably only have popular phrases used in a vague and indefinite sense, and without the least intention of theorizing on the nature of the soul. Commoner still are even more vague phrases as to the destination of the soul, which is said to fly to heaven, to air, or to ether.' It is ether which is said in the metrical inscription first quoted to receive the souls of the slain Athenian warriors. So in the following: “ Here Dialogus, student of wisdom, his limbs purged with pure fire, is gone to the immortals. Here lie naked the bones of Dialogus the discreet, who practised virtue and wisdom; them a little dust hides sprinkled over them; but the spirit from his limbs the broad heaven has received.” Dialogus was presumably a philosopher, and had learned the difference between soul and body. The words “heaven and the immortals” have to him a somewhat vague meaning, repre- senting rather something hoped for than believed in and expected. There is a stronger flavor of philosophic materialism in the following: “ Damp ether holds the soul and mighty intellect of Eu- rymachus, but his body is in this tomb.” The word al@hp, ether, is certainly used by Homer to signify the abode of the gods, and no doubt the poet of our metrical inscription had Homer in his mind, but here the word “ damp” (éypés) seems to point to some materialist notion as to the nature of spirit and its affinity to the upper air. A more popular interpretation must be accepted ? obpavés, aidiip.

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eS a a SS ae Oe eee eee aS Vr 2 88 OEP Os’ LDS LS THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. O77 in other cases, such as: “Earth sent thee forth to light, Sibyrtius, and earth holds thy remains, but ether, the source of thy soul, has received it ” But the vulgar notions with regard to the future state were certainly borrowed from Homer, sucked in by the many with their mothers’ milk, or at least imbibed at school, where Homer occu- pied the place taken by the Bible in our church- schools. The Greeks generally were inclined to regard Homer as infallible, and so, when they thought of the future state at all, pictured it ac- cording to his teaching. Hence they made it a shadowy realm under the goverment of Hades and Persephone, a poor, washed-out copy of the brilliant life on earth. The dead go to the cham- ber of Persephone, or, as it is sometimes phrased, the chamber of the blessed. “ The bones and the flesh of our sweet son lie in earth, but his soul is gone to the chamber of the holy.” It is clear, from some other inscriptions, that in that chamber rewards were supposed to await the good, and punishments the bad. Thus one man writes on the grave of his nurse: “ And I know that, if below the earth there be rewards for the good, for thee, nurse, more than for any, is honor waiting in the abode of Persephone and Pluto.” The suggestive if is again repeated elsewhere. “If there is with Persephone any reward for piety, a share of that was bestowed on thee in death by Fate.” The expression in both in- stances seems to be rather of a wish or longing than of a sure and certain hope. Indeed, this wavering tone never becomes full and confident until we come down to the times of Christian inscriptions, when a sudden and marvelous change takes place. To the Christian the place of interment is no longer a tomb, but a sleeping-place. When he speaks of ether and heaven as receiving the soul, the words have quite another ring. Though Christian epitaphs at Athens be somewhat beyond my province, I cannot avoid introducing one or two, if merely for the sake of contrast. The following charmingly combines the genial backward glance of the Greek with the forward glance of the believer : ** Look, friend, on the sacred beauty of Askle- piodote, of her immortal soul and body, for to both Nature gave one undefiled beauty, and, if Fate seized her, it vanquished her not; in her death she was not forsaken, nor did she abandon her husband though she left him, but now more than ever watches him out of heaven, and rejoices in him and guards him.” Or take another: “* His body is hidden here in earth, but his soul is escaped to heaven (ai@jp) and returned to its source, for he has obtained the reward of the best of lives, Sometimes one catches a note of a still higher strain : “ There, whence pain and moans are ban- ished, take thy rest.” I think no one can deny that these epitaphs are quite equal to the pagan ones in literary taste and felicity of language, while in sentiment they mark a striking advance. It would have been natural to expect that the religion of Isis, which, among all ancient faiths, clung most closely to the belief in a future life, and which owed to that circumstance its great influence among the later Greeks, would have left in the epitaphs some traces of a surer hope and trust in what was beyond the grave. But such is not the case, and a still more remarkable omis- sion is to be noticed. The great Eleusinian mys- teries were celebrated annually, within a few miles of Athens. The whole population must have known more or less of the meaning of the ceremonies; and there were probably few adult Athenians who had not been initiated. But it has always been supposed that the resurrection of the dead and the life to come were the chief matters on which light was thrown during the celebration. It has been thought that the anal- ogy between the sowing of wheat and the burying of the dead, that analogy which the Apostle Paul works out in full detail, was then insisted on. Cicero speaks of the mysteries of Eleusis as some of the noblest productions of Attic soil, and de- clares that they impart not only directions for leading a better life, but also a better hope in death. Polygnotus painted on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi the punishments suffered in Hades by those who neglected to have them- selves initiated in the mysteries. Yet in all the Attic epitaphs which have come down to us we discern not a trace of any such doctrine as we should have been disposed, from such indications, to attribute to the college of priests who con- ducted the mysteries. When the next world is at all spoken of, it either appears as the Homeric realm of Hades and his bride Persephone, or else is mentioned in the vague language of the pbi- losophers as ether and heaven. The conclusion seems inevitable. We are strongly warned against attributing too much influence over the ordinary mind, or any very lofty and spiritual teaching, to the mysteries. The wise men, like Cicero and Plutarch, may have found in them deep meaning and profound consolation, reading into them the results of their own philosophy and faith ; just as

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278 able men of recent times have read into them . most of the doctrines of Christianity. But to the common people they were probably a string of outward observances with little inner meaning. Like the sacraments of Christianity, to which in many respects they were parallel, they had a strong tendency to lose all life and become mere form. That their secret was so well preserved can be attributed to but one cause—that their secret, such as it was, was not of a kind that could be communicated. It is certain that throughout Greece, in antiquity, the future life was by the common people looked upon with dis- taste, if not with dread; and that they had no doctrine tending to soften its repulsion. Moral reflections and words of advice form a not unfrequent ending to Athenian epitaphs. Sometimes in these nothing more is expressed than a kindly wish for the reader. Thus one stranger, after stating that he was shipwrecked, adds in genial spirit, “May every sailor safely reach his home!” Another wishes for all way- farers who read the stone a prosperous journey. Sometimes there is a general observation: “ It is rare for a woman to be at once noble and dis- creet;” or a quotation from a poet, as in the case of the well-known line of Menander, ‘‘ Those whom the gods love die early.” Sometimes the occasion is improved, as a Scotch minister would say, and a little sermon read to the passer-by, who is advised to live virtuously, “ knowing that the abode of Pluto beneath is full of wealth and has need of nothing ”—virtues, that is to say, and not riches, are the only things which will avail after death. So far with regard to metrical inscriptions. The long inscriptions which are not metrical are nearly always of the same kind as the well- known epitaph of Shakespeare — curses pro- nounced against those who shall in future time at- tempt to move or destroy the grave, curses of which the modern explorer makes very light, apparently supposing that their virtue has in the course of centuries departed. But in ancient time they might be more effectual. They are always of a very late date; so long as the peo- ple of Athens had a common feeling and a com- mon pride in their city, there was small fear of the violation of the grave of a citizen, but under the Roman emperors the Athenian citizenship and Greek nationality fell to pieces, and no one felt sure of the future. Herodes Atticus, the wealthiest citizen of Athens in the reign of Hadrian, who built the Athenians a splendid marble Odeum, set up a monument to his wife THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Appia Annia Regilla, “the light of the house,” which he thought it necessary to fence by a very unpleasant string of threats : “* By the gods and heroes! charge any who hold this place not to move aught of this: and if any destroy or alter these statues and honors (més), for him may earth refuse to bear fruit, and sea become unsailable, and may he and his race perish miserably '” The inscription goes on to heap blessings on those who keep the tomb in its place and pay it honor. A lady who bears the Roman name of Antonia hands over, in her epitaph, her tomb to keep, to Pluto, and Demeter, and Persephone, and all the nether gods, calling down a curse on all who violate it. In another epitaph we find a formidable list of diseases which are likely to seize the violator—palsy, fever, ague, elephanti- asis, and the rest. In another instance the di- mensions of the curse are curtailed, and it is put neatly into two hexameter verses: “‘ Move not the stone from the earth, villain, lest after thy death, wretch, dogs mangle thy unburied body !” In the last-quoted epitaph it is evidently the writer’s intention to threaten a punishment ac- cording to the lex talionis. To move a tomb- stone was an offense of the same class, though in degree of course slighter, as to leave the body of a dead man unburied. It is well known how keenly every Greek dreaded that his body should after his death be deprived of burial-rites, and how bitterly he condemned all who through fear or carelessness abandoned dead friends to dogs and vultures. No doubt this dread was connect- ed with the very ancient and wide-spread notion that those who remained unburied could not rest in the grave, were repelled from the gates of the world of spirits, and hovered as unhappy ghosts in the vicinity of their corpses. As the first step toward exposing a dead body was the tear- ing down of the stone which covered it, and as the stone was, moreover, closely associated with the dead, some of the mysterious horror which guarded the corpse was transferred to the grave- stone above it. We may consider ourselves happy that amorg us gravestones are protected not by curses but by blessings, by cherished memories and associations; and so, perhaps, it was in the better times at Athens, only when the old civilization was falling into corruption, all gentler ties were loosed, and every man fought for himself and his, with any weapons which came nearest. One closes the “ Corpus of the Sepulchral In- scriptions” with a feeling of surprise—surprise

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aS aS SS Oo that a people so gifted as the Athenians should be so helpless and tongue-tied in the presence of death. The reliefs do not disappvint « rea- sonable expectation ; in execution, at least, they put our modern cemeteries to shame, if the range of ideas expressed is somewhat narrow. But the inscriptions are at a far greater depth below Greek poetry and oratory than the reliefs are be- low the best Greek sculpture. The reason may partly be that the reliefs are the work of pro- fessionals, the inscriptions of amateurs. But there are two other reasons of a more satisfac- tory character. The first of these I have already mentioned, that except in the case of soldiers and of public characters, such as eminent poets, JOHN STUART MILL’S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 279 it was considered bad taste at Athens to have an epitaph at all; those, therefore, which we find are mostly written by persons of the less respectable classes, and in the later and worse times of the city. But the deepest reason, at least from the modern point of view, is that the Greek mind found in death no inspiring power ; they might regard its inevitable power with equa- nimity and even cheerfulness, but in any way to rejoice in its presence, to look upon it with hope and warmth of heart, did not consist with the point of view of their religion. Such feelings at such a time are inspired only by one or two religions of the world, among which there is no place for naturalism.— Contemporary Review, JOHN STUART MILL'S Br W. STANLEY URING the last few weeks the correspond- ence columns of the Spectator have con- tained letters on the subject of the late Mr. Mill’s opinions about the immortality of the soul. The discussion began with a letter, in which an anony- mous writer, G. S. B., asserted that Mill spoke of immortality as probably an illusion, although morally so valuable an illusion that it is better to retain it, He went on to say, “It is surely time that all this scientific shuffling and intellect- ual dishonesty—for it is nothing else—should be exposed and exploded.” An ardent admirer of Mill was not unnatural- ly stung by this remark, and replied in a letter, ably and warmly vindicating Mill’s truthfulness and “ scrupulous accurateness.” After showing, as he thinks, that Mill never tried to uphold any illusion, he thus concludes : “It is very difficult to misunderstand Mr. Mill, so anxious was he always to be clear, to be just, to keep back nothing, to examine both sides, to overstate nothing, and to understate nothing, so sensitively honorable was his mind, so transpar- ently honest his style. But these are commonplaces with respect to him. I am content to contrast the scrupulous accurateness of Mr. Mill with what appears of that quality in ‘G. 8. B.’” In the Spectator of the following week (Octo- ber 27th), I took the opportunity to express my cissent from both the correspondents, saying : “IT do not like the expression ‘ scientific shuf- fling and intellectual dishonesty’ which G. 8. B. has used, for fear it should imply that Mill know- PHILOSOPHY TESTED. JEVONS, F. B. 8. ingly misled his readers. It is impossible to doubt that Mill’s mind was ‘sensitively honorable,’ and, whatever may be his errors of judgment, we cannot call in question the perfect good faith and loftiness of his intentions. On the other hand, it is equally difficult to accept what Mr. Mal- leson says as to the ‘scrupulous accurateness’ of Mill’s ‘ Essays on Religion.’ He was scrupulous, but the term ‘ accurateness,’ if it means ‘logical accurateness,’ cannot be applied to his works by any one who has subjected them to minute logical criticism.” I then pointed out that, in pages 103 and 109 of his “ Essays on Religion,” Mill gives two differ- ent definitions or descriptions of religion. In the first he says that “ the essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires toward an ideal object, recognized as of the highest excel lence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of desire.” In the second statement he says : * Religion, as distinguished from poetry, is the product of the craving to know whether these imaginative conceptions have realities answering to them in some other world than ours.” A week afterward Mr. Malleson made an ingen- ious attempt to explain away or to palliate the obvious discrepancy by reference to the context. I do not think that any context can remove the discrepancy ; in the one case the object of desire is an ideal object ; in the other case the craving, which I presume means a strong desire, is toward

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280 realities in some other world ; and_the difference between ideal and real is too wide for any con- text to bridge over. Besides, I will ultimately give reasons for holding that Mill’s text cannot be safely interpreted by the context, because there is no certainty that in his writings the same line of thought is steadily maintained for two sentences in succession. Mill’s “ Essays on Religion” have been the source of perplexity to numberless readers. His greatest admirers have been compelled to admit that in these essays even Mill seems now and then to play with a word, or unconsciously to mix up two views of the same subject. It has been urged, indeed, by many apologists, including Miss Helen Taylor, their editor, that Mill wrote these essays at wide intervals of time, and was deprived, by death, of the opportunity of giving them his usual careful revision. This absence of revision, however, applies mainly to the third essay, while the discrepant definitions of religion were quoted from the second essay. Moreover, lapse of time will not account for inconsistency occurring between pages 103 and 109 of the same essay. The fact simply is, that these es- says, Owing to the exciting nature of their sub- jects, have received a far more searching and hostile criticism than any of his other writings. Thus inherent defects in his intellectual charac- ter, which it was a matter of great difficulty to expose in so large a work as the “ System of Logic,” were readily detected in these brief, can- did, but most ill-judged essays. But, for my part, I will no longer consent to live silently under the incubus of bad logic and bad philosophy, which Mill’s works have laid upon us. On almost every subject of social im- portance—religion, morals, political philosophy, political economy, metaphysics, logic—he has ex- pressed unhesitating opinions, and his sayings are quoted by his admirers as if they were the oracles of a perfectly wise and logical mind. Nobody questions, or at least ought to question, the force of Mill’s style, the persuasive power of his words, the candor of his discussions, and the perfect goodness of his motives. If to all his other great qualities had been happily added logical accurate- ness, his writings would indeed have been a source of light for generations to come. But in one way or another Mill’s intellect was wrecked. The cause of injury may have been the ruthless training which his father imposed upon him in tender years; it may have been Mill’s own life-long attempt to reconcile a false empiri- cal philosophy with eonflicting truth. But, how- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ever it arose, Mill’s mind was essentially illogi- cal. Such, indeed, is the intricate sophistry of Mill’s principal writings, that it is a work of much mental effort to trace out the course of his falla- cies. For about twenty years past I have been a more or less constant student of his books: dur. ing the last fourteen years I have been compelled, by the traditional requirements of the University of London, to make those works at least partially my text-books in lecturing. Some ten years of study passed before I began to detect their fun- damental unsoundness. During the last ten years the conviction bas gradually grown upon my mind that Mill’s authority is doing immense injury to the cause of philosophy and good intellectual training in England. Nothing, surely, can do so much intellectual harm as a body of thoroughly illogical writings, which are forced upon students and teachers by the weight of Mill’s reputation, and the hold which his school has obtained upon the universities. If, as I am certain, Mill’s phi- losophy is sophistical and false, it must be an in- dispensable service to truth to show that it is so. This weighty task I at length feel bound to under- take. The mode of criticism to be adopted is one which has not been sufficiently used by any of his previous critics. Many able writers have defended what they thought the truth against Mill’s errors ; but they confined themselves for the most part to skirmishing round the outworks of the Associa- tionist Philosophy, firing in every here and there a well-aimed shot. But their shots have sunk harmlessly into the sand of his foundations. In order to have a fair chance of success, different tactics must be adopted; the assault must be made directly against the citadel of his logical reputation. His magazines must be reached and exploded; he must be hoist, like the engineer, with his own petard. Thus only can the discon- nected and worthless character of his philosophy be exposed. I undertake to show that there is hardly one of his more important and peculiar doctrines which he has not himself amply refuted. It will be shown that in many cases it is impossible to state what his doctrine is, because he mixes up two or three, and, in one extreme case, a8 many as six different and inconsistent opinions. In several important cases, the view which he pro- fesses to uphold is the direct opposite of what he really upholds. Thus, he clearly reprobates the doctrine of Free-Will, and expressly places him- self in the camp of Liberty; but he objects to

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the name Necessity, and explains it away so in- geniously that he unintentionally converts it into Free-Will. Again, there is no doubt that Mill wisbed and believed himself to be a bulwark of the Utilitarian Morality ; he prided himself on the invention, or at least the promulgation, of the name Utilitarianism; but he expounded the doc- trines of the school with such admirable candor, that he converted them unconsciously into any- thing rather than the doctrines of Paley and Bentham. As regards logic, the case is much worse. He affected to get rid of universal reasoning, which, if accomplished, would be to get rid of science and logic altogether; of course, he em- ployed or implied the use of universals in almost every sentence of his treatise. He overthrew the syllogism on the ground of petitio principii, and then immediately set it up again as an indispen- sable test of good reasoning. He defined logic as the Science of Proof, and then recommended a loose kind of inference from particulars to partic- ulars, which he allowed was not conclusive, that is, could prove nothing. Though inconclusive, this loose kind of inference was really the basis of conclusive reasoning. Then, again, he founded induction upon the law of causation, and at the same time it was his express doctrine that the law of causation was learned by induction. What he meant exactly by this law of causation it is im- possible to say. He affirms and denies the plu- rality of causes. Sometimes the sequence of causation is absolutely invariable, sometimes it is conditional. Generally, the law of causation is spoken of as Universal, or as universal through- out Nature; yet in one passage (at the end of Book III, chapter xxi.) he makes a careful statement to the opposite effect, and this state- ment, subversive as it is of his whole system of induction, has appeared in all editions from the first to the last. On such fundamental questions as the meaning of propositions, the nature of a class, the theory of probability, etc., he is in error where he is not in direct conflict with himself. But the indictment is long enough already; there is not space in this article to complete it in detail. To sum up, there is nothing in logic which be has not touched, and he has touched nothing without confounding it. To establish charges of this all-comprehen- sive character will, of course, require a large body of proof. It will not be sufficient to take a few of Mill’s statements and show that they are mistaken or self-inconsistent. Any writer may now and then fall into oversights, and it JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 281 would be manifestly unfair to pick a few unfortu- nate passages out of a work of considerable ex- tent, and then hold them up as specimens of the whole. On the other hand, in order to overthrow a philosopher’s system, it is not requisite to prove. his every statement false. If this were so, one large treatise would require ten large ones to re- fute it. What is necessary is to select a certain number of his more prominent and peculiar doc- trines, and to show that, in their treatment, he is illogical. In this article I am, of course, limited in space, and can apply only one test, and the subject which I select for treatment is Mill’s doctrines concerning geometrical reason- ing. The science of geometry is specially suited to form a test of the empirical philosophy. Mill certainly regarded it as a crucial instance, and devoted a considerable part of his “System of Logic” to proving that geometry is a strictly physical science, and can be learned by direct observation and induction. The particular na- ture of his doctrine, or rather doctrines, on this subject will be gathered as we proceed. Of course, in this inquiry I must not abstain from a searching or even a tedious analysis, when it is requisite for the due investigation of Mill’s logi- cal method ; but it will rarely be found necessary to go beyond elementary mathematical knowl- edge, which almost all readers of the Contempo- rary Review will possess. As a first test of Mill’s philosophy, I propose this simple question of fact: Are there in the material universe such things as perfectly straight lines? We shall find that Mill returns to this question « categorical negative answer. There exist no such things as perfectly straight lines. How then can geometry exist, if the things about which it is conversant do not exist? Mill’s ingenuity seldom fails him. Geometry, in his opinion, treats not of things as they are in reality, but as we suppose them to be. Though straight lines do not exist, we can experiment in our minds upon straight lines, as if they did ex- ist. It is a peculiarity of geometrical science, he thinks, thus to allow of mental experimenta- tion. Moreover, these mental experiments are just as good as real experiments, because we know that the imaginary lines exactly resemble real ones, and that we can conclude from them to real ones with quite as much certainty as we conclude from one real line to another. If such be Mill’s doctrines, we are brought into the fol- lowing position : 1. Perfectly straight lines do not really exist. ~ er enemm ares on

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282 2. We experiment in our minds upon imagi- nary straight lines. 8. These imaginary straight lines exactly re- semble the real ones. 4. If these imaginary straight lines are not perfectly straight, they will not enable us to prove the truths of geometry. 5. If they are perfectly straight, then the real ones, which ezactly resemble them, must be per- fectly straight: ergo, perfectly straight lines do exist. It would not be right to attribute such rea- soning to Mill without fully substantiating the statements. I must, therefore, ask the reader to bear with me while I give somewhat full extracts from the fifth chapter of the second book of the “ System of Logic.” Previous to the publication of this “system,” it had been generally thought that the certainty of geometrical and other mathematical truths was a property not exclusively confined to these truths, but nevertheless existent. Mill, however, at the commencement of the chapter, altogether calls in question this supposed certainty, and de- scribes it as an illusion, in order to sustain which it is necessary to suppose that those truths re- late to, and express the properties of, purely im- aginary objects. He proceeds:! “Tt is acknowledged that the conclusions of geometry are deduced, partly at least, from the so- called definitions, and that those definitions are assumed to be correct descriptions, as far as they go, of the objects with which geometry is conver- sant. Now, we have pointed out that, from a defi- nition as such, no proposition, unless it be one concerning the meaning of a word, can ever fol- low, and that what apparently follows from a defi- nition, follows in reality from an implied assump- tion that there exists a real thing conformable thereto. This assumption, in the case of the defi- nitions of geometry, is false :? there exist no real things exactly conformable to the definitions. There exist no points without magnitude ; no lines without breadth, nor perfectly straight; no circles with all their radii exactly equal, nor squares with all their angles perfectly right. It will, perhaps, be said that the assumption does not extend to the actual, but only to the possible, existence of such things. I answer that, accord- ing to any test we have of possibility, they are not even possible. Their existence, as far as we can form any judgment, would seem to be incon- 2 Book II., chapter v., section 1, near the com- mencement of the second paragraph. 2 The word false occurs in the editions up to at least the fifth edition. In the latest, or ninth edition, I find the words, not strictly true, substituted for false.

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. sistent with the physical constitution of our planet at least, if not of the universe.” About the meaning of this statement no doubt can arise. In the clearest possible language Mill denies the existence of perfectly straight lines, so far as any judgment can be formed, and this de- nial extends, not only to the actual, but the pos- sible, existence of such lines. He thinks that they seem to be inconsistent with the physical con- stitution of our planet, if not of the wniverse. Under these circumstances, there naturally afises the question, What does geometry treat? <A sci- ence, as Mill goes on to remark, cannot be con- versant with nonentities ; and as perfectly straight lines and perfect circles, squares, and other fig- ures, do not exist, geometry must treat such lines, angles, and figures, as do exist, these apparently being imperfect ones. The definitions of such objects given by Euclid, and adopted by later geometers, must be regarded as some of our first and most obvious generalizations concerning those natural objects. But, then, as the lines are never perfectly straight nor parallel, in reality, the circles not perfectly round, and so on, the truths deduced in geometry cannot accurately apply to such existing things. Thus we arrive at the necessary conclusion that the peculiar ac- curacy attributed to geometrical truths is an illu- sion. Mill himself clearly expresses this result : * “The peculiar accuracy, supposed to be char- acteristic of the first principles of geometry, thus appears to be fictitious. The assertions on which the reasonings of the science are founded, do not, any more than in other sciences, exactly correspond with the fact; but we suppose that they do so, for the sake of tracing the consequences which follow from the supposition.” So far Mill’s statements are consistent enough. He gives no evidence to support his confident as- sertion that perfectly straight lines do not exist ; but with the actual truth of his opinion I am not concerned. All that would be requisite to the logician, as such, is that, having once adopted the opinion, he should adhere to it, and admit nothing which leads to an opposite conclusion. The question now arises in what way we ob- tain our knowledge of the truths of geometry, especially those very general trnths called axioms. Mill has no doubt whatever about the answer. He says:? “It remains to inquire, What is the ground of our belief in axioms—what is the evidence on 1 Book II., chapter v., section 1, at the beginning of the fourth paragraph. 2 Same chapter, at the beginning of section 4.

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Pew OO” SL a which they rest? I answer, they are experimen- tal truths ; generalizations from observation. The proposition, two straight lines cannot inclose a space—or, in other words, two straight lines which have once met, do not meet again, but continue to diverge—is an induction from the evidence of our senses.” This opinion, as Mill goes on to remark, runs counter to a scientific prejudice of long standing and great force, and there is probably no propo- sition enunciated in the whole treatise for which a more unfavorable reception was to be expected. I think that the “scientific prejudice” still pre- vails, but I am perfectly willing to agree with Mill’s demand that the opinion is entitled to be judged, not by its novelty, but by the strength of the arguments which are adduced in support of it. These arguments are the subject of our in- quiry. Mill proceeds to point out that the prop- erties of parallel or intersecting straight lines are apparent to us in almost every instant of our lives. “We cannot look at any two straight lines which intersect one another, without seeing that from that point they continue to diverge more and more.”! Even Whewell, the chief opponent of Mill’s views, allowed that observation suggests “te properties of geometrical figures; but Mill is not satisfied with this, and proceeds to controvert the arguments by which Whewell and others have attempted to show that experience cannot prove the axiom. The chief difficulty is this: before we can as- sure ourselves that two straight lines do not in- close space, we must follow them to infinity. Mill faces the difficulty with boldness and candor : “What says the axiom? That two straight lines cannot inclose a space ; that after having once intersected, if they are prolonged to infinity they do not meet, but continue to diverge from one an- other. How can this, in any single case, be proved by actual observation? We may follow the lines to any distance we please; but we cannot follow them to infinity ; for aught our senses can testify, they may, immediately beyond the farthest point to which we have traced them, begin to approach, and at last meet. Unless, therefore, we had some other proof of the impossibility than observation ' affords us, we should have no ground for believing the axiom at all. “To these arguments, which I trust I cannot be accused of understating, a satisfactory answer will, I conceive, be found, if we advert to one of the characteristic properties of geometrical forms —their capacity of being painted in the imagina- tion with a distinctness equal to reality: in other 4 Same section, near the beginning of fourth para- graph. JOHN STUART MILL’S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 283 words, the exact resemblance of our ideas of form to the sensations which suggest them. This, in the first place, enables us to make (at least with a little practice) mental pictures of all possible com- binations of lines and angles, which resemble the realities quite as well as any which we could make on paper; and in the next place, make those pict- ures just as fit subjects of geometrical experimenta- tion as the realities themselves ; inasmuch as pict- ures, if sufficiently accurate, exhibit of course all the properties which would be manifested by the realities at one given instant, andon simple inspec- _ tion ; and in geometry we are concerned only with such properties, and not with that which pictures could not exhibit, the mutual action of bodies one uponanother. The foundations of geometry would therefore be laid in direct experience, even if the experiments (which in this case consist merely in attentive contemplation) were practised solely upon what we call our ideas, that is, upon the diagrams in our minds, and not upon outward objects. For in all systems of experimentation we take some objects to serve as representatives of all which re- semble them ; and in the present case the condi- tions which qualify a real object to be the repre- sentative of its class, are completely fulfilled by an object existing only in our fancy. Without deny- ing, therefore, the possibility of satisfying our- selves that two straight lines cannot inclose a space, by merely thinking of straight lines with- out actually looking at them—I contend, that we do not believe this truth on the ground of the imaginary intuition simply, but because we know that the imaginary lines exactly resemble real ones, and that we may conclude from them to real ones with quite as much certainty as we could conclude from one real line to another. The conclusion, therefore, is still an induction from observation.” ! I have been obliged to give this long extract in full, because, unless the reader has it all fresh- ly before him, he will scarcely accept my analy- sis. In the first place, what are we to make of Mill’s previous statement that the axioms are inductions from the evidence of our senses? Mill admits that, for aught our senses can testify, two straight lines, although they have once met, may again approach and intersect beyond the range of our vision. ‘‘ Unless, therefore, we had some other proof of the impossibility than observa- tion affords us, we should have no ground for be- lieving the axiom at all.”*. Probably it would not occur to most readers to inquire whether such a statement is consistent with that made two or three pages before, but on examination we find it entirely inconsistent. Before, the axioms were 1 Book II., chapter v., section 5. The passage oc- curs in the second and third paragraphs. 8 End of the second paragraph.

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ee RO ON 284 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. inductions from the evidence of our senses ; now, we must have “ some other proof of the impossi- bility than observation affords us.” This further proof, it appears, consists in the attentive contemplatation of mental pictures of straight lines and other geometrical figures. Such pictures, if sufficiently accurate, exhibit, of course, all the properties of the real objects, and in the present case the conditions which qualify a real object to be the representative of its class are completely fulfilled. Such pictures, Mill admits, must be sufficiently accurate ; but what, in geom- etry, is sufficient accuracy? The expression is, to my mind, a new and puzzling one. Imagine, since Mill allows us to do so, two parallel straight lines. What is the sufficient accuracy with which we must frame our mental pictures of such lines, in ' order that they shall not meet? If one of the lines, instead of being really straight, is a portion of a circle having a radius of a hundred miles, then the divergence from perfect straightness within the length of one foot would be of an order of magnitude altogether imperceptible to our senses. Can we, then, detect in the mental picture that which cannot be detected in the sensible object ? This can hardly be held by Mill, because he says, further on, that we are only warranted in substi- tuting observation of the image in our mind for observation of the reality by long-continued ex- perience that the properties of the reality are faithfully represey ‘ed in the image. Now, since we may (at least with a little prac- tice) form mental pictures of all possible combina- tions of lines and angles, we may, I presume, form a picture of lines which are so nearly paral- lel that they will only meet at a distance of 100,- 000 miles. If we cannot do so, how can we de- tect the difference between such lines and those that are actualiy parallel? Mill meets this diffi- culty. If two lines meet at a great distance, “we can transport ourselves thither in imagina- tion, and can frame a mental image of the appear- ance which one or both of the lines must present at that point, which we may rely on as being pre- cisely similar to the reality. Now, whether we fix our contemplation upon this imaginary picture, or call to mind the generalizations we have had occasion to make from former ocular observation, we learn by the evidence of experience, that a line which, after diverging from another straight line, begins to approach to it, produces the impression on our senses which we describe by the expression, ‘a bent line,’ not by the expression, ‘a straight line,’ 4 1 Book IL., chapter v., section 5, end of fourth para- graph. In this passage we have somewhat unexpect- edly got back to the senses. We may call to mind the generalizations from former ocular observa- tion, and we have the evidence of experience to distinguish between the impressions made on our senses by a bent line and a straight line. But what will happen if the bent line be a circle with a radius of a million miles? Have we the evi- dence of experience that two such lines, which seem to be parallel for the first hundred miles, afterward begin to approach, and finally intersect ? If so, our senses must enable us to see clearly and to exactly measure quantities a hundred miles away. Oragain, if there be two lines which close in front of me are one foot apart, but which a hundred miles away are one foot plus the thou- sandth of an inch apart, they are not parallel Will my senses enable me to perceive the magni- tude of the thousandth part of an inch placed a hundred miles off ? But we have had enough of this trifling. Any one who has the least knowledge of geometry must know that a straight line means a perfectly straight line: the slightest curvature renders it not straight. Parallel straight lines mean per- feetly parallel straight lines; if they be in the least degree not parallel, they will, of course, meet sooner or later, provided that they be in the same plane. Now, Mill said that we get an im- pression on our senses of a straight line; it is through this impression that we are enabled to form images of straight lines in the mind. We are told,’ moreover, that the imaginary lines ex actly resemble real ones, and that it is long-con- tinued observation which teaches us this. It fol- lows most plainly, then, that the impressions on our senses must have been derived from really straight lines. Mill’s philosophy is essentially and directly empirical; he holds that we learn the principles of geometry by direct ocular per- ception, either of lines in Nature, or their images in the mind. Now, if our observations had been confined to lines which are not parallel, we could by no possibility have perceived, directly and ocularly, the character of lines which are paral- lel. It follows, that we must have perceived per- fectly parallel lines and perfectly straight lines, although Mill previously told us that he considered the existence of such things to be “ inconsistent with the physical constitution of our planet, at least, if not of the universe.” Perhaps it may be replied that Mill simply made a mistake in saying that no really straight 1 Same section, about thirteen lines from the end of the third paragraph.

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lines exist, and, correcting this blunder of fact, the logical contradiction vanishes. Certainly he gives no proper reason for his confident denial of their existence. But merely to strike out a page of Mill’s Logic will not vindicate his logical char- acter. How came he to put a statement there which is in absolute conflict with the rest of his arguments? No interval of time, no want of revision, can excuse this inconsistency, for the passage occurs in the first edition of the “ System of Logic” (vol. i., p. 297), and reappears un- changed (except as regards one word) in the last and ninth edition. The curious substitution of the words “ not strictly true” for the word “ false” shows that Mill’s attention had been directed to the paragraph ; and a good many remarks might be made upon this little change of words, were there not other matters claiming prior attention. We have seen that Mill considers our knowl- edge of geometry to be founded to a great extent on mental experimentation. I am not aware that any philosopher ever previously asserted, with the same distinctness and consciousness of his meaning, that the observation of our own ideas might be substituted for the observation of things. Philosophers have frequently spoken of their ideas or notions, but it was usually a mere form of speech, and their ideas meant their direct knowledge of things. Certainly this was the case with Locke, who was always talking about ideas. Descartes, no doubt, held that whatever we can clearly perceive is true; but he probably meant that it would be logically possible. I do not think that Descartes in his geometry ever got to mental experimentation. But, however, this may be, Mill, of ali men, ought not to have recom- mended such a questionable scientific process, if we may judge from his statements in other parts of the “System of Logic.” The fact is that Mill, before coming to the subject of Geome- try, had denounced the handling of ideas instead of things as one of the most fatal errors—indeed, as the cardinal error of logical philosophy. In the chapter upon the “Nature and Import of Propositions,” ' he says: “The notion that what is of primary impor- tance to the logician in a proposition, is the rela- tion between the two ideas corresponding to the subject and predicate (instead of the relation be- tween the two phenomena which they respectively express), seems to me one of the most fatal errors ever introduced into the philosophy of Logic ; and the principal cause why the theory of the science has made such inconsiderable progress during the 1 Book L, chapter v., eection 1, fifth paragraph.

JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 285 last two centuries. The treatises on Logic, and on the branches of Mental Philosophy connected with Logic, which have been produced since the intrusion of this cardinal error, though sometimes written by men of extraordinary abilities and at- tainments, almost always tacitly imply a theory that the investigation of truth consists in contem- plating and handling our ideas, or conceptions of things, instead of the things themselves: a doc- trine tantamount to the assertion that the only mode of acquiring knowledge of Nature is to study it at second hand, as represented in our own minds,” Mill here denounces the cardinal error of in- vestigating Nature at second hand, as represent- ed in our own minds. Yet his words exactly de- scribe that process of mental experimentation which he has unquestionably advocated in geom- etry, the most perfect and certain of the sci- ences. It may be urged, indeed, with some show of reason, that the method which might be erro- neous in one science might be correct in another. The mathematical sciences are called the exact sciences, and they may be of peculiar character. But, in the first place, Mill’s denunciation of the handling of ideas is not limited by any excep- tions ; it is applied in the most general way, and arises upon the general question of the Import of Propositions. It is, therefore, in distinct con- flict with Mill’s subsequent advocacy of mental experimentation. In the second place, Mill is entirely precluded from claiming the mathematical sciences as pecul- iar in their method, because one of the principal points of his philosophy is to show that they are not peculiar. It is the outcome of his philosophy to show that they are founded on a directly em- pirical basis, like the rest of the sciences. He speaks ' of geometry as a “ strictly physical sci- ence,” and asserts that every theorem of geome- try is a law of external Nature, and might have been ascertained by generalizing from observa- tion and experiment. What will our physicists say to a strictly physical science, which can be experimented on in the private laboratory of the philosopher’s mind? What a convenient sci- ence! What a saving of expense in regard of apparatus, and materials, and specimens ! * 1 Book III., chapter xxiv., section 7, about the tenth line. 2 Same section, beginning of second paragraph. 3 Since writing the above, I have made the signifi- cant discovery that in the first and second editions a clause follows the passage quoted from Book I., chap- ter v., section 1, paragraph 5 (vol. 1., middle of page ——<—_————————

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Me NN a a 286 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Incidentally, it occurs to me to ask whether Mill, in treating geometry, had not forgotten a little sentence which sums up the conclusion of the first section of his chapter on Names?! Here he luminously discusses the question wheth- er names are more properly said to be the names of things, or of our ideas of things. After giv- ing some reasons of apparent cogency, he con- cludes emphatically in these words: “ Names’ therefore, shall always be spoken of in this work as the names of things themselves, and not mere- ly of our ideas of things.” Here is really a diffi- culty. Straight line is certainly a name, and yet it can hardly be the name of a thing which is not a straight line. It must then be the name either of a real straight line, or of our idea of a straight line. But Mill distinctly denied that there were such things as straight lines, “in our planet at least ;” hence the name (unless, indeed, it be the name of lines in other planets) must be the name of our ideas of straight lines. He promised ex- pressly that names “ in this work,” that is, in the “ System of Logic,” should always be spoken of as the names of things themselves. It must have been by oversight, then, that he forgot this em- phatic promise in a later chapter of the same vol- ume. We may excuse an accidental lapsus me- moria, but a philosopher is unfortunate who makes many such lapses in regard to the funda- mental principles of his system. But let us overlook Mill’s breach of promise, and assume that we may properly employ ideal experiments. We are told® that, though it is impossible ocularly to follow lines “in their pro- longation to infinity,” yet this is not necessary. “Without doing so we may know that if they ever do meet, or if, after diverging from one an- other, they begin again to approach, this must 119), in the following words: “A process by which, I will venture to affirm, not a single truth ever was ar- rived at,except truths of psychology, a science of which Ideas or Conceptions are avowedly (along with other mental phenomena) the snbject-matter.’’ These words du not appear in the fifth and ninth editions. Now, as Mill could not possibly pretend to include geometry, a strictly physical science, under psychology, we find him implying, or rather asserting, that not a single truth ever was arrived at in geometry by the very method of handling our ideas on which he de- pends for the knowledge of the axioms of geometry. The striking out of these words seems to indicate that he had perceived the absolute conflict of his two doctrines ; yet he maintains ‘his opinion about the cardinal error of handling ideas, and merely deletes a too glaring inconsistency which results from it. 1 Book I., chapter fi., section 1, near the end. 2 Book II., chapter v., section 5, beginning of fourth paragraph. take place not at an infinite, but at a finite dis- tance. Supposing, therefore, such to be the case, we can transport ourselves thither in imagina- tion, and can frame a mental image of the ap- pearance which one or both of the lines must present at that point, which we may rely on as being precisely similar to the reality.” Now, we are also told! that “ neither in Nature nor in the human mind do there exist any objects exactly corresponding to the definitions of geometry.” Not only are there no perfectly straight lines, but there are not even lines without breadth. Mill says,? “ We cannot conceive a line without breadth ; we can form no mental picture of such a line; all the lines which we have in our minds are lines possessing breadth.” Now I want to know what Mill means by the prolongation of a line which has thickness and is not straight. Let us examine this question with some degree of care. In the first place, if the line, instead of being length without breadth, according to Euclid’s definition, has thickness, it must be a wire; if it had had two dimensions without the third, it would surely have been described as a surface, nota line. But then I want to know how we are to understand the prolongation of awire, Is the course of the wire to be defined by its surface or by its central line, or by a line running deviously within it? If we take the last, then, the line be- ing devious and uncertain, its prolongation must be undefined. If we take a certain central line, then either this line has breadth or it has no breadth ; if the former, all our difficulties recur ; if the latter— Well, Mill denied that we could form the idea of such a line. The same difficulty applies to any line or lines upon the surface, or to the surface itself regarded as a curved surface without thickness. Unless, then, we can get rid of thickness in some way or other, I feel unable to understand what the prolongation of a line means. But let us overlook this difficulty, and assume that. we have got Euclid’s line—length without breadth. In fact, Mill tells us* that “we can reason about a line as if it had no breadth” be- cause we have “the power, when a perception is present to our senses, or @ conception to our in- tellects, of attending to & part only of that per- ception or conception, instead of the whole.” I believe that this sentence supplies a good instance 1 Book II., chapter v., section 1, beginning of third paragraph. 2Same rection, second paragraph, eleven lines from end. 2 Same paragraph, seventeen lines from end.

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rer away — — es Vea JOHN STUART MILL’S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 287 of a non sequitur, being in conflict with the sen- tence which immediately follows. Mill holds that we learn the properties of lines by experimenta- tion on ideas in the mind ; these ideas must surely be conceived, and they cannot be conceived with- out thickness. Unless, then, the reasoning about a line is quite a different process from experiment- ing, I fail to make the sentences hold together at all. If, on the other hand, we can reason about lines without breadth, but can only experiment on thick lines, would it not be much better to stick to the reasoning process, whatever it may be, and drop the mental experimentation altogether ? But let that pass. Suppose that, in one way or other, we manage to attend only to the direc- tion of the line, not its thickness. Now, the line cannot be a straight line, because Mill tells us that neither in Nature nor in the human mind is there anything answering to the definitions of geometry, and the second definition of Euclid de- fines a straight line. If not straight, what is it? Crooked, I presume. What, then, are we to un- derstand by the prolongation of a crooked line ? If the crooked line is made up of various portions of line tending in different directions, if, in short, it be a zigzag line, of course we cannot prolong it in all those directions at once, nor even in any two directions, however slightly divergent. Let us adopt, then, the last bit of line as our guide. If this bit be perfectly straight, there is no diffi- culty in saying what the prolongation will be. But then Mill denied that there could be such a bit of straight line; for the length of the bit could scarcely have any relevance in a question of this sort. If not a straight line, it may yet be a piece of an ellipse, parabola, cycloid, or some other mathematical curve. But if a pieve of an ellipse, do we mean a piece of a perfect ellipse ? In that case one of the definitions of geometry has something answering to it in the mind at least; and if we conceive the more complicated mathematical curves, surely we can conceive the straight line, the most simple of curves. But if these pieces of line are not perfect curves, that is, do not fulfill definite mathematical laws, what are they? If they also are crooked, and made up of fragments of other lines and curves, all the difficulty comes over again. Apparently, then, we are driven to the conception of a line, no por- tion of which, however small, follows any definite ‘mathematical law whatever. For if any portion has a definite law, the last portion may as well be supposed to be that portion; then we can prolong it in accordance with that law, and the result is a perfect mathematical line or curve, of which Mill denied the existence either in Nature or in the human mind. We are driven, then, to the final result that no portion of any line follows any mathematical law whatever. Each line must follow its own sweet will. What, then, are we to understand by the prolongation of such a line ? Surely the whole thing is reduced to the absurd. But in this inquiry we must be patient. Let us forget the non-existence of straight lines, the cardinal error of mental experimentation, and whatever little oversights we have yet fallen upon. Let us suppose there really are geomet- rical figures which we can treat in the manner of “‘a strictly physical science,” such as geometry seems to be. What lessons can we draw from Mill’s Logic as to the mode of treating the fig- ures? A plain answer is contained in the follow- ing extract from the second volume : “Every theorem in geometry,” he says,' “is a law of external Nature, and might have been as- certained by generalizing from observation and experiment, which in this case resolve themselves into comparison and measurement.” Here we are plainly told that the solution of every theorem in geometry may be accomplished by a process of which measurement is, to say the least, a necessary element. No doubt a good deal turns upon the word “ generalizing,” by which I believe Mill to mean that what is true of the figure measured will be true of all like figures in general Give him, however, the benefit of the doubt, and suppose that, after measuring, we are to apply some process of reasoning before deciding on the properties of our figure. Still it is plain that, if our measurements are not accu- rate, we cannot attain to perfect or unlimited ac- “ curacy in our results, supposing that they depend upon the data given by measurement. Now, I wish to know how Mill would ascertain by generalizing from comparison and measurement that the ratio of the diameter and circumference of a circle is that of one to 3.141592653589793823846. .. . Some years ago I made an actual trial with a pair of compasses and a sheet of paper to ap- proximate to this ratio, and, with the utmost care, I could not come nearer than one part in 540. Yet Mr. W. Shanks has given the value of this ratio to the extent of 707 places of decimals,* and it is a question of mere labor of computation to carry it to any greater length. It is obvious 1 Book IIL, chapter xxiv., section 7, beginning of second paragraph. 2 Proceedings of the Royal Society (1872-"73), vol. xxL, p. 319. a eee te Bee te =

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a 288 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. that the result does not and cannot depend on measurement at all, or else it would be affected by the inaccuracy of that measurement. It is obviously impossible, from inexact physical data, to arrive at an exact result, and the computa- tions of Mr. Shanks and other caleulators are founded on a priori considerations ; in fact, upon considerations which have no necessary connec- tions with geometry at all. The ratio in ques- tion occurs as a natural constant in various branches of mathematics, as, for instance, in the theory of error, which has no necessary connec- tion with the geometry of the circle. It is amusing to find, too, that Mill himself happens to speak of this same ratio, in his “ Ex- amination of Hamilton,”! and he there says, “This attribute was discovered, and is now known, as a result of reasoning.” He says noth- ing about measurement and comparison. What has become, in this critical case, of the empirical character of geometry which it was his great ob- ject to establish? A few lines further on (p. 372) he says that mathematicians could not have found the ratio in question “ until the long train of difficult reasoning which culminated in the dis- covery was complete.” Now, we are certainly dealing with a theorem of geometry, and if this could have been solved by comparison and meas- urement, why did mathematicians resort to this long train of difficult reasoning ? I need hardly weary the reader by pointing out that the same is true, not merely of many other geometrical theorems, but of all. That the square on the hypothenuse of a right-angled tri- angle is exactly equal to the sum of the squares on the other sides ; that the area of a cycloid is exactly equal to three times the area of the de- scribing circle; that the surface of a sphere is ex- actly four times that of any of its great circles ; even that the three angles of a plane triangle are exactly equal to two right angles—these and thousands of other certain mathematical theorems 3 Second edition, p. 371. cannot possibly be proved by measurement and comparison. The absolute certainty and accuracy of these truths can only be proved deductively. Reasoning can carry a result to infinity—that is to say, we can see that there is no possible limit theoretically to the endless repetition of a pro- cess. Thus it is found, in the 117th proposition of Euclid’s tenth book, that the side and diagonal of a square are incommensurable. No quantity, however small, can be a sub-multiple of both; or, in other words, their greatest common measure is an infinitely small quantity. It has also been shown that the circumference and diameter of a circle are incommensurable. Such results cannot possibly be due to measurement, It may be well to remark that the expression “a false empirical philosophy,” which has been used in this article, is not intended to imply that all empirical philosophy is false. My meaning is that the phase of empirical philosophy upheld by Mill and the well-known members of his school, is falsé. Experience, no doubt, supplies the ma- terials of our knowledge, but in a far different manner from that expounded by Mill. Here this inquiry must for the present be in- terrupted. It has been shown that Mill under- takes to explain the origin of our geometrical knowledge on the ground of his so-called “ Em- pirical Philosophy,” but that at every step he in- volves himself in inextricable difficulties and self- contradictions. It may be urged, indeed, that the groundwork of geometry is a very slippery subject, and forms a severe test for any kind of philosophy. This may be quite true, but it is no excuse for the way in which Mill has treated the subject; it is one thing to fail in explaining a difficult matter: it is another thing to rush into subjects and offer reckless opinions and argu- ments, which, on minute analysis, are found to have no coherence. This is what Mill has done, and he has done it, not in the case of geometry alone, but in almost every other point of logical and metaphysical philosophy treated in his works. —Contemporary Review.

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i ee ee oe he THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 289 THE EVOLUTION THEORY AND ITS RELATIONS TO -THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.’ By Prorzsson ERNST HAECKEL, or Jena Univensrry. S we meet here to-day to celebrate the open- ing of the fiftieth Congress of German Naturalists, our first care should be to show how much each particular branch of research contrib- utes to the sum of human knowledge. Educated people of every class, who watch with the liveliest interest the astonishing progress of natural sci- ence, have special reason to-day to put to us the question, “ What, in view of the general develop- ment of the human mind, are the results which you present to us?” In compliance, therefore, with the invitation with which you have honored me, and to recompense the kind attention which I pray you to grant me for a few moments, I have chosen for the subject of my discourse a topic of high mutual interest, namely, the relations of sci- ence in general, or of the philosophy of Nature, to that branch of research with which I am more nearly concerned, the Evolution Theory. During the last ten years or more, no ather doctrine has taken hold so firmly of the attention of the public, or has so violently agitated our profoundest convictions, as the resuscitated the- ory of evolution and the monistic philosophy with which it is connected. By its aid alone can we resolve the question of questions—the one great fundamental question of man’s place in Nature. And since man is the measure of all things, the ultimate bases, the highest principles of all science, naturally depend on the place in Nature assigned to man as our knowledge of the cosmos increases. As every one knows, it is to Charles Darwin, more than any other man, that our present doc- trine of evolution is indebted for the supremacy it enjoys. He it was that, eighteen years ago, first broke the ice of dominant prejudices, being inspired with that same idea of unity in the development of the universe which, in the last century, impressed the minds of our greatest thinkers and poets, at whose head we must place Immanuel Kant and Wolfgang Goethe. In set- ting up his theory of natural selection, Darwin gave a firm foundation to that biological side of the general theory of evolution—the most impor- 1 An address delivered at the Manich meeting of German Naturalists and Physicians. Translated by J. Fitzgerald, A. M. 55 tant side of that theory—which appeared as early as the beginning of this century under the title of derivation of beings, or theory of descent. In vain had the old philosophy of Nature previously contended for the theory of descent; neither Lamarck nor Geoffroy St.-Hilaire in France, neither Oken nor Schelling in Germany, could se- cure its triumph. It is now just fifty years since Lorenz Oken, in this very town of Munich, com- menced his academic lectures on the doctrine of evolution; and it becomes us, I think, to lay a crown of laurel on the tomb of that profound zo- ologist, that enthusiastic philosopher. Again, it was Oken, too, who, out of an ardent desire of uni- fying science, called together at Jena, in 1822, the first Congress of German Naturalists; on this ground alone he would have a special claim on our gratitude at this fiftieth anniversary. The philosophy of Nature could at that time only sketch the general plan and barely lay the foundation of the grand edifice of the unity of development. The materials required for its con- struction were not collected till a later period, through the labors of a multitude of diligent and painstaking workers, A mighty literature, a re- markable perfection of the methods of research, give evidence of the amazing progress made by natural science since Oken’s day. At the same time, however, the boundless extension of the field of observation, and the consequent division of labor, have led to a deplorable waste of energies ; the more direct interest taken in the observation of details has totally obscured the nobler end of investigating general laws. And what is the result? That, during the pe- riod when this active research most flourished— that is, the thirty years from 1830 to 1859—the two chief branches of natural history proceeded on principles diametrically opposed to each other. Take, first, the problem of the development of the globe. Ever since 1830, since the publication of Lyell’s “ Principles of Geology,” the idea that our planet did not originate in an act of supernatural creation; so, too, that it had passed through no series of revolutions as radical as they were mys- tical; but that, rather, it had been formed natu- rally and gradually by a process of progressive and uninterrupted development, has been spread-

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| ’ AE NS an \ 290 ing more and more. In the history of the devel- opment of living things, on the contrary, entire confidence was reposed in the ancient and unten- able myth, according to which every species of animals or of plants was, like man himself, cre- ated independently of every other species. These creations, it was supposed, had succeeded to one another in series, without any tie of filiation. This flat contradiction of the two doctrines—the ge- ologists’ theory of natural development, and the naturalists’ myth of a supernatural creation— was ended by Darwin in 1859 in favor of the former. Since then we no longer make any difficulty about believing that the formation and the transfor- mation of the living things inhabiting our globe obey the grand eternal laws of a mechanical evo- lution, precisely like the earth itself and the whole system of the universe. We no longer are required now, as was the case fourteen years ago at the Stettin meeting of the Congress of Naturalists, to gather together proofs of the new theory of evolution founded by Darwin. Since that time, the knowledge of that truth has made most satisfactory progress. In the field of research with which my own labors are concerned, in the extensive science of organic forms or morphology, it is everywhere recognized as of the very highest importance, as basic. Com- parative anatomy and embryology, systematic zo- ology and botany, can no longer disregard the theory of descent. It alone is able to explain the mysterious relations of innumerable organic forms to one another ; in other words, to refer them to their mechanical causes. Their mutual resem- blances are explained to be a natural conse- quence, as being an inheritance from a common ancestral form; and their differences are ac- counted to be the necessary effect of an adapta- tion to different conditions of existence. By the theory of descent alone can we explain, simply and naturally, the facts of paleontology, of cho- rology, and of cecology ;' by its aid alone can we account for those remarkable rudimentary organs —eyes that see not, wings that do not fly, mus- cles that do not contract—in a word, all those useless parts of the body which so embarrass the prevailing teleology. These organs clearly show that conformity to an end, in the structure of or- ganic forms, is neither general nor complete ; they do not emanate from a plan of creation drawn up beforehand, but were of necessity pro- 1 Chorology treats of the geographical and topo- graphical distribution of organisms ; @cology of the habitations, the means of existence, and the mutual relations of organisms. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. duced by the accidental clash of mechanical causes,! The man who, in the face of these imposing facts, should still demand proofs in favor of the theory of descent, would himself give evidence only of one thing, namely, his lack of knowledge and of understanding. To demand proofs exact and strictly experimental would he a totally dif- ferent thing. Such a demand—and it is often made—results frou. a very wid«-spread, errone- ous idea, that ail natural sciencer may be exact sciences. But the truth is, that only a small frac- tion of the natural sciences is exact, namely, such of them as are based on mathematics. These are, first, astronomy, and, above all, the higher me- chanics ; then the greater part of physics and chemistry, as also a good deal of physiology, and only a very small portion of morphology. In the last-named department of biology the phe- nomena are so complex, so variable, that, as a rule with respect to them, the mathematical method is out of the question. Though we may, as a broad principle, require for all sciences an exact and even a mathematical basis, and though the possibility of finding such a basis may be ad- mitted, nevertheless, in nearly all the branches of biology we are absolutely unable to comply with this condition. Here the historical, the his- torico-philosophical method is the best substitute for the exact or physico-mathematical method, This is particularly true of morphology. In truth, we attain scientific knowledge of organic forms only through the history of their develop- ment. The great progress of our times in this branch of science comes from the fact that we have extended the signification and the scope of the history of development infinitely beyond the limits it had before Darwin’s day. Before his time, that term was applied only to the develop- ment of the organized individual, now styled em- bryology or ontogeny. When the botanist traced the plant to its seed, or the zodlogist the animal to the egg, they both supposed that with this history of the embryo they had settled the whole question of morphology. Our greatest embryolo- gists, Wolff, Baer, Remack, Schleiden, and (till re- cently) the whole school founded by them, knew only of individual embryology. Nowadays, and for us, the mysterious phenomena of embryology are very different things. They are no longer incomprehensible enigmas; we grasp their pro- found meaning. In obedience to the laws of 1 Dyesteleology treats of rudimentary organs as con- tradicting the “‘ conformity to an end” of the support- ers of teleology, or the doctrine of final causes.

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al ng he ce Be ct if. 2 e- ct C- h e, a d d n B. a il + wee oOo 1-4 @ — SS SS FTF a heredity, the different states assumed under our own eyes in a very brief period by the embryo are simply a condensed and abridged summing up of the corresponding form-changes through which the ancestors of the form under examination have passed in the course of ages. From a hen’s-egg, placed in a hatching apparatus, we see coming forth after twenty-one days a young chick; we are no longer mute with wonder at the marvel- ous changes which conduct us from the simple ovula-cell to the gastrula, from the gastrula to the vermiform and acephalous embryo, and from the latter to the higher embryonic forms which present the organization of a fish, an amphibian, a reptile, and finally a bird. What is more, we from all this infer the series of corresponding an- cestral forms from the unicellular amebda to the gastrea, and so on through Vermes, Acrania, Fishes, Amphibia, and Reptilia, to the Birds. Thus does the series of embryonic forms in the chicken present to us a sketch-list of its real ancestors. | The direct, original connection, then, which ex- ists between the embryology of the individual and the genealogical history of its ancestors, con- stitutes our fundamental biogenetic law, and is | summed up in this brief expression : embryology (or ontogeny) is a synopsis of genealogy (or phylo- | geny), the laws of heredity being the condition. This palingenetic abridgment is momentarily dis- | turbed only when there appear, in consequence | of adaptation to the conditions of embryonic life, cenogenetic modifications. The phylogenetic meaning of embryological phenomena is the only explanation we can offer of them as yet—an explanation that is confirmed in the highest degree and completed by the re- sults of comparative anatomy and paleontology. The truth is, that this matter does not admit of exact or even experimental demonstration. For all these bialogical data, from the very nature of things, have to do with historical and philosophi- cal natural science. Their common aim is to dis- cover historic facts which, in the lapse of many thousands of years, took place on the surface of our young planet, long before the coming of the human race. Direct, exact demonstration of them is a thing utterly beyond the limits of possibility. By a critical study of the historical archives, and by a prudent though bold use of speculative hypothesis, we may indirectly come at the truth. Phylogeny turns these historic data to account, and determines their significance after the same manner as the other historical sciences. Just as the historian, with the aid of chronicles, biog- . THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 291 raphies, and private Jetters, faithfully describes for us events that occurred long ago; as the archeologist, from the study of sculptures, inserip- tions, utensils, learns the grade of civilization reached by a people that long since disappeared ; as the philologist, by comparing kindred lan- guages, whether in their present state or in their most ancient documents, shows that they have de- veloped and that they have their source in a com- mon mother-language—so the naturalist, by mak- ing critical use of the phylogenetic archives of comparative anatomy, ontogeny, and paleontology, acquires an approximately correct knowledge of the facts which, in the lapse of untold ages, have brought about changes in the forms of organic life upon the earth. The genealogical history of organisms or phy- logeny cannot rest on foundations more exact, more experimental, than its elder and more fa- vored sister, geology. Nevertheless the scientific value of the latter is now universally recognized. Only an ignorant person can now smile incred- ulously on being told that the mighty ranges of the Alps, whose snow-capped crests glisten from afar, consist simply of indurated sea-ooze. The stratification of these mountains, and the fossils imbedded in them, admit no other explanation, though the thing is incapable of exact demon- | stration, All geologists to-day agree in admit- ting a succession, a fixed classification of these Alpine strata, though this classification presup- poses a stratigraphic system that nowhere exists unbroken. Do not our phylogenetic hypotheses possess the same value as these generally-accepted geological hypotheses? The only difference be- tween them is that this vast hypothetical ensem- ble of geology is incomparably more perfect, more simple, more easily comprehended, than that of phylogeny, which is still young. The historical sciences of Nature, geology and phylogeny, constitute a strong bond between the exact natural sciences on the one hand, and the purely historical, intellectual sciences on the other. Thus does biology in general, but particu- larly systematic zodlogy and botany, rise actually to the grade of natural history—a title of honor which they have long borne, but which they de- serve only in our own time. If these sciences are still oftentimes designated, and even in official quarters, “ descriptive ” sciences, as distinguished from the “explicative” sciences, that fact only shows how erroneous an idea people have hith- erto had of their true scope. Since the natural system of organisms has come to be regarded as the expression of their genealogy, systematics,

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an with its dry descriptions, gives place to the more vivid history of the genealogy of classes and species. But, whatever we may think of this enormous progress of morphology, it does not of itself suf- fice to explain the extraordinary influence of the present doctrine of evolution upon general sci- ence, or the philosophy of Nature. That influ- ence depends, as we know, rather on the special consequences of the theory of descent as applied to man. The ancient question of the origin of our own species is, for the first time, solved by this theory in a scientific sense. If the doctrine of evolution is true in general; if there is, in- deed, a natural and historic genealogy of living beings, then man, too, the lord of creation, is de- scended from the sub-kingdom Vertebrata, the class Mammalia, the sub-class Placentalia, and the order Monkeys. Already in 1735, Linné, in his “System of Nature,” classed man with the monkeys and the bats, in the order of Primates. None of the later zodlogists have been able to separate him from the Mammalia. Conclusion: this place unanimously assigned to him in classi- fication means phylogenetically only one thing, to wit, that he is a branch of that class of ani- mals. In vain has every effort been made to invali- date this pregnant consequence of the doctrine of evolution; vain has been every attempt at making an exception in favor of man, and saving him from such an ancestry; in vain has been constructed for him an ancestral line distinct from the genealogical tree of the Vertebrata. The phylogenetic data of comparative anatomy, on- togeny, and paleontology, speak so plainly in fa- vor of a unitary derivation of all vertebrate ani- mals sprung from a common source, that doubt is impossible. No philologist who compares the German, Russian, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit lan- guages, will say that they may have sprung from different sources, however great the differences between them may be. Nay, all are agreed, as a result of critical study of the structure and the development of these diverse languages, that they all descend from the Aryan or Indo-Ger- manic. So, too, all morphologists are profoundly impressed with the idea, in short convinced, that all the Vertebrata, from amphioxus to man inclu- sively—that all fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, are the descendants of one primitive vertebrate. Indeed, we cannot suppose that the life-conditions, varied and complex as they are, which through a long line of evolutive processes have led to the creation of the vertebrate type, — 292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. have occurred more than once in the course of the earth’s history. For the subject in hand, we are concerned only with man’s animal origin. We therefore will dwell no longer on the lower stages of our genealogy. We would merely, in passing, state that its upper stages are now firmly established, thanks to the labors of distinguished morpholo- gists, among whom Gegenbaur and Huxley hold the first rank. True, it is still often asserted that here we have to do only with the descent, the origin of man’s body, and not of his intellectual functions. To meet this serious objection we must, first of all, bear in mind the physiological fact that our life is inseparably tied to the organization of our central nervous system. Now, the latter is con- stituted like the same system in the higher verte- brates, and comes into existence in the same way ; even according to Huxley’s researches the struct- ural differences existing between the brain of man and that of the higher monkeys are much less than the differences between the higher and the lower monkeys. Besides, the function or work of an organ cannot.be thought of without the organ itself, and the function always devel- ops simultaneously with the organ. Hence we are forced to the conclusion that our psychic fac- ulties have been developed slowly, gradually, in a ratio with the phylogenetic building up of our brain For the rest, this great question of the soul comes up before us now in a very different aspect from that it wore twenty or even ten years ago. Under whatever form we may picture to ourselves the union of soul and body, of spirit and matter, it is still clear, on the theory of evolution, that all organic matter at least, if not matter in general, is in some sense possessed of psychic properties, In the first place the progress of microscopic re- search has shown that the elementary anatomic parts of organs—the cells—generally possess an individual psychic life. Ever since forty years ago, when Schleiden proposed at Jena the cell- theory of the vegetable kingdom—which theory was straightway applied by Schwann to the ani- mal kingdom—we ascribe to these microscopic beings an individual life of their own. Cells are, according to Briicke, true individuals of the first (or lowest) order—elementary organisms. The fruitful application made by Virchow in his “ Cel- lular Pathology” of the theory in question to medicine in general, presupposes that the cells must not be regarded as the inert, passive mate- rials of the organism, but as the living and active members of the same state.

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THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 293 Finally, this view rests upon the study of In- fusoria, Amebe, and otber one-celled organisms. In them we again find, in the individual, isolated * cells, the same manifestations of psychic life, sen- sation and perception, will and movement, as in the higher animals, which consist of multitudi- nous cells. In sociate as well as in solitary cells the psychical life resides in one and the same substance—protoplasm. Further, we know that moneres and other rudimentary organisms—mere detached bits of protoplasm—possess sensation and the power of movement, just as does the en- tire cell. From this we should conclude that the cell-soul, which is the basis of scientific psycholo- gy, is itself only a compound, i. e., the sum of the psychic properties of the protoplasmic mole- eules, called also plastidules.: Thus the soul of the plastidule would be the ultimate factor to which could be reduced the psychic life of living things. Does the doctrine of evolution hereby ex- haust its psychological analysis? By no means. The new organic chemistry teaches us that it is the physical and chemical properties of a certain element, earbon, which, by its complex combina- tions with other elements, produces the special psychological properties of organized bodies, and in particular of protoplasm. The moneres, con- sisting only of protoplasm, form as it were a bridge over the deep gulf which divides organic from inorganic Nature. They show us how the simplest organisms must have sprung, in the be- ginning, from inorganic carbon combinations. If a certain number of carbon-atoms combined with a certain number of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur atoms to form a unit, a plastidule, we may regard the soul of the plastidule, that is to say, the sum total of its vital properties, as the necessary product of the forces of all the atoms combined. Then, from. the monistic point of view, we may call this sum of the atomic forces the soul of the atom. From the chance meeting and the multiplied combinations of these atom- souls—always constant, always incommutable— come the multiple and highly-variable souls of the plastidules, which are the molecular factors of organic life. Having reached these extreme psychological consequences of the monistic doctrine, or of the doctrine of evolution, we meet again those an- cient conceptions of the universal animation of 4 Plastidules, protoplasm molecules considered as the elementary factors of all vital properties. They are, so to speak, organic atoms, the atoms of the phy- siologist. matter, which have been variously expressed by such philosophers as Democritus, Spinoza, Bru- no, Leibnitz, and Schopenhauer. All psychic life is ultimately reducible to two elementary functions, namely, sensation and motion: on the one hand, excitation ; on the other, reflex movements. The eimple sensation of pleasure or displeasure, the simple motion of attraction or of repulsion, are the sole elements wpich, by an endless series of complex combinations, constitute the whole sum of psychic activity. The hate or the love of atoms, the attraction or the repulsion of mole- cules, the motion and sensation of cells and cel- lular organisms, the thought and consciousness of man, these are the different steps of one and the same evolutive psychological process. The unitary conception of the universe, or monism, toward which the new doctrine of evolu- tion leads us, puts an end to the opposition which has hitherto existed between the various dualistic systems of the universe. It avoids the narrow- ness of both materialism and spiritualism ; it com- bines practical idealism with theoretical realism ; it unites the science of Nature and the science of mind in one unitary general science, which com- prises all. The present theory of evolution is not only of very great theoretical value, as forming the con- necting link between these different sciences ; it furthermore yields practical results. Neither medi- cine, considered as an applied natural science, not political economy, jurisprudence, or theology, in so faras they form a part of applied philosophy, ean henceforth resist its influence. Nay, I am convinced that it is precisely in such domains that it will prove to be the most powerful lever of progress and perfectionment ; and, inasmuch as the great aim of the sciences just named is the education of the young, the doctrine of evolution, as being the most potent instrument of education, must make its authoritative voice heard even in the school-room. It must not enter the school simply by tolerance, but must be its directing principle. If I may be permitted briefly to call attention to the more important aspects of this question, I would first of all dwell upon the paramount advan- ' tages of the genetic method. Both teachers. and pupils will take infinitely greater interest in the subject-matter of instruction, if, first of all, they put to themselves the question, ‘‘ How did this thing come into existence—how did it develop?” With the question of development comes that of causality, and after all it is the knowledge that | we aequire of proximate causes, and not the

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akpeneesemenenese eee 294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. knowledge of facts themselves, that satisfies our | in the exact education. The doctrine of evolu- desire of knowing and our reason. The knowledge of the simple general causes to which phenomena the most diverse and the most complex are refer- able, at once simplifies and deepens our instruc- tion. The understanding of causes changes a dry science into one of vivid interest. The true meas- ure of intellectual development is not the quan- tity of facts learned, but the way in which we understand their causes. ° To what extent are the fundamental principles of the doctrine of evolution to be introduced into the schools? In what order are its principal branches—cosmogony, gevlogy, animal and plant phylogeny, anthropology—to be taught in the various classes? That is a matter to be decided by the professors themselves. I believe that com- prehensive reformation of our school system in this direction is inevitable, and that it will be eminently successful. What a gain it would be, for instance, if that important branch of instruc- tion, languages, were treated according to the comparative and genetic method! What in- creased interest would be given to physical geog- raphy, if it were genetically connected with geol- ogy! What new life and light would be infused into the dry and wearisome systematics of animal and plant forms, were they to be represented simply as the divergent branches of a common enealogical stem! Finally, how different the ea we should have of our own organism, were we no longer to regard ourselves, on the authori- ty of myths and phantoms, as the fictitious image of an anthropomorphic creator, but rather, in the clear light of phylogeny, to consider ourselves as the most highly-developed form of the animal kingdom—as an organism which, in the course of millions and millions of years, has gradually been evolved from a long line of vertebrate an- cestors, and which in the struggle for life has risen high above its kindred ! By stimulating every branch of instruction, the theory of evolution will awaken in the breasts of masters and pupils the consciousness of their true dependence. As an historical science it will reconcile the two systems of instruction which are at present vying with each other for mastery in the school—the old, classic, historico-philo- sophical system on the one hand; the new, exact, physico-mathematical system on the other. Both are equally correct, equally indispensable. The human mind will not attain its perfect develop- ment save by satisfying both at once, If, hith- erto, education has been too exclusively classi- cal, a like thing happens too often nowadays tion reduces the two systems to a true propor- tion by serving as a bond of union between exact science and classical science—the science of Na- ture and the science of mind. It points out ev- erywhere the tide of life which flows with a single, unbroken stream. Everywhere it discloses to the assiduous seeker fresh scientific conquests to be achieved; it “gently brings the mind to the truth.” This boundless perspective of progres- sive perfectionment which is opened to us by the doctrine of evolution is the strongest protest against the pitiable “ ignorabimus ” which is re- echoed from all sides. No man can foretell at what “ limits ” the human mind will stand still in the conquest of Nature, or how far its invading progress will extend in the future. The most urgent demand, and the one most dif- ficult to comply with, addressed by practical phi- losophy to the evolution doctrine is, it appears to me, the demand for a new morality. No doubt the development of moral character, of religious convictions, will hereafter, as hitherto, be the great concern of education. But hitherto, in all classes of society, the conviction has been that moral precepts are closely connected with cer- tain ecclesiastical tenets ; and since these tenets, or dogmas—mixed up as they are with old crea- tion-myths—are in absolute contradiction with the evolution doctrine, it has been supposed that the existence of religion and morality was in dan- ger from that doctrine. This apprehension is, in my opinion, baseless. It is the result of confounding natural religion, which is true and rational, with the dogmatic and mythological religion of the Church. The com- parative history of religions, which is one of the most important branches of anthropology, teaches us how diversified are the garments in which different nations and periods, in accord- ance with their respective characters and needs, are wont to clothe the religious idea. From it we learn that even the dogmas of the Church itself have slowly and uninterruptedly developed. New churches and new sects arise; old ones die out. How long does any given form of belief persist, under the most favorable conditions? A thou- sand years or two—a brief span of time, which is lost in the eternity of the geological ages. Fi- nally, the comparative history of civilization also shows us how faint is the connection between true morality and any definite form of faith or of church constitution. Often the utmost brutality, the extremest savagery of manners, are associated with the absolute predominance of a church. We

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| al THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 295 have only to look at the middle ages. On the other hand, we find the highest degree of morality in men who are entirely freed from church creeds, Outside of all creeds and churches, there ex- ists in germ in the heart of every man a true natural religion, which is inseparably identified with our na- ture’s best side. Its first precept is love and the abnegation of our natural egoism in favor of our neighbor, and in view of the good of the race to which we belong. This moral law is more ancient than church religion; it is the development of the social instincts of animals. The beginnings of it we find among divers classes of mammals, birds, and insects. Agreeably to the law of as- sociation and the division of labor, many indi viduals unite to form a community, a common- wealth. The existence of these commonwealths necessarily depends on the reciprocal relations of their members, and on each one foregoing his in- dividual interest for the good of the whole. The consciousness of this necessity, the feeling of duty, is simply a social instinct, and instinct is always a psychic habit which, acquired through adaptation and then becoming hereditary, at last appears to be innate. If we would understand the great force of the sentiment of duty in animals, we need only over- turn an ant-hill. What do we see amid the ruin? We see thousands of ant-citizens all intent, not on saving their own lives, but in protecting the precious commonwealth to which they belong. The doughty men-at-arms make sturdy opposition when we would introduce our hand; the nurses of the young ones save the so-called “ ants’-eggs” —the nymphz on whom the future of the com- munity depends; the industrious workers begin on the spot, with indomitable courage, to clear away the débris, and to construct a new dwelling- place. The wonderful degree of civilization found among ants, bees, and other social species, sprung originally from the rudest beginnings, just as our buman civilization did. Nay, even the tenderest affections of the hu- man heart, those which inspire all our poetry, we find in germ in the animal kingdom. What shall we say of the deep mother’s love of the lioness, the touching conjugal affection of parrots known as “inseparable,” the devotion and fidelity of the dog? The noble sentiments of sympathy and love which thus find expression are but perfected in- stincts, as is the case in man himself. So understood, the ethics of the evolution theory does not need to seek for new principles ; we have only to refer to their true bases the an- cient precepts of duty. Long prior to all church religions, these natural precepts governed man’s common and legal life, just as they governed the social life of animals. The churches should utilize these weighty data, instead of combating them. The future is not of that theology which vainly struggles against the victorious doctrine of evolution, but rather of that which will adopt it and turn it to account. Far from apprehending, from the influence of the evolution doctrine on our religious convictions, an overthrowing of all existing moral laws, and a deplorable emancipation of egoism, we look rather for the establishment of natural morals based on the immovable foundation of natural laws. By acquainting us with our true place in Nature, an- thropogeny demonstrates the necessity of our an- cient social obligations. Like the theoretic philosophy of Nature, prae- tical philosophy, and pedagogy, henceforth will derive their principles not from pretended revela- tions, but from the natural conceptions of the doctrine of evolution. This victory of monism over dualism opens to us rich horizons of hope for the unending progress of our development, moral as well as intellectual. Bearing all this in mind, we must say, All hail to the evolution the- ory, reconstituted in our day by Darwin ; it is the mightiest lever of general science, or Nature- philosophy, both pure and applied ! Dita i a

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296 - THE POPULAR. SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. THE LIBERTY OF SCIENCE IN THE MODERN STATE. By Prorzsson RUDOLF VIRCHOW, or Bextor Univensrry. HEN the committee of arrangements hon- ored me with an invitation to address the meeting from this place, I asked myself whether it was not best to discuss one special topic of the recent development of our science from a point of view originally proposed by my- self, but more recently recalled to your minds by Herr Klebs. I have, however, once more con- cluded to treat a subject of general interest, prin- cipally because, as I believe, the time has come when some understanding must be reached be- tween science as represented and studied by us, on the one hand, and the general life of the com- munity on the other; and also because in the history of the nations of Continental Europe the time is even now coming on apace when the in- tellectual destinies of nations must be determined, perhaps for a long time to come, in the tribunals of last resort. Not for the first time, gentlemen, am I able at a meeting of German naturalists to point in warning to almost dramatic occurrences in our neighbor state. Again and again, at times when this Association has met, I have had occasion to refer to events which had just taken place be- yond the Rhine ; and these, however remote they may appear to be from our concernments, never- theless, in the long-run, always touch upon the same domain of controversy—namely, the ré/e of modern science in the modern state. To be frank—and here we may, perhaps, be doubly so —the question that is ever pressing upon us is that of Ultramontanism and Orthodoxy. I con- fess that it is with unfeigned alarm that I look forward to the events of the next few years among our neighbors. At the present moment we here may look about us with some pride and await the tide of events with a degree of calm- ness. But to-day, when we are engaged in cele- brating the fiftieth anniversary of this assembly, it is surely opportune to call to mind what great changes have taken place in Germany, and par- }. ticularly in Munich, since the days when Oken first assembled the German naturalists and physi- cians, 1 An address delivered at the Munich meeting of the German Association of Physicians and Naturaliste. Nature's translation, revised and corrected by J. Fitzgerald, A. M. I propose only to refer very briefly to two facts that, though well known, are still of suffi- cient interest to be mentioned again. The first is that, even when in 1822 the few members con- stituting the first assembly of German naturalists met at Leipsic, the holding of such a meeting seemed so hazardous a thing that the sessions were held in secret. It was not till 1861— 89 years later—that the names of the mem- bers who had been present from Austria could be published. The second fact, which has direct reference to the memory of Oken, is that this esteemed and illustrious teacher, this ornament of the Munich High-Scbool, was fated to die in exile in the same Swiss canton in which Ulrich von Hutten ended his life of trouble and conflict. Gentlemen, the hitter exile which oppressed Oken’s last years and caused him to languish away far from the spot where he had expended the best powers of his life, this exile will ever remain as the signature of the period through which we have victoriously passed. And so long as there is an Association of German Naturalists, it behooves us gratefully to remember that, down to the day of his death, this man bore all the signs of a martyr, and to look upon him as one of those witnesses unto blood who have achieved for us the freedom of science. Nowadays, gentlemen, it is easy to speak of the liberty of science in Germany ; now we are perfectly secure even here, where, only a few de- cades back, the fear was great that a new change of things might perhaps produce the extreme re- verse, and we can without let or hinderance discuss the highest and most difficult problems of life and the hereafter. Surely the addresses which were delivered at the first and second general meetings are proof sufficient that Munich is now a place which can bear to hear the representatives of science in the most perfect liberty. I was not able to listen to all these addresses, but I have since read those of Profs. Haeckel and Nigeli, and I must say we cannot ask more than such freedom of discussion. If it were only a question of rejoicing over this possession, I should indeed not have claimed your attention for the subject in hand. But, gentlemen, we have arrived at a point where it | becomes necessary to investigate whether we

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THE LIBERTY OF SCIENCE IN THE MODERN STATE. 297 may hope to retain securely for the future the possession which we actually enjoy. The fact that we are enabled to discuss, as we do to-day, is not for one who, like myself, has had long ex- perience of public life, a sufficient assurance that it will always remain so. Therefore, I think that not only should we strive to awaken the interest of the public, but I believe we should ask our- selves what we must do to maintain the present condition of things. I will tell you at once, gen- tlemen, what I conceive to be the chief result of my reflections, and what I most desire to prove. I wish to show that, for the present, we have nothing more to ask, but that, on the contrary, we have now reached the point where it must needs be our special task, by owr moderation, and by a certain renunciation of pet theories and personal views, to make it possible for the favor- able disposition of the nation, which we now en- joy, to persist and not to change to the contrary. In my opinion, we are actually in danger of compromising the future by making too ample use of the freedom afforded by the present state of things; and I would warn you against indulg- ing such caprices of personal speculation as you see nowadays displayed in sundry departments of natural science. The discourses of those who have preceded me, that of Prof. Nigeli in particu- lar, contain, for all who read them, a multitude of highly-important observations on the course and the limits of scientific knowledge; but these it cannot be my task to repeat here. Still, I have some remarks to make about them, and I desire to adduce a few practical instances from the experience of natural science, in order to show how great is the difference between real science in the strictest sense of that term—for which alone, in my opinion, we can justly demand that full measure of liberty which may be called liberty of science, or, more correctly still, per- haps, liberty of scientific teaching—and, on the other hand, that wider domain which belongs rather to speculation; which raises the problems toward which research is to be directed; which by anticipation formulates propositions that have yet to be demonstrated, and whose truth has yet to be discovered, though in the mean time they may be with a certain probability accepted, inasmuch as they fill up gaps in our knowl- edge. We must not forget that there exists a line of demarkation in natural science between what is speculative and what is actually proved and ultimately determined. The people demand of us that this line not only should be on occasion drawn as clearly as possible, but that it be so fixed and determined that every one shall for ever- more know just where it lies, and how far he can be required to accept as truth what he is taught. Such, gentlemen, is the task on which we have to work in our own minds. The practical questions which are connected with this lie very near. It is evident that, for whatever we consider to be assured scientific truth, we must demand complete admission into the scientific treasury of the nation. T'his the nation must lake to itself—it must consume and digest it, and continue to work at it. Herein lies the double advantage which natural science offers to the nation : on the one hand the material progress, that enormous progress which has been made in modern times. All the benefits derived from the steam-engine, telegraphy, photography, ete.; all our discoveries in chemistry and the production of dyestuffs, etc.—all rest essentially on the fact that we men of science establish firmly certain propositions, and when these have been fully demonstrated, so that we know them to be scien- tific truth, we give them to the nation at large; then others, too, can work with them, and create new products, before unthought of, which come into the world as perfect novelties, and which transform the condition of society and of nations. All this constitutes the material importance of our labors, Their intellectual value is of like importance. If I present the nation with a scien- tific truth that is fully demonstrated, to which not the least doubt attaches; if I ask every one to convince himself of the correctness of this truth, to assimilate it, to make it part of his own thoughts, of course I assume that his conception of things in general will be similarly affected. Every essentially new truth of this kind must needs influence a man’s whole mode of viewing things, his method of thinking. If, for instance, to cite a case that lies near, we consider the advances made during the past few years in our knowledge of the human eye, beginning at the time when the several com- ponent parts of the eye were first anatomically separated, when these several anatomically sepa- rated parts were first examined microscopically and their respective structures determined, down to the time when we gradually learned the vital properties and the physiological functions of the different parts, until at last, by the discovery of the retina-purple (Sehpurpur), and its photographic properties, an advance was made of which but a year ago we hardly had an idea—then it is evident that with each progressive step of this kind some department of optics, particularly the ~ rr > “LATE TE

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298 doctrine of vision, is determined and changed. Through this discovery we get definite knowledge of the action of light within the human body it- self, and we see that it is a quite peripheral organ of the body, not at all the brain, but the eye, that experiences this action. Furthermore, we learn that this photographic process is not an intel- lectual operation, but a chemical action performed with the aid of certain vital processes; and that in reality what we see is, not external objects, but their images in the eye. We thus gain a new analytical fact to aid us in understanding our relations to the outer world, and in more sharply distinguishing between the purely psychic and the purely physical elements of vision. The re- sult is a reconstruction, in part, of optics, and, at the same time, of psychology. Chemistry now steps in to investigate matters that heretofore it had taken no cognizance of, namely, the highly- important questions : ‘“‘ What is the retina-purple ? What manner of substance is this? How is it formed, how decomposed, how reformed?” The solution of these questions will not fail to open an entirely new field of research ; and it is to be hoped also that we shall soon witness new ad- vances in technical photography—that we shall be enabled to produce colored photographs. Here, then, is an advance made simultaneously on two different planes—progress both material and intellectual. And thus it is that, with each real advance in the knowledge of Nature, a series of changes must of necessity take place not only in the external but also in the internal relations of man ; and no one can prevent the new knowledge from affecting him. Each new fragment of real knowledge has its effect on man, producing new ideas, new trains of thought, and ultimately every one finds himself compelled to consider even the highest problems of mind in the light of natural phenomena. But there are certain practical considerations that concern us more nearly. Everywhere through- out Germany we are now occupied in remodeling our educational systems, enlarging and develop- ing them and determining their forms. The new Prussian education acts are on the threshold of coming events. In all the German states larger schoolhouses are being built, new educational establishments founded, the universities enlarged, high-schools and middle schools established. The question arises: “What is to be the chief staple of the ins:ruction given? What shall be the aim of theschool? In what direction shall it work ?” If natural science demands, and if for years we ourselves have been striving to gain, an influence THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. in the schools ; if we demand that natural science shall be admitted into the schools in a larger measure, and instilled into the minds of the young, there to form the basis of new ideas, then surely is it high time for us to come to an under. standing as to what we may and what we will demand. When Prof. Haeckel declares it to be a question for the schoolmaster to determine whether the theory of descent should even now be made the groundwork of education, whether the plastidule-soul should be assumed as the basis of all our conceptions of Mind, and whether the phylogeny of man should be traced back to the lowest classes of the organic world, or beyond, up to spontaneous generation, in my opinion he shirks the difficulty. If the theory of descent is so certain as Prof. Haeckel assumes it to be, we must needs demand for it a place in the schools. It is not to be thought of that so weighty a doc- trine, one so revolutionary, so intimately affecting the consciousness of all, a doctrine that of itself constitutes as it were a new religion, should not be implanted bodily in the system of education. How could we bring ourselves to observe abso- lute silence in the schools, with regard to such a revelation, as I may call it, or to leave it to the option of the schoolmaster, whether or not be shall acquaint his pupils with the greatest and most important advances that have been made in science during this entire century? That, gentle- men, were an act of resignation of the austerest kind, and in reality it never would be practised. The schoolmaster who accepted the doctrine would teach it unconsciously, and he could not do otherwise. He would have to dissimulate, he would at times have to abdicate his own knowl- edge in the most artificial way, so as not to be- tray his acquaintance with and acceptance of the doctrine of descent, or the fact that he knows precisely how man originated and whence he is come ; and if he does not know whither man goes, at least he would think that he knows precisely how in the course of sons the progressive series has shaped itself. Therefore, I say that, though we were not actually to demand the admission of the theory of descent into the plan of education, it would introduce itself. Nor must we forget, gentlemen, that what here we express, perhaps still with a certain timid reserve, is propagated by those outside with a confidence increased a thousand-fold. For in- stance, I once laid down the proposition—in op- position to the doctrine then reigning of the de- velopment of organic life from inorganic matter— that each cell has its origin in another cell, at

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der. THE LIBERTY OF SCIENCE IN THE MODERN STATE. 299 least in pathology, and more especially in human pathology. I may remark here that-in both re- lations I still to-day consider this phrase a per- fectly correct one. But after I had promulgated this doctrine, and had formulated the origin of the cell from the cell, others were not wanting who extended this phrase not only in the organic world far beyond the limits assigned by me, but who put it down as generally valid even beyond the limits of organic life. I have received the most wonderful communications, both from America and Europe, in which the whole of astronomy and geology was based upon the cellular theory, because it was thought impossible that what was decisive for the life of organic nature upon this earth should not be equally applicable to the heavenly bodies—they, too, being round bodies, which had shaped themselves into globes and represented so many cells flying about in univer- sal space and playing a part there similar to that of the cells in our body. I cannot pronounce these men to have been all arrant fools and simpletons. Indeed, from | some of their arguments, I have conceived the idea that many of them were men of education, who had studied much, and at last had attacked the problems of astronomy, but who could not see that the adaptation (Zweckmdssigkeit) of heaven- ly phonomena to their ends should have a differ- ent basis from that of man’s organization. Hence, in their pursuit of a monistic conception, they reached the conclusion that the heavens, too— nay, even that the whole universe—must be an organism adapted to ends, and that the only prin- ciple governing it must be the cell-principle. I cite this only in order to show what shape things take outside, how “theories” are enlarged, and how our own doctrines may return to us in a form fearful to ourselves. Now, only imagine how the theory of descent may be shaped to-day in the head of a socialist ! Indeed, gentlemen, this may seem ridiculous to many, but it is very serious, and I only hope that the theory of descent may not produce those horrors in our country which similar theories have actually brought to our neighbors. Any- how this theory, if carried through to its conse- quences, has an extremely dangerous side, and that the socialists have a certain notion of it already, you will doubtless have remarked. We must make this quite clear to ourselves. Nevertheless, be the matter as dangerous as it may, the confederates as bad as possible, and yet I say, from the moment when we are con- vinced that the theory of descent is a doctrine perfectly proved, so certain that we could swear by it, that we could say, thus it is—from that moment we must not hesitate to introduce it into general life, transmit it not only to every educat- ed person, but teach it to every child, make it the basis of our whole conception of the universe, of society, and of the state, and found our educa- tional system upon it. This I consider a neces- sity. In saying this I am not at all afraid of the re- proach which, to my astonishment, has made a great noise in my Prussian Fatherland, while I was absent in Russia: I mean the reproach of half- knowledge. Strange to say, it was one of our so- called liberal journals which asked the question whether the great errors of our time, and social- ism in particular, were not based upon the diffu- sion of half-knowledge. With reference to this I would like to state here, in the midst of the Nat- uralists’ meeting, that a// human knowledge is only piece-work. ll of us who call ourselves natural- ists, only possess fragments of natural science ; none of us is able to come here and represent with equal right every one of the sciences, or par- ticipate in the discussions of every one of the sections. On the contrary, it is just because they have developed themselves in a certain one-sided direction, that we esteem specialists so highly. Outside of our respective specialties, our science is half-knowledge. It were much to be desired iff we could only succeed in diffusing this half. knowledge more and more, if we could sueceed in causing at least the majority of educated persons to progress far enough to be able to survey the principal directions which the several departments of natural science are taking, and to follow their development without meeting difficulties too great to be overcome, so that they might at least be aware of the general progress of science, if, in- deed, they were not acquainted, at every moment, with the totality of all single and special proofs. We do not get much further ourselves. I, for instance, have honestly tried during my life to obtain chemical knowledge; I have even worked in a laboratory; but I feel quite incompetent to sit down at some chemical meeting without preparation, and to discuss modern chemistry in all directions. Nevertheless, I am able to pene- trate, after a time, so far into any chemical novel- ty that it does not strike me as incomprehensible. But I must always first acquire this understand- ing, I have not got it to start with; and when I want it again I must acquire it again. That which honors me is the knowledge of my igno- rance, The most important part is that I know

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800 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. perfectly well what I do not know of chemistry. If I did not know that, then, of course, I should always be wavering toand fro. But as I imagine that I am tolerably well aware what I do not know, I say to myself every time I am obliged to entera domain which is still closed to me: “ Now I must begin again to learn; now I must study afresh ; now I must do as anybody does who enters the domain of science.” The great error, which is shared even by many educated people, consists in not remembering that, with the enormous ex- tent of natural science and with the inexhaustible quantity of its details, it is impossible for any one person to master the whole. We must acquire such familiarity with the fundamentals of natural science and the gaps which exist in our knowledge, that every time we find a gap of this kind we shall say to our- selves, “Now you enter a domain which is un- known to you.” If every one had this much knowledge, many a one would strike his breast and own that it is a ticklish thing to draw uni- versal inferences with regard to the history of all things, so long as he is not entirely master of the material on which the inferences are based. It is easy to say: “A cell consists of small particles, and these we call plastidules; and plas- tidules are composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxy- gen, and nitrogen, and are endowed with a spe- cial soul ; this soul is the product or the sum of the forces which the chemical atoms possess.” This may be all so; I cannot judge of it exactly. This is one of those points which are yet unap- proachable for me ; I feel there like a navigator who gets upon a shoal, the extent of which he cannot guess. But yet I must say that until the properties of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and ni- trogen, are so defined that I can understand how a soul results from their combination, I cannot admit that we are justified in introducing the plastidule-soul into the educational programme, or in asking every educated man to recognize it as a svientific truth, from which logical conclu- sions may be drawn, or on which he may base his conception of the universe. We really can- not demand any such thing. On the contrary, I think that before we put forward such theses as the expression of science, before we say this is modern science, we must first make a whole series of laborious investigations. We must therefore say to the schoolmasters, “ Do not teach this.” This, gentlemen, is the resignation which, in my opinion, they ought to exercise who deem such a solution in itself to be the probable out- come of scientific investigation. We can cer- tainly not differ on that point for a moment, that, if this doctrine of the soul were really true, it eould only be confirmed by a long series of sei- entific researches. In the history of the natural sciences is re- corded a multitude of facts which go to show that certain problems remain a long time in sus- pense, awaiting solution. And if this solution is found at last, and found in a direction of which there was a presentiment perhaps centuries ago, it does not follow that during those times which were occupied only by speculation or presenti- ment the problem might have been taught as a scientific fact. Herr Klebs spoke of contagium animatum the other day, i. e., the idea that in diseases the trans: mission takes place by means of living organ isms, and that these organisms are the causes of contagious diseases. The doctrine of contagium animatum is lost in the obscurity of the middle ages. This expression has been handed down to us by our forefathers, and it was very prominent in the sixteenth century. Certain works of that period exist, which propound contagium anima- tum as a@ scientific dogma with the same confi- dence, with the same kind of justification, with which the doctrine of the plastidule-soul is now- adays advocated. Nevertheless, the living causes of diseases could not be found for a long time. The sixteenth century could not find them, nor could the seventeenth nor the eighteenth. Inthe nineteenth century we have begun to find con- tagia animata one by one. Zodlogy and botany have both contributed their contingent; we have found animals and plants which represent conta- gia, and a special part of the theory of contagia has been confirmed in zodlogy and botany, quite in the sense of the theories of the sixteenth cen- tury. But you will already have seen from the address of Herr Klebs that the proof is not yet all in. However much we may be disposed to admit the general validity of the old doctrine, now that a series of new living contagia have been found, now that we know cattle-disease and diphtheria to be diseases which are caused by special organisms, still we may not yet say that all contagious or even all infectious dis- eases are caused by living organisms. After it has appeared that a doctrine, which was pro- pounded as early as the sixteenth century, and which has since obstinately emerged again and again in the ideas of men, has at last, since the second decade of the present century, obtained more and more positive proofs for its correct- ness, we might really think that now it was our

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o~? ie Lr i eo | nn ee | ee ee. ce il i i i THE LIBERTY OF SOIENCE IN THE MODERN STATE. 301 duty to infer, in the sense of an inductive exten- sion of our knowledge, that all contagia and miasmata are living organisms. Indeed, gentle- men, I will admit that this conception is an ex- tremely probable one. Even those investigators who have not yet gone so far as to regard con- and miasmata as living beings have yet al- ways said that they resemble living beings very closely, that they have properties which we otherwise know in living beings only, that they propagate their kind, that they increase and are regenerated under special circumstances, that, indeed, they appear like real organic bodies— these men, nevertheless, have waited, and rightly, until the existence of infective organisms was proved. Thus does prudence still counsel re- serve. . We must not forget that the history of science a number of facts which teach us that phenomena which are very closely allied to one another may occur under very unlike conditions. When fermentation was traced to the presence of certain fungi, when it was known that its beginning is closely connected with the develop- ment of certain species of fungi, the inference was easily drawn that all processes related to fermentation happen in the same way; I mean all those processes which are comprised under the name of “catalytic,” and which oceur so fre- quently in the human and animal body as well as in plants. There were, indeed, some scientific men who imagined that digestion, which is one of the processes which closely resemble those of fermentation, was brought about by certain fungi which occur frequently (in the special case of cat- tle the question has been practically discussed), - ll one another brought about in very different ways, the one in the interior of the ferment fungus, the other in the digestive organs of man; in one case the process is connected with a definite vegetal organism, in the other case it takes place without any such organism, and simply throug) a liquid. I should consider it a great misfortune if we were pot to continue, in the same way as I have done now, to examine in each single case whether the hypothesis we frame, the idea which we form, and which may be highly probable, is really true, whether it is justified by facts. Here I would re- mind you that there are cases also among the in- fectious diseases where most undoubtedly a simi- lar contrast exists. My friend Herr Klebs will no doubt pardon me if I, even now, in spite of the recent progress which the doctrine of infective fungi has made, still maintain my reserve, and only admit that fungus which has been proved by demonstration, while I deny all the other fungi as long as I do not hear of facts which attest them, Among infectious diseases there is a certain group which are caused by organic poisons—I will only mention one of them, which, according to my opinion, is very instructive—I mean the poison- ing by a snake-bite, a very celebrated and most remarkable form. If we compare this kind of poisoning with those kinds which are generally called infectious diseases (infection means little else than poisoning), we must admit that there exists the closest analogy between the two in the course they usually take. As far as the succession of the symptoms is concerned, there is nothing to negative the hypothesis that the ensemble of phe- nomena consequent on snake-bite was caused by fungi entering the body and producing certain changes in different organs. Indeed, there are and which were supposed to cause digestion in the stomach in the same way as the ferment fungi cause fermertation elsewhere. We now know that the digestive juices have absolutely nothing to do with fungi. Much as they may possess catalytic properties, we are yet certain that their active substances are chemical bodies which we can extract from them, which we can isolate from their other component parts, and which we can cause to act in the isolated state free from any admixture of living organisms. The human sali- va has the property of very rapidly converting starch and dextrine into sugar, and every time we eat bread, “sweet” bread is formed in the mouth; nevertheless we have here no fungus, no ferment organism, but only certain chemical sub- atanees which produce transformations very simi- jar to those produced within the fungi. Here, some processes, septic processes, for instance, where just such phenomena occur, and it is cer- tain that some forms of poisoning by snake-bite resemble some forms of septic infection as much as one egg resembles another. And yet we have not the least cause to suspect an importation of fungi into the body in the case of snake-bite, while in the case of septic processes we, on the contrary, acknowledge and recognize this impor- tation. ° The history of natural science has numerous examples, which ought always to cause us more and more to restrict our doctrines absolutely to that domain only in which we can actually prove them, and not by way of induction to proceed so far as to extend doctrines immeasurably which have only been proved for one or more cases. then, we see two processes that closely resemble Nowhere is the necessity of such restriction more

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TE tn ee 302 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. apparent than in the history of evolution. The | of ingratitude not to recognize in Harvey’s oppo- question of the primal origin of organic beings, | sition to the old generatio e@guivoca the greatest a question which is at the basis of advanced Dar- | advance that has been made by science in this winism, is very ancient. We know not who was field. Later we became acquainted with a great the first to attempt a solution of it. But when | number of new forms of propagation in sundry we quote the old popular theory, which teaches | species of living beings—as direct segmentation, that all possible living things, whether animals or _ gemmation, and alternate generation. All these plants, may originate from a lump of clay—a | forms of generation, parthenogenesis included, lumplet, as the case might be—we should at the | constitute the grounds upon which we have re- same time remember that the famous doctrine of | jected all unitary systems of the generation of generatio aequivoca, or epigenesis, is closely allied | organic individuals. Instead of a unitary scheme, to it, and that it has been a common idea for | we have a number of different schemes; and now thousands of years. Now, with Darwinism the | we have no one formula to explain once for all doctrine of spontaneous generation has been | how a new animal existence begins. taken up again, nor can I deny that there is Generatio equivoca, however often attacked something very alluring in the idea of thus | and refuted, nevertheless confronts us continu- crowning the theory of descent, and, after the | ally. True it is, that not a single positive fact is whole series of living forms has been constructed, | known proving that generatio equivoca has ever from the lowest of the protista up to the highest | occurred; that ever inorganic masses, for in- human organism, of furthermore connecting this | stance, the firm of Carbon & Co., have spontane- long series with the inorganic world. All this is | ously developed into an organic substance. Still in harmony with that tendency toward generaliza- | I admit that if we will form an idea how the first tion which is so characteristic of the human mind | organic being could have originated by itself, that it has ever since the earliest times occupied | nothing remains but to go back to spontaneous a place in the speculation of mankind. We do | generation. This is clear: if I will not accepta unquestionably repugn against divorcing the or- | theory of creation ; if I will not believe that there ganic world from the rest of the universe as some- | was a special Creator who took up a lump of clay thing apart, and we incline rather to make the | and breathed into it the breath of life ; if I would union between them closer. In this sense it is | account for things in my own way, I must recur some satisfaction to be able to say that the group | to generatio equivoca. Tertium non datur. Noth- of atoms known as Carbon & Co.—though rather | ing else remains if once we say, “I do not admit curt, the style is nevertheless correct enough, in- | creation, but I do want an explanation.” If that asmuch as carbon is the main thing—that the firm | is your antecedent proposition, then you must of Carbon & Co. once upon a time separated it- | proceed to your consequent and say, “ Ergo I ad- self from ordinary carbon, and under special con- | mit generatio eguivoca.” But we have no actual ditions produced the first plastidule, and that it | proof for it. Nobody has ever seen generatio still continues to do the same thing. But in the | eguivoca occurring in reality, and every one who face of this we have to state that all real scientific | maintained that he had seen it has been refuted, knowledge has proceeded in the opposite direc- | not by theologians at all, but by naturalists. I tion. We date the beginning of our real knowl- | mention this, gentlemen, in order to let our im- edge of the development of higher organisms from | partiality appear in the right light, and this is the day when Harvey uttered the famous propo- | very necessary at times. We always have our sition, Omne vivum ex ovo—every living being | weapons in ourselves and about us, to fight against comes from an egg. This proposition, as we now | that which is not fortified with proof. know, is incorrect in its universality. We can I therefore say that I must admit the theo- nowadays no longer regard it as fully established ; | retical justification of such a formula. Whoever indeed, we now know of a multitude of genera- | will have a formula, whoever says, “I absolutely tions and propagations that take place without | want a formula, I wish to be perfectly at one ova. From the time of Harvey down to that of | with myself, I must have a coherent conception our illustrious friend Von Siebold, who obtained | of the universe,” must either admit generatio general recognition for the doctrine of partheno- | eguivoca or creation; there is no other alterna- genesis, there has been established a whole series | tive. If we want to be outspoken we may in- of limitations which go to show that the expres- | deed own that naturalists have a slight predilec- sion Omne vivum ez ovo was as a general propo- | tion for generalio e@quivoca, It would be very sition inexact. Nevertheless, it were the height | beautiful if it could be proved.

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tee ata, 2 FF § & FS £ e ” PIP AFRPESPIRES oH rag * 7 THE LIBERTY OF SCIENCE IN THE MODERN STATE. 3038 But we must admit that it is not yet proved. Proofs are still wanting. If any kind of proof were to be successfully given we would acquiesce. But even then it would have to be determined, first, to what extent we could admit generatio @quivoca, We should quietly have to continue our investigations, because nobody will think that spontaneous generation is valid for the to- tality of organic beings. Possibly it would only apply to a single series of beings. But I believe we have time to wait for the proof. Whoever remembers in what a regrettable manner, quite recently, all attempts to find a certain basis for generatio cequivoca, in the lowest forms of the transition from the inorganic to the organic world, have failed, should consider it doubly dangerous to demand that this ill-famed doctrine should be adopted as a basis for all human conceptions of life. I may, doubtless, suppose that the story of Bathybius has become known to nearly all educated persons. With this Bathybius the hope has again vanished that generatio equivoca can be proved. I think, therefore, that with regard to this first point, the connection between the organic and the inorganic, we must simply own that in reality we know nothing. We may not set down our hypothesis as a certainty, our problem as a dogma; that cannot be permitted. Just as in working up the doctrines of evolution it has been far more certain, more fertile, and more in ac- cordance with the progress of accredited natural science, to analyze the original unitary hypothesis part by part, we shall also have first to keep apart the organic and inorganic in the old well- known analyzing way, and not synthetize them prematurely. Nothing, gentlemen, has been more injurious to natural science, nothing has done more harm to its progress and to its position in the opinion of nations, than premature syntheses. While laying stress upon this, I would point out spe- cially how our Father Oken was damaged in the opinion not only of his contemporaries, but also of the following generation, because he was one of those who admitted syntheses into their con- ceptions to a far greater extent than a stricter method would have allowed. Let us not dis- regard the example of the Nature-philosophers ; do not let us forget that every time that a doc- trine which has passed for a certain, well-found- ed, reliable one, and of universal application, turns out to be faulty in its outlines, or is found to be an arbitrary and despotic one in essential and great points, then a great number of men lose their faith in science entirely. Then the reproaches begin : ‘‘ You are not sure even your- selves; your doctrine, which is called truth to- day, is a falsehood to-morrow; how can you de- mand that your doctrine shall become the ob- ject of instruction and a part of the general con- sciousness?" From such experiences I take the warning that if we wish to continue to claim the attention of all we must resist the temptation of pushing our hypotheses, our merely theoretical and speculative views, into prominence, so as to make them the basis of a conception of the uni- verse. If what I have said before is true—that half- knowledge is more or less predicable of all naturalists, that in many, perhaps in most, of the lateral branches of their own sciences, they are only half-knowers ; if later on I said that the true naturalist was distinguished by his being perfect- ly aware of the limits of his knowledge and his ignorance, then you understand, gentlemen, that also with regard to the public at large we must confine our claims to demanding that what every single investigator in his own direction, in his sphere, can designate as reliable truth which is common to all—that only this shall be admitted into the general plan of education. In thus marking the limits of our knowl- edge we must remember before all things that what is generally termed natural science is, like all other knowledge in this world, composed of three totally different parts. Generally a differ- ence is only made between objective and subjective knowledge, but there is a certain intermediate part—I mean belief—which also exists in science, with this difference only, that here it is applied to other things than in the case of religious be- lief. It is rather unfortunate, in my opinion, that the expression “ belief” has been so completely monopolized by the Church, that one can hardly apply it to any secular object without being mis- understood. In reality, even in science there is a certain domain of faith, wherein the individual no longer undertakes to prove what is handed down to him as true, but accepts it as simple tradition: and this is precisely the same thing which we see in the Church. Conversely, I may observe—and my view is one that is not rejected by the Church itself—that it is not belief alone which is taught in the Church, but that even church-doctrines have their objective and their subjective sides. No church can avoid develop- ing in the three directions I have pointed out: in the middle the path of belief, which is certainly very broad, but on the one side of which there is

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804 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. a certain quantity of objective historical truth, | patriarchs of science, inasmuch as we have the and on the other a variable series of subjective and often very fantastic ideas. In this ecclesi- astical and scientific doctrines are alike. The cause of this is that the human mind is one, and that it carries the method which it follows in one domain finally into all the others as well. Still we roust always have clear ideas as to how far each of the directions mentioned extends in the different domains. Thus, for example, in the ecclesiastical domain—for in this it is most easily exemplified —we have the special dogma, the so-called posi- tive belief: of this I need not speak. But each church has furthermore its peculiar historical side. It says, “This has happened, this has oceurred, these events have taken place.” This historical truth is not only handed down, but makes its appearance in the garb of an objec- tive truth, with definite evidences, This is the case with the Christian religion just as much as with the Mohammedan, with Judaism as with Buddhism. On the other side we find the left wing as it were, where subjectivity reigns ; there the individual dreams, there visions come and hallucinations. One religion promotes them by special drugs, another by abstinence, etc. Thus subjective individual currents are developed, which occasionally assume the shape of perfectly in- dependent phenomena existing by the side of and apart from the previous ecclesiastical do- main, which at times are rejected as heresies, but which often enough merge into the main current of the recognized church-doctrine. All this we find again in natural science. There too we have the current of dogma, there too we have the cur- rents of objective and subjective doctrines. Con- sequently our task is a compound one. First of all we try to reduce the dogmatic current. The principal aim of science has for centuries been to strengthen more and more the right, the conser- vative side. This side, which collects the ascer- tained facts with full consciousness of the evi- dences ; which adheres to experiment as the highest means of proof ; which is in possesssion of the real scientific treasury, has steadily grown larger and broader, and this principally at the expense of the dogmatic stream. Really, if we only con- sider the number of natural sciences which since the end of the last century have grown and now flourish, we must admit that an almost incredi- ble revolution has taken place. There is no science in which this is so emi- nently evident as in medicine, because that is the only science which has a continuous history of nearly 3,000 years. We are, so to speak, the dogmatic current at its longest. This current was so strong that, in the early part of the mid- dle ages, even the Catholic Church embraced it, and the heathen Galen appeared like a father of the Church in the ideas of men; indeed, if we read the poems of that period, he often presents himself exactly in the position of a father of the Church. Medical dogma persisted until the time of the Reformation. Vesalius and Paracelsus, who were Luther’s contemporaries, made the first grand attempts at reduction; they drove piles into the bed of the dogmatic stream, constructed dikes by its sides, and left only a narrow chan- nel. Beginning with the sixteenth century, it has grown narrower and narrower every century, so that finally only a very small channel has remained for the therapeutists. So passes away earthly glory. Only 30 years ago the Hippocratic method was spoken of as something so sublime and im- portant that nothing more sacred could be imag- ined. Nowadays we must own that this method is annihilated nearly down to its root. At least, a good deal of imagination is necessary if we say that any physician of the present day acts as Hip- pocrates did. Indeed, if we compare the medi- cine of to-day with the medicine of the year 1800 —it so happened that the year 1800 marks a great turning-point in medicine—we find that our science has undergone a complete reformation during the last 70 years. At that time the great Paris school was formed, immediately under the influence of the French Revolution, and we must admire the genius of our neighbors that enabled them to find all at once the fundamental basis of an entirely new science. If now we see medi- cine continue its development in the greater breadth of objective knowledge, we must never forget that the French were the precursors, as in the middle ages the Germans were. In citing medicine as an example, I only wished to show you in brief what changes have come about both in the methods and in the data of sci- ence. I am confident that in medicine, by the close of this century, there will remain only so much of the dogmatic current as might easily pass through a water-main. For the rest, the ob- jective current will probably altogether swallow up the dogmatic. The subjective stream will still, perhaps, re- main. Perhaps even then many an individual will dream his beautiful dreams. The field of objec- tive facts in medicine, great as it has become, has yet left such a number of lateral fields, that for

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2 Se ES TES BES PS ASRSCEESESCFECESERLESE anybody who wanis to speculate plenty of oppor- tunities offer daily. And these opportunities are honestly made use of. A multitude of books would remain unwritten if only objective things were to be communicated. But the subjective wants are still so great that I believe I am justi- fied in maintaining that, of our present medical literature, about one-half might safely remain un- published, without doing any damage worth men- tioning to the objective side. Now, when we (each, in my opinion, we ought not to look upon this subjective side as an essen- tial object in the doctrine. I believe I now belong to the oldest professors of medicine; I have taught my science now for over 30 years, and I may say that during these 30 years I have honestly striven to free my mind more and more from all subjective tendency, and to get more and more into the ob- jective current. Nevertheless, I openly confess that I find it impossible to give up subjectivity altogether, Every year I see again and again that, even in points where I had believed myself to be entirely objective, I still retained a large number of subjective ideas. I do not go so far as to require everybody to express himself entire- ly without any admixture of subjectiveness, but I do say that we must set ourselves the task to transmit to the students the real knowledge of facts im the first place, and, if we go further, we must tell them each time: “ But this is not proved; but this is my opinion, my idea, my theory, my speculation.” This, however, we can only do with those who are already educated and developed. We cannot carry the same method into the elementary schools ; we cannot say to each peasant-boy, “This is a fact, this we know, and that we only suppose.” On the contrary, that which is known, and that which is only supposed, as a rule, get so thorough- ly mixed up that that which is supposed becomes the main thing, and that which is really known appears only of secondary importance. There- fore we who support science, we who live in sci- ence, are all the more called upon to abstain from carrying into the heads of men, and most of all into the heads of teachers, that which we only suppose. True, we cannot give facts simply in the shape of raw material; that is impossible. They must be arranged in a certain systematic order. But we must not extend this arrangement beyond what is absolutely necessary. And here I have an objection to make to Herr Niigeli’s address. Herr Niigeli has discussed, certainly in the most measured way, and—you will notice this if you read his address—in a thor- 56 THE LIBERTY OF SCIENOE IN THE MODERN S:ATE. 808 oughly philosophical manner, the difficult ques- tions which he has chosen as subjects for his dis- course. Nevertheless, he has taken a step which I consider extremely dangerous. He has done in another direction what is in one way done by ge- neratio equivoca, He asks that the psychological domain shall be extended not only from animals to plants, but that we shall actually carry from the organic world into the inorganic our conceptions of the nature of mental phenomena. This meth- od of thinking, which is represented by great philosophers, is natural in itself. If any one wants by any means to connect mental phenomena with those of the rest of the universe, then he will necessarily come to transfer mental processes, as they occur in man and the animals of highest organization, to the lower and lowest animals; then a soul is even ascribed to plants; further on the cell thinks and feels, and finally he finds a passage down to chemical atoms, which hate or love one another, seek one another, or flee from one another. All this is very fine and excellent, and may after all be quite true. It maybe. But, then, do we really want, is there any positive sci- entific necessity for extending the domain of men- tal phenomena beyond the circle of those bodies in which and by which we see them really hap- pening? I have no objection to carbon-atoms having a soul, or to their acquiring a soul by their union with the plastidule ; but J do not know how I am to find out whether the thing is so. This is simply playing with words. If I declare at- traction and repulsion to be psychic phenom- ena, then I simply throw Psyche out of the window, and Psyche is Psyche no longer. The phenomena of the human mind may eventu- ally be explained in a chemical way, but for the present, I think, it is not our task to mix up these domains. On the contrary, it is our duty to keep them strictly where we understand them. And as I have always laid stress upon this, that we should not in the first line try to find the transition from the inorganic into the organic, but that we should first of all determine the contrast between the inorganic and the or- ganic, and carry on our investigations among those contrasts in the same way, I now maintain that the only way to progress—and I hold the firmest conviction that we shall not advance at all otherwise—is to limit the domain of mental phenomena to where we really perceive mental phenomena, and not to suppose mental phenomena, where perhaps they may be, but where we do not notice any visible, audible, sensible, in one word, perceptible phenomena, which we might call men- . er errs b

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806 tal. There is no doubt that for us mental phe- nomena pertain to certain animals, not to the totality of all organic beings, not even to all animals generally, and I maintain this without hesitation. We have no reason yet to say that the lowest animals possess psychic attributes ; we find them only in the higher animals, and with perfect certainty only in the highest. Now I will admit with pleasure that certain gradations, certain gradual transitions, certain points can be found, where from mental phenom- ena one gets to phenomena of simply material or physical nature. I certainly do not declare that it will never be possible to bring psychical phe- nomena into immediate connection with physical ones. All I say is, that at present we are not justified in setting down this possid/e connection as a scientific doctrine, and I must distinctly op- pose the attempts to enlarge our doctrines pre- maturely in this manner, and to bring again and again into the foreground as a positive statement what we so often proved a useless problem. We must distinguish strictly between what we want to teach and what we want to investigate. What we investigate are problems. We need not keep them to ourselves ; we may communicate them to the whole world and say, “ There is the problem, this is what we are trying to find ;” like Columbus, who, when he started to discover India, made no absolute secret of it, but who eventually did not find India, but America. And the same happens to us not rarely. We start to prove certain problems which we suppose to be perfectly cor- rect, and in the end we find something quite dif- ferent, which we never expected. The investiga- tion of such problems, in which the whole nation may be interested, must ke open to everybody. That is the liberty of research. But the problem is not at once to be the object of instruction. When we teach we must confine ourselves to those smaller domains which are already so large, and which we have actually mastered. Gentlemen, I am convinced that only with a resignation of this kind, which we impose on ourselves, which we exercise toward the rest of the world, shall we be enabled to conduct the fight against our enemies with a victorious result. All attempts to transform our problems into doc- trines, to introduce our theories as the basis of a plan of education, particularly the attempt simply to depose the Church, and to replace its dogma by a religion of descent, these attempts, I say, must fail, and their failure would at the same time very seriously compromise the position of science generally. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Therefore let us be moderate, let us exercise resignation, so as to set forth even our favorite problems, always as problems only, and let us never tire of saying: “‘ Do not take this for con- firmed truth ; bear in mind that this may perhaps be changed; only for the moment we are of opinion that it may be true.” By way of illustration I will add another ex- ample. At this moment there are probably few naturalists who are not of opinion that man is allied to the rest of the animal world, and that a connection will possibly be found, if indeed not with apes, then perhaps in some other direction, as is now the opinion of Prof. Vogt. I acknowledge openly tha: this is a desidera- tum of science. I am quite prepared for it, and I should not for a moment wonder nor be alarmed if the proof were found tbat the ancestors of man belonged to some other order of vertebrates. You know that just at present I work by prefer- ence in the field of anthropology, but yet I must declare that every step of positive progress which we have made in the domain of prehistoric an- thropology has really moved us further away from the proof of this connection. At this mo- ment anthropology studies the question of fossil man. From man in the present “ period of crea- tion ” we have descended to the Quaternary period, to that period when, as Cuvier maintained with the greatest confidence, man did not exist, Now- adays Quaternary man is a generally accepted fact. Quaternary man is no longer a problem, but a real doctrine. But Tertiary man, on the contrary, is a problem, though a problem which is already being discussed according to the evidence of facts. There are objects already about which discus- sions are going on as to whether they may be admitted as proofs of the existence of man during the Tertiary period. We do not merely speculate on the subject, but we discuss certain objects, whether they may be recognized as witnesses for the existence of man during the Tertiary period. The question raised is answered differently, ac- cording to whether these objective material ele- ments of proof are considered sufficient or not. Even men who, like the Abbé Bourgeois, are de- cided ecclesiastics, are convinced that man lived during the Tertiary period ; for them Tertiary man is already a doctrine. For us, who are of a more critical nature, Tertiary man is still a problem, but, as we must acknowledge, a problem worthy of discussion. Let us, therefore, for the present remain at Quaternary man, whom we really find. If we study this Quaternary, fossil man, who ought after all to stand nearer to our ancestors in the

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on, and ped pan fer- ust ‘ich yay ssil

eaub de caihe a eno . Ce eee. Ee eS oe . . ‘ THE LIBERTY OF SCIENCE IN THE MODERN STATE. series of descent, or rather of ascent, we find a man just the same as we are ourselves. Only ten years ago, when a skull was found, perhaps in peat or in lake-dwellings, or in some old cave, men always fancied that they detected in it evidences of a savage and quite undeveloped state; in short, they were ready to find the mon- key type. There is now much less of this sort of thing. The old troglodytes, lake-inhabitants, and peat-people, turn out to have been quite a respect- able society. They have heads of such a size that many a person now living would feel happy to possess one like them. Our French neighbors have certainly warned us not to infer too much from the great size of these heads; it may be possible that they were not filled only with nerve- substance, but that the old brains had more in- termediary tissue than is the case nowadays, and that their nerve-substance, in spite of the size of the brain, remained at a low state of de- velopment. However, this is only a friendly con- versation which, to some extent, is held as a sup- port of weak minds. On the whole, we must really acknowledge that no fossil type of a lower human development exists. Indeed, if we take all the fossil human remains that have been found hitherto and compare them with what the pres- ent offers, we can maintain with certainty that among the present generation there is a much larger number of relatively low-type individuals than among the fossils hitherto known. That only the highest geniuses of the Quarternary period enjoyed the good-fortune of being pre- served for us I dare not suppose. Commonly conclusions are drawn from the condition of a single fossil object with respect to the majority of others which have not been found. But I will not do this. I will not maintain that the whole race was as good as the few skulls which have been found. But I must say that one fossil monkey-skull or man-ape skull which really be- longed to a human proprietor has never been found, Every addition which we have obtained in the material inventory of objects for discussion has moved us farther away from the problem to be solved) Now, of course, we cannot avoid the consideration that perhaps it was on some quite special spot of the earth that Tertiary man lived.

807 This is quite possible, since during the last few years the remarkable discovery has been made in North America that the fossil ancestors of our horses occur in countries from which the horse had entirely disappeared for a long time. When America was discovered there were no horses there at all; in the very place where the ances- tors of our horses had lived no living horse had remained. Thus it may also be that Tertiary man has existed in Greenland or Lemuria, and will again be brought to light from under the ground somewhere or other. But, as a fact, we must positively acknowledge that there is always a sharp limit between man and the ape. We can- not teach, we cannot designate as a revelation of science the doctrine that man descends from the ape or from any other animal. We can but desig- nate this as a problem, however probable it may appear. The experience of the past should have been for us sufficient warning not needlessly to give way to the temptation of drawing premature con- clusions. Here, gentlemen, is the difficulty that faces every scientific man who addresses the pub- lic. He who writes or speaks to the public, should exercise double care now in finding out how much of what he knows and says is objectively true. He must as much as possible have all his induc- tive amplifications, all his analogous reasonings printed in small type underneath the text, and only what is objectively true embodied in the text. In that way, gentlemen, we may perhaps succeed in winning an ever-increasing circle of followers and fellow-workers, and in effectively interesting the educated public. Unless we do so, gentlemen, I fear we overrate our power. Old Bacon, it is true, said with justice, Scientia est potentia—knowledge is power. But he also defined knowledge; and knowledge, as he under- stood it, was not speculative knowledge—knowl- edge of problems—but objective knowledge of facts. Gentlemen, in my opinion, we ghall abuse our power, endanger our influence, if we do not fall back on this perfectly solid, this perfectly safe and impregnable ground. Thence we can, as investigators, invade the domain of problems, and I am convinced that every attempt of this kind will then find the necessary safety and support.

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THE POPULAR SOIENCE \ MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. THE CURIOSITIES OF CREDULITY. Br WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, C.B., M. D., LL.D., F.R.S. N the last number of Fraser’s Magazine, Mr. A. R. Wallace holds me up as “an example of what prepossession and blind skepticism can do for a man;” “ how it makes a scientific man unscientific, a wise man foolish, and an honest man unjust.” The following historical narrative will serve, I think, as “ an example of what prepossession and blind credulity can do for a man,” and will fur- ther afford a very useful lesson as to the “ falla- cies of testimony” in regard to the class of sub- jects at present under discussion between Mr. Wallace and myself. Every one who has attended to the history of animal magnetism knows full well that a belief in its higher pretensions not only prevailed ex- tensively in France during the decade of 1820- 80, but took a very strong hold of the medical profession in that country, many of its most dis- tinguished members giving their public attesta- tion to the reality of those claims. Thus M. Rostan, one of the ablest medical psychologists of his day, contributed to the first edition (1825) of the “ Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales ” (of which he was one of the conductors) an article on “Magnétisme Animal,” in which he detailed experiments carried on by himself and other emi- nent physicians, which had entirely satisfied them of the truth of clairvoyance. Another very able advocate of mesmerism during this epoch was M. Georget, a young physician of high reputation, and the author of a much-esteemed treatise on the “ Physiology of the Nervous System.”'! And a commission appointed by the French Academy of Medicine in 1826 to inquire into the subject (of which commission M. Husson, physician to the Hotél Dieu, was the reporter) reported in the same sense in 1831, its members bearing their personal testimony to the genuineness of phenom- ena which they had themselves witnessed and tested, and of which they considered that no reasonable doubt could be entertained. 1 It so happened that my father, having broken down in health from overwork, was, during some months of 182627, under the medical care of MM. Rostan and Georget, the latter of whom told him that the evidence of the reality of spiritual existence afforded by clairvoy- ance had brought him back from a state of materialis- tic atheism—exactly what a lady of high culture told me some twonty years ago in regard to spiritualism. The state of mind of these eminent men, there- fore, in regard to mesmerism was thus exactly parallel, on the one hand, to that of the authori- ties of Salem (New England) in 1692 in regard to witchcraft, and, on the other, to the present atti- tude of Mr. Wallace and his associates in regard to spiritualism. On evidence which “ hundreds of the most solemn people knew to be true,” the Salemites hung scores of innocent people. And 80, on evidence which Mr. Wallace and his friends know to be true, they brand as “ arrogant ” skep- tics not only myself, but the great body of medi- cal and scientific men of whose opinions on this subject I am the exponent, because, warned by the experience I am now relating, we decline to accept their testimony as binding on our own be- lief. Our mental attitude, on the other hand, is that of the courageous skeptics of 1692, who, pos- sessed by “ the froward spirit of Sadduceeism,” caused the release of 150 reputed witches, and the stoppage of proceedings against 200 more, in spite of the indignant protests of Dr. Cotton Mather, and the “ hundreds of most solemn peo- ple” who backed it up. And it is also that of the obstinate skeptics in the French Academy of Med- icine, forty-six years ago, who dared to question the authority of MM. Rostan and Georget, as well as of the eminent reporter and other members of its commission ; and who succeeded in prevent- ing the academic adoption of their report, which was simply enterré in the archives of the Academy, as the expression of the opinion of the individuals composing that commission. Early in 1837, however, the academic discus- sion was renewed ; and this renewal elicited the following remarkable statement from M. Bous- quet: “ Messieurs, tout le monde a Ja prétention de bien voir; tout le monde croit avoir bien vu ; et vous savez combien un homme est fort, lors- qu'il peut dire—‘ J’ai vu.’ C'est sans doute un grand avantage ; toutefois l’illusion est 4 cdté de la réalité. Georget croyait donc avoir bien vu; il y parait assez 4 la maniére dont i) parle du magnétisme dans son ouvrage sur le systéme nerveux. Cependant, on sait aujourd’hui qu'il a été trompé par des misérables qui s’en vantent. Je tiens cela de M. Londe, le collaborateur de Georget, et le témoin de toutes ses expériences.

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Ainsi, Messieurs, Georget est mort plein de foi dans le magnétisme ; son ouvrage reste, et l’au- teur n’est pas 1a pour effacer les erreurs qu’il contient.” The circumstance referred to by Dr. Bousquet was a death-bed confession made by a female hospital] patient, one of the principal sub- jects of MM. Rostan and Georget’s experiments on clairvoyance; who declared that she and a confederate (who occupied the next bed) used to spend many delicious hours of their nights in chuckling over the deceits they had put on the doctors, and in contriving new ones for the next day. The effect of this disclosure upon the mind of M. Rostan (which I learned at the time through the private channel already referred to) is shown by the fact that when a second edition of the “ Dictionnaire de Médecine ” came out in 1838, he withdrew the article he had contributed to the first, this being replaced by one from the pen of M. Calmeil (a physician of the highest repute in the same line), which went as strongly against the pretensions of animal magnetism as Rostan’s article of 1825 had gone in their favor. Ata subsequent sitting of the Academy, an earnest appeal was made to it by a young mag- netizer, M. Berna, to enter anew upon a system- atic investigation of the whole subject. “Ma croyance au magnétisme,” he urged, “ n’est point le fruit de l'enthousiasme ou d’un examen super- ficiel, mais de plusieurs années d’expériences et de méditation. . . . Je propose de faire voir, sur des personnes que j’ai actuellement 4 ma dispo- sition, des faits concluants en faveur du magné- tisme.” Moved by the obvious sincerity of this appeal, and unwilling to hold back from inquir- ing into the facts which M. Berna professed him- self fully prepared to substantiate, the Academy appointed a second commission, which ineluded MM. Roux, Bouillaud, Hippolyte Cloquet, Pelle- tier, and other distinguished members of its body, with M. Dubois (d’Amiens) as its reporter. This commission reported, six months afterward, that M. Berna had utterly failed to prove his case; the only fait concluant demonstrated being that he had been victimized by cunning cheats. Against this conclusion a protest was made by M. Husson, the reporter of the first commission ; but the report of M. Dubois was nevertheless almost unanimously adopted by the Academy. It was to meet the argument of M. Husson—that, although M. Berna’s clairvoyantes had failed, other magnetizers might bring forward more “lucid” subjects—that M. Burdin offered his prize; and a third commisssion was then appointed, for the special purpose of investigating the claims of THE CURIOSITIES OF CREDULITY. clairvoyance. This third commission included, with M, Husson, the reporter of the first, and M. Dubois, the reporter of the second, such acknowl- edged leaders of the medical profession as MM. Chomel, Louis, Double, and Moreau. It contin- ued open to the investigation of all claims to the Burdin prize for a period of three years. It de- tected and exposed the trickery of the claimants who ventured to present themselves. And when, in 1840, it presented its report, the Academy was so completely satisfied that the members of its first commission had been (like the Salemites of 1692) “ sadly deluded and mistaken,” that it ar- rived at the determination thenceforth to regard all communications on the subject of animal mag- netism as non avenues, having no more claims on its attention than claims to the discovery of “ perpetual motion,” or the “ quadrature of the circle,” would have upon that of the Academy of Sciences. Now, I ask what would be thought of the fairness of a stanch Scripturalist who should now quote, as valid testimony to the universality of the Noachian Deluge, the “ Reliquiz Diluvianz”’ of Dr. Buckland, whose fundamental doctrine was subsequently retracted by its author in his Bridg- water Treatise ; or should accuse a scientific op- ponent either of culpable ignorance, or of inten- tional suppressio veri, in making no mention of a report presented in favor of the same doctrine to a scientific society, which not only never adopted it, but, in the course of a few years, passed upon it the strongest possible sentence of condemna- tion? Yet this is exactly what Mr. Wallace has done in reviewing my “ Lectures” in Mr. Crookes’s journal, accusing me of “ ignoring ev- ery particle of evidence which is too powerful to be explained away,” and citing, as conspicuous examples of one-sidedness, my silence as to M. Rostan’s article and M. Husson’s report. If time had permitted, I should have most gladly ad- duced in my “ Lectures” these very testimonies as conspicuous examples of the extent to which the most able but “ prepossessed” men may be led away by cunning cheate—M. Rostan by his own confession, and the members of the first commission on the almost unanimous verdict of the French Academy of Medicine. That animal magnetism is now, as in 1840, regarded by the highly-trained medical intelli- gence of France as a “ dead letter,” only worthy of attention as a “curiosity of history,” which “points a moral” in regard to other like de- mands on human credulity, may be judged from the manner in which it is treated in one of the

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“810 great medical dictionaries now in course of pub- lication. The second section of the “ Diction- naire Encyclopédique” contains a long and elab- orate historical article on “‘ Magnétisme Animal,” from the pen of M. Dechambre, who has the reputation of being one of the ablest of French medical critics. After bringing down his history to 1840, M. Dechambre thus continues: “ Ici pourrait se terminer !’histoire analytique du ma- gnétisme animal ; car il ne se produira plus dé- sormais, en France du moins, que des faits isolés, dépourvus de toute authenticité, et le plus sou- vent pour les besoins d’une misérable industrie.” Further on, he says: “ Quant a toutes les pro- priétés et facultés extraordinaires dont on a doté les somnambules, et qu’il est inutile de rappeler, nous attendons sans impatience ni préoccupation qu’on en démontre mieux l’existence; et nous les considérons, jusqu’a nouvel ordre, comme un double produit de Villusion et de la supercherie.” And he sums up as follows: “‘Comme ceux des effets que nous regardons comme possibles résul- tent d’une autre cause que influence d’un agent spécial dit magnétisme, nous terminons par cette conclusion radicale: le magnétisme animal n' existe pas.” In this condemnation M. Dechambre does not hesitate to include the Odylism of Von Reichen- bach, which Mr. Wallace (in his review of my “ Lectures ”) blames me for repudiating—the reality of Reichenbach’s experimental results having been attested by about sixty persons of repute in Vienna, including “ a number of litera- ry, official, and scientific men and their fami- lies ;” and having been verified in this country by Prof. Gregory, of Edinburgh, and by Dr. Ashburner in London. Now, it so happened that I was assured at the time by the late Prof. Dau- beny, of Oxford, who himself witnessed Von THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Reichenbach’s experiments at Vienna, that noth. ing could be more loose and unscientific than the manner in which they were conducted ; and the verdict of that very clear-sighted and trustwor- thy observer has been subsequently confirmed by the general consensus of the scientific and medical public of Germany, which, as I have been recently assured by my distinguished friend Prof. Hofmann, of Berlin, would treat any at- tempt to rehabilitate Odyle (as it appears from M. Dechambre’s testimony that it would be treat- ed by the scientific and medical public of France) as simply non avenu. And any one who is ac- quainted with the state of scientific and medical opinion in this country must be well aware that any attempt to rehabilitate Odyle, except on the basis of a new set of experiments, in which the old sources of fallacy should be carefully guarded against, would be utterly futile; neither the au- thority of Prof. Gregory in Edinburgh, nor that of Dr. Ashburner in London, having been con- sidered by the scientific and medical contempora- ries among whom they respectively lived, and to whom their qualifications for such an inquiry were well known, as of more account than that of Von Reichenbach himself. I do not for a moment call in question the right of any one either to hold or to express his belief in clairvoyance and Odylism. But I do protest against the right of such a one either to call in question the candor and honesty of any other who entertains an opinion as to the proba- tive value of the evidence on these subjects that differs from his own ; or to charge him with per- verting the facts of history because his conclu- sions as to the untrustworthiness of that evidence are drawn from a survey of the whole of the his- tory, and not from selected parts of it-—Athe- neum. THE GERM-THEORY OF DISEASE. By H. CHARLTON BASTIAN, F.R.8., M.D. — it may be conceded that with our present state of knowledge an affirmative decision in regard to the absolute proof of the present occurrence of archebiosis (spontaneous generation) may be still withheld, there is, I think, no similar warrant for suspense of judg- ment in regard to the Germ-Theory of Disease, or, as it is also called, the doctrine of Contagium Vivum. Existing evidence seems to me abun- dantly sufficient for the rejection of this doctrine as untrue.! 1 Since this paper was read, the doctrine has again been proclaimed—and never with more force and abil- ity—by Dr. William Roberts (British Medical Journal, August 11, 1877). Its essential points may be stated in the words of its latest exponent. He says: “I

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~~ YF FP et —- --— a Tae THE GERM-THEORY OF DISEASE. ~ 311 My urine and potash experiments will go far to illustrate this difference in the weight of the evidence in regard to the two questions, A “ sterilized” fluid—that is, one which left to itself would always remain pure—may be caused to ferment by the addition of a certain proportion of liquor potasse devoid of all living things, especially if the influence of the potash be favored by certain accessory physical condi- tions. This fact is admitted by M. Pasteur him- self. During the fermentation thus initiated, a matter (ferment) appears and increases, which is capable of spreading a similar process far and wide in suitable media. But, on the strengh of the analogy upon which the germ-theorists rely, we may find in such an ex- periment a warrant for the belief that ina healthy person, free from the contagium of typhoid fever or any other of its class, certain kinds of ingesta (solids or fluids), wholly free from all specific poison may, with or without the favoring influ- ence of other altered conditions, give rise to an independent zymotic process. And during the process thus initiated, a matter (contagium) ap- pears and increases in certain of the fluids or tis- sues of the body, which is capable of spreading a similar disease far and wide among receptive members of the community. Can the germless liquor potasse plus the favor- ing conditions (the principal of which is a certain high temperature) be regarded as the “cause” of the fermentation? The answer does not ad- mit of doubt: the effect in question would not have taken place without their influence. The old logical formula in regard to the word, cessante causa, cessat effectus, completely justifies this point of view; and so also does the definition of Sir John Herschel. A “cause,” said this philosopher, is have already directed your attention to the analogy between the action of an organized ferment and a con- tagious fever. The analogy is probably real, in so far, at least, that it leads us to the inference that contagt- um, like a ferment, is something that is alive. ... If, then, the doctrine of a contagium vivum be trne, we are almost forced to the conclusion that contagium consists (at least in the immense majority of cases) of an independent organism or parasite ; and it isin this sense alone that I shall consider the doctrine, . . . itis more than probable, looking to the general analogy between them, that all infective diseases corform in some fashion to one fundamental type. If septic Bac- teria are the cause of septicemia, if the Spirilla are the cause of relapsing fever, if the Bacillus anthracis is the cause of splenic fever, the inference is almost irresistible that other analogous organisms are the cause of other infective inflammations and of other specific fevers.""— September, 1877. “an assemblage of phenomena which occurring, some other phenomenon invariably commences or has its origin.” But there is a point of view which must not be lost sight of. It is of considerable importance, and has of late been dwelt upon by G. H. Lewes with his usual force and clearness. He says:' “The fact that it is a convenience to select some one element out of the group, either for its con- spicuousness, its novelty, or its interest, and that we call it the cause of the change, throwing all the other elements into the background of con- ditions, must not make us overlook the fact that this cause—this selected condition—is only effec- tive in coalescence with the others. Every con- dition is causal; the effect is but the sum of the conditions.” This brings us to the only point of doubt which can possibly exist in regard to the interpretation of my experiment. It is whether our most prom- inent causal element, the liquor potasse, exercises its influence (a) partly upon the fluid and partly upon certain otherwise dead or impotent germs still lurking within the vessel, or (5) simply upon the mere chemical constituents of the fluid me- dium, but in such a way as actually to engender minute particles of living matter which thereafter appear as ferment-organisms. If a practically dead germ can by any treat ment be revived, it may take its place as one of the causal conditions leading to fermentation ; hence it is that a certain reserve may still be maintained as regards the absolute proof of the possibility of a germless origin of common fer- mentations, and the almost simultaneous occur- rence of a new birth of living units (archebiosis). But all similar grounds for reserve are ab- sent—are non-existent, in fact—in regard to the bearing of this experiment upon the possibility of an occasional independent origin for zymotic disease, whether or not such disease is character- ized by the appearance within the body of any distinctive living organisms.’ This I will now endeavor to demonstrate, It is the process of fermentation which is supposed to be in part analogous to the zymotie disease. It is true that a contagious something becomes engendered during fermentation and during zymosis, by means of which the process or the disease may be spread abroad. But there 1“ Problems of Life and Mind,” vol. ii., p. 390. 2 The rule is, that organisms are present in fermen- tations, while they are, so far as we know, quite ex- ceptional in zymotic diseases. . « * pe oe! ae OS, Ee ~ nt. oo aad =e oe ~ af Aue - a.m 1s 20 me oe ; eS ~ wi,” 2 = eee —— eee ye ae eh

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312 are important differences in regard to the possi- ble independent origin of the two processes which have hitherto been only too much neglected. The treatment of this subject has often been much too superficial. In order to produce a kind of picto- rial effect which may easily captivate the imagi- nation, difficulties are often ignored, and many new, modifying, or antagonistic points of view have even of late been treated as though they were non-existent. A few words will suffice to make plain some of the differences between the respective condi- tions which would be operative in the germless origin of fermentation on the one hand, and in the de novo origin of a contagious disease on the other. And in so doing I shall be able, I think, at the same time, to show how much simpler it would be to bring about an independent zymosis than an independent fermentation—that is, if we are to rely on the analogy upon which the germ- theorists base their arguments. During the great majority of fermentations, living organisms make their appearance and rap- idly multiply. These living organisms have been proved to be common producers of chemical prin- ciples, some of which are soluble ferments, oth- ers (like pyrogen) are poisons which may be al- most as deadly as that of a serpent, while others still are inert and appear as mere pigment-gran- ules. It is proved that some of these chemical principles act as true ferments.' It is thought, and it is probable, that the organisms themselves —altogether apart from their media and what else they may contain—may be capable of doing the same, Still this has not yet been definitely proved; so that the action of soluble chemical ferments is at present almost better substanti- ated than that of the living organisms by which they may have been formed. By means of boil- ing alcohol and other agents these bodies can be isolated and freed from living impurity. It is, however, much more difficult entirely to separate minute living organisms from their media,* and, consequently, more difficult to be perfectly cer- tain in regard to their potencies. It is, however, 1 Pastenr, Comptes Rendua, July 8, 1876, p. 4. 2 The more efficient means of filtering organisms from their media, which we now possess, by means of porous earthenware, ought to be useful in this direc- tion. Such organisms and their germs might be sub- sequently washed with several distilled waters, just as a chemist would wach a delicate precipitate. It would be strange, indeed, if this very mild usage inter- fered with the properties of organisms which at other times are credited with such remarkable powers of endurance. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. on account of the derivation of the chemical fer- ments from the living units, and because of the presence of these latter bodies in all fermenting mixtures, that their own agency is still regarded by many as essential to the initiation of ordinary fermentations. But, as I have already indicated, we much need further information as to the pre- cise mode in which fermentation is initiated and carried on by soluble ferments like that which M. Musculus discovered in and separated from urine. If they (all or any of them) are capable of setting up fermentations in germless fluids in the course of which organisms appear, such phe- nomena would most effectually disprove an exelu- sive germ-theory. Turning now to the process of zymosis, we find the available generative conditions altogether different. Here we have to do not with fluids only, but with tissues and organs composed, of living elements characterized by all kinds and degrees of activity. Some of them produce the various soluble ferments of the body, some may produce poisons, and others habitually lead to the formation of pigment-granules—vital acts severally similar in kind to those which the com- mon ferment-organisms are known to manifest. Tissue-elements without number having such and multitudes of other properties are, therefore, ever present, capable under certain influences of being more or less easily diverted into unhealthy modes of action, so that many of them may become true living ferments in the modern sense of that term,' and therefore possible producers of chemi- cal ferments (contagia) capable of initiating some or the whole of the series of changes by which they were themselves produced, in other suitable sites. The essential difference between the two prob- lems thus becomes plain. The only point which my experiment leaves in the least doubtful in re- gard to the causal conditions initiating fermenta- tion is, whether any latent, powerless, and, as it 1 How legitimate this statement is may be seen from what M. Pasteur himself says. These are his most mature views: “I have been gradually led to Jook upon fermentation as a necessary consequence of the manifestation of life, when that life takes place without the direct combustion due to free oxygen. . . . We may partially see, as a consequence of this theory, that every being, every organ, every cell which lives or continues its life without making use of atmos- pheric air, or which uses it in a manner insafficient for the whole of the phenomena of its own nutrition, must possess the characteristics of a ferment with regard to the substance which is the source of ite to- tal or complementary heat.""—Comptes Rendus, 1872, t. Ixxv., p. 764.

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THE GERM-THEORY OF DISEASE. 813 were, dead organized ferment may still, in spite of the usual evidence to the contrary, lurk in the seemingly “sterilized” fluid. This, however, is the very point about which there is no shadow of doubt in regard to zymosis. Possible ferments without number are, by necessity, present in the form of tissue-clements. So that if we are to be guided by the analogy upon which all germ-theo- rists so strongly rely, the independent generation of a zymotic process should, for the reason above specified, be incomparably more easy to be brought about than fermentation in a germless fluid. In regard to the independent origin of a zymosis, the all-important point is, not whether latent ferments exist, but whether any causes, or sets of unhygienic conditions, can rouse or modify, in certain special modes, the activity of any of these myriads of potential ferments of which the hu- man organism is so largely composed. And if, as some germ-theorists would have us believe, impotent germs of common ferment-organisms, incapable of exclusiorf, are also widely dissemi- nated throughout the body, these, if they are such unavoidable elements, could (in regard to the eti- ology of disease) only be looked upon as com- ponents of the body, ranking side by side with the tissue-elements themselves. Thus such organized ferments or germs as are possibly absent from the “ sterilized ” experimen- tal fluids are confessedly present by myriads in persons who may be sickening under the influ- ence of various unhygienic conditions or non- specific states of the system; and the only point which is regarded as doubtful in connection with the de novo origin of a zymosis is what analogy might lead us to affirm as completely proved by my experiments, viz., that certain conditions, or states of system, may be capabie of rousing some of such ferments into a specific kind of activity, wholly apart from the influence of any specific contagia coming from without.! 1 While the last sheets of this paper are passing through the press, a very interesting address by Dr. B.W. Richardson, F.R.8., has been published (Nature, October 4, 1877), entitled “A Theory as to the Nat- ural or Glandalar Origin of the Contagious Diseases.” In it the author advances many strong arguments against the germ-theory ; he also propounds some in- teresting speculations ae to the mode of origin and action of the chemical principles, or poisons, which COnstitute, as he believes, the “ contagia" of the com- municable diseases. Some such views make a very fitting enpplement to the doctrines which I have been here attempting to establish in regard to these dis- eases ; only we must, as Dr. Richardson observes, seék gradually to put well-proved facts in the places flow occupied by mere speculations. In regard to the practical aspects of the two opposite doctrines, Dr. Even if independent ferment-organisms of common or special kinds do make their appear- ance during any process of zymosis originated in the manner above suggested, they would, from the point of view of the etiology of disease, be just as much consequences of the morbific influ- ences as proliferation of tissue-elements is a con- sequence of the direct application of acetic acid or any other irritant. But here, in order to make this point of view more plain, a short digression is necessary. - The intracellular fermentation in vegetal tis- sues supplies us with a kind of link between the ordinary processes of fermentation and the zy- motic processes of animals, MM. Lechartier and Bellamy, as well as Pasteur and others, have now clearly shown that in vegetal tissues placed under certain abnormal or unhealthy conditions, fer- mentative phenomena take place essentially simi- lar to those occurring in solutions containing in- dependent ferment-organisms. And just as the vegetal cell can do what, in other cases, the inde- pendent organism does, so it is supposed that in the process of zymosis tissue-elements may take on a specifically faulty action, leading to the for- mation of certain chemical principles or “ con- tagia” in the fluids or tissues of the animal body ; so that, in the great majority of zymotic diseases, offcast particles from the body, whether living or dead, when saturated with such principles, may constitute the veritable contagia by which the specific disease is spread abroad among the com- munity. In the majority of the cases of intracellular fermentation no independent organisms are gen- erated, though in others, as in that of the beet- root and the potato, they are invariable con- comitants. Similarly in the majority of zymotic diseases no independent organisms are generated, though in others, such as relapsing fever and Richardson makes some very pertinent observations. “If the contagium vivum view be true," he says, “if the air around us is charged with invisible germs, which come whence we know not, which bave unlim- ited power to fertilize, which need never cease to fertilize and multiply, what hope is there for the skill of man to overcome these hidden foes? Why on some occasion may not a plague spread over the whole world, and destroy its life universally? While, on the other hand, if the opposite notion be true, we have complete mastery over the diffusion of the poi- sons of all the communicable diseases. We have but to keep steadily in view that the producing and the reproducing poweris in the affected body, and wecan, even with our present knowledge, all but completely limit the action to the p power of that body—its power, I mean, of secretion and diffusion of secretion.— Octoder 6, 1877.

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314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. splenic fever, they are invariable concomitants ; and being engendered in diseased parts and fluids they may thereafter themselves act either as real contagia or as carriers of contagion. The causal conditions capable of inducing fermentation in the beet-root and the potato, and with it the appearance of Bacteria in swarms throughout their tissues, are known, and have no ordinary connection with preéxisting Bacteria. And similarly the causal conditions capable of inducing relapsing fever and splenic fever, though not so definitely known, may nevertheless have no ordinary connection with preéxisting Spirilla and Bacilli resembling those which appear in the blood or tissues of the patients suffering from either of these diseases. Thus the mere fact that in certain zymotic diseases liying organisms have been proved to appear, affords of itself no support whatever to an exclusive germ-theory, as I shall, after this digression, endeavor to show. The fact may be quite otherwise explained, either (1) in accordance with the views of certain germ-theorists, though these are in direct oppo- sition to the statements of others of the same party; (2) in accordance with the statements of this second section of the germ-theorists, sup- plemented by a belief in heterogenesis : 1. The presence of latent germs of common though modifiable ferment-organisms throughout the body is invoked by one section of the germ- theorists, who contend that certain altered states of health, together with altered vitality of tissues, may rouse such hitherto latent common organ- isms into activity, and occasionally convert them into so-called “specific” forms capable of new actions. But based as this view is upon wholly insufficient evidence, and with its fundamental position denied by other leading germ-theorists, it would, even had it been securely founded, be quite inadequate to meet the necessities of their position. A special zymotic disease, which had arisen in the manner above indicated, would as- suredly have had what is termed a de novo origin —it would have started from no specific cause, and would never have developed, but for the existence of those “determining conditions ” which brought about the altered state of health and tissues. This group of conditions would therefore constitute the cause of the disease; and inasmuch as, by the hypothesis we are now considering, the common germs are held to be ever present and unavoidable, any changes or de- velopments which they might take on could only be studied in the same rank and side by side with those of the other tissue-elements—that is, as consequences or phenomena of the disease. 2. It was originally affirmed by Prof. Burdon- Sanderson,' and it has of late been distinctly reasserted by M. Pasteur,® that the blood and in- ternal tissues of healthy animals and of man are entirely free from ferment-organisms or their germs. Some have sought to modify this view, on the strength of certain experiments which ate so extremely inconclusive as to make it almost puerile to have brought them forward.* For, however strong the evidence is that living units may, on certain occasions, be even proved experimentally to appear in fluids in which no living matter previously existed (arche- biosis), it is even stronger to show that, under certain conditions, similar low, independent forms of life may originate in the midst of living tissues previously free from them, by a kind of trans- formation (heterogenesis) of some of the units of protoplasm, which, though still living, have been modified in nature and fendency by reason of their existence in a partially devitalized area. The evidence in favor of this last kind of change may be regarded wholly apart from that furnished by the closed-flask experiments, from which it is quite distinct. It suffices, I think, to account for the presence of organisms in some of those local and general diseases with which they are known to be associated, and, therefore, to complete the proof that even such disease may originate de novo (as well as by contagion), ard that the organisms which characterize them are, in such cases, consequences or concomitant prod- ucts, not causes of the local or general condi- 1“ Thirteenth Report oi the Medical Officer of the Privy Council.” 2 Comptes Rendus, April 30, 1877, p. 900. * Cutting out portions of the internal organs of re- cently-killed animals, enveloping them with super- heated paraffine, and then placing them in an incuba- tor at a suitable temperature to see whether germs and organisms will appear, would, even if taken alone, obviously permit no certain conclusion to be drawn from their appearance. But the evidence relied upon by Sanderson and Pasteur tends as strongly to show that they are not developments of preéxiseting germs, as certain other evidence subsequently to be mentioned tends to show that they are heterogenetic products (‘* Transactions of the Pathological Society,” 1875, p. 267). Yet, following a now long-established custom of ignoring the possibility of the beterogenetic origin of Bacteria, the results of such experiments are by some supposed to demonstrate the existence of latent germs in an organ like the spleen, for in- stance, which is wholly cut off from outside commu- nication—and even when the blood itself is declared to be germless.

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THE GERM-THEORY OF DISEASE. 315 tions at whose bidding they appear. The ele- ments of the proof are these : (a.) First, there is the evidence which has been adduced by various observers as a result of the study by the microscope of the mode in which organisms appear within tissue-elements, I do not lay much stress upon this here, because evi- dence of such a nature is more open to various objections than that which is to follow.' (6.) Although the blood and internal tissues of healthy animals and of man are free from in- dependent organisms and their germs, yet such organisms will habitually show themselves after death, in the course of a few days, throughout all the organs of one of the lower animals or of man—even when life has been abruptly termi- nated during a state of health. It cannot be said, in explanation of this, that the organisms naturally present in the intestinal canal have been enabled to spread through the body so as to reach its inmost recesses after death—since many of the organisms found are motionless, and others have mere to-and-fro movements of a non- progressive character. The blood, again, has ceased to circulate, so that this fluid, germless during life, cannot after death be considered to act even as a carrier. If the organisms them- selves cannot make their way through the tissues, and if no carrier exist, they must naturally have been born in or near the sites in which they are found, Phenomena of this kind are to be witnessed even in insects, such as silk-worms and flies ; and the organisms that habitually develop in them after death are, as in the case of higher animals, just such organisms as appear in some of their best - known contagious diseases.* Certain of these diseases, like “‘muscardine,” seem to be generable de novo at the will of the operator by merely placing the animal for a few days under particular sets of unhealthy conditions. (c.) Some of the ferment-organisms may also be made to appear at will in certain parts of still living and previously healthy animals by deter- mining in any such part either (1) a greatly low- ered vital activity, or (2) an active perversion of the nutritive life of the part of considerable in- tensity : _ 1, This subject bas been studied experimen- tally by Messrs. Lewis and Cunningham,* two 1 On this subject sce “‘ Beginnings of Life,” vol. ii., . $42, : . 3 Ibid., pp. 327, note 1, and 380, and “ Transactions of the Pathological Society,” 1875, p. 848. ths Fungus-Disease of India,” Calcutta, 1875, P- thoroughly competent and trustworthy observers, whose researches during recent years have won for them a deservedly high reputation. They say: “The object of the experiments was to as- certain whether, by interfering with the vascular supply of certain tissues and organs of the body of an animal without injuring the isolated tissue, we sbould be able within the course of some hours to detect organisms in those parts in the same manner as we had been able to do when an ani- mal had been killed under chloroform and set aside in a warm place. We found that such was the result, and that a kidney, for example, when [its artery was] carefully ligatured without inter. fering with its position in the abdomen, would be found after some hours to contain precisely sim- ilar organisms ; whereas the other kidney, whose circulation had not been interfered with, con- tained no trace of any vegetation whatever.” ! 2. Facts of this second order have been thor- oughly established by the important researches of Prof. Burdon-Sanderson. He says:* “If afew drops of previously boiled and cooled dilute solu- tion of ammonia are injected underneath the skin of a Guinea-pig, a diffuse inflammation is pro- 1 On September 17, 1877, I had an opportunity of seeing how far this would hold good for the human subject. On that day I made an examination, twelve hours after death, of the body of a young man who had been suffering from severe heart-disease in Uni- versity College Hospital. His temperature bad only been slightly raised for about forty-eight hours before death; but there was reason for believing that em- bolic obstructions had recently occurred in one or both kidneys. Abundant “ vegetations " were found on the mitral and aortic valves, and two or three em- bolic patches existed in each kidney, some being re- cent and others of older date. One large yellowish embolic patch was likewise found occupying the upper extremity of an enlarged spleen. Some blood from the right ventricle and some urine from the bladder, carefully removed with capillary tubes, on examina- tion with the microscope and a one-twelfth object- glass, showed no organisms of any kind. Portions of tissue cut from the interior of the liver also showed , no organiems. On the other hand, the embolic patch in the spleen as well as those in the kidney, both old and recent, showed, when portions of their disin- tegrated substance were examined, organisms, more or less abundantly distributed, similar to those which Messrs. Cunningham and Lewis have figured. Some were Bacilli, and some were more like what Cohn now distinguishes as Vibriones. They were not so abundant as to be always found without careful exam- ination ; and, on the other hand, in the diseased splen- ic tissue there were a multitude of small acicular crys- tals which an inexperienced observer might mistake for motionless organisms. In the lower healthy por- tion of the spleen no organisms were found. 2 Transactions of the Pathological Society,” 1872, Pp. 806-308. spade

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Da 5 anak “ SS - 816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. duced, the exudation liquid of which is found after twenty-four hours to be charged with Bac- teria. . . . Other chemical agents,” he adds, “ will lead to the same results, and always under con- ditions which preclude the possibility of the intro- duction of any infecting matter from without.” Elsewhere’ the same investigator refers to experiments which were made about the same time, in order to throw light upon the cause of the appearance of Bacteria in certain peritoneal exudations, and to ascertain whether or not their presence was to be considered as “a mere result of the intensity of the peritonitis.” He says: “To determine this, experiments were made during the following month (May, 1871), which _ consisted in inducing intense peritonitis by the injection, not of exudation liquids, but of chem- ical irritants, particularly dilute ammonia and concentrated solution of iodine in hydriodic acid. As regards the ammonia, precautions were taken to guard against contamination by boiling and cooling the liquids as well as the implements to be used immediately before injection. In the case of the iodine solution this was, of course, unnecessary. In every instance it was found that the exudation liquids, collected from twenty- four to forty-eight hours after injection, were charged with Bacteria, whence it appeared prob- able that the existence of these organisms was dependent, not on the nature of the exciting liquid by which the inflammation was induced, but on the intensity of the inflammation itself.” From the various evidence more or less fully referred to in the present section it seems to me legitimate to conclude: 1. That if we are to be guided bythe anal- ogy now dwelt upon as existing between fermen- tation and zymosis, it would be perfectly certain that the latter process can originate de novo— that is, under the influence of certain general or special conditions, and where specific contagia of any kind are at first absent, though they subse- quently appear as results or concomitant products. So that an exclusive theory of “contagion,” as 1 “ Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Coun- eil,”’ etc., new series, No. vi., 1875, p. 57. the only present cause of communicable diseases, is not supported by experimental evidence. 2. That some contagia are mere not-living chemical principles, though others may be living units. 8. That even in the latter case, if the pri- mary contagious action be really due to the living units and not to the media in which they are found, such primary action is probably de- pendent rather upon the chemical changes or “ contact actions” which they are capable of set- ting up than upon their mere growth and vege- tative multiplication. 4. That where we have to do with a true living contagium (whether pus-corpuscle or ferment-organism), the primary changes which it incites are probably of a nature to engender (either in the fluids or from the tissue-elements of the part) bodies similar to itself, so that the in- fected part speedily swarms therewith, When pus from a certain focus of inflammation comes into contact with a healthy conjunctiva, and therein excites a contagious form of inflammation, no one adopts the absurd notion that all the pus- corpuscles in this second inflammatory focus are the lineal descendants of those which acted as the contagium; and the mode of action may be al- together similar when matter containing Bacilli, by coming into contact with a wounded surface, gives rise to splenic fever and the appearance of such organisms all through the body. The old notion about the excessive self-multiplication of the original contagium is probably altogether er- roneous. Thus all the distinctive positions of those who advocate a belief in the so-called “ Germ-Theory of Disease,” or rely upon the exclusive doctrine of a “Contagium Vivum,” seem to be absolutely broken down and refuted. We may give that attention to the appearance and development of independent organisms in association with morbid processes which the importance of their presence demands, but we must regard them as concom- itant products, and not at all, or except to an extremely limited extent, as causes of those local and general diseases with which they are insepa- rably linked. png ne

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5 JOHN STUART MILL’S PHILOSOPHY TEST. 817 JOHN STUART MILL’S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. Br W. STANLEY JEVONS, F. BR. 8. IL. ie the previous article on John Stuart Mill’s “ Philosophy,” I made the strange assertion that Mill’s mind was essentially illogical. To those who have long looked upon him as their guide, philosopher, and friend, such a statement must of course have seemed incredible and absurd, and it will require a great body of evidence to convince them that there is any ground for the assertion. My first test of his logicalness was derived from his writings on geometrical science. I showed, by careful!y authenticated extracts, that Mill had put forth views which necessarily imply the existence of perfectly straight lines; yet he had at the same time distinctly denied the existence of such lines. It was pointed out that he emphatically promised to use names always as the names of things, not as the names of our ideas of things; yet, as straight lines in his opin- ion do not exist, the name straight line is either the name of “just nothing at all,” as James Mill would have said, or else it is the name of our ideas of what they are. It is by experimenting on these ideal straight lines in the mind that we learn the axioms and theorems of geometry ac- cording to Mill ; nevertheless Mill had denounced, as the cardinal error of philosophy, the handling ideas instead of things, and had, indeed, in the earlier editions of the “System of Logic,” as- serted that not a single truth ever had been ar- rived at by this method, except truths of psy- chology. Mill asserted that we might experi- ment on lines in the mind by prolonging them to any required distance; but these lines according te Mill’s own statements must have thickness, and on minute inquiry it was found impossible to attach any definite meaning at all to the prolon- gation of a thick line. Finally, it was pointed out that, when Mil! incidentally speaks of an im- portant mathematical theorem concerning the ratio of the diameter and circumference of the circle, he abandons his empirical philosophy pro tempore, and speaks of the ratio in question as being discovered by a long train of difficult rea- soning. Such is the summary of the first small install- ment of my evidence. On some future occasion I shall return to the subject of geometrical rea- soning, which is far from being exhausted. It will then be proved that, on the question whether geometry is an inductive or a deductive science, Mill held opinions of every phase; in one part of his writings geometry is strictly inductive; in another part it is improperly called inductive ; elsewhere it is set up as the type of a deductive science, and anon it becomes a matter of direct observation and experiment ; presently Mill dis- covers, unexpectedly, that there is no difference at all between an inductive and a deductive sci- ence—the true distinction is between a deductive and an experimental science. But Mill charac- teristically overlooks the fact that, if the differ- ence lies between a deductive and an experimental science, and not between a deductive and an in- ductive science, then a similar line of difference must be drawn between an inductive and an experimental science, although Mill's inductive methods are the Four Experimenta] Methods. But the origin of our geometrical knowledge is a very slippery subject, as I before allowed. It would not be fair to condemn Mill for the troubles in which he involved himself in regard to such a subject if there were no other counts proved against him. Certainly he selected geom- etry as a critical test of the truth of his empiri- cal philosophy, but he may have erred in judg- ment in choosing so trying a test. Let us, there- fore, leave geometry for the present, and select for treatment in this second article a much broader and simpler question—one which lies at the basis of the philosophy of logic and knowl- edge. We will endeavor to gain a firm compre- hension of Mill’s doctrine concerning the nature and importance of the relation of Resemblance. This question touches the very nature of knowl- edge itself. Now, critics who are considered to be quite competent to judge have declared that Mill’s logic is peculiarly distinguished by the thorough analysis which it presents of the cogni- tive and reasoning processes. Mill has not re- stricted himself to the empty forms and methods of argument, but has pushed his inquiry, as they think, boldly into the psychology and philosophy of reasoning. In the “System of Logic,” then, we shall find it clearly decided whether resem- blance is, or is not, the fundamental relation with which reasoning is concerned. It was the doc-

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818 trine of Locke, as fully expounded in the fourth book of his great Essay, that knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas. ** Knowledge, then,” says Locke, ‘‘ seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the con- nection and agreement, or disagreement and re- pugnancy, of any of our ideas. In this alone it consists. Where this perception is, there is knowl- edge ; and, where it is not, there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet we always come short of knowledge.” Many other philosophers have likewise held that a certain agreement between things, various- ly described as resemblance, similarity, identity, sameness, equality, etc., really constituted the whole of reasoned knowledge as distinguished from the mere knowledge of sense. Condillac adopted this view, and stated it with admirable breadth and brevity, saying, “ L’évidence de raison con- siste uniquement dans l’identité,” Mill has not failed to discuss this matter, and his opinion on the subject is most expressly and clearly stated in the chapter upon “The Import of Propositions.” ! He analyzes the state of mind called Belief, and shows that it involves one or more of five matters of fact—namely, Existence, Coexistence, Sequence, Causation, Resemblance. One or other of these is asserted (or denied) in every proposition which is not merely verbal. No doubt relations of the kinds mentioned form a large part of the matter of knowledge, and they must be expressed in propositions in some way or other. I believe that they are expressed in the terms of propositions, while the copula al- ways signifies agreement, or, as Condillac would have said, identity of the terms. But we need not attempt to settle a question of this difficulty. We are only concerned now with the position in Lis system which Mill assigns to Resemblance. This comes last in the list, and it is with some expression of doubt that Mill assigns it a place atall. He says:* “* Besides propositions which assert a sequence or coexistence between two phenomena, there are, therefore, also propositions which assert resem- blance between them—as, this color is like that color; the heat of to-day is egual to the heat of yesterday. It is true that such an assertion might with some plausibility be brought within the de- scription of an affirmation of sequence by consid- ering it as an assertion that the simultaneous con- templation of the two colors is followed by a spe- 1 Book I.; chapter v. 2 Book I., chapter v., section 6. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. cific feeling termed the feeling of resemblance, But there would be nothing gained by encumber- ing ourselves, especially in this place, with a gen- eralization which may be looked upon as strained. Logic does not undertake to analyze mental facts into their ultimate elements. Resemblance be- tween two phenomena is more intelligible in it- self than any explanation could make it, and un- der any classification must remain specifically dis- tinct from the ordinary cases of sequence and co- existence.” It would seem, then, that Mill had, to say the least, contemplated the possibility of resolving Resemblance into something simpler—namely, into a special case of sequence and coexistence; but he abstains, not apparently because it would be plainly impossible, but because logic does not undertake ultimate analysis. It would encumber us with a “strained generalization,” whatever that may be. He therefore accords it provision- ally a place among the matters of fact which logic treats. Postponing further consideration of this pas- sage, we turn to a later book of the “System of Logic,” in which Mill expresses pretty clearly his opinion that Resemblance is a minor kind of relation to be treated last in the system of Logic, as being of comparatively small importance, In the chapter headed “ Of the Remaining Laws of Nature,” ! we find Mill distinctly stating that* “the propositions which affirm Order in Time, in either of its two modes, Coexistence and Succes- sion, have formed, thus far, the subject of the present book. And we have now concluded the exposition, so far as it falls within the limits as- signed to this work, of the nature of the evidence on which these propositions rest, and the pro- cesses of investigation by which they are ascer- tained and proved. There remain three classes of facts: Existence, Order in Place, and Resem- blance, in regard to which the same questions are now to be resolved.” From the above passage we should gather that Resemblance has not been the subject treated in the preceding chapters of the third book, or certainly not the chief sabject. Of the remaining three classes of facts, Exist- ence is dismissed very briefly. So far as relates to simple existence, Mill thinks* that the induc- tive logic bas no knots to untie, and he proceeds to the remaining two of the great classes into which facts have been divided. His opinion 2 Book III., chapter xxiv. ® First section, near the beginning. * Same section.

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‘JOHN STUART MILL’S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 319 about Resemblance is clearly stated in the sec- ond section of the same chapter, as follows: “ Resemblance and its opposite, except in the case in which they assume the names of Equality and Inequality, are seldom regarded as subjects of science; they are supposed to be perceived by simple apprehension; by merely applying our senses or directing our attention to the two ob- jects at once, or in immediate succession.” After pointing out that we cannot always bring two things into suitable proximity, he adds: “The comparison of two things through the intervention of a third thing, when their direct comparison is impossible, is the appropriate scien- tific process for ascertaining resemblances and dis- similarities, and is the sum total of what Logic has to teach on the subject. “An undue extension of this remark induced Locke to consider reasoning itself as nothing but the comparison of two ideas through the medium of a third, and knowledge as the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas: doctrines which the Condillac school blindly adopted, with- out the qualifications and distinctions with which they were studiously guarded by their illustrious author. Where, indeed, the agreement or dis- agreement (otherwise called resemblance or dis- similarity) of any two things is the very matter to be determined, as is the case particularly in the sciences of quantity and extension, there the pro- cess by which a solution, if not attainable by direct perception, must be indirectly sought, consists in comparing these two things through the medium of a third. -But this is far from being true of all inquiries. The knowledge that bodies fall to the ground is not a perception of agreement or dis- agreement, but of a series of physical occurrences, a succession of sensations. Locke’s definitions of knowledge and of reasoning required to be limited to our knowledge of, and reasoning about, Resem- blances.”’ We learn from these passages, then, that science and knowledge have little to do with resemblances. Except in the case of equality and inequality, resemblance is seldom regarded as the subject of science, and Mill apparently accepts what he holds to be the prevailing opinion. The sum total of what logic has to teach on this sub- ject is that two things may be compared through the intervention of a third thing, when their di- rect comparison is impossible. Locke unduly extended this remark when he considered reason- ing itself as nothing but the comparison of two ideas through the medium of a third. Locke’s definitions of knowledge and of reasoning require to be limited to our knowledge of, and reasoning about, resemblances. In the preceding part of the’third book of the “System of Logic,” then, we have not been concerned with Resemblance. The subjects dis- cussed have been contained in propositions which affirm Order in Time, in either of its modes, Co- existence and Succession. Resemblance is an- other matter of fact, which has been postponed to the twenty-fourth chapter of the third book, and there dismissed in one short section, as being seldom regarded as a subject of science, Under these circumstances we should hardly expect to find that Mill’s so-called Experimental Methods are wholly concerned with resemblance. Cer- tainly these celebrated methods are the subject of science; they are, according to Mill, the great methods of scientific discovery and inductive proof; they form the main topic of the third book of the Logic, indeed, they form the certral pillars of the whole “ System of Logic.” It is a little puzzling, then, to find that the names of these methods seem to refer to Resemblance, or to something which much resembles resemblance. The first is called the Method of Agreement; the second is the Method of Difference; the third is the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference ; and the remaining two methods are confessedly developments of these principal methods. Now, does Agreement mean Resemblance or not? If it does, then the whole of the third book may be said to treat of a relation which Mill has pro- fessedly postponed to the second section of the twenty-fourth chapter. Let us see what these methods involve. The canon of the first method is stated in the follow- ing words,' which many an anxious candidate for academic honors has committed to memory : “If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree, is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.”’ Now, when two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation agree, do they, or do they not, resemble each other? Is agree- ment the same relation as resemblance, or is it something different? If, indeed, it be a separate kind of relation, it must be matter of regret that Mill did not describe this relation of agreement when treating of the “Import of Propositions.” Surely the propositions in which we record our observations of “the phenomenon under investi- gation ” must affirm agreement or difference, and as the experimental methods are the all-important 1 Book III., chapter vili., section 1, near the end.

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= a ee Wid + as instruments of science, these propositions must have corresponding importance. Perhaps, how- ever, we shall derive some light from the copn- text ; reading on a few lines in the description of the Method of Difference,’ we find Mill saying that— “In the Method of Agreement we endeavored to obtain instances which agreed in the given cir- cumstance but differed in every other: in the present method (i. e., the Method of Difference) we require, on the contrary, two instances resem- bling one another in every other respect, but dif- fering in the presence or absence of the phenome- non we wish to study.” It would really seem, then, as if the great Ex- perimental Method depends upon our discovering two instances resembling one another. Here re- semblance is specified by name. We seem to learn clearly that Agreement must be the same thing as Resemblance ; if so, Difference must be its opposite. Proceeding accordingly to con- sider the Method of Difference, we find its re- quirements described in these words:* “ The two instances which are to be compared with one another must be exactly similar, in all circum- stances except the one which we are attempting to investigate.” This exact similarity is not actual identity, of course, because the instances are two, not one. Is it, then, resemblance? If so, we again find the principal subject of Mill’s Logic to be that which he relegated to section 2 of chapter xxiv. If we proceed with our reading of Mill’s chapter on the “Four Experimental Methods,” we still find sentence after sentence dealing with this re- lation of resemblance, sometimes under the very same name, sometimes under the names of simi- larity, agreement, likeness, etc. As to its appar- ent opposite, difference, it seems to be the theme of the whole chapter. The Method of Difference is that wonderful method which can prove the most general law on the ground of two instances ! But of this peculiarity of the Method of Differ- ence I shall treat on another occasion. Perhaps, however, after all, I may be misrep- resenting Mill's statements. It crosses my mind that by Resemblance he may mean something different from exact similarity. The Methods of Agreement and Difference may require that com- plete likeness which we should call identity of quality. It is only fair to inquire, then, whether he uses the word Resemblance in a broad or a 1 Same chapter, second section. 2 Same chapter, third section, third paragraph, fourth line. 820 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY:—SUPPLEMENT. narrow sense. On this point Mill leaves us in no doubt ; for he says distinctly,’ “ This resemblance may exist in all conceivable gradations, from per- fect undistinguishableness to something extremely slight.” Again, on the next page, while distinguishing carefully between such different things as nu- merical identity and indistinguishable resem- blance, he clearly countenances the wide use of the word resemblance, saying,’ ‘“ Resemblance, when it exists in the highest degree of all, amount- ing to undistinguishableness, is often called iden- tity.” It seems, then, that all grades of likeness or similarity, from indistinguishable identity down to something extremely slight, are properly com- prehended under resemblance ; and it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the agreement and similarity and difference treated throughout the Experimental Methods are all cases of that minor relation, seldom considered the subject of science, which was postponed by Mill to the second section of the twenty-fourth chap- ter. But the fact is, that I have only been playing with this matter. I ought to have quoted at once a passage which was in my mind all the time—one from the chapter on the Functions and Value of the Syllogism. Mill sums up the con- clusion of a long discussion in the following words : # ** We have thus obtained what we were seek- ing, a universal type of the reasoning process. We find it resolvable in all cases into the following elements: Certain individuals have a given attri- bute ; an individual or individuals resemble the former in certain other attributes ; therefore they resemble them also in the given attribute.” All reasoning, then, is resolvable into a case of resemblance ; the word resemble is itself used twice over, and, as I shall hereafter show, the word attribute, synonymous with property, is but another name, according to Mill, for resemblance. It is true that this quotation is taken from the second book of the System, not from the preced- ing part of the third book to which Mill referred as not having treated of resemblance. But this can hardly matter, as he speaks of the universal type of the reasoning process, which must include, of course, the whole of the inductive methods expounded in the third book. But, in case the reader should not be quite satisfied, I will give yet one more quotation, taken 1 Book I., chapter fii., section 11, paragraph 4 2 Same section, fifth paragraph, third line. 3 Book II., chapter iii., section 7, at beginning.

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JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. from the twentieth chapter of the third book, a chapter, therefore, which closely precedes the chapter on “ The Remaining Laws of Nature,” where Mill dispatches Resemblance. This chap- ter treats nominally of analogy, but what must be our surprise to find that in reality it treats from beginning to end of Resemblance! This is the way in which he describes reasoning by anal- ogy:! “ I¢ is, on the whole, more usual, however, to extend the name of analogical evidence to argu- ments from any sort of resemblance, provided they do not amount to a complete induction : without peculiarly distinguishing resemblance of relations. Analogical reasoning, in this sense, may be reduced to the following formula: Two things resemble each other in one or more re- spects; a certain proposition is true of the one; therefore, it is true of the other. But we have nothing here by which to discriminate analogy from induction, since this type will serve for all reasoning from experience. In the strictest induc- tion, equally with the faintest analogy, we conclude because A resembles B in one or more properties, that it does so in a certain other property.” It seems, then, that the universal type of the reasoning process wholly turns upon the pivot of resemblance. The stone which was despised and slightingly treated in a brief section of the twenty- fourth chapter, has become the corner-stone of Mill's logical edifice. It would almost seem as if Mill were one of those persons who are said to think independently with the two halves of their brain. On the one side of the great longitudinal fissure must be held the doctrine that resem- blance is seldom a subject of science; on the other side, Mill must have thought out the im- portant place which resemblance holds as the universal type of the reasoning and inductive pro- cesses. Double-mindedness, the Law of Oblivis- cence, or some Deus ex machina, must be called in ; for it is absurd to contemplate the possibility of reconciling Mill’s statement of the wniversal type of all reasoning with his remarks upon Locke’s doctrine. Locke, he says in the passage already quoted, unduly extended the importance of resemblance, when he made all reasoning a case of it, and Locke’s definition of knowledge and of reasoning required to be limited to our knowledge of and reasoning about resemblances. Yet, accord- ing to Mill himself, the wniversal type of aut rea- soning turns wholly on resemblance. Under such circumstances, it is impossible to discuss serious- “te Book IIL., chapter xx., beginning of second sec- Qn. 57 821 ly the value of Mill’s analysis of knowledge- Which part of the analysis are we to discuss? That in which resemblance is treated as the basis of all reasoning, or that in which it belongs to the “remaining” and “ minor matters of fact,” which had not been treated in the books of induc- tion, and which therefore remained to be disposed of ? We have not yet done with this question‘of resemblance; it is the fundamental question as regards the theory of knowledge and reasoning, and, even at the risk of being very tedious, I must show thatin the deep of Mill’s inconsistency there is still a lower deep. I have to point out that some of his opinions concerning the import of propositions may be thus formulated : 1. The names of attributes are names for the resemblances of our sensations. 2. Certain propositions affirm the possession of properties, or attributes, or common peculiari- ties. 3. Such propositions do not, properly speak- ing, assert resemblance at all. Proceeding in the first place to prove that Mill has made statements of the meaning attrib- uted to him, we find the matter of the first in a note! written by Mill in answer to Mr. Herbert Spencer, who had charged Mill with confounding exact likeness and literal identity. With the truth of this charge we will not concern ourselves now; we have only to notice the following dis- tinct statement: “ What, then, is the common something which gives a meaning to the general name? Mr. Spencer can only say, it is the simi- larity of the feelings ; and I rejoin, the attribute is precisely that similarity. The names of attri- butes are in their ultimate analyses names for the resemblances of our sensations (or other feelings). Every general name, whether abstract or con- crete, denotes or connotes one or more of those resemblances.” Mill’s meaning evidently is that when you apply a general name to a thing, as for instance in calling snow white, you mean that there is a resemblance between snow and other things in respect of their whiteness. The general name white connotes this resemblance; the ab- ' stract name whiteness denotes it. Let us now consider a passage in the chapter on the Import of Propositions, which must be quoted at some length : * 1 Book II., chapter ii, section 3, near the beginning of the third paragraph of the foot-note. This note does not occur in some of the early editions. 3 Book L, chapter v., section 6, second paragraph.

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322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “It is sometimes said that all propositions , is precisely that similarity—that common some- whatever, of which the predicate is » general thing—which gives a meaning to the general name, name, do, in point of fact, affirm or deny resem- | ond that the names of attributes are, in their ul- blance. All eee ee an that thing | timate analysis, names for the resemblances of our belongs to a ; but things being classed to- . , gether according to their resemblance, everything | po econ Previously he said that “ every gen- is of course classed with the things which it is | eral name ” connotes one or more of these resem- supposed to resemble most ; and thence, it may be said, when we affirm that gold is a metal, or that Socrates is a man, the affirmation intended is, that gold resembles other metals, and Socrates other men, more nearly than they resemble the objects contained in any other of the classes codrdinate with these.” Of this doctrine Mill goes on to speak in the following curious remarks,’ to which I particular- ly invite the reader’s attention : “There is some slight degree of foundation for this remark, but no more than a slight degree. The arrangement of things into classes, such as the class meal, or the class man, is grounded in- deed on a resemblance among the things which are placed in the same class, but not on a mere general resemblance : the resemblance it is ground- ed on consists in the possession by all those things, of certain common peculiarities ; and those peculi- arities it is which the terms connote, and which the propositions consequently assert; not the re- semblance. For though when I say, Gold is a metal, I say by implication that if there be any other metals it must resemble them, yet if there were no other metals I might still assert the prop- osition with the same meaning as at present, namely, that gold has the various properties im- plied in the word metal ; just as it might be said, Christians are men, even if there were no men who were not Christians. Propositions, there- fore, in which objects are referred to a class be- cause they possess the attributes constituting the class, are so far from asserting nothing but resem- blance, that they do not, properly speaking, assert resemblance at all.” I have long wondered at the confusion of ideas which this passage exhibits. We are told that the arrangement of things in a class is founded en a resemblance between the things, but not a “mere general resemblance,” whatever this may mean. It is grounded on the possession of cer- tain “common peculiarities.” I pass by the strangeness of this expression; I should have thought that common peculiarity is a self-contra- dictory expression in its own terms; but here it seems to mean merely attribute or quality. The terms then connote this attribute, rot the resem- blance. Here we are in direct and absolute con- flict with Mil’s previous statement that attribute 1 Same section, third paragraph. | blances ; now he says that it is “ these peculiari- ties” which the terms connote, and which the propositions consequently assert, not the resem- blances. But these peculiarities are common pecu- liarities—that is, common qualities or attributes. The self-contradiction is absolute and complete, except, indeed, so far as Mill admits that there is “some slight degree of foundation” for the re- mark which he is controverting. We will afterward consider what is this slight degree of foundation ; but proceeding for the present with the interpretation of the remarkable passage quoted, we learn that when I say, “‘ Gold is a metal,” I may imply that if there are other metals it must resemble them; yet, if there were no other metals, I might still assert that gold has the various properties implied in the word metal. The “ Law of Obliviscence’’ seems to have been at work here; Mill must have quite forgotten that he was speaking of propositions, “‘of which the predicate is a general name,” or the name of a class. Now if, as Mill sometimes holds, a class consists only of the things in it,’ there must be more metals than gold, else metal would not be a general name. If, as Mill elsewhere says, to the contrary effect, the class may exist whether the things exist or not,” we still have him on the other horn of the dilemma; for then the meaning of the general name must consist in its connotation, which consists of attributes, which are but another name for resemblances. Yet, forsooth, the propo- sition does not, properly speaking, assert resem- blances at all. The important passage quoted above is, as we might readily expect, inconsistent with various other statements in the “ System of Logic,” as, for instance, most of the seventh section of the chap- ter on “ Definition,” where we are told* that the philosopher “ only gives the same name to things which resemble one another in the same definite particulars,” and that the inquiry into a defini- tion‘ “is an inquiry into the resemblances and differences among those things.” Elsewhere we 1 “System of Logic,” Book II., chapter ii., section 2, fourth paragraph. 2 Book L., chapter vii., section 1, first paragraph. 2 Book I., chapter vili., section 7, paragraph 4, about the seventeenth line. This section is numbered 8 in some of the early editions. # Same section, paragraph 8, line 7.

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JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. are told’ that “the general names given to ob- jects imply attributes, derive their whole meaning from attributes ; and are chiefly useful as the lan- guage by means of which we predicate the attri- butes which they connote.” Again, in the chap- ter on the “ Requisites of a Philosophical Lan- guage,” he says :* “Now the meaning (as has so often been ex- plained) of a general connotative name resides in the connotation ; in the attribute on account of which, and to express which, the name is given. Thus, the name of animal being given to all things which possess the attributes of sensation and voluntary motion, the word connotes those attributes exclusively, and they constitute the whole of its meanings.” Now, the attribute, as we learned at starting, is but another name for a Resemblance, and yet a proposition of which the predicate is a general name, does not, properly speaking, assert resem- blance at all. The inconsistency is still more striking when we turn to another work, namely, John Stuart Mill’s edition of his father’s “Analysis of the Human Mind.” Here, in a note* on the subject of classification, Mill objects to his father’s ultra- nominalist doctrine, that “men were led to class solely for the purpose of economizing in the use of names.” Mill proceeds to remark‘ that “ we could not have dispensed with names to mark the points in which different individuals resemble one . another: and these are class-names.” Referring to his father’s peculiar expression—“ individual qualities ”°—he remarks very properly : “It is not individual qualities that we ever have occasion to predicate. ... We never have occasion to predicate of an object the individual and instantaneous impressions which it produces in us. The only meaning of predicating a quual- ity at all, is to affirm a resemblance. When we ascribe a quality to an object, we intend to assert that the object affects us in a manner similar to that in which we are affected by a known class of objects.” A few lines farther down he proceeds : “ Qualities, therefore, cannot be predicated without general names ; nor, consequently, with- out classification. Wherever there is a general name there is a class; classification, and general names, are things exactly coextensive.” 1 Book IV., chapter fii., eight lines from end of chapter. 2 Book IV., chapter iv., section 2, second line. ® VoL i. p. 260. * Page 261. 823 This is, no doubt, quite the true doctrine; but what becomes of the paragraph already quoted, which appeared in eight editions of the “ System of Logic,” during Mill’s lifetime? In that para- graph he asserted that propositions referring an object to a class because they possess the attri- butes constituting the class, do not, properly speaking, assert resemblance at all. Now, when commenting on his father’s doctrine, Mill says that the only meaning of predicating a quality at all, is to affirm a resemblance, In a later note in the same volume Mill is, if possible, still more explicit in his assertion that the predication of general names is a matter of attributes and resemblances. He begins thus: * ‘“* Rejecting the notion that classes and classi- fication would not have existed but for the neces- sity of economizing names, we may say that ob- jects are formed into classes on account of their resemblance.” On the next page he says in the most distinct manner : “ Still, a class-name stands in a very different relation to the very definite resemblances which it is intended to mark, from that in which it stands to the various accessory circumstances which may form part of the image it calls up. There are cer- tain attributes common to the entire class, which the class-name was either deliberately selected as a mark of, or, at all events, which guide us in the application of it. These attributes are the real meaning of the class-name—are what we intend to ascribe to an object when we call it by that name.” There can be no possible mistake about Mifl’s meaning now. The class-name is intended to mark definite resemblances. These resemblances must be the attributes which the class-name was either deliberately selected as a mark of, or which guide us in the application of it. These attributes are the real meaning of the class-name—are what we intend to ascribe to an object, when we call it by that name. Yet we were told in the passage of the “System of Logic” to which I invited the reader’s special attention, that propositions in which objects are referred to a class, because they possess the attributes constituting the class, are so far from asserting nothing but resem- blance, that they do not, properly speaking, as- sert resemblance at all. A class-name is now spoken of as intended to mark definite resem- blances. Previously we were informed that, in saying, “Gold is a metal,” I do not assert re- 1 James Mill's “ Analysis of the Human Mind,” new edition, vol. i., p. 288.

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ee ee Ew coe sas ee eee Ce Rl ade. ws ” et ee | I TEI, i iia aia aaa aii CPT OS Pe ET OO ae) eh {SN DRE DEAL NLR BLE AE MAE ERE in Nt a re et can 324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMEN7. semblance, forsooth, because there might be no other metal but gold. Yet metal is spoken of as a class, so that the word metal is a class-name, and the whole discussion refers to propositions of which the predicates are general names. The fact is, the passage contains more than one non-sequitur ; it tacitly assumes that metal might continue to be a class-name, while there was only one kind of metal, so that there would be nothing else to resemble. Then there is an- other non-sequitur when Mill proceeds straight- way to another example, thus—“‘just as it might be said, Christians are men, even if there were no men who were not Christians.” The words “just as” here mean that this example bears out the last; but Christians and men being plural, the predicate men is now clearly a class- name, and the meaning is that Christians all re- semble each other in the attributes connoted by the classname man. Mill adds, indeed, the words “even if there were no men who were not Christians.” Here is unquestionable confusion of thought. Man is a class-name and connotes the definite resemblances of the objects in the class, even if the class happens to be coextensive with the class Christians. If I say, “ Men are capable of laughter,” the general predicate “ ca- pable of laughter” connotes a character in which men resemble each other, even though there be no beings capable of laughter who are not men. Thus, when we closely examine the passage in question, it falls to pieces; it has no logical co- herence.! I may remark incidentally that it is strange to meet, in a discussion of the fundamental prin- ciples of logic and knowledge, with things which have a slight degree of foundation. The element- ary principles of a science either are true or are not true. There is no middle term. Degree in such matters is out of place. But in Mill’s philo- sophical works, as I shall have various opportuni- ties to show, there is a tendency to what may be called philosophical trimming. Instead of saying outright that a thing is false, he says too fre- quently that it is “not strictly true,” as in the case referring to the primary ideas of geometry quoted in my last article. Mill’s opinions, in fact, so frequently came into conflict with each other, that he acquired the habit of leaving a lit- 1In my own opinion, an affirmative proposition asserts resemblance in its highest degree, i. e., iden- tity, even when the eubject and predicate are singular terms ; but to prevent confusion, I argue the question on Mill’s aseumption that the predicate is a general or class name. tle room to spare in each of his principal state- ments; they required a good deal of fitting to- gether. Now “the slight degree of foundation ” for the remark that propositions, of which the predicate is a general name, do assert resem- blance, seems to be explained in the two para- graphs which follow that quoted, and these we will now consider. Mill proceeds to remark! that there is some- times a convenience in extending the boundaries of a class so as to include things which possess in a very inferior degree, if in any, some of the characteristic properties of the class, provided that they resemble that class more than any other. He refers to the systems of classification of living things, in which almost every great family of plants or animals has a few anomalous genera or species on its borders, which are ad- mitted by a kind of courtesy. It is evident, however, that a matter of this sort has nothing to do with the fundamental logical question wheth- er propositions assert resemblance or not. This paragraph is due to the ambiguity of the word resemblance, which here seems to mean vague or slight resemblance, as distinguished from that in- contestable resemblance which enables us to say that things have the same attribute. In fact, a very careful reader of the sections in which Mill treats of resemblance will find that there is fre- quent confusion between definite resemblance, and something which Mill variously calls “mere general resemblance ” or “ vague resemblance,” which will usually refer to similarities depending on the degree of qualities, or the form of ob- jects. There is, however, a second case bearing out Mill’s opinion that there is “some slight degree of foundation” for the remark that propositions whose predicates are general terms affirm resem- blance. This is a matter into which we must in- quire with some care, so that I give at full length the paragraph relating to it :* “There is still another exceptional case, in which, though the predicate is the name of a class, yet in predicating it we affirm nothing but resemblance, that class being founded not on re- semblance in any given particular, but on general unanalyzable resemblance. The classes in ques- tion are those into which our simple sensations, or rather simple feelings, are divided. Sensations of white, for instance, are classed together, not be- cause we can take them to pieces, and say they are alike in this, and not alike in that, but because 1 Book L., chapter v., section 6, fourth paragraph. ? Book L., chapter v., section 6, paragraph 5.

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~oeortRss TF @ bs | ie | ? : = 2 o& PF’ FF FF ervnws ers ee aS JOHN STUART MILL'S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. 825 we feel them to be alike together, though in dif- ferent degrees. When, therefore, I say, ‘ The col- or I saw yesterday was a white color;’ or, ‘ The sensation I feel is one of tightness,’ in both cases the attribute I affirm of the color or of the sensa- tion is mere resemblance—simple likeness to sen- sations which I have had before, and which have had those names bestowed upon them. The names of feelings, like other concrete general names, are connotative ; but they connote a mere resemblance. When predicated of any individual feeling, the in- formation they convey is that of its likeness to the other feelings which we have been accustomed to eall by the same name. Thus much may suffice in illustration of the kind of propositions in which the matter of fact asserted (or denied) is simple resemblance.” Such a paragraph as the above is likely to produce intellectual vertigo in the steadiest thinker. In an off-hand manner we are told that this much may suffice in illustration of an excep- tional case in which resemblance happens to be predicated. This resemblance is mentioned slight- ingly as mere resemblance, or general unanalyzable resemblance. Yet, when we come to inquire seri- ously what this resemblance is, we find it to be that primary relation of sensation to sensation, which lies at the basis of all thought and knowl- edge. Prof. Alexander Bain is supposed to be, since Mill’s death, a mainstay of the empirical school, and, in his works on “ Logic,” he has un- fortunately adopted far too much of Mill’s views. But, in Prof. Bain’s own proper writings, there is a vigor and logical consistency of thought for which it is impossible not to feel the greatest re- spect. Now we find Mr. Bain laying down, at the commencement of his writings on the intellect,’ that the primary attributes of intellect are: 1. Consciousness of difference ; 2. Consciousness of agreement ; and, 3. Retentiveness. He goes on to say with admirable clearness that discrimina- tion or feeling of difference is an essential of in- telligence. The beginning of knowledge, or ideas, is the discrimination of one thing from another. As we can neither feel nor know without a tran- sition or change of state, every feeling, and every cognition, must be viewed as in relation to some other feeling or cognition. There cannot be a single or absolute cognition. Then, again, Mr. Bain proceeds to say that 1“ Mental and Moral Science. A Compendium of Psychology and Ethics,” 1868, pp. 82, 88. The same doctrine of the nature of knowledge is etated in the treatise on “* The Senses and the Intellect,” second edi- tion, pp. 325-331; in the ‘‘ Deductive Logic,” pp. 4, 5, 9,and elsewhere. the conscious state arising from agreement in the midst of difference is equally marked and equally fundamental : ‘* Supposing us to experience, for the first time, a certain sensation, as redness ; and, after being en- gaged with other sensations, to encounter redness again ; we are struck with the feeling of identity, or recognition ; the old state is recalled at the instance of the new by the fact of agreement, and we have the sensation of red, together with a new and pe- culiar consciousnes, the consciousness of agreement in diversity. As the diversity is greater, the shock of agreement is more lively.’ Then Prof. Bain adds, emphatically : * All knowledge finally resolves itself into dif- ferences and agreements. To define anything, as a circle, is to state its agreements with some things (genus) and its difference from other things (dif- ferentia).’’ Prof. Bain then treats as the fundamental act of intellect the recognition of redness as identi- cal with redness previously experienced. This is changing red for white, exactly the same illustra- tion as Mill used in the example, “ The color I saw yesterday was a white color.” Now Mr. Bain says, and says truly, that all knowledge finally resolves itself into differences and agreements. Propositions, accordingly, which affirm these ele- mentary relations, must really be the most impor- tant of all classes of propositions. They must be the elementary propositions which are presup- posed or summed up in more complicated ones. Yet such is the class of propositions which Mill dismisses in an off-hand manner in one paragraph as “ still another exceptional case.” If we look into the details of Mill’s para- graph, perplexity only can be the result. He speaks of “ the class being founded not on resem- blance in any given particular, but on general wn- analyzable resemblance.” The classes in question are those into which “our simple sensations, or rather simple feelings, are divided.” Now, what can he possibly mean by any given particular? If the color I saw yesterday was a white color, that was the given particular in which resem- blance existed. No doubt the resemblance is un- analyzable, because analysis has done its best, and the matter refers, Mill states, to a simple sen- sation. When we are dealing with the elements of knowledge, of course analysis is no longer ap- plicable. But I confess myself unable to under- stand why he calls it general unanalyzable resem- blance. If I understand the matter aright, Mill should have said specific analyzed resemblance. When one red flower is noticed to resemble an-

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326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. other red flower in color, the general resemblance has been analyzed and found to consist in a spe- cific resemblance of color to color. If I see an orange, I know it to be an orange, because it resembles similar fruits which I have often heard so called. In the first instance, the resemblance may be to my mind mere general resemblance ; that is to say, I may not devote separate atten- tion to the several points of resemblance. But if one asks me why I call it an orange, I must analyze my feeling of resemblance, and I then discover that the color of the fruit resembles the color of fruit formerly called oranges, and that in regard to the form, the texture of the surface, the hardness, the smell, and so forth, there are other resemblances, My knowledge, as Prof. Bain says, finally resolves itself into differences and agreements, But the agreements in question are precisely those resemblances—the base-work of all knowledge—which Mill dismisses as still an- other exceptional case. There is really no mystery or perplexity in the matter, except such as Mill has created by the perversity of his intellect. Mill has made that into a species, which is really the summum genus of knowledge. Locke truly pronounced knowledge to consist in the perception of agree- ment or repugnance of our ideas, and Prof. Bain has stated the same view with a force and dis- tinctness which leave nothing to be desired. But Mill, strange to say, has treated this all- fundamental relation among “The Remaining Laws of Nature,” “Minor Matters of Fact,” or “Exceptional Cases.” It is usually impossible to trace the causes which led to Mill’s perversi- ties, but, in this important case, it is easy to ex- plain the peculiarity of his views on Resem- blance. He was laboring under heredilary preju- dice. His father, James Mill, in his most acute but usually wrong-headed book, the “ Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind,” had made still more strange mistakes. In several curious passages the son argues that we cannot resolve resemblance into anything simpler. These needless arguments are evidently suggested by parts of the “Analysis” in which the father professed to resolve resemblances into cases of sequence | Thus, when James Mill is discussing' the “ Association of Ideas,” he objects to Hume specifying Resemblance as one of the grounds of association. He says : ‘ Resemblance only remains, as an alleged 1“ Analysis: "’ first edition, vol. i., p. 79; second edition, vol. i., p. 111. principle of association, and it is necessary to in- quire whether it is included in the laws which have been above expounded. I believe it will be found that we are accustomed to see like things togeth- er. When we see a tree, we generally see more trees than one ; when we see an ox, we generally see more oxen than one; a sheep, more sheep than one; ® man, more menthan one. From this observation, I think, we may refer resemblance to the law of frequency, of which it seems to form a particular case.” I cannot help regarding the misapprebension contained in this passage as perhaps the most extraordinary one which could be adduced in the whole range of philosophical literature. Resem- blance is reduced to a particular case of the law of frequency, that is, to the frequent recurrence of the same thing, as when, in place of one man, I see many men. But how do I know that they are men, unless I observe. that they resemble each other? It is impossible even to speak of men without implying that there are various things called men which resemble each other suf- ficiently to be classed together and called by the same name. Nevertheless James Mill seems to have been actually under the impression that he had got rid of resemblance ! Later on in the same work,' indeed, we have the following statement : “Tt is easy to see, among the principles of as- sociation, what particular principle it is, which is mainly concerned in Classification, and by which we are rendered capable of that mighty opera- tion; on which, as its basis, the whole of our intellectual structure is reared. That principle is Resemblance. It seems to be similarity or re- semblance which, when we have applied a name to one individual, leads us to apply it to another, and another, till the whole forms an aggregate, connected together by the common relation of every part of the aggregate to one and the same name. Similarity, or Resemblance, we must re- gard as an Idea familiar and sufficiently under- stood for the illustration at present required. It will itself be strictly analyzed, at a subsequent part of this inquiry.” In writing this passage, James Mill seems to have forgotten, quite in the manner of his son, that he had before treated Resemblance as an alleged principle ot association, and had referred it to a particular case of the law of frequency. Here it reappears as the principle on which the whole of our intellectual structure is reared. It is strange that so important a principle should elsewhere be called an “alleged principle,” and 1“ Analysis:" first edition, vol. i, pp. 212, 218; second edition, vol. i., pp. 270, 271.

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JOHN STUART MILI’S PHILOSOPHY TESTED. equally strange that it should afterward be “ strictly analyzed.” Before we get down to the basis of our intellectual structure it might be supposed that analysis had exhausted itself. James Mill gives no reference to the subse- quent part of the inquiry where this analysis is carried out, nor do I find that John Stuart Mill, or the other editors of the second edition, have supplied the reference. Doubtless, however, the analysis is given in the second section of chapter xiv., where, in treating of “ Relative Terms,” ! he inquires into the meaning of Same, Different, Like, or Unlike, and comes to the conclusion that the resemblance between sensation and sen- sation is, after all, only sensation. He says: “ Having two sensations, therefore, is not only having sensation, but the only thing which can, in strictness, be called having sensation; and the having two and knowing they are two, which are not two things, but one and the same thing, is not only sensation, and nothing else than sensation, but the only thing which can, in strictness, be called sensation. The having a new sensation, and knowing that it is new, are not two things, but one and the same thing.” This is, no doubt, a wonderfully acute piece of sophistical reasoning ; but I have no need to occupy space in refuting it, because John Stuart Mill has already refuted it in several passages which evidently refer to his father’s fallacy. Thus I have already quoted, at the commence- ment of this article, a statement in which John Stuart Mill argues that resemblance between two phenomena is more intelligible than any explana- tion could make it. Again, in editing his father's Analysis,” Mill comments at some length upon this section,® showing that it does not explain anything, nor leave the likenesses and unlike- nesses of our simple feelings less’ ultimate facts than they were before. But though Mill thus refuses to dissolve re- semblance away altogether, his thoughts were probably warped in youth by the perverse doc- trines which his father so unsparingly forced upon his intellect. Too early the brain-fibres re- ceived a decided set, from which they could not recover, and all the power and acuteness of Mill’s intellect were wasted in trying to make things fit, which could not fit, because mistakes had been made in the very commencement of the structure. This misapprehension of the Mills, pére et Jills, concerning resemblance, is certainly one of 1“ Analysis:” first edition, vol. ii., p.10; second | edition, vol. ii., pp. 11, 12, * VoL ii., pp. 17-20. 827 the most extraordinary instances of perversity of thought in the history of philosophy. That which is the summum genus of reasoned knowledge, they have either attempted to dissolve away altogether, or, after grudgingly allowing its existence, have laced in the position of a minor species and ex- ceptional case, Yet it is impossible to use any language at all without implying the relation of resemblance and difference in every term, There is not a sentence in Mill’s own works in which this fact might not be made manifest after a little discussion, We cannot employ a general name without implying the resemblance between the significates of that name, and we cannot select any class of objects for attention without dis- criminating them from other objects in general. To propose resemblance itself as the subject of inquiry presupposes that we distinguish it from other possible subjects of inquiry. Thus, when James Mill is engaged (in a passage already quoted) in dissipating the relation of resem- blance, he presupposes resemblance in every name, What is a new sensation, unless it re- sembles other new sensations in being discrimi- nated from old sensations? What is a sensation unless it resembles other sensations in being sep- arated in thought from things which are not-sen- sations? But it is truly amusing to find that, in the very first sentence of the paragraph imme- diately following that quoted, James Mill uses the word resemblance. He says,’ “The case between sensation and sensation resembles that between sensation and idea:” Nevertheless, James Mill sums up the result of the section of his work in question by the following: * + It seems, therefore, to be made clear, that in applying to the simple sensations and ideas their absolute names, which are names of classes, as red, green, sweet, bitter; and also applying to them names which denote them in pairs, as such and such ; there is nothing whatsoever but having the sensations, having the ideas, and making marks for them.” This sentence, if it means anything, means that our sensations and our ideas have no ties between them except in the common marks or names applied to them. The connection of re- semblance is denied existence. This ultra-nom- inalism of the father is one of the strangest per- versities of thought which could be adduced ; and, though John Stuart Mill disclaims such an absurd doctrine in an apologetic sort of way, yet he nev- 1“ Analysis :" first edition, vol. fi., p.10; second edition, vol. ii., p. 12. 2 Ibid, first edition, p. 15; second edition, p. 17.

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ne ee et ME ee ee Sa Set ee ee ee wR tS eee Se oe tee) Rte eee ee ae Ne i SM BD Oe Rl Cm oe - — er te. en Split Caray a ed eT an, een bmn ene er > a | 328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. er, as I shall now and again have to show, really shook himself free from the perplexities of thought due to his father’s errors. It may seem to many readers that these are tedious matters to discuss at such length. After all, the import of propositions and the relation of resemblance are matters which concern metaphy- sicians only, or those who chop logic. But this is a mistake. A system’ of philosophy—a school of metaphysical doctrines—is the foundation on which is erected a structure of rules and infer- ences touching our interests in the most vital points. John Stuart Mill, in his remarkable “ Au- tobiography,” has expressly stated that a princi- pal object of his “ System of Logic” was to over- throw deep-seated prejudices, and to storm the stronghold’ in which they sheltered themselves. These are his words: ! ‘Whatever may be the practical value of a true philosophy of these matters, it is hardly pos- sible to exaggerate the mischiefs of a false one. The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, indepen- dently of observation and experience, is, I am per- suaded in these times, the great intellectual sup- port of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the ob- ligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erect- ed into his own all-sufficient voucher and justifica- tion. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices. And the chief strength ofthis false philosophy in morals, politics, and religion, lies in the appeal which it is accustomed to make to the evidence of mathemat- ics and of the cognate branches of physical sci- ence. To expel it from these, is to drive it from its stronghold; and because this had never been effectually done, the intuitive school, even after what my father had written in his ‘ Analysis of the Mind,’ had in appearance, and as far as pub- lished writings were concerned, on the whole the best of the argument. In attempting to clear up the real nature of the evidence of mathematical and physical truths, the ‘System of Logic’ met +“ Autobiography,” pp. 225-227. the intuitive philosophers on ground on which they had previously been deemed unassailable ; and gave its own explanation, from experience and association, of that peculiar character of what are called necessary truths, which is adduced as proof that their evidence must come from a deep- er source than experience. Whether this has been done effectually, is still sub judice ; and even then, to deprive a mode of thought, so strongly rooted in human prejudices and partialities, of its mere speculative support, goes but a very little way toward overcoming it; but, though only a step, it is a quite indispensable one ; for since, after all, prejudice ean only be successfully combated by philosophy, no way can really be made against it permanently until it has been shown not to have philosophy on its side.” This is at least a candid statement of mo- tives, means, and expected results. Whether Mill's exposition of the philosophy of the mathe- matical sciences is satisfactory or not, we par- tially inquired in the previous article ; and in one place or another the inquiry will be further prose- cuted in a pretty exhaustive manner. Mill allowed that the philosophy of his solution was still sud judice, and it must remain in that position for some time longer. But of the importance of the matter it is impossible to entertain a doubt, If Mill's own philosophy be yet more false than was, in his opinion, the philosophy which he under- took to destroy, we may well adopt his own esti- mate of the results. ‘“ Whatever,” he says, “ may be the practical value of a true philosophy of these matters, it is hardly possible to exaggerate the mis- chiefs of a false one.” Intensely believing, as I do, that the philosophy of the Mills, both father and son, is a false one, I claim, almost as a right, the attention of those who have sufficiently stud- ied the matters in dispute to judge the arduous work of criticism which I have felt it my duty to undertake. Erratvm.—tin the first article on John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy, Contemporary Review tor De- cember, 1877, vol. xxxi., p. 170, fifth line (Porviar Scrence Montaty Supriement, No. IX., p. 280, second column, last line), for Liberty read Necessi- ty.—Contemporary Review.

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a rr" st Fn @ we wy | Be & DISSECTING A DAISY. 829 DISSECTING A DAISY. By Proresson GRANT ALLEN. T AM lying on my back in the sunshine, close to the edge of a southward-sloping cliff, on the green and smiling coast of Dorsetshire. There is a pleasant scent of thyme upon the breeze, and a drowsy buzzing strikes my ear from the great awkward humble-bee who is bus- tling about in his burly fashion from blossom to blossom just before my eyes. A few yards away a couple of country lassies, some four or five years old, are picking bunches of centaury and buttercup, which they immediately pull to pieces with evident enjoyment of their destructive power. Being by trade a philosopher, I proceed to philosophize upon their conduct, and pluck the nearest flower I can reach, in imitation of my bucolic fellow-creatures. It happens to be a daisy. I look at it closely, and think to myself, “ What a lovely little blossom it is, after all!” As a psychologist I am bound to account for my own pleasure in looking at it, and for the delight with which my five-year-old friends pull it to pieces. Let me dissect my daisy, then, not literally and materially, as they do, but in a psychological and esthetic sense. Let me set to work and find out exactly what it is in the daisy which makes me like it, and what it is in myself that makes a daisy please me. In two previous articles I endeavored to show the readers of this Magazine what was the source of our pleasure in looking at a carvéd cocoanut cup and a polished granite obelisk.' In the pres- ent paper I shall try to explain the higher esthet- ic enjoyment derived from the contemplation of a simple blossom. It might at first sight appear that the love of little meadow-flowers was a more elementary feeling than the appreciation of a work of art like the bowl or the obelisk. But I think if we look carefully at the matter we shall sée reason to believe that even in children and much more in adults the pleasure derived from the contemplation of a daisy is far higher, more complex, and more developed, than the primitive sense of beauty in a human utensil or a massive monolithic monument. We shall see as we go on that mankind has really advanced from the admiration for colored and sculptured human products to the admiration for color and sculpt- 1 See the Cornhill Magazine for October and Novem- ber, 1877. ure in plants and flowers and shells and min- erals; and that the appreciation of art, rude or refined, has been a stepping-stone to the appre- ciation of Nature, forming a necessary factor in the evolution of each new mode of esthetic pleasure. One element in the love for flowers is un- doubtedly of immense antiquity in the whole race of vertebrate animals, and goes back much fur- ther than the origin of human arts. I mean the stimulation of bright color—the most conspicu- ous constituent in the pleasure felt by children and by savages, and by no means an inconsider- able element in the enjoyment of our most refined horticulturists. There are good grounds for be- lieving that this gratification is shared by a large part of the animal creation, and has descended to us men from our early half-human frugivorous ancestors. The bright hues of fruits and flowers seem to have been acquired by them as attractive allurements for the animal eye, and as aids to cross-fertilization or the dispersion of seeds. At any rate, we find many animals acutely sensitive to the stimulation of brilliant colors; and we know that human infants will notice red or yel- low patches long before their attention is at- tracted by more sombre hues. Accordingly, we may consider that the primordial element of beauty in flowers is to be found in their bright coloring, which affords immediate pleasurable stimulation to the eye by its brilliance and pun- gency. But primeval man did not probably care very greatly for flowers, even when gorgeously adorned in all the richest tints of the rainbow. The en- joyment of color seems to have been a gradual growth, and to have depended largely on the taste for personal decoration. The modern sav- age does not particularly trouble himself about any bright-hued objects that cannot be employed for his individual adornment. He picks up and prizes bits of coral, or brilliant pebbles, or glis- tening shells, because these can be manufactured into necklets or waistbands. He robs birds of their gorgeous plumage, and animals of their gay furs, to make himself a cloak or a girdle. He stains his body blue and yellow, or paints his weapons and domestic implements with such rude pigments as he can extract from plant or clay or - et ee

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rt Gu 08 ORNS I OE Ak eee a OU we ts Ct oe) Oe a) il ied ee ee ee eA AE 2 Re RE A IRR 8 rete ee een Sew tea SS ees eee : { ; || ; | 330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE mollusk. But he does not care very much for such transitory beauty as that of leaves and flow- ers, which cannot be worked up into a permanent means of human decoration. Yet by accustom- ing his eyes to feast on the bright hues of his ochre-stained bow and his wampum-belt, he is laying the foundation fcr far higher and more discriminative wsthetic pleasures in later genera- tions. The susceptibility to the pungent stimu- lation of dispersed color which the savage derives | from his ante-human ancestors, he improves and strengthens by exercise on his broad contrasts of red and blue, and hands on in a more devel- oped form to his semi-barbarous and civilized descendants. Even savages, however, cannot fail to be struck by the hues of flowers when they are very large and very brilliant, The Malays, who re- ported to Dr. Arnold their discovery of the first - Rafflesia—the monstrous parasitical blossom of Sumatra, a yard in diameter, which deceives in- | sects by its exact resemblance in smell and ap- pearance to a piece of putrid meat—testified their admiration by cries of “Come, come! A flower, big, beautiful, wonderful!” Such masses of blossom as we find on the lilac, the tulip-tree, the rhododendron, and the hibiscus, must fix and gratify the eye of the most callous savage. There is scarcely a literature in the world, if it be but the embryo songs of the South-Sea-Islanders, which does not contain abundant mention of flowers as beautiful objects, whose. loveliness is apparent even to those rude poets and their bru- tal audience. Though negro children never pluck the road-side posies as our own little villagers do, yet I have found it difficult to keep their hands off the scarlet bunches of poinsettia, the crimson- hearted foliage of caladium, and the purple sprays of bougainvillia, Even among the unsophisti- cated Admiralty-Islanders, the officers of the Challenger found little garden-plots filled with a wild profusion of red or yellow blossom. So with ourselves, the mere pleasure of color enters largely into our love for the golden crocus, the imperial tulip, and the joyous geranium. We get a pleasant shock of varied stimulation from a garden glowing with roses, peonies, fuchsias, chrysanthemums, asters, dahlias, and Canterbu- ry bells. We look with delight upon the hang- ing masses of laburnum, the clustered wealth of apple- blossom, the crimson glory of Virginia- creeper, tinged by the first autumnal frost. I do not say that we have here no higher emotion- al and poetic sentiments, intermingled with the simple delight of color in some inextricable way : MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. on the contrary, I shall try to show hereafter that such feelings inevitably complicate the anal ysis of our mental state in admiring a hyacinth, a daffodil, or a gladiolus. But in spite of these superadded emotional elements, I think the un. | mixed delight of pure color-stimulation must _ count for a great deal. It is the most original part of our pleasure in looking at a flower, and to the last it remains the principal part in many cases, Among our English wild-flowers there are not a few that challenge attention on the ground of | brillianey and purity of hue alone, without tak. | ing into consideration other esthetic advantages, The dark purple of the fritillary and the lighter shades of the foxglove would make them beauti- ful even apart from the drooping, serpentine grace of the one and the tall, clustered shaft on which the other bears its dappled bells. The intense yellow of the buttercup, the marsh marigold, and the gorse, would extort our praise if it occurred in any costly exotic. Clover, broom, lucerne, poppies, cornflowers, thistles, dandelions, con- _ volvulus, and heather, are all bright enough to _ fix our eyes upon their. lovely tints as we sean the fields in which they grow. Each blossom | Stands out as a little patch of pungent color in the midst of the uniform background of green which throws them up in strong relief. And so | the eyes of our village children are attracted from one to another in succession (just as the eyes of the bee, for whose guidance their fair tints were first developed, are drawn on from each to its neighbor), and their little hands are soon filled with cowslips, and primroses, and white-fringed daisies, like the one which I am ' now holding* in my palm, and which is to form the text for our morning’s discourse, Our daisy is not like some of these other flowers, a gayly-decked, flaunting madam, in robe of crimson and ornaments of gold. She has no very fine colors and no very large mass of bloom to unfold before our admiring gaze. And yet, I suppose, there never was a flower about which so much poetry has been written in books, and said in love-making, and thought in the heart of mas, as this same humble, quiet little daisy. More- over, since all poetry is only esthetic feeling ' crystallized into words, there must be some won- derful potency in this tiny flower, little as it at- tracts our eyes by its outer hues, or we should not find its name so often in the pages of our ‘poets. But, before we go on to see what good | points it actually Aas, let us look briefly at those which it has not, that we may thus more clearly | realize the problem before us.

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We have seen that the daisy has not bright eolor in any conspicuous degree, nor has it a noticeable size. But besides these disadvantages, it also lacks the pleasant property of perfume. Some of our bright-hued flowers, like the rose and the carnation, add this further beauty to their large dimensions and delicate tints ; others, a little less fortunate, like the primrose, the wall- flower, the heliotrope, the violet, and the mead- ow-sweet, make up by their exquisite scent for the comparative sobriety of their petals. Many of those blossoms which can boast scarcely any attractions of form or pigment yet gratify us by their delicious fragrance; such are mignonette, lavender, sweet-brier, and rosemary. But the little daisy cannot lay claim to this source of pleasure ; it cannot even compete with thyme, marjoram, or hawthorn, far less with the lilac, the orange, or the flowering almond. Furthermore, the daisy does not possess that intellectual interest which many blossoms arouse by their quaintness or unusual form. There is a certain uncanny look about a listera, a snap- dragon, or a bee-orchis, which is sure to fix our at- tention upon it fora moment. Monk’s-hood, with its queer cowl and upright honey-glands ; cock’s- comb, with its intricate mass of crimson fluff; begonia, with its lop-sided leaf and quadrangular blossom; calceolaria, with its padded and in- flated slipper ; the dodder twining thread-like its long pink filaments ; the teazle, imbedded in its prickly mail; the cactus, seeming to spring from the middle of a leaf—all these have an oddity and idiosyncrasy which insures at least a curious glance. But the daisy is just a simple, symmet- rical, yellow-centred flower—or at least (to save my credit with the botanical reader) it looks so to a cursory inquirer. It has a shape with which we are perfectly familiar through a thousand ex- amples, from sunflowers to camomile; and there is nothing about it in any way to draw toward it the eye of a careless wayfarer. On the other hand, the daisy is free from some disagreeable qualities which spoil the beauty of certain other plants. It has not the objection- able odor of its sister composites, such as mil- foil, tansy, and corn-marigold. If it cannot com- pete with the honeysuckle or the lily-of-the-valley, it does not disgust us like the leek, the dragon arum, and the strong-smelling night - plants. Again, though the colors of the daisy are not very brilliant, at any rate it is a recognizable flower in the popular sense, not an insignificant botanical inflorescence like that of a grass, an oak, or a plantain. It is quite prominent enough DISSECTING A DAISY. 831 to catch the eyes of children, who pass over dock, and groundsel, and galeum ; indeed, on a level plot of grass it is sure to gain a certain amount of notice from every one in contrast with the green area by which it is surrounded. It was the first flower I could see just now, when I stretched my hand for a text to philosophize upon, though, when I look down closer in the grass, I see half a dozen little blossoms of tinier dimensions which escaped my notice beside the larger disk of the daisy. All this while, however, the daisy has been lying passive in my hand, under sentence of vivi- section, while I have been quietly settling in my own mind what it is nof. It is time for me now to change my method of inquiry, and to discover what it is. First of all, as I take it up and look at it closely, I see that it is a little, white-fringed flower, with a yellow centre. Though not very brilliant, it has quite color enough to be pretty, Its white is pure and lucid; its yellow is clear and soft; while its outer edge is tipped with a dainty pink, that rivals the inner surface of a shell. When it was half open, this pink edge was its most conspicuous part ; and, as I turn to look again, I see that my five-year-old psycho- logical subjects are stringing a number of its fel- lows in their pinky stage into a rosy-colored daisy-chain. Clearly, on the score of color alone, our daisy might fairly lay claim to a certain share of simple beauty. I doubt whether my little friends here care for much else in its com- position besides this commonest and earliest ele- ment of gsthetic pleasure. I look again, and I see that beyond its delicate tint it has the charm of symmetrical form. Its outer rays are disposed in regular order, radiat- ing from the centre of the head; while its inner orb is a perfect circle of soft, yellow bloom. In recognizing this source of pleasure, we pass from the purely sensuous factor of color to the intel- lectual one of symmetry. The mind is agreeably occupied in noticing the circular shape, the or- derly repetition of form, and the even arrange- ment both of parts and hues, Next to the pri- mordial pleasure of brilliant optical stimulation, this is perhaps the earliest in historical develop- ment of all esthetic feelings ; and, unlike the other, it is of purely human origin. Birds and mammals—perhaps even reptiles—are apparently gratified by pure color; but only man is capable of taking pleasure in the intellectual recognition of symmetrically-repeated forms. We saw, in the case of the cocoanut which we carved to-

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+ Py be re ew ee Ni tee Ne 2. ee or eee ee eS ee 332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. gether last October, how early this love for regu- lar patterns appeared among mankind, and how large a share it bore in the evolution of esthetic taste. Derived originally from the contemplation of the organic world, it has reacted at last upon our perceptions of organisms themselves. From the tattooing and carving of the savage; from the paddles, the bowls, and the clubs, of early chieftains ; from the Greek temples, and urns, and key-patterns ; from the Roman arch and am- phitheatre and tessellated pavement; from the Gothic rose-window, and sedilia, and screen ; from obelisk, and column, and monument; from every vase, basin, table, plate, dish, carpet, wall- paper, and decorative device generally, through- out all time, savage, barbarous, or civilized, we have learned to expect symmetry and regularity, and to feel a pleasure at their due occurrence. And, as I look at this little daisy in my hand, I recognize in it the possession of those attributes which concur with its color to make me call it I take the daisy in my fingers and pull out one of the pink-tipped rays. As I inspect it closely, I see that it forms a perfect but very ir- regular floret. Our daisy, then, is a composite plant, and this which looks a single blossom is in reality a thick-set head of lovely little bells. Gaze hard into the central mass, and you will see them clustered thickly together, each with a yellow fringe, shaped like a Canterbury bell, within which lie the stamens and pistil, scarcely visible without the aid of a lens. In the very heart of the flower, each.tiny floret is still un- opened—in the bud, so to speak—and they stand like little golden knobs, too small to count with the naked eye. Toward the circumference, how- ever, the separate bells are fully opened, and, if you will take the trouble to look hard enough, you will see that they are perfect miniature flow- ers, every one having a deeply-cleft corolla, which forms a bright-yellow tube with five projecting, vandyked points. The outer florets of all are the pinky-white says which first attracted our attention, and, when I look at one of them by itself, I can see that it is a marvelously mis- shapen representative of the little inner bells. Its corolla has grown together into a single, one- sided leaflet, in which we can scarcely distinguish a trace of the original petals, four or five in num- ber, answering to the vandyked points of the internal bells. Its color has been entirely blanched, while at the outer extremity it has been dyed with a melting shade of delicate pink. Its stamens have disappeared altogether, but the pistil still | remains as in the central blossoms. My scientific teachers have taught me to recognize in this arrangement the joint effect of incident sunlight, freer elbow-room, and natural selection. Most of the daisy-shaped composites have an outer row of radial florets, to give size, color, and at- tractiveness to the blossom, and to allure those great fertilizing agents, the bees and the butter. flies ; while the real working organs, the golden bells, lie thickly packed together in the middle, and take a comparatively passive part in the task of fascinating the insect-eye. But at present, when my purpose is purely esthetic, I must neg- lect these interesting biological speculations and return to my analysis of a daisy, viewed as a beautiful object alone. What a new sphere of esthetic pleasure this discovery, that the daisy is composite, has laid open before us! I was just beginning to tire of its pinky rays and its yellow centre, my inter- est in its various parts was just b eginning to flag, when suddenly I find a whole unthought-of region disclosed to my delighted view. I can sit and look at it now, and have full occupation for my intellect at least ten minutes longer. In the case of our cocoanut we saw already how large an element of esthetic pleasure is given us in the intellectual interest and the sensuous gratifi- cation of numerous visual, salient points. If we look at a book of engravings, and turn over the pages in rapid listlessness, it is clear that we are not receiving very much pleasure from their con- tents; but if we linger for ten minutes over a single plate, marking every detail and taking in every figure, the inference is strong that we are thoroughly enjoying our occupation. Yet such enjoyment is not always of necessity esthetic in kind. If I had never seen a daisy before, and were pulling it to pieces for the pur- pose of settling its botanical affinities, my inter- est, though strong, would be purely scientific. I should not be concentrating my attention on its color and its symmetry, but rather noticing trivial and sensuously dull traits in its internal economy, reduced to botanical rule and number. I should not be thinking of it in such poetical terms as golden bells and pink-tipped rays, but in the cut-and-dried phraseology of natural sci- ence: “Inner florets, bisexual, regular, of five yellow petals, combined into a tubular corolla; stamens four to five, anthers combined ; pistil with one cell, one style, and two stigmas,” and much more to the same technical effect. In all this process, the sense of laborious investigation and toilsome straining of the eye and the intel-

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DISSECTING A DAISY. lect would be too prominent to allow of its inclu- sion among esthetic feelings. But when we look into a daisy merely to recognize its minute work- manship, its marvelous complexity, its incredible accuracy of detail, our pleasure is truly and sim- ply esthetic in kind. In the last sentence we have bit by accident upon the source of this pleasure. It is derived from the gratification with which we regard deli- cate workmanship in human products. Both the cocoanut and the obelisk showed us how large a factor this feeling forms in our appreciation of artistic handicraft. The theory of special crea- tion, which taught us for so many generations to regard each organism as a separate invention of the Supreme Mind, naturally led us to extend the notion of intentional ornamentation and decora- tive detail to these living forms, moulded into shape by the finger of God. And even now, when many of us have learned to see in every plant or animal the natural resultant of antece- dent causes acting by physical laws on an endless line of ancestors, we still figure to ourselves the minute organization of each in terms of human activity. We find a flower or a shell most beau- tiful when we think of it as an artistic product. The very words we apply to them—sculpture, tracery, chiseling, and so forth—are derived from the works of man, and add a fresh sense of beauty to the natural objects which we invest with their connoted ideas. A couple of examples will make this clear. As I came along this morning from the quiet watering-place where we have pitched our sum- mer tent, I did a little amateur geologizing in the blue lias cliffs which I passed on my way. Among other fossils, I found this ammonite. A beautiful object it is, even in the eyes of children, who may often be seen hunting for them in the fallen débris of the cliff; for its surface is brill- iant with a metallic iridescence, and gold or bronze alternate every moment on its shining crystalline texture with fitful gleams of gorgeous purple and strange undertones of lucid green. But a closer glance reveals other beauties besides this simple effect of scattered light-rays. The spire is composed of three or four overlapping whorls, exquisitely graceful in their curved out- line and fullness of depth. The dorsal ridge, or backbone of the shell, is embossed with small studs and projecticas at proportionate distances. The sides are covered by a fluted pattern, carved with a delicate accuracy which no human graver could compass. And, more wonderful than all, traversing this sculptured surface in every direc- tion are tiny lines of tracery, like the leaves of a very delicate fern, repeated at measured intervals over all the whorls. In and out they wind, each one following exactly the same course as its neighbors, so that the space between any two lines forms a symmetrical and marvelously mi- nute pattern, compared to which the finest lace is a mere bungling mass of knotted cord. This am- monite was once a chambered shell, like that of the pearly nautilus in our own time; and each of these sutures, as the sculptured lines are called in scientific books, marks the point of juncture between one of the chamber-walls and the exter- nal shell. Wrinkled and twisted into ten thou- sand folds, it yet preserves throughout its exquisite symmetry, and presents to our eyes an appear- ance of decorative design which no amount of reasoning can dispel from our fancy and our esthetic imagination. To the last, we shall think of it as a piece of Nature’s handiwork, and praise her for the exquisite taste and unapproachable skill which she lavishes on all her productions. Or, take again some of those fossil trees of the coal-measures, which grew like huge club- mosses and mare’s-tails to the height of our own modern tropical palms, Even a geologist de- scribes them as “ fluted columns, ornately carved in the line of the channeled flutes;” as “ sculpt- ured into gracefully-arranged rows of pointed and closely-imbricated leaves, similar to those into which the Roman architects fretted the torus of the Corinthian order;” and as “furnishing ex- amples of a delicate diaper-work, like that so ad- mired in our more ornate Gothic buildings—such as Westminster Abbey or Canterbury and Chi- chester Cathedrals—only greatly more exquisite in their design and finish.” Wherever we look at a description of beautiful natural objects which owe their effectiveness to detail and intricacy, we shall find the self-same language employed. The apparent similarity to human handicraft is the peg upon which we hang our esthetic admira- tion. So, too, with our little daisy. As we peer into its golden disk, we see in it one of Nature’s most complicated works—a whole head of flow- ers, each in perfect miniature, with every part complete, crowded into a circle of half an inch diameter. It is truly wonderful! I will call my little neighbors here, and ask them to enjoy the spectacle with me. Strange, indeed! they come and look at it, but don’t betray the slightest symptom of interest. I try again. I take a sin- gle bell on the point of a pin, and dilate upon its loveliness, The eldest of the two stares at me

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, a es ae ee ee ee ee» ee ~ ane te 9 hee eS OF el Ot OI ek me A COON a oo 834 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. in mingled pity and contempt. “It’s only a daisy!” she says, in her native Dorsetshire tongue. There is nothing more in it. Why! dear me, I had forgotten my “ Peter Bell.” I see it now, and repent me of my bad psychology. I have been asking these children to experience a feeling for which they have no appropriate nervous organ. I have been requesting the blind to enjoy the glories of sunset, or exhorting the deaf to drink in the touching strains of Men- delssohn. Indeed, if the reader will believe me, I don’t think I would have committed such a blunder in practical psychology except for the sake of experiment, example, and precept. These little maidens can receive pleasure from the pink and white and yellow of the blossom; perhaps they can even appreciate the symmetrical arrange- ment of disk and rays and daisy-cup; but they cannot possibly see the beauties of those tiny separate specks of yellow which the educated ob- server resolves into perfect individual flowers. How could it be otherwise? In the individ- ual and in the race appreciation of art must come before appreciation of Nature. Only by connect- ing the workmanship of flowers and shells and insects with the workmanship of bowls and pad- dies and sculptured stone, can we ever rise to a love for beauty in these natural shapes. The sav- age who delights in patiently-wrought clubs and war-canoes can see no marvel in the delicate handicraft of the ammonite, the lycopodium, or the thistle-flower. Indeed, I venture myself to think that our enjoyment of the beauty of design in Nature—as opposed to the more sensuous grat- ification of form and color—is largely due to the influence of that Hebrew cosmogony which for fifty generations has formed an intimate portion of our every-day life. It has taught us to look upon every plant or animal as made, while the Savage regards them merely as growing. And though we may now accept a somewhat different account of the origin of life, yet we cannot cast away in a moment—let us hope we may never cast away—the beautiful and poetical implica- tions of the earlier creed. But these little peasant-children beside me can hardly profit much by the sublime conception of the Hebrew bards. They have never seen those fluted pillars and diapered patterns on which the taste for intricate design has been slowly built up. They and their ancestors forever have formed their esthetic ideas from the glazed pottery and rude furniture of the laborer’s cottage. They can admire a red-and-blue German print, or a pink- and-white daisy viewed as a whole; but I doubt whether they would look twice at the deeply-re- cessed Norman doorway of Iffley Church, or the Prentice’s Column in Roslyn Chapel. Much less, then, can they transfer this feeling of admiration for skill and delicacy of handicraft to the foliated suture of my lias ammonite or the bell-shaped florets of my dissected daisy. It could not have been for this, I suppose, that I noticed them pulling to pieces their centau- ries when I first lay down here. Probably not. That was doubtless an ebullition of the natural taste for destruction which we all inherit, more or less, from our predatory ancestors. It was not without reason that those pseudo-philoso- phers, the phrenologists, assigned a separate bump on their fanciful cranial chart to the fac- ulty of destructiveness. The self-same impulse which drove our naked forefathers to burn one another’s villages, entered into alliance at later times with political or religious fanaticism to over- throw the temples of Ephesus and Persepolis, the library of Alexandria, the painted windows of our own cathedrals, the Hétel-de-Ville, and the Co- lonne Vendéme. Iconoclasts and Puritans and Communards doubtless fully believed in the jus- tice of their principles, but they all felt a grim pleasure, one imagines, in the destruction of idol- atrous images and anti-social monuments. As I was coming here this morning, I passed through a field of stubble with a thick sprinkling of tall thistle-heads. Whenever I came within reach of a big one, I cut it off with a smart blow from my stick. The thistle deserves no quarter as an en- emy to the agricultura] interest, and it was cer- tainly very pleasant to see their heads roll off so nicely at a single clean cut. So far we have looked at those esthetic points in our daisy which a complete examination of its structure could not fail immediately to suggest. But there are many others which, though not so obvious to the analyst, are far more generally perceived than those with which we have lately dealt. We will retrace our steps to the stage where we have merely considered the daisy in its aspects as a colored and symmetrical object. Everybody feels at once that it is a great deal more than that. Let us see why. In the first place, it is a fower—a real flower, with all the general attributes of flowers as a class. Milliners will sell you an artificial daisy which really looks at first sight nearly as good as the genuine article. But you and I feel that a nat- ural field-grown daisy is worth a good ten thou- sand of such tinsel abominations. And yet notice here a curious revulsion which has been brought

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aaB Fo F vorT wa eywewVeVvertreevrte eee Ss — =a EF al a DISSECTING A DAISY. about in our feelings during the evolution of civilization. A savage does not care much for flowers: they are bright and pretty enough, but, if he picks them, they fade in half an hour. Give him a few pieces of red and blue cloth or glass, similarly dyed, and he infinitely prefers them to the handiwork of Nature. He would consider the milliner’s daisy ever so much prettier than the living flower. The vulgar among ourselves think a bunch of wax or paper flowers beautiful ornaments for a sitting-room table, more lasting and so more desirable than an actual bouquet; whereas, with more refined natures, the feeling of artificiality spoils the one, and the sense of reality gives the other loveliness. A great many threads of feeling go to make up this complex mental state. For one thing, the texture and composition of the two are quite different. The daisy’s leaves are soft and smooth and delicate, while the imita- tion is hard and glazed and coarse-grained. The daisy will bear looking into, and the closer we look the more beauty do we discover; but the artificial flower is all made up of wires and twisted rag, which disclose their ugly workmanship when we scrutinize them too curiously. The daisy’s pigment is diffused within its cells like the native roses of a maiden’s cheek; but the pink of the milliner’s flowers is smeared on outside like the rouge and pearl-powder of a vulgar actress. We, who are accustomed to manufactured goods, have learned to discriminate between the coarse handi- work of man and the dainty devices of Nature. We recognize the difference between the micro- scopic cells of a real leaf and the twisted fibres of a calico petal. Sometimes a false begonia or coleus on a London landing deceives us for a mo- ment, but, 80 soon as we discover by the touch its artificial character, all feeling of beauty is gone in amoment. It is the freshness, the smoothness, the delicate texture, the living flower, which we love, as well as the mere brightness, and color, and form. Again, in our adult minds the very fragility and short-livedness of the real daisy give it a certain poeticalinterest, We like it the better for being 80 frail. We don’t care for that tough calico thing, with knobs of yellow composition, which will stand any amount of knocking about. We would rather have a live daisy, whose little leaves will shrink and die at any exposure or rough treatment. Furthermore, the daisy is not merely a natu- ral object and a living thing, but it is yet more specifically a flower. Our sentiment toward it is not at all the same as that which we entertain * with regard to a bird or a butterfly. With them, the consciousness of animal life, of pleasurable existence, occupies the foreground of our mental picture. We think of tuem as happy and joyous and free; we watch them with delight as the one cleaves the unresisting air in rapid motion, and the other flits fairy-like from blossom to blos- som, sucking the honey from their perfumed depths. A stuffed bird or a dried butterfly in a cabinet dves not affect us with the like gladsome sentiments. The color and form are still the same, but the life and the joy are wanting to fill in the measure of our sympathetic delight. A flower, however, rests its claims on totally differ- ent grounds. Dim recollections of childhood, vague echoes of pleasure felt by generations long dead, whose experience yet reverberates through our brains by the mystic transmission of heredity —these give to the flower, insentient and uncon- scious as it is,a certain deeper beauty of its own. Some attraction toward a form of life so unlike our own, so unfathomable, so incapable of reali- zation to our minds, exists in every poetical heart, and reaches its furthest development in such an exquisite, if overwrought, outpouring as Shelley’s “‘ Sensitive-Plant.” But all these poetical feelings, which to the educated and refined among us have come to be part and parcel of our love for flowers, do not exist at all among children or unrefined adults. They like them chiefly as colored and symmetri- cal objects, very little distinctively as flowers. Now and then one may meet a cottager whose sentiments on the subject are more like one’s own; but, on the whole, these subtiler, evanes- cent elements of esthetic pleasure are confined to the literary and artistic class. It was the error of Burke and Alison to refer all esthetic pleasure to these rare constituents, overlooking the far commoner gratifications of immediate sensuous stimulation. Even among the most refined, there are cer- tain flowers, like the gladiolus and the tulip, which attract us chiefly by their brilliant hues; and others, like the daisy and the violet, which appeal more strongly to our associated sentiments. We have seen already what is the esthetic worth of a flower as a flower: let us ask next what is the value of a daisy as a daisy. Dear little daisy, how beautiful it is, hiding its modest little head in the grass, and bowing gently before the tyrant breeze! We think of it as such a shrinking, unassuming, lovable little flower. It does not flaunt abroad like the marsh- mallow, nor grow in weedy patches like the dan-

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ET a we Oe OE bad ERE BS I US GSXneo x a a a | | | AD OT eat as ete EES. NL NS : . 336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. delion ; but it just raises its pretty, simple head in the midst of a level sward of close-cropped grass. Mr. Herbert Spencer has pointed out how nearly the tender feeling toward our children— our little ones, as we love to call them—is allied with the tender regard for littleness generally. “ Sweet little thing,” the women say of any tiny work of urt, or bird or plant. And all wom- en being by nature mothers, it is no wonder that their hearts go forth toward whatever seems weak and helpless and shrinking, even as their own babies are. “Dear little flower,” says every man instinctively, as he stoops to pick the first daisy of the season. The tininess of the daisy is evidently one source of its attractiveness. Dear little English daisy, growing at home on every common and pasture and road-side through- out the length and breadth of the land! Emphat- ically to us an English flower, toward which, as a symbol of home, we turn with loving regret and longing of heart in distant lands across the sea. In Mr. Charles Reade’s “Never too Late to) Mend,” there is a touching scene in which a par- ty of rough miners and ex-convicts go together on a Sunday morning through the Australian | bush to see and hear an English lark. Many a | wayfarer in the heats of a tropical.summer or the depths of a Canadian winter has been gladdened and refreshed for a moment by the fragrance of an English violet, crushed and mangled in a let- ter, but still redolent of England and of home. | And 80, too, our little English daisy is to all of us a rallying-point for many memories of home, in whatsoever quarter of the globe our lot for the moment may be cast. Dear little familiar daisy, picked when we were children in the fields around us, or on the half-holidays, when we turned out from town for a blow in the country and a feast of green grass | and bright blossoms! We woveit then into daisy- | chains, or pulled it to pieces as we sat, and learned its well-known features by heart a thousand times over, And when we pick it again on a spring morning now, it comes back to us as a love of our childhood, and we feel a thrill of personal affec- tion even to-day toward that insensible little mass of yellow bloom. In all these emotional ways does the daisy ap- peal to ouraffections. Besides its beauty of color and symmetry of form, besides its intellectual in- terest as a composite and its sentimental claims as a flower, it has a title to our love in its charac- ter of a simple little familiar English daisy. This is the secret of its frequent appearance in poe- try and its effectiveness in rhetorical illustration. And, finally, the figure which it takes in literature reacts upon the feelings with which we regard it in the actuality. We think at once of a daisy, a rose, or a violet, as poetical, while we only think of a dahlia or a hollyhock as handsome. With the reading class, memories of Wordsworth, and Burns, and Tennyson, cling about every individual daisy. But here again we must beware of that literally pra-posterous theory which would refer the beauty of an esthetic object to its external associations. The daisy is admitted as a com- ponent of poetry because it is a flower, pink and white and yellow, pretty, symmetrical, graceful, familiar, and domestic. Poetry is all made up of such pretty objects, strung into a beautiful frame- work of metre, and connected by a thread of nar- rative or abstract lyrical thought. And then, in consequence, we love the objects themselves all the better, because of the good company in which we have so often found them. But they must al- ways have been either pretty or lovable in them- selves to begin with, or else they would never have found their way into poetry at all. And now that we have reached this rough analysis of the esthetic pleasure involved in the contemplation of a daisy, let us hark back again to inquire by what steps it has arisen. The first basis of our enjoyment we saw to be the sensu- ous gratification of pure color. Though red and orange are the most agreeable of all hues to the unsophisticated eye, yet white and yellow are by no means without their proper effectiveness. This pleasure we believed to be the fundamental one in our appreciation of a daisy, as of all other flowers. It is this which first fixes our attention upon it, and which gives it an immediate claim to be included in the esthetic class. Of all the grati- fication involved in its perception that of color is by far the most universal, and in several cases it is probably the only one. Next, in order of development, comes the pleasure of symmetry. It is not perceived by very young children, because it is not immediate and sensuous, like that of color, but requires an intellectual exercise of the higher organs, whose functions are not developed in early life. But with this exception it is almost universal in the human race, though it does not seem to be shared by our anthropoid kinsmen. Above this, again, come the emotional pleas- ures of familiarity and homeliness. These re- quire a considerable evolution of the domestic and social feelings before they can attain to any great intensity. They are probably quite wanting in absolute savages, and very little developed ® obo & Et #& ga@aQaeafs @ we! nt ak nein kh aia eam oe em Oe 6a ae ae ee

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DISSECTING A DAISY. among such peoples as the negroes and Malays. But there are considerable traces of a love for familiar flowers in the verse of the Hindoos, the Japanese, and the Greeks; while the feeling is easily recognized in our own unlettered peasantry. Among all the literary class it reaches a very highly-evolved and conspicuous form. The next element to be developed is that of sentimental attachment toa floweras such. This takes its rise out of the preceding stages, coupled with that intellectual advance which makes the distinction between natural and artificial products wider and more impassable, Still later the poetical and literary associations come in to complicate our simple esthetic feel- ing. While last of all to appear upon the field are those purely scientific elements which result from a physical analysis of the flower into its component parts. But these two final sources of esthetic pleasure, though late in order of time, belong to portions of our nature, every day in- creasing in depth and power. Just as in the kin- dred region of the sublime every fresh enlarge- ment of our gaze into the surrounding infinities of space and time increases and deepens our sense of sublimity for all our after-life, so in this other region of the beautiful, every fresh enlargement of our acquaintance with Nature lays open before us newer and yet newer sources of pleasurable esthetic feeling. The geologist, the botanist, and the naturalist, are forever exercising their eyes and their intellects on unseen or unobserved feat- ures of crystals, and minerals, and ferns, and flowers, and butterflies, and birds, which quicken their appetite for the beautiful in Nature, and will doubtless lead the way hereafter to further de- velopments of esthetic expression in art. It has been the error of all systematizers, how- ever, to begin with these highest and most evolved factors of esthetic emotion, instead of beginning with the simplest and most primordial. Being themselves educated and cultivated men, they have thought only of feelings shared by them with the educated and cultivated classes generally. Perhaps they have considered the simpler and commoner feelings participated in by the child, the savage, and the animal, as too trivial and vul- gar to be worthy of their exalted notice. If they wish to account for the beauty of a daisy, they do not refer to its color and its shape, but talk only of its humility, its modesty, its simplicity, and its poetical associations. These are certainly factors in their own complex and imaginative mental state, but do they constitute the primitive ele- 58 ments of beauty cs understood by ninety-nine out of a hundred human beings everywhere? If you ask any intelligent child, he will give you a truer and more philosophic auswer : “I like a daisy be- cause it’s a pretty flower, and pink, and white, and round, and yellow; and you can string them on a straw, and they look beautiful.” The tran- scendentalists who try to account for all beauty on a theory of typical infinity, unity, repose, sym- metry, purity, and moderation, will find no echo in the heart of the child or the savage. My little friends in the meadow here can readily agree with me that a pink daisy is a very pretty thing, but they seem to be somewhat uncertain on the ques- tion whether it is a type of Divine incomprehensi- bility. Perhaps they enjoy the even arrangement of its radial florets, but I doubt whether they see in its symmetry a type of Divine justice. We might venture to go further, I think, and to assert that those higher emotional feelings which the Associationists make the basis of the esthetic property are really and truly not zsthetic at all. The modesty, humility, and familiarity, of the daisy make us say, “ How touching and how dear it is!” which are expressions proper to our affections; but its pinkness, whiteness, and reg- ularity, make us say, “ How pretty or how beauti- ful it is!” which are expressions proper to our esthetic sentiment. The sensuous pleasures which Alison rejected are, in reality, the prime elements of beauty, and to the vast majority of persons the only ones ever perceived. Perfume, softness, color, form, symmetry, musical tone, rhythm, these are the main and primordial com- ponents of all esthetic objects; and if we add to them harmony, variety, and decorative detail of a sort which testifies te or recalls human work- manship, we have summed up all the properties which in strictness entitle any natural of artificial product to the name of beautiful. The higher intellectual and emotional feelings come in to supplement and intensify the original pleasures thus defined; but they yield us rather the sense of pathos, of sublimity, of tenderness, of scien- tific interest, than that of beauty in the strictest sense. Zsthetics is the last of the sciences in which vague declamation is still permitted to usurp the place of ascertained fact. The pretty imagina- tive theories of Alison, of Jeffrey, and of Prof. Ruskin, are still allowed to hold the field against scientific research. People think them beautiful and harmless, forgetting that everything is fraught with evil if it “warps us from the living truth.”

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) , ' i : | SSRs sense ’ 338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. We shall never understand the nature of beauty | begin at the beginning, and then we may, per so long as we attack our problem from the wrong | haps, have fair hopes of some day reaching the side, As in every other department of knowl- | end. edge, so in esthetics, we must be content to —Cornhill Magazine, DOG-POISON IN MAN. By HENRY W. ACLAND, M.D. ERIODICAL literature has developed one great change in modern life, and there is no subject too technical, none too professional, to be brought before the general reader. As re- gards medical questions, the great surgeon, Bro- die, and the Nestor of English medicine, Sir Thomas Watson, led the way. The subject of the present paper, that of the mode of working in man of poison from a mad dog, has one advantage, that it well illustrates the importance of viewing biological studies as a whole, and shows that human and comparative pathology are inseparable. Let us consider what hydrophobia ‘iis, and how it comes to exist: 1. How it acts, 2. How it is spread. 3. How it is to be prevented. We must look at these from a general rather than from a medical point of view. Hydrophobia, as all know, is the result of an animal poison operating on man. What does this mean? What are animal poisons? Whence do they come? How do they operate ? The subject of animal poisons is one of strange —nay, of fascinating interest. It is so extensive that, if pursued in detaij, it would wholly exhaust the patience of any that had not a special pur- pose in following it through its manifold partic- ulars. Some idea of it, however, may be easily gained. We are each of us constructed on a definite plan, the outcome of we know not how many myriads of ages operating under definite condi- tions by regular laws. We have a certain form which varies according to the race from which we spring. We are composed of matter much the same in every human being, and little vary- ing in all animal life endued with the higher kinds of consciousness. The fish, the reptile, the bird, the gentle quadruped that culls the living herb, the fierce brute that spreads terror and death, whether for sustenance or delight, all have a structural kinship with ourselves. We are but a part of a vast army of living things, living in the warmth of one life-sustaining fire, breathing the same air, imbibing the same moisture, obeying the same physical attractions, building in and in the same chemical elements, growing a kindred growth, deploying for a time the same animal forces, dying the same death, disintegrated by the same physical decomposition, returning to the same air, and water, and dust. How strange, then, that this family, so knit up, should find in itself members whose function should seem to be that of bringing instant de- struction to those about them, for no purpose that we can see—neither for self-defense nor for self-maintenance by way of food! It is as though there were set in the eternal order of things, somewhere in the animal series, a terrible mate- rial contrast with the heavenward aspirations of the soul of man, Poisons, no doubt, surround us. We have heard enough of late of poisoning air, poisoning water, poisoning food, poisoning soil. The mar- vel is, that animals exist who themselves generate them for the sake of poisoning. Since much of the poison which surrounds us is created by ourselves, i:s origin may be toa great extent prevented by ourselves, But the growth of some poisons is beyond control, ex- cept by the destruction of the grower; for in- stance, the poison of snakes. This is the sim- plest case of an animal communicable poison. No manner of life, nor self-discipline, could hinder the snake from manufacturing his deadly dynamite, ° or from using it when manufactured. How, then, does this typical animal poison act so as to produce its terrible results? ‘“ Snake poison,” says Sir Joseph Fayrer, “is essentially a neurotic; and, when it takes full effect, kills by annihilating the source of nerve-force in ways which bid fair to be elucidated by modern inves- tigation.” To illustrate this, I quote from that scientific surgeon and accomplished physiological inquirer the following typical case : ee eee ee eee ee ae ee lO lll

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-* @eeh8 Boe & ee ee. ee ee DOG-POISON IN MAN. “ Lotawon Chumar, aged fifty years, was bitten on August 7, 1870, under the following circum- stances: He was sleeping in a poultry-yard in Be- nares, when he suddenly awoke by a great noise among the fowls at 4 a. u., and, while moving about to ascertain the cause, was bitten by some- thing that he did not see, as it was dark—he sus- pected it was a snake. When daylight appeared he found a fowl lying dead, and he then himself began to feel ill; a little later he become insensi- ble, and unable to stand. The only mark of in- jury was a black spot near the ankle-joint. The wound was incised and liquor ammoni applied to it. It was also administered internally every fif- teen minutes; twenty drops with water, equal parts, were injected under the skin, but he never rallied, and died half an hour after admission.” ! Another instance, quite as characteristic of life among our native brethren in India, is worth perusal : Information was received at 6 p.m. of Novem- ber 2ist, that a native boy, name and residence unknown, had died from the effects of snake-bite. It appears that the diseased had been on the Dia- mond Harbor Road, and, near the house of the in- formant, had gone into the jungle, having pre- viously laid down on the road-side a basket contain- ing a snake and some other things used by snake- charmers. He returned in a few minutes, and was observed to be rubbing his right with his left hand; on being questioned as to what was the matter, as he looked as though he was suffering, he said he had a burning sensation all over his body, and shortly after he fell down and died. He had, while in the jungle, ma@ with a snake, the kind he did not mention, and, on trying to catch it, it bit him on the back of his right hand. . . . The precise time between the bite and the death is not known, but it could not have been more than from fifteen to twenty minutes, from the account I re- | ceived of the circumstances of the case.” 2 The effect of virulent snake-poison, as, for in- stance, that of the cobra, is produced, first, by its in- troduction into the blood ; second, by affecting the nerves either at their periphery, or along their course, or at their centre. Depression and faint- ness are the first result; then loss of codrdinat- ing power; then paralysis, convulsions, and as- phyxia.* It would seem by various experiments and observations on cobra-poisoned animals and men, that the motor-nerves alone, or the spinal cord, 1 Fayrer, “ Thanatophidia of India,” p. 58. * Ibid., p. 59. * This is admirably described, and in the fullest manner, by Fayrer in the “ Proceedings of the Royal Society,” 1874, p. 3 or the brain, may be each separately affected, or any combination of them. Fayrer quotes Genesis, chapter xlix. 17, where Jacob says, “ Dan is an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider falleth backward "—i. e., produces instant paralysis of the hinder limbs. This snake-poison is the sim- plest, deadliest, naturalest, healthy poison. The poison created by the dog, our compan- ion and friend, is in another category. It is not natural to him. He is himself a victim. The poison he transmits he has received. It works almost certainly his own destruction. He spreads it without intention. Man perhaps helps to cause it by his treatment of him. It is a consequence of his faithfulness and of his domestic relations, and of his familiarity, that he inflicts the injury on his master. The rabies, which is his torment and curse, brings about the hydrophobia in his protector and guardian. It lies with man to save the dog from the sickness, which, once engen- dered, rebounds with terrible force on the human family. Since the secreted poison which the dog emits when himself affected by rabies does not produce on man the same results that it produces on the dog, it might be suspected that there is something wild and uncertain in the modus operandi of a poison. It is not so. It has been well said by a classical writer that there are three prime laws of poisons: 1, That all have certain definite and specific actions. 2. That they lie latent a certain but varying | period of time before these actions are set-up. 8. That the phenomena which result from the poison, when roused inte action, vary according to the dose, and the condition or special charac- ter of the victim. In illustration of these laws, we may cite, firstly, so familiar an instance as that scarlet- fever poison will not produce small-pox ; sec- ondly, that the effect may be latent only a moment (as in the poison of prussic acid, and the poison of the cobra) before the symptoms are set up; or it may be latent for definite days, as in mea- sles; or for uncertain weeks, months, or even years, as in hydrophobia; and, thirdly, that tem- perament, state of health, mode of life, race, in- heritance, the animal, as well as the nature of the poison itself, produce remarkable variations in the action of some poisons. What, then, is canine rabies? and how does rabies arise? Probably never spontaneously, or, if it ever does so, it is certainly with extreme

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340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. rarity. It is communicated from one rabid ani- | tim; they all became rabid one after the other, mal to another animal which becomes rabid. | Whether it ever does originate except by com- | munication is a question belonging to the inter- | minable controversy of spontaneous generation. I quote from Youatt a graphic description of rabies in the dog: ‘The early symptoms of rabies in the dog are occasionally very obscure. In the greater number | of cases, these are sullenness, fidgetiness, and con- | tinual shifting of posture. Where I have had op- portunity, I have generally found these circum- stances in regular succession. For several consec- utive hours, perhaps, he retreats to his basket or | his bed. He shows no disposition to bite, and he answers the call upon him laggardly. He is curled up, and his face is buried between his paws and his breast. At length he begins to be fidgety. He | searches out new resting-places ; but he very soon | | | changes them for others. He takes again to his | own bed; but he is continually shifting his post- ure. He begins to gaze strangely about him as he | lies on his bed. His countenance is clouded and } suspicious. He comes to one and another of the family, and he fixes on them a steadfast gaze as | if he would read their very thoughts. ‘I feel | strangely ill,’ he seems to say; ‘have you any- | thing to do with it? or you? or you?’ Has not a} dog mind enough for this? If we have observed | a rabid dog at the commencement of the disease, | we have seen this to the very life. “There is a species of dog—the small French | poodle—the essence of whose character and con- stitution is fidgetiness or perpetual motion. If this dog has been bitten, and rabies is about to | establish itself, he is the most irritative, restless being that can be conceived ; starting convulsively at the slightest sound; disposing of his bed in every direction; seeking out one retreat after an- | other in order to rest his wearied frame, but quiet only for a moment in any one, and the motion of his limbs frequently simulating chorea and even epilepsy. A peculiar delirium is an early symp- | tom, and one that will never deceive. A young man had been bitten by one of his dogs; I was re- quested to meet a medical gentleman on the sub- ject: I was a little behind my time. As I entered the room I found the dog eagerly devouring a pan of sopped bread. ‘There is no madness here,’ | said the gentleman. He had scarcely spoken, when | in a moment the dog quitted the sop, and, with a | furious bark, sprang against the wall as if he would seize some imaginary object that he fancied was there. ‘ Did you see that?’ was my reply ; ; ‘ what do you think of it?’ ‘I see nothing in it,’ was his retort ; ‘ the dog heard some noise on the other side of the wall.’ At my serious urging, however, he consented to excise the part. I procured a poor worthless cur, and got him bitten by this dog, and carried the disease from this dog to the third vic- | and there my experiment ended.” ! And again : ‘“ A terrier, ten years old, had been ill, and re- fused all food for three days. On the fourth day he bit a cat of which he had been unusually fond, and he likewise bit three dogs. I was requested to see him. I found him loose in the kitchen, and | at first refused to go in, but, after observing him for a minute or two, I thought that I might vent- ure. He had a peculiarly wild and eager look, and turned sharply round at the least noise. He often watched the flight of some imaginary object, and pursued with the utmost fury every fly that he saw. He searchingly sniffed about the room, and examined my legs with an eagerness that made me absolutely tremble. His quarrel with the cat had been made up, and when he was not otherwise employed he was eagerly licking her and her kit- | tens. In the excess or derangement of his fond- ness, he fairly rolled them from one end of the kitchen to another. With difficulty I induced his ! master to permit me to destroy him.” No person of ordinary observation need be told that dogs, like little children, have all their personal characters, which they carry with them into their hours of sickness and suffering. “Tt is not every dog that.in the most aggra- vated state of the disease shows a disposition to | bite. The finest Newfoundland dog that I ever saw became rabid. He had been bitten by a cur, and was supposed to have been thoroughly ex- amined in the country. No wound, however, was found: the circumstance was almost forgotten, and he came up to the metropolis with his master. He became dull, disinclined to play, and refused all food. He was continually watching imaginary ob- | jects, but he did not snap at them. There was no ' howl, nor any disposition to bite. He offered him- self to be caressed, and he was not satisfied except he was shaken by the paw. On the second day I saw him. He watched every passing object with | peculiar anxiety, and followed with deep attention the motions of a horse, his old acquaintance; but he made no effort to escape, nor evinced any dis- position to do mischief. I went to him, and patted and coaxed him, and he told me, as plainly as Jooks and actions and a somewhat deepened whine could express it, how much he was gratified. I saw him on the third day. He was evidently dying. He | could not crawl even to the door of his temporary kennel; but he pushed forward his paw a little way, and, as I shook it, I felt the tetanic muscular action | which accompanies the departure of life.* “On the other hand, there are rabid dogs | whose ferocity knows no bounds. If they are threatened with a stick, they fly at and seize it, and furiously shake it. They are incessantly em- 1 Youatt, “The Dog,” p. 131. sa2aeeenena8 6 wd wd eS @ Ss. i ttm inh ath one a Jee eh eee ee, ool oe a ee.

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— 2 bw @& et aM a a ae Bae | DOG-POISON IN MAN. ployed in darting to the end of their chain, and attempting to crush it with their teeth, and tearing to pieces their kennel, or the wood-work that is within their reach. They are regardless of pain. The canine teeth, the incisor teeth are torn away ; yet, unwearied and insensible to suffering, they continue their efforts to escape. A dog was chained near a kitchen-fire. He was incessant in his en- deavors to escape, and, when he found that he could not effect it, he seized, in his impotent rage, the burning coals as they fell, and crushed them with his teeth. “If by chance a dog in this state effects his eseape, he wanders over the country bent on de- struction. He attacks both the quadruped and the biped. He seeks the village street or the more crowded one of the town, and he suffers no dog to escape him. The horse is his frequent prey, and the human being is not always safe from his attack. A rabid dog running down Park Lane, in 1825, bit no fewer than five horses, and fully as many dogs. He was seen to steal treach- erously upon some of his victims, and inflict the fatal wound. Sometimes he seeks the more dis- tant pasturage. He gets among the sheep, and more than forty have been fatally inoculated in one night. A rabid dog attacked a herd of cows, and five-and-twenty of them fell victims. In July, 1813, a mad dog broke into the menagerie of the Duchess of York at Oatlands, and, although the palisades that divided the different compartments of the menagerie were full six feet in height, and difficult or apparently almost impossible to climh, he was found asleep in one of them; and it was clearly ascertained that he had bitten at least ten of the dogs.” ! How subtilely and by what small change of circumstance results may be altered, the following will show : “ There is a beautiful species of dog, often the | inhabitant of the gentleman’s stable—the Dalma- tian or coach dog. He has, perhaps, less affection | for the human species than any other dog, except the greyhound and the bull-dog; he has less sa- gacity than most others, and certainly less courage. He is attached to the stable ; he is the friend of the horse; they live under the same roof; they share the same bed; and, when the horse is summoned to his work, the dog accompanies every step. They are certainly beautiful dogs, and it is pleasing to see the thousand expressions of friendship between them and the horse ; but, in their continual excur- sions through the streets, they are exposed to some danger, and particularly to that of being bitten by rabid dogs. It is a fearful business when this takes place. The coachman probably did not see the affray ; no suspicion has been excited. The horse rubs his muzzle on the dog, and the dog licks 1 Youatt, ‘“‘ The Dog,” pp. 140, 141. the face of the horse; and in a great number of cases the disease is communicated from the one to the other. The dog in process of time dies, the horse does not long survive, and, frequently too, the coachman shares their fate. I have known at least twenty horses destroyed in this way.” * Many cases of detailed history might be quoted from the vast literature of this subject—a litera- ture, the extent of which, from Aristotle to Sir Thomas Watson, would surprise many. I would refer the reader to Youatt’s charming book on the dog, and to the admirable and exhaustive writings of Fleming, the industrious advocate of the study of Comparative Pathology, whence I will give two passages that will show the havoc which may be caused, and how it is caused. Andes first, by one dog: “‘ If the mad dog is not confined in a cage, but kept in a room where there is more liberty, it wan- ders about in every direction, and with all the greater agitation—if not accustomed to be separated from its human companions: It is continually on the move, and rambles, seeks, smells, howls at the walls, flies at the phantoms that seem to pursue it, gnaws at the bottoms of doors, and furniture, and may at last make an escape through glass doors or windows. If persons are only separated from it by glass it does not hesitate to smash the fragile barrier: being all the more determined to get through it when excited by seeing them, and moved by the fatal desire to bite, which now entirely dom- inates it. The larger the obstacles the wilder its fury, and no sacrifice is too great to obtain liberty. House-dogs are trying every moment to escape from their dwelling; and those which are kept tied up or shut in a room are constantly endeavoring to break their attachment, or to destroy the doors or partitions that confine them, in order to satisfy their longing to be at large. “When a rabid dog makes its escape it goes freely forward, as if impelled by some irresistible force—traveling considerable distances in a short time, and attacking every living being it meets on its way; preferring dogs, however, to other ani- mals, and the latter rather than mankind. Cats also appear to be, next to dogs, most liable to be injured. A mad dog that had done a considerable amount of mischief in Lancashire, in 1869, was seen, in one part of its career, trotting along the road with a cat in its mouth, which it had picked up from a cottage, and which, some time afterward, it dropped to attack a cow. Fowls, likewise, are particularly exposed to the assaults of the rabid dog. When it attacks, and endeavors to tear its victims, it does so in silence, never uttering a snarl or acry of anger; and, should it chance to be injured in return, it emits no cry or yell of pain. Though it will not so readily assault mankind as it will 1 Youatt, ** The Dog,” p. 134.

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| | SRN AE A: a th tl Rt hat IE hl ty a BN Ss ome ie ot to aia 342 THE POPULAR SOIENCE other creatures, yet it is most prudent, when in the presence of a mad dog, to allow it to pass, instead of attacking it, unless there is a certainty of killing it without the risk of being wounded by its teeth. The degree of ferocity would appear to be infiu- enced very much by the natural disposition of the dog, and the training it has received. Some, for instance, only snap or give a slight bite in passing; while others, on the contrary, bite furiously and tear the objects presented to them or which they meet in their way, and sometimes with such an extreme degree of violence as to injure their mouths and break their teeth, or even their jaws. If chained up, they will gnaw the chain until their teeth are worn away and the jawbones laid bare. * The rabid dog does not continue its progress very long. Exhausted by fatigue, by the fits of madness excited in it by the objects it meets in its way, by hunger, thirst, and also, no doubt, as a consequence of the disease itself, its limbs soon become feeble. Then it slackens its rate of trav- eling, and walks unsteadily ; its drooping tail, its head inclined toward the ground, the mouth open, and the protruded tongue of a lead-blue color, and covered with dust—all this gives the distressed creature a very striking and characteristic physiog- nomy. In this condition, however, it is much less to be dreaded than in its early fits of fury. If it is still bent on attacking, it is only when it meets with anything directly in its track that it seeks to satisfy its rage; but it is no longer sufficiently ex- citable to change its direction, or go out of its course to attack an animal or a man not immedi- ately in its path. It is extremely probable, also, that its fast-failing vision and deadened scent pre- vent its being so easily impressed by surrounding objects as it previously was.’’! The incident which is selected by Fleming concerning the Durham pack, though well known, is too instructive to be unnoticed : ** For the last seven or eight years the Durham County hounds, under the management of a com- mittee, have had Thomas Dowdswell, from Lord Macclesfield’s, as their huntsman ; and it is not too much to say that by careful breeding, with the ad- vantage of some of the best blood, the pack has been brought to a state of perfection never sur- passed since the time of Mr. Ralph Lambton, who for so many years hunted the country at present occupied by these unfortunate hounds. The pack | of forty-one couples commenced the season under the most promising auspices, with a country well stocked with foxes, and every prospect of success ; | but, alas for men’s calculations ! a check has come, and every hope apparently so well founded has been destroyed by a visitation as sudden as it was une ** About five weeks ago, after a very good and 1 Fleming, “* Rabies and Hydrophobia,” pp. 227-230. MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. severe run, in breaking up their fox, Dowdswell observed a fine young hound, called Carver, by Lord Macclesfield’s Foiler, going from hound to hound in a very unusual manner. Taking alarm, he had the hound led home, and by direction kept confined in a place by himself for a few days, in order to prove the nature of the disease, which in- creased in intensity, and on the third day the dog was perfectly mad, biting and gnawing everyth‘ng he could reach. Four hounds he had bitten previ- ously were at once put down... . “A few days elapsed, and other hounds were seized in precisely the same manner, all dying in about three or four days. Asa rule, the hounds 80 attacked were quite harmless, following the huntsman, and apparently grateful for anything done forthem. The attacks continued, and some few began to show signs of rabies. The general features of the disease were, however, what is generally called dumb madness, which, beyond doubt, is contagious in its character; and seeing that no hound, once attacked, ever recovered, the decision come to was to put them down imme- diately on the first appearance of the symptoms, in order to avoid infection. “ Up to last week about nine couples had been attacked and died, the disease still running on, Of course, hunting was dropped, and the com- mittee, feeling deeply their responsibility, called a meeting of the subscribers in Durham, on Mon- day last, to take into consideration the proper course to be adopted under these painful cireum- stances. “The question to be decided was, whether, looking at the danger to life, and the uncertainty as to any known mode of cure, the pack should be destroyed, or an attempt be made to stamp out the disease by isolating every hound. Up to Sat- urday it was thought the latter plan might be adopted and tried with safety; but the Monday morning’s report showed the attack on several more hounds had assumed unmistakable symp- toms of rabies, This fact induced the meeting to come to a unanimous resolution: ‘ That it was a duty they owed to the country to sacrifice the whole of their gallant pack, and to appeal to mas- ters of hounds for a few hounds to enable them to | finish the season so disastrously cut short.’ . . . “ The remarkable feature in the history of the | outbreak, however, consisted in the fact that some | drafts of the pack were sent to India toward the end of July, and it was reported in Durham, at the | commencement of December, that many of these had been attacked by a ‘disease of the throat,’ as the reporters termed it, and ‘ hanging of the lower ' jaw,’ and that ‘ all died.’ ”?! | Thus it is that fowls, cattle, horses, wild ani- mals, and men, are inoculated, and thus the viras | 1 Fleming, “ Rabies and Hydrophobia,” pp. 65-87. —.oa & « ee a ee ee ee |

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sa 5S a PRS SE a OF h6e ae ee a DOG-POISON IN MANX. . is carried across Europe to the plains of India! We must apply to death brought about by rabies the same general principles as to death from snake-bite ; but in the one case the poison works its fatal end at once, in the other it may lie dor- mant for years. It lies dormant probably by being entangled at the head of the wound, and there held in its place till some new action liber- ates it, and lets it loose into the circulation: the view advanced by Sir Thomas Watson some years since, and now also held by others. We have briefly considered the effect of the poison of rabies inflicted by one dog upon an- other, as well as the effect of virulent snake- poison inflicted on a man. It remains to com- pare the effects of the dog-poison on a man with that of the cobra upon him. There are points of similarity and points of divergence. The points of similarity are—first, that the poison, if allowed to enter the circulation in suffi- cient quantity, is uniformly fatal; and, secondly, that the fatal termination seems certainly to be by way of the nervous system. We are not yet in a condition to say with ab- solute precision what are the anatomical changes in the nervous system either in man, or in ani- mals not man. But observations are rapidly ac- cumulating.' It is certain that in each case the injury arises from the introduction of the animal increase until thirst and inability to drink remove all doubt as to the only result. The inability to drink is only a sign of deep-seated changes in the nerve-structure. Prof. Rolleston has pointed out to me that these changes, though hardly discernible, may be | so great (having regard to the actual character of the force-producing nerve-cell) as to explain entirely, first, the excitement, and, second, the destruction of the ordinary functions of the nerve-centres, which regulate life. In a paper to which the professor has referred me, by Dr. Mayor, I find it noticed that “there may be dif- ferences between these delicate structures in man and other animals so slight as to be nearly in- appreciable,” but still differences of the widest significance and importance ; and so it may quite be that fundamental changes shall take place by sudden shock or otherwise in the fine structures by which the nerve-force is developed in man, and yet the physical changes may be wholly out- side the reach of our observation. It is right to add that already these changes have been ob- served by Dr. Gowers, though their exact import cannot yet be declared. Hydrophobia occurring in man, after com- munication of the poison of rabies, is thus shown to be a “toxoneurosis.” It would not be desir- | able, nor would it be of any use in a paper of this kind, to enter into a detailed description of poison into the blood. In each case, therefore, | the symptoms of this mode of death.’ I have the end can be averted only by keeping the | thought it best rather to illustrate the character poison out of the circulation; or, if in it (ina moderate quantity), by maintaining life till it can be eliminated: the way by which alone the wou- rali can effect a cure; and this only if the poison has not wrought gr set up changes destructive to the vitality or regenerative power of the nerve- elements. The nervous symptoms in man, when once the poison has fairly entered the system, gradually * Many persons are engaged in prosecuting re- searches into the actual alteration of structure which can be detected after death from hydrophobia, among whom may be named Dr. Gowers, of University Col- lege Hospital, Dr. Greenfield, of St. Thomas’s, and Dr. Savage, to whom I am indebted for valuable micro- scopic preparations. All available knowledge will shortly be collected, under the best auspices, by a committee of the British Medical Association, includ- ing Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, Dr. Lauder Branton, Dr. Gowers, Mr. Ernest Hart,and Mr. Callender. Whether the knowledge they will certainly gain as to the modus operandi of the poison, and the changes it effects in vessels and nerves, will help the cure. when the changes have been set up, is in the womb of the of the malady in other ways. We must admit that there is, as yet, no cure known for the dis- ease when once established in man. The most ex- travagant remedies have been suggested. Every form of pharmacy and charlatanism has expend- ed itself throughout all generations—advocated sometimes by otherwise great names. The pages of Coslius Aurelianus, Morgagni, and a host of others, would create considerable interest, and one may say even amazement, on this subject. The danger is generally preventable by prompt measures taken at the time when the injury is inflicted. The weight of evidence seems to show that the actual cautery is the most efficacious , means, excision the next, and caustics, though sometimes sufficient, are the least to be relied upon. This much said, I must advert to state- ments in various journals to the effect that a case had been cured by means of wourali-poison by 1 Those who desire a graphic account of a case of hydrophobia, should consult Sir Thomas Watson's “* Lectures on the Practice of Medicine,” vol. 1., p. 590, sixth edition, 1871.

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344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. periepmerecter re Dr. Offenburg. This is not the only case adduced. Another is reported from America, with an ex- cellent but cautious commentary by a great | should be done by every state which is suffices. iy ongunae to hare an inteligant sytem of um, American physician, Dr. Austin Flint. With respect to Offenburg’s case, I must own that from information I have received from Ger- many, through the kindness of Dr. Victor Carus, itary police ? If the state is in earnest to put an end to. fea scp it would not be worth while to do less than this, that follows : the distinguished professor of Leipsic, I am by | 1. To have a rigid dog-tax, i. e., one which no means satisfied that it was a true case of de- | permits no unowned, unregistered dogs, Every veloped hydrophobia. Of this, as of the Ameri- | dog should have a collar, with the name of the can case, I can only say that there is enough to | owner and the number of the license. ' justify and demand the trial of the remedy. Of 2. Dogs which cannot be identified by these all the efforts of scientific medicine, it would be | _ Means should be destroyed by the sanitary an- one of the most remarkable should it turn out | | thority of the district where they are found. trained powers in experiment. Late one evening a few weeks ago, a boy was brought to the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, with the dread, if not with the signs, of hydrophobia. He had been bitten by a dog, five years before, in the hand, and again, two years before, in the leg. A pustular eruption, the size of a shilling, had just appeared at the seat of the bite on the hand, where there always had been a small scar. All connected with the lad were in great alarm. Now on this doubtful and slight symptom various difficult questions arose : 1, Could the period of incubation, if the dog had been mad, be five or even two years? On the historical evidence, Yes. 2. Would an eruption so occurring be likely to be the precursor of true hydrophobia? Yes. cure by giving the wourali-poison were true, then, after the symptoms arose, his death within four or perhaps five days was certain. 4. Can a person die of fright, with spurious symptoms of hydrophobia? Yes. swers! Yet this is the issue raised in every case that occurs of dog-bite, where the condition of arise, Mr. Yule, Fellow of Magdalen College, pre- pared for me a solution of wourali, whose mode of action he was able accurately to determine. But the sore healed, and nothing remained but the old scar; and the experiment of wourali was not called for. This brief outline of the general character of the much-discussed malady, in our four-footed to be successful. The remedy itself is a terrible instrument, and requires the greatest skill in its use. That skill will not be wanting, the result of tions. How strange these simple questions and ap- | the dog, as in this instance, could not be ascer- | tained. To meet the symptoms, should they | friend, and of the relation in which we stand _ and central zones of latitude are generally occu- 8. No dogs should, for a certain period, be imported from abroad, except under condi- 4. Mr. Fleming’s suggestion that on every dog’s license should be printed precise instruc. tions as to the signs of rabies, and as to what should be done in case of dog-bite, should be carried out. Practical statesmen and debates in the Houses of Parliament will doubtless suggest difficulties in these propositions. But it is hard to think that there is no agency among the excise, the police, the Board of Trade, the sanitary authori- ties, for carrying out, with but little trouble or, expense, these or any other regulations ef police for this end. Cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, do not stray unowned in the streets. I am by no means. sure that there might not be cases of exemption on payment of a much higher tax. Indeed, for. the sake of the poor, the cost of mere registration, 8. If the genuine symptoms appeared, would | should be low enough to he hardly a productive the boy recover? Unless the alleged cases of ‘tax. Packs of hounds, and some other dogs un- der responsible keeping, might, earn immunity from the hated collar on payment of a sum quite. profitable to the state, though little felt by the owners. The owner of such dogs might be safe- ly trusted to destroy them on due cause, It has to be borne in mind that the disease may exist in all domestic animals, and notably in the wild one reserved for sport—the fox. He may perchance communicate it to the dog. Space will not allow the distribution of rabies throughout the globe to be fully considered. Fleming has ransacked many writers in every country for records of its existence. If one should take a map of the world and mark on it with a blue wafer the countries where it is preva- lent ; with a red one where it exists, but is rare; and with a yellow one where it is absent, he would see, in a graphic way, that the temperate

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LE tt ee A MK Ad Se Shea FE #3. FA es Be pied, rather than the extremes toward either pole. This seems to depend nqt upon the temperature, but upon comparative isolation of the northern and southern countries, such as Greenland, where there are many dogs and no rabies, and such as New Zealand, Australia, notwithstanding their communication with England, and the islands generally of the great oceans. But this matter requires more precise elucidation. Experiments at Alfort seem to show that neither thirst nor heat will originate it, and go far to prove that it is a simple case of communicable virus. Great pains have been taken in France to collect a record of all known cases of persons bitten by mad dogs. M. Bouley, the learned veterinarian of France, has given in the Comptes Rendus for 1870 a careful and instructive abstract of reports on the subject. It will well repay perusal. In forty-nine departments where rabies existed, 320 persons had been bitten by mad dogs in six years, Only 129 had hydrophobia, and 123 were known to have died. No one of these 129 had the dis- ease latent for more than six months. Most of them died on the second or third day after the symptoms appeared. Of 134 persons 92 re- covered whose wounds were cauterized, and of 66 not cauterized 56 died, only 10 recovering. These statements prove the almost complete im- munity through the use of actual cautery. In the case of 785 dogs that were bitten, 527 were killed; and of 25 not killed but observed, 13 became mad. But let this be noted: of 785 thus bitten, 552 were accounted for. The author- ities let 233 escape. And if these went mad in the proportion of those who were observed, there would remain 116 dogs left at large mad. Statistics of this kind have been unattainable for England. But we have enough through the splendid tables of mortality, monuments alike of English civilization and of official zeal, prepared by Major Graham and Pr. Farr at Somerset House, to show that the present panic in this country depends on the horror of the complaint, not on DOG@-POISON IN MAN. its frequency, and upon the just conviction that it is high time to prevent its increase. There are 22,000 cases of snake-bite annually in India, or 1 to every 10,000 of the population. In England there were in the years 1850 to 1876, 538 deaths from hydrophobia out of 12,457,265 total deaths. These occurred in 27 years, at the rate of 20 annually in a mean population of 20,- 781,799 persons. The annual deaths to a million persons living were 22,201, one being from hy- drophobia. The cholera in Oxford, in 1854, de stroyed in a few weeks 115 persons out of 26,000, which, if expressed in the proportions of the people in India, would amount to 973,077 deaths. The maximum of deaths from hydrophobia in one year, in England, from 1850 till 1876, was in 1874, viz., 61 in a population of 23,648,609; and the minimum in 1862, 1 out of 436,566 deaths among 20,871,013 persons, In the year 1876 the deaths from hydrophobia were 53, out of 510,308 deaths; or 1 in 9,628 deaths occurring among 24,244,010 persons: in other words, one death in a year! from hydrophobia among 457,432 living. These figures, together with the fact of the im- munity after cautery, and the thorough attention now paid to the subject, should reduce the alarm to its natural proportions and place. Thus I have endeavored to present a rough sketch of a disorder which has caused too«nuch anxiety tomany. Nothing can divest the subject of its wide and weird interest. Yet nothing can be more reassuring than the knowledge of how nearly it is under our own control. The marvel is that we are and have been so careless. Often we may prevent where we cannot cwre, This has been the message of Medicine, in the present age, to man, in more things than the poison of rabies. 3 Meanwhile there was, during the eight years 1869-"76, an annual average of 212 deaths among the 8,333,345 persons estimated to constitute the average population of London in the same period, by being ran over or knocked down in the streets. —Contemporary Review.

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ON THE TEACHING OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. By Prorgssor P. G. TAIT. n T the very outset of our work two questions of great importance come prominently for- ward, One of these, I have reason to conclude from long experience, is probably a puzzling one to a great many of you ; the other is of paramount con- sequence to us aJl. And both are of consequence not to us alone but to the whole country, in its present feverish state of longing for what it but vaguely understands and calls sci These questions are, What is Natural Philosophy ? and, How is it to be taught? A few words only on. the first question must suffice for the present. The term Natural Phi- losophy was employed by Newton to describe the study of the powers of Nature: the investigation of forces from the motion they produce, and the application of the results to the explanation of other phenomena. It is thus a subject to whose proper discussion mathematical methods are in- dispensable, The “ Principia” commences with a.clear and simple statement of the fundamental laws of motion, proceeds to develop their more immediate consequences by a powerful mathe- matieal method of the author’s own creation, and extends them to the whole of what is now called Physical Astronomy. And in the preface New- ton obviously hints his belief that in time a sim- ilar mode of explanation would be extended to the other phenomena of external Nature. _ In many departments this has been done to a remarkable extent during the two centuries which have elapsed since the publication of the “ Prin- cipia.” In others scarcely a single step of any considerable magnitude has been taken ; and, in , €onsequence, the boundary between that which is properly the subject of the natural philoso- pher’s inquiries and that which is altogether be- yond his province is at present entirely indefinite. There can be no doubt that, in many important respects, even life itself is dependent upon pure- ly physical conditions. The physiologists have quite recently seized, for their own inquiries, a great part of the natural philosopher’s apparatus, and with it his methods of experimenting. But to say that even the very lowest form of life, not to speak of its higher forms, still less of volition 1 Extended from Notes of the Introductory Lect- ure to the ordinary course of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh University, October 31, 1877 "a and consciousness, can be fully explained on phys- ical principles alone—i. e., by the mere relative motions and interactions of portions of inani- mate matter, however refined and sublimated—ig simply unscientific. There is absolutely nothing known in physical science which can lend the . slightest support to such an idea, In fact, it fol. lows at once from the Laws of Motion that a ma- terial system, left to itself, has a perfectly deter. mined future, i. e., that upon its configuration and motion at any instant depend all its sub- sequent changes;‘so that its whole history, past and to come, is to be gathered from oneal. most instantaneous, if sufficiently comprehensive, glance. In a purely material system there ia thus necessarily nothing of the nature of a free agent. To suppose that life, even in. its lowest form, is wholly material, involves therefore either a denial of the truth of Newton’s laws of motion, or an erroneous use of the term “ matter.” Both are alike unscientific. Though the sphere of our inquiries extends wherever matter is to be found, and is therefore coextensive with the physical universe itself, there are other things, not only without but. with- in that universe, with which our science has ab- solutely no power to deal. In this room we sim. ply recognize them, and pass on. Modern extensions of a very general ated ment made by Newton enable us now to specify much more definitely than was possible im his time the range of physical science. We maynow, call it the Science of Matter and Energy. These are, as the whole work of the session will be de, signed to prove to you, the two real things in the physical universe; both unchangeable in amount, but the one consisting of parts. which preserve their identity, while the other is manifested only in the act of transformation, and though measu- rable cannot be identified. I do not at present enter on an exposition of the nature or laws of either ; that exposition will come at the proper time ; but the fact that so short and simple a defi- | nition is possible is extremely instructive, show- ing, as it unquestionably does, what very great advances physical science has made in recent times. The definition, in fact, is but little infe- rior in simplicity to two of those with which most of you are no doubt already to a certain extent

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Ba & ther ion, Joth nde fore self, ith. ab- ‘im. ate- cify his S a BRPFERIPERR SSIES PRSVEREERELES¢. - ae ee ee eS ag _ ON THE TEACHING OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. familiar—that of geometry as'the Science of Pure an clementary class like this, must of course be, “popularly.” But this word has many senses, even in the present connection—one alone good, the others of variously- graduated amounts of bad- ness. Let us begin with one or two of the bad ones, The subject is a very serious one for you, and therefore must be considered carefully, in spite of the celebrated dictum of Terence, Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit. (In other words, flatter your audience and tickle their ears, if you seek to ingratiate yourself with them ; tell them the truth, if you wish to raise enemies.) But science is one form of truth. When the surgeon ig convinced that the knife is required, it becomes his duty to operate. And Shekespeare gives us the proper answer to the time-serving caution of Terence and Cicero in the well-known words, “ Let the galled jade wince.” One of these wholly bad methods was recent- ly very well put by a Saturday critic, as follows : * “The name of ‘ Popular Science’ is, in itself, 4 doubtful and somewhat invidious one, being commonly taken to mean the superficial exposition of results by o speaker or writer who himself understands them imperfectly, to the intent that his hearers or readers may be able to talk about them without understanding them at all.” This, I need hardly say; is not in eny eense scienee-teaching. It appears, however, that there is a great demand for it, more especially with audiences which seek amusement rather than in- struction ; avd this demand, of course, is satis- fied. Such an audience gets what it wants, and, I may add, exactly what it deserves. Not quite so monstrous as that just alluded t, yet far too common, is the essentially vague and highly-ornamented style of so-called science- teaching. The objections to this method are of three kinds at least—each independently fatal: \ 1. It gives the hearer, if he have no pre- vious acquaintance with physics, an altogether erroneous impression of the intrinsic difficulty of the subject. He is exhorted, in grandiloquent fights of labored earnestness, to exert his utmost stretch of intellect, that he may comprehend the great step in explanation which is next to be given ; and when, after this effort, the impression on his mind is seemingly quite inadequate, he eens a ae Fe rw eh 847 —that there must be some profound mystery in the words he has heard which has entirely eseaped his utmost penetration. After a very, few at- tempts he gives up in despair. How many 4 man has been driven away altogether, whose in- tellect might have largely contributed to the ad- vance of physics, merely by finding that he can make nothing of the pompous dicta of bis teacher or text-book, except something so simple that he fancies it cannot possibly be what was meant! 2. It altogether spoils the student’s taste for the simple facts of true science. Aud it does eo just as certainly as an undiluted course of negro melodies or music-hall comic songs is de- structive of all relish for the true art of Mozart or Haydn, or as sensation novels render Seott’s highest fancies tame by contrast. And— “... as if increase of appetite Had grown by what it fed on, .. -” the action on the listener is made to react on the teacher, and he is called upon for further end further outrages on the simplicity of science. Sauces and spices not only impair the digestion, they create » craving for other stimulants of ever-increasing pungency and deleteriousness. But, 3. No one having a true appreciation of the admirable simplicity of science could be guilty of these outrages. To attempt to in- troduce into science the meretricious adjuncts of “ word-painting,” etc., can only be the work of dabblers—not of scientific men, just as— “ To gild refinéd gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfame on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow ; or with taper light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, _ Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” . None could attempt such a work who bad the smallest of the true beauty of Nature. Did he know it, he would feel how utterly inade- quate, as well as uncalled for, were all his great- est efforts, For, again, in Shakespeare's words, such a course— “ Makes sound opinion sick, and truth suspected, For patting on so new a fashioned robe.” “In the great majority of ‘ popular’ scientific works the author, as a rule, has not an exact knowledge of his subject, and does bis best to avoid committing himself, among difficulties which he must at least try to appear to explain. begins to fancy that he has not understood at all

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348 its only basis, requires not merely that we should never disguise a difficulty, but, on the contrary, that we should call special attention to it, as a probable source of valuable information. If you meet with an author who, like the cuttle-fish, en- deavors to escape from a difficult position by darkening all around him with an inky cloud of verbiage, close the book at once and seek infor- mation elsewhere.” But I must come back to the really important point, which is this: True science is in itself simple, and should be explained in as simple and definite language as possible, Word-painting finds some of its most ap- propriate subjects when employed to deal with human snobbery or human advice—where the depraved tastes and wills of mortals are con- cerned—not the simple and immutable truths of science. Battles, murders, executions; po- litical, legal, and sectarian squabbles ; gossip, ostentation, toadyism, and such like, are of its proper subjects. Not that the word-painter need be himself necessarily snobbish or vicious—far from it. But it is here, as our best poets and satirists have shown, that his truest field is to be found. Science sits enthroned, like the gods of Epicurus, far above the influence of mere human passions, be they virtuous or evil, and must be treated by an entirely different code of rules. And a great deal of the very shallowest of the pseudo-science of the present day probably owes its origin to the habitual use, with reference to physical phenomena, of terms or synonyms whose derivation shows them to have reasonable appli- cation to human beings and their actions alone— not at all to matter and energy. In dealing with such pseudo-science it is, of course, permissible to me, even after what I have said, to use word- painting as far as may be thought necessary. The Pygmalions of modern days do not re- quire to beseech Aphrodite to animate the ivory forthem. Like the savage with his fotem, they have themselves already attributed life toit. “It comes,” as Helmholtz says, “to the same thing as Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. The stars are to love and hate one another, feel pleasure and dis- pleasure, and to try to move in a way correspond- ing to these feelings.” The latest phase of this peculiar non-science tells us that all matter is ALIVE; or, at least, that it contains the “ promise and potency” (whatever these may be) “of all terrestrial life.” All this probably originated in the very simple manner already hinted at; viz., THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. in the confusion of terms constructed for applica: | tion to thinking beings only, with others appl — eable only to brute matter, and a blind following — of this confusion to its necessarily preposterous consequences. So much for the attempts to in troduce into science an element altogether incom. _ patible with the fundamental conditions of its ex. istence. When simple and definite language cannot be, employed, it is solely on account of our ignorance; Ignorance may, of course, be either wnavoidable or inexcusable, It is unavoidable only when knowledge is not to be had. But that of which there is no knowk edge is not yet part of science. All we can do with it is simply to confess our ignorance and seek for information. As an excellent illustration of this we may take two very common phenomena—a rainbow and an awrora—the one, to a certain extent at least, thoroughly understood ; the other scarcely understood in almost any particular. Yet it is possible that, in our latitudes at least, we see the one nearly as often as the other. For, though there are probably fewer auroras to be seen than rainbows, the one phenomenon is in general much more widely seen than the other. - A rainbow és usually a mere local phenomenon, depending on a rain-cloud of moderate extent; while an aurora, when it occurs, may extend over a whole terres- trial hemisphere. Just like total eclipses, lunar and solar. Wherever the moon can be seen, the lunar eclipse is visible, and to all alike. Buta total solar eclipse is usually visible from a mere strip of the earth—some 50 miles or so in breadth, The branch of natural philosophy which is called Geometrical Optics is based upon three ex perimental facts or laws, which are assumed as exactly true, and as representing the whole truth —the rectilinear propagation of light in any one uniform medium, and the laws of its reflection and refraction at the common surface of two such media—and as a science it is nothing more than the developed mathematical consequences of these three postulates. Hence, if these laws were rigorously stained represented all the truth, nothing but mathemat- ical investigation based on them would be re- quired for the complete development of the phe nomena of the rainbow—except the additional postulate, also derived from experiment, that fall- ing drops of water assume an exact spherical form —and, as data for numerical calculation, the ex- perimentally-determined refractive index.for each ray of light at the common surface of air and water.

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~~ rr FFF wey £&€ eo eS see Owe SMe wo eS PFSSSERS er TPES ESAS ERE REPRE ER . _— ‘Pe ee ye aS ~ + se ian BP ap 2 a dea : - ; : get : ‘ v Thus, for instance, we can tell why the rain- bow has the form of a portion of a circle sur- rounding the point opposite to the sun; why it is red on the outer edge ; what is the order of the other colors, and why they are much less pure than the red; why the whole of the background inclosed within it is brighter than that just out- side, and so on. Also, why there is a second (also circular) rainbow ; why it is concentric with the first, and why its colors are arranged in the reverse order, etc. But, so long at least as we keep to geomet. rical optics, we cannot explain the spurious bows which are usually seen, like ripples, within the primary and outside the second rainbow ; nor why the light of both bows is polarized, and so forth. We must apply to a higher branch of our science; and we find that Physical Optics, which gives the results to which those of geometrical optics are only approximations, enables us to supply the ex- planation of these phenomena also. When we turn to the aurora we find nothing 0 definite to explain. This may, to some extent at least, account for our present ignorance. We remark, no doubt, a general relation between the direction of the earth’s magnetic force and that of the streamers; but their appearance is capri- cious and variable in the extreme. Usually they have a pale-green color, which the spectroscope shows to be due to homogeneous light; but in very fine displays they are sometimes blood-red, sometimes blue. Auroral arches give sometimes a sensibly continuous spectrum, sometimes a sin- gle bright line. We can imifate many of the phenomena by passing electric discharges through rarefied gases; and we find that the streamers so produced are influenced by magnetic force. But we do not yet know for certain the source of the discharges which produce the aurora, nor do we even know what substance it is to whose incan- descence its light is due. We find by a statistical method that auroras, like cyclones, are most nu- merous when there are most spots on the sun; but the connection between these phenomena is not yet known. Here, in fact, we are only begin- ning to understand, and can but confess our igno- rance, But do not imagine that there is nothing about the rainbow which we cannot explain, even of that which is seen at once by untrained ob- servers. All the phenomena connected with it which we can explain are mathematical deduc- tions from observed facts which are assumed in the investigation. But these facts are, in the main, themselves not yet explained. Just as de ws, 4 Se Aon, Sei. s - : = 4 bn 5 wl nal cians ts. se cop RCL AR he Sah og a Z Ai ~ . 5% wri “4 - we. ae ar ’ "ON THE TEACHING OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 349 there are many exceedingly expert calculators who habitually and usefully employ logarithmic tables without having the least idea of what a logarithm really is, or of the manner in which the tables themselves were originally calculated ; so the natural philosopher uses the observed facts of refraction and reflection without having as yet anything better than guesses as to their possible proximate cause. And it is so through- out our whole subject : assuming one result, we can prove that the others must follow. In this direc- tion great advances have been made, and every extension of mathematics renders more of such deductions possible. But when we try to reverse the process, and thus to explain our hitherto as- sumed results, we are met by difficulties of a very different order. The subject of Physical Astronomy, to which I have already alluded, gives at once one of the most striking and one of the most easily intelli- gible illustrations of this point. Given the law of gravitation, the masses of the sun and planets, and their relative positions and motions at any one instant—the investigation of their future mo- tions, until new disturbing causes come in, is en- tirely within the power of the mathematician, But how shall we account for gravitation? This is a question of an entirely different nature from the other, and but one even plausible attempt to answer it has yet been made. , But to resume. The digression I have just made had for its object to show you how closely full knowledge and absolute ignorance may be and are associated in many parts of our subject— absolute command of the necessary consequences of a phenomenon, entire ignorance of its actual nature or cause. And in every branch of physics the student ought to be most carefully instructed about mat- ters of this kind. A comparatively small amount of mathematical training will often be found suffi- cient to enable him to trace the consequences of a known truth to a considerable distance; and no such training is necessary to enable him to see (provided it be properly presented to him) the boundary between our knowledge and our igno- rance—at least when that ignorance is not di- rectly dependent upon the inadequacy of our de- ductive powers. The work of Lucretius is perhaps the only really successful attempt at scientific poetry. And it is so because it was written before, there was any true physical science.. The methods throughout employed are entirely those of a priori reasoning, and therefore worse than worthless,

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$30 THE POPULAR SOLENCE MONTHEYBOPPLEMENT. altogether misleading. Scientific poetry, using both words in their highest sense, is now impos- sible. The two things are in their very nature antagonistic. A scientific man may occasionally be a poet also; but he has then two distinct and almost mutually incompatible natures ; and, when he writes poetry, he puts science aside. But, on the other hand, when he writes science, he puts poetry and all its devices aside. Mark this well! Re ing, Py wiles greta “ether ew the unthinking multitude, write of “.... the huger orbs which wheel In circuits vast throughout the wide abyss Of unimagined chaos—till they reach Ethereal splendor. . . .” (The word “unimagined ” may puzzle the reader, but it probably alludes to Ovid’s expres- sion “sine imagine.” For this sort of thing is nothing if not classical! The contempt in which “scholars” even now hold mere “ physicists” is proverbial. And they claim the right of using at will new words of this kind, in whose company even the “tremendous empyrean” would, per- haps, not be quite out of place.) But, whether this sort of thing be ee te not, it is in no sense science. ‘“ Huge,” “vast,” and such like (for which, if the rhythm permit, you may substitute their similars, “ Ti- tanic,” “gigantic,” etc.), good honest English though they be, are utterly unscientific words. In science we restrict ourselves to small and great, and these amply suffice for all our wants. But even these terms are limited with us to a mere relative sense; and it can only be through ignorance or forgetfulness of this that more so- norous terms are employed. The size of every finite object depends entirely upon the unit in terms of which you measure it. There is nothing absolutely great but the Infinite. A few moments’ reflection will convince you of the truth of what I have just said. Let us go by easily comprehensible stages from one (so- called) extreme to the other. Begin with the smallest thing you can see, and compare it with the greatest. I suppose you have all seen a good barometer. The vernier attached to such an in- strument is usually read to the thousandths of an inch, but it sometimes leaves you in doubt which of two such divisions to choose. This gives the limit of vision with the unaided eye. Let us therefore begin with an object whose size is about gy55 Of an inch. Let us choose as our | seale of relative magnitude 1 to 250,000 or there- abouts. It fs nearly the proportion in which each of you individually stands to the whole pop- ulation of Edinburgh. (I am not attempting any: thing beyond the rudest illustration, because that will amply suffice for my present purpose.) — Well, 250,000 times the diameter of our miénii mum visibile gives us a length of ten feet or so—~ three or four paces. Increased again im abous the same ratio, it becomes more than 400 miles, somewhere about the distance from Edinburgh to London. Perform the operation again, and you get (approximately enough for our purpose) the sun’s distance from the earth. Operate oned more, and you have got beyond the nearest fixed star. Another such operation would give a dis: tance far beyond that of anything we can ever hope to see. Yet you have reached it by repeat ing, at most five times, upon the smallest thing you can see, an operation in itself not very diff: cult to imagine. Now, as there is absolutely — nothing known to science which can preclude us from carrying this process further, so there is absolutely no reason why we may notin thought — reverse it, and thus go back from the smallest visi- - ble thing to various successive orders of smallness; And the first of these that we thus reach has already been pointed to by science as at least 4 nd | rough approximation to that coarse-grainedness — which we know to exist (though we shall never be able to see it) even in the most homogeneous substances, such as glass and water. For several trains of reasoning, entirely independent of one até other, but based upon experimental facts, enablé us to say with certainty that all matter becomes heterogeneous (in some as yet quite unknown way) when we consider portions of it whose dimensions are somewhere about goa-ahoaw Of an inch. We have, as yet, absolutely no infor mation beyond this, save that, if there be ulti mate atoms, they are at least considerably more minute still. Next comes the very important question— How far is experimental illustration necessary and useful? Here we find excessively wide diver: gence, alike in theory and in practice. In some lecture-theatres, experiment is every- thing; in others, the exhibition of gorgeous dis- plays illustrative of nothing in particular is said occasionally to alternate with real or imagined (but equally sensational) danger to the audience, from which they are preserved (or supposed to be preserved) only by the extraordinary presence of mind of the presiding performers—a modern resuscitation of the ancient after-dinner amuse- ment of tight-rope dancing, high above the heads of the Banqueters, where each had thus a very

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bv. PRRSSEFEBE Pe ERESI SS Rob aPsaSaa TET ESE Sees ss REF Fal genuine, if selfish, interest in the nerve and steudi- ness of the artists. Contrasted in the most direct manner with these, is the dictum not long ago laid down : “It may be said that the fact makes a stronger impression on the boy through the medium of his sight—that he believes it the more confidently. I say that this ought not to be the case. If he does not believe the statements of his tutor—probably a clergyman of mature knowledge, recognized abil- ity, and blameless character—his suspicion is irra- tional, and manifests a want of the power of appre- ciating evidence—a want fatal to his success in that branch of science which he is supposed to be culti- vating.” Between such extremes many courses may be traced. But it is better to dismiss the consider- ation of both, simply on the ground that they are extremes, and therefore alike absurd. Many facts cannot be made thoroughly intel- ligible without experiment; many others require no illustration whatever, except what can be best given by a few chalk-lines on a blackboard. To teach an essentially experimental science without illustrative experiments may conceivably be possi- ble in the abstract, but certainly not with profess- ors and students such as are to be found on this little planet. And, on the other hand, you must all remember that we meet here to discuss science, and sc*ence alone. A university class-room is not a place of public amusement, with its pantomime displays of red and blue fires, its tricks whether of prestigia- tion or of prestidigitation, or its stump-oratory. The best and greatest experimenter who ever lived used none of these poor devices to win cheap ap- plause. His language (except, perhaps, when non- experimenting pundits pressed upon him their fear- ful Greek names for his splendid discoveries) was ever the very simplest that could be used: his experiments, whether brilliant or commonplace in the eyes of the mere sight-seer, were chosen sole- ly with the object of thoroughly explaining his subject; and his whole bearing was impressed with the one paramount and solemn feeling of duty, alike to his audience and to scienee. Long ages may pass before his equal, or even his rival, ean appear; but the great example he has left should be imitated by us all as closely as possible. Nothing is easier in extempore speaking, as I dare say many of you know by trial, than what is happily called “piling up the agony.” For, as has been well said : “.... men there be that make Parade of fluency, and deftly play & igri k aka Sac -~ ON THE TEACHING OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 851 With points of specch as jugglers toes their balls; A tinkling crew, from whose light-equandered wit No seed of virtue grows.” Every one who has a little self-confidence and a little readiness can manage it without trouble. But it is 80 because in such speaking there is no necessity for precision in the use of words, and no objection to any epithet whatever, unless it be altogether misplaced. But the essence of all such discourse is necessarily fancy, and not fact, Here, during the serious work of the session, we | are tied down almost exclusively to facts. Fan- cies must afpear occasionally; but we admit them only in the carefully-guarded form of a ref- erence to old opinions, or to a “ good working hypothesis.” Still, facts are not necessarily dry: not even if they be mere statistics. All depends . on the way in which they are put. One of the © most amusing of the many clever songs, written and sung by the late Prof. Rankine in his moments of relaxation, was an almost literal transcript of & prosaic statistical description of a little Irish town, taken from a gazetteer! He was a truly original man of science, and therefore exact in his statements; but he could be at once both exact and interesting. And I believe that the intrinsic beauty of science is such that it cannot suffer in the minds of a really intelligent audience, how- ever poor be the oratorical powers of its ex- pounder, provided only he can state its facts with clearness. Oratory is essentially art, and there- fore essentially not science. . There is nothing false in the theory, at of what are called Chinese copies. If it could be Sully carried out, the results would be as good as the original—in fact, undistinguishable from it. But it is solely because we cannot have the theory carried out in perfection that true artists are forced to slur over details, and to give ‘‘ broad effects,” as they call them. The members of the pre-Raphaelite school are thoroughly right in one part at least of their system: unfortunately, it is completely unrealizable in practice. But the “ broad effects” of which I have spoken are true art, though perhaps in a somewhat modified sense of the word (which, not being a scientific one, has many shades of meaning), To introduce these “‘ broad effects” into science may be artful, but it is certainly unscientific. In so-called “‘pop- ular science,” if anywhere, Ars est celare insci- entiam. The “artful dodge” is to conceal want of knowledge. Vague explanations, however artful, no more resemble true science than do even the highest flights of the imagination, whether in “Ivanhoe” or “Quentin Durward,” “Knicker-

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bocker’s New York” or Macaulay’s “England,” - pesemble history. And when the explanation is bombastic as well as vague, its type is the same as that of the well-known speech of Sergeant Buzfuz. One ludicrous feature of the “high-falutin ” style is that if you adopt it you throw away all your most formidable ammunition on the smaller game, and have nothing proportionate left for the larger. It is as if you used a solid shot from an 8l-ton gun upon a single skirmisher! As I have already said, you waste your grandest terms, such as huge, vast, enormous, tremenfous, etc., on your mere millions or billions; and then what is left for the poor trillions? The true lesson to be learned from this is, that such terms are alto- gether inadmissible in science. But even if we could suppose a speaker to use these magnificent words as a genuine descrip- tion of the impression made on himself by certain phenomena, you must remember that he is de- scribing not what is known of the objective fact (which, except occasionally from a biographic point of view, is what the listener really wants), but the more or less inadequate subjective im- pression which it has produced, or which he de- sires you to think it has produced, on “‘ what he is pleased to call his mind.” Whether it be his own mind, or that of some imaginary individual, matters not. To do this, except perhaps when lecturing on psychology, is to be unscientific. True acientific teaching, I cannot too often re- peat, requires that the facts and their necessary consequences alone should be stated (and illus- trated if required) as simply as possible. The impression they are to produce on the mind of the reader, or hearer, is then to be left entirely to himself. No one has any right to suppose, much less to take for granted, that his own notions, whether they be “so-called poetic instincts” (to use the lowest term of contempt) or half-compre- hended and imperfectly -expressed feelings of wonder, admiration, or awe, are either more true to fact or more sound in foundation than those of the least scientific among his readers or his audience. When he does eo he resembles a mere leader of a clague. “Hiss here, my friends; ap- plaud there! Three cheers more! .Three groans! Nine times nine!” And so forth ad nauseam. If your minds cannot relish simple food, they are not in that healthy state which is required for the study of science. Healthy mental appetite needs only hunger-sauce. That it always has in plenty, and repletion is impossible. But,you must remember that language cannot ¢ THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. * be simple unless it be definite ; though sonst from the very nature of the case, it may be very, difficult to understand, even when none but the simplest terms are used. Multiple meanings for technical words are totally foreign to the spirit of true science. When an altogether new idea has’ to be uxpressed, a new word must be coined for: it. None but a blockhead could object to a new. word for a new idea. And the habitual use of) non-scientific words in the teaching of science be- trays ignorance, or (at the very least) willful im definiteness. a Do not fancy, however, that you will have: very many new words to learn. A month of Botany or of Entomology, as these are too often taught, will introduce you to a hundred-fold as: many new and strange terms as you will require, — in the whole course of natural philosophy; and,’ among them, to many words of a far more “ diffi-) cult complexion ’’ than any with which, solely for the sake of definiteness, we find ourselves com strained to deal. a But you will easily reconcile yourselves to the’ necessity for new terms if you bear in mind that these not only secure to us that definiteness with- out which science is impossible, but at the same’ time enable us to get rid of an enormous number. of wholly absurd stock-phrases which you find in almost every journal you take up, wherever at~ least common physical phenomena are referred to. | When we are told that a building was “ struck by the electric fluid” we may have some difficulty in understanding the process; but we cannot be at all surprised to learn that it was immediately thereafter “seized upon by the devouring element, which raged unchecked ti!l the whole was reduced to ashes.” I have no fault to find with the penny- ” a-liner who writes such things as these: it is all. directly in the way of his business, and he has: been trained to it. Perhaps his graphic descrip- ) tions may occasically rise even to poetry. But. when I meet with anything like this—and theres — are but too many works, professedly on natural) — philosophy, which are full of such things—I 4now:, that I am not dealing with science. A wild and plaintive wail for definiteness often) comes from those writers and lecturers who are habitually the most vague. A few crocodile tears are shed, appearances are preserved, and they » plunge at once into greater mistiness of verbosity than before. $ Considering the actual state of the great ma- jority at least of our schools and our elementary text books, I should prefer that you came here completely untaught in physical science, You meoew#pe@dadaereigseew sent a “ao ome rwre & ese ee a - *&} & = we a a a a a ee a a a ee

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FRIES EGS sf a - an - - - * ee SAAS ASRALAARS ALORS SAIS . ON THE TEACHING OF will then have nothing to wnlearn. This is an absolutely incalculable gain. Unlearning is by far the hardest task that was ever im ona student, oron any one else, And it is also one of those altogether avoidable tasks which, when we have allowed them to become necessary, irritate us as much as does a perfectly unprofitable one —such as the prison-crank or shot-drill. And in ’ this lies by far the greatest responsibility of all writers and teachers. Merely to fail in giving instruction is bad enough, but to give false infor- mation can be the work only of utter ignorance or of carelessness, amounting, so far as its effects go almost to diabolical wickedness. Every one of you who has habitually made use of his opportunities of observation must have already seen a great deal which it will be my duty to help him to understand. But I should prefer, if possible, to have the entire guidance of him in helping him to understand it. And I should commence by warning him in the most formal manner against the study of books of an essen- tially unscientific character. By all means let him read fiction and romance as a relaxation from severer studies ; but let the fiction be devoted to its legitimate object, human will and human action; don’t let it tamper with the truths of science. From the “ Arabian Nights,” through “Don Quixote,” to Scott, the student has an am- ple field of really profitable reading of this kind ; but when he wishes to study, let him carefully eschew the unprofitable, or rather pernicious, spe- cies of literary fiction which is commonly called “ popular science.” As I have already said, in this elementary class, you will require very little mathematical knowledge, but such knowledge is in itself one of those wholly good thiags of which no one can ever have too much. And, moreover, it is one of the few things which it is not very easy to teach badly. A really good student will learn mathematics in spite of the badness of his teach- ing. No pompous generalities can gloss over an incorrect demonstration ; at least in the eyes of any one competent to understand a correct one. Can it be on this account that there are so many more aspirants to the teaching of physics than to that of the higher mathematics? If so, it is a very serious matter for the progress of science in this country ; as bad, at least, as was the case in those old days when it was supposed that a man who had notoriously failed in everything else must have been designed by Nature for the voca- tion of schoolmaster; a truly wonderful applica- tion of teleology. 59 ° ‘ 4 PMs NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 3538 But even this queer kind of dominie was not 80 strange a monstrosity as the modern manikins of paper science, who are always thrusting their crude notions on the world; the anatomists who have never dissected, the astronomers who have never used a telescope, or the geologists who have never carried a hammer! The old metaphysical pretenders to science had at least some small excuse for their conduct in the fact that true science was all but unknown in the days when they chiefly flourished, and when their a priori dogmatism was too generally looked upon as science. But that singular race is now wellnigh extinct, and in their place have come the paper- scientists (the barbarous word suits them exact- ly)}—those who, with a strange mixture of half- apprehended fact and thoroughly appreciated nonsense, pour out continuous floods of informa- tion of the most self-contradictory character. Such writers loudly claim the honors of discovery for any little chance remark of theirs which re- search may happen ultimately to substantiate, but keep quietly in the background the mass of unreason in which it was originally enveloped. This species may be compared to midges, perhaps occasionally to mosquitoes, continually pestering men of science to an extent altogether dispropor- tionate to its own importance in the scale of be- ing. Now and then it buzzes shrilly enough to attract the attention of the great sound-hearted but umreasoning because non-scientific public, which, when it does interfere with scientific mat- ters, can hardly fail to make a mess of them. Think, for a moment, of the late vivisection crusade or of the anti-vaccinators. What absolute fiends in human form were not the whole race of really scientific medical men made out to be, at least in the less cautious of these heated denun- ciations ? How many camels are unconsciously swallowed while these gnats are being so carefully strained out, is obvious to all who can take a calm, and therefore a not necessarily unreasonable, view of the matter. But the victims of such people are not in scientific ranks alone. Every man who occupies & prominent position of any kind is considered as a fit subject for their attacks. By private letters and public appeals, gratuitous advice and remon- strance are perpetually intruded upon him. If he succeed in anything, it is of course because these unsought hints were taken ; if he fail, it is because they were contemptuously left unheeded ! Enough of this necessary but unpleasant di- gression. I know that it is at least quite as easy to understand the most recondite mathematies

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; vdet tin ee -_ am * 854 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ' as to follow the highest of genuine physical rea- soning; and therefore, when I find apparently profound physical speculation associated with incapacity for the higher mathematics, I feel con- vineed that the profundity cannot be real. One very necessary remark, however, must be made here: not in qualification, but in explanation, of this statement. One of the greatest of physical reasoners, Faraday, professed, as most of you are aware, to know very little of mathematics. But in fact he was merely unacquainted with the technical use of symbols. His modes of regard- ing physical problems were of the highest order of mathematics. Many of the very best things in the recent great works on Blectricity by Clerk- Maxwell and Sir William Thomson are (as the authors cheerfully acknowledge) little more than well-executed translations of Faraday’s concep- tions into the conventional language of the higher I hope that the time is not far off when no one who is not (at least in the same sense as Far- aday) a genuine mathematician, however he may be otherwise qualified, will be looked upon as even a possible candidate for a chair of Natural Philosophy in any of our universities. Of course such a danger would be out of the question if we were to constantly bear in mind the sense in which Newton understood the term natural phi- losophy. There is nothing so well fitted as mathe- matics “‘ to take the nonsense out of a man,”’ as it is popularly phrased. No doubt a man may bean excellent mathematician, and yet have absolutely no knowledge of physics; but he cannot possibly know physics as it is unless he be a mathema- tician. Much of the most vaunted laboratory work is not nearly of so high an order of skilled labor as the every-day duty of a good telegraph- clerk, especially if he be in charge of a siphon- recorder. And many an elaborate memoir which fills half a volume of the transactions of some learned society is essentially as unsightly and in- convenient an object as the mounds of valueless dross which encumber the access to a mine, and destroy what otherwise might have been an ex- panse of fruitful soil. There are many ways in which these mounds may grow. The miner may be totally ignorant of geology, and may thus have bored and excavated in a locality which he ought to have known would furnish nothing. Or he may have, by chance or by the advice of knowing friends, hit upon a really good locality. Even then there are many modes of failure,two of which are very common. He may fail to recognize the ore when he has got it; and 80 it goes at once to the refuse-heap, por to be worked up again long after by some who has a little more mineralogical knowledg as in the recent case of the mines of Lauthin Here he may be useful—at second-hand. Orit it be fossils or crystals, for instance, for which he is seeking, his procedure may be so rough as"{ smash them irreparably in the act of mitiing, This is dog in the manger with a vengeance. Bit, anyhow, he generally manages to disgust evéty other digger with the particular locality which he has turned upside down; and thus exercises 5 real, though essentially negative, influence on the progress of mining. The parallel here hinted at is a very apt one, and can be traced much further. For there ate other peculiarities in the modes of working adopt- ed by some miners, which have their exact coun- terparts in many so-called scientific inquiries ; but, for the present, we must leave them unnoticed. ' There is but one way of being scientific: but the number of ways of being unscientific is in- finite, and the temptations alluring us to them are numerous and strong. Indolence is the most is- nocent in appearance, but in fact probably the most insidious and dangerous of all. By this I mean, of course, not mere idleness, but that easily acquired and fatal habit of just stopping short of the final necessary step in each explanation. Far- — aday long ago pointed this out in his discourse on “Mental Inertia.” Many things which are ex- cessively simple when thoroughly understood are ~ by no means easy to acquire ; and the student too often contents himself with that Aalf learning which, though it costs considerable pains, leaves no permanent impression on the mind, while “ one struggle more” would have made the sub- ject his own forever after. Scienee, like all other learning, can be reached _ only by continued exertion. And, even when we - have done our utmost, we always find that the best we have managed to achieve has been merely to avoid straying very far from the one true path. For, though science is in itself essentially sim- ple, and is ever best expressed in the simplest terms, it is my duty to warn you in the most for- mal manner that the study of it is beset with dif ficulties, many of which cannot but constitute real obstacles in the way even of the mere beginner. And this forms another of the fatal objections to the school-teaching of physical science. For there is as yet absolutely no known road to science ex- cept through or over these obstacles, and a cer- tain amount of maturity of mind is required to overcome them, ; SRTRBESETE Ss. m—aawweoew eee eceaecewenwmear2s @ @ Bo f= S oo BS pel

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_ If any one should deny this, you may at once conclude either that his mental powers are of a considerably higher order than those of Newton (who attributed all his success to close and pa- tient study), or, what is intrinsically at least some- what more probable, that he has not yet traversed the true path himself. But it would be a mere exercise of unprofitable casuistry to inquire which is the less untrustworthy guide, he who affirms that the whole road is easy, or he who is contin- THE LITTLE HEALTH OF LADIES. Br FRANCES POWER COBBE. I the following pages I propose to speak, not of any definite form of disease, but of that éondition of petite santé, valetudinarianism, and general readiness to break down under pressure, Wherein a sadly large proportion of women of thé ‘higher classes pass their years. It is un- necessary, I think, to adduce any evidence of the prevalence of this semi-invalidism among ladies in England, or its still greater frequency abroad, and (emphatically) in America. In a very mod- érate circle of acquaintance, every one knows a score of cases of it, of that confirmed kind which fias scarcely any analogue in the physical condi- tion of men. If we take a state of perfect sound- tess to be represented by 100, the health of few ladies will be found to rise above 80 or 90—that of the majority will be, I fear, about 75—and a large contingent, with which we are now specially concerned, about 50 or 60. In short, the health of women of the upper class is, I think, unques- tionably far below par. Whatever light their butners were calculated to shed on the world, the gat is half turned down, and cannot afford any- thing beyond a feeble glimmer. Of the wide-extending wretchedness entailed by this petite santé of ladies it would be easy to speak for hours. There are the husbands whose honiés are made miserable by unsettled habits, irregular ‘hours, a cheerless and depressed, or ese, perhaps, an hysterically excitable or peevish companion ; the maximum of expenditure in their households, with the minimam of enjoyment. I 1 To avoid it may be well to say that this word is here used in its older sense of the “ Loaf-givers." The ill-health of women who are Joa’ winners is, alas! another and still more sorrowful think men, in such cases, are most sincerely to be pitied, and I earnestly wish that the moans which they, and also their mothers and sisters, not unnaturally spend over their hard lot, could be turned into short, sharp words, resolutely pro- viding that their daughters should not adopt the unhealthful habits and fall into the same miser- able state, perpetuating the evil from generation to generation. As to the poor children of a feeble mother, their case is even worse than that of the husband, as any one may judge who sees how delightful and blessed a thing it is for a mother to be the real, cheerful, energetic companion of her sons and daughters. Not only is all this lost, but the presence of a nervous, ezigeante invalid in the dwelling-room of the family is a perpetual damper on the healthful spirits of the children; and, in the case of the girls, the mother’s demands on their attention (if she be not a miracle of un- selfishness) often break up their whole time for study into fragments too small to be of practical use. “The desulloriness of a home wherein the mistress spends half the day in bed is ruinous to the young, unless a most unusual degree of care be taken to secure them from its fll effects.“ Pitiable, however, as are the conditions of the husband and children of the Lady of Little Health, her own lot—if she bé not a mere malingerer—is surely’ still more’ deserving of sympathy. She loses, to begin with, all the keen happiness of health, the inexplicable, indefinable bien-étre of natura] vigor— “ the Joy of morning's active zeal, The calm delight, blessing and blest, To sink at night to dreamless rest.”

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; 856 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. She knows nothing of the glorious freedom of the hills and woods and rocky shore; she misses all the relief which lonely rides and walks afford from those petty worries which, like the wasps and ants in the dreadful old Persian torture, are sure to fasten on the poor wretch pinned to the ground, “To be weak is to be miserable.” There is no truer maxim; and, when we reflect how many women are weak—not merely in com- parison to men, which is nothing to the purpose, but weak absolutely and judged by the standard of Nature—we have before us a vast, low-lying field of dull wretchedness profoundly mournful to contemplate. Out of it, what evil vapors of mor- bid feelings, jealousies, suspicions, hysterical pas- sions, religious terrors, melancholy, and even in- sanity, are generated, who shall estimate? To preserve the mens sana otherwhere than in the corpore sano is a task of almost superhuman wis- dom and conscientiousness, The marvel is, not that so many fail, as that a few succeed in per- forming it. Be it noted, further, that it is the chronic petite santé much more than any positive disease, which is morally so injurious to the sufferer and all around her. I have heard one whose long years of pain seem each to have lifted her nearer to heaven remark with a smile, that “ actual pain is always, in a sense, entertaining!” She in- tended, no doubt, to say that it tasked the powers of will and religious trust to bear it firmly. Out of such contests and such triumphs over either bodily or mental suffering, springs (as we all rec- ognize) that which is most precious in human experience, the gold purified in the furnace, the wheat thrashed with the flail : “ Only upon some cross of pain and woe God's son may lie, Each sou! redeemed from self and sin must know Its Calvary.” But the high moral results of positive pain and danger seem unattainable by such a mere nega- tion of health as we are considering. The sun- shine is good and the storm is good, but the gray, dull drizzle of November—how is any one to gain much from it? Some beautiful souls do so, no doubt; but far more often chronic petite santé leads to self-indulgence ; and self-indulgence to selfishness ; and selfishness (invariably) to deceit and affectation, till the whole character crumbles to pieces with dry rot. Now, I must say at once that I consider the frequency of this valetudinarianism among women to be a monstrous state of things, totally opposed to any conception I can form of the intentions of ae Providence or the laws of beneficent Nature ; and the contented way in which it is accepted, as if — it were a matter of course, by society’ and the — poor sufferers themselves, and even by such well. meaning friends of women as M. Michelet, strikes me as both absurd and deplorable. That ‘the Creator should have planned a whole sex of pa- tients—that the normal condition of the female of the human species should be to have legs which walk not, and brains which can only work on pain of disturbing the rest of the ill-adjusted machine—this is to me simply incredible. The theory would seem to have been suggested by a study, not of the woman’s body, framed by the great Maker’s wisdom, but from that of her silly clothes sent home from the milliner, with tags, and buttons, and flounces, meant for. show, not use; and a feather and an artificial —a way of a head-gear. Nay, my skepticism goes further, even into the stronghold of the enemy. I do not believe that even the holy claims of motherhood ought to involve—or, if women’s lives were better regu. lated, would involve—so often as they do, a state of invalidism for the larger part of married life; or that a woman ought to be disabled from per- forming the supreme moral and intellectual duties of a parent toward her first-born children, when she fulfills the lower physical part of her sacred office toward those who come afterward... Were this to be inevitably the case, I do not see how a woman who has undertaken the tremendous re- sponsibilities of a mother toward the opening soul of a child could venture to burden herself with fresh duties which will incapacitate her from performing them with all her heart and soul, and strength. One of the exasperating things about this evil of female valetudinarianism is, that the women who are its victims are precisely the human beings who, of our whole mortal race, seem naturally most exempt from physical want or danger, and ought to have enjoyed immunity from disease or pain of any kind. Such ladies have probably never from their birth been ex- posed to hardship, or toil, or ill-ventilation, or bad or scanty food, fuel, or raiment. They have fed on the fatness of the earth, and been clothed in purple and fine linen. They are the true lotos-eaters whom the material cares of the world reach not. They “live and lie reclined,” in a land where (in a very literal sense) “It seemeth always afternoon,” and where they find a certain soothing, esthetic * SBErAeSSeSSBBBBAaBetesee et eeseee Ete S 246.6872 8848 Swwseserwt ese a sc

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~~ =e SF PF eo me Pr eB Fe OTe & FS oi od i Se en i Te Re Me) eS erM FOSS 2 YY FS FS ae emotion in reading in novels the doleful tale of of the “ill-used race of men that cleave the soil” — without dreaming of going down among them to make that tale less dismal. That these women, these Epicurean goddesses of the drawing-room, should be so often the poor, fragile, suffering creatures we behold them, un- able to perform half the duties of life, or taste a third part of its pleasures—this is a pure perver- sity of things which ought surely to provoke re- volt. What are the causes of the valetudinarianism of ladies ? First, of course, there is a considerable class of inherited mischief, feeble constitutions, con- genital tendencies to chronic troubles, gout, dys- pepsia, and so on, due to the errors of either parent, or to their evil heritage of the same. All that need be said here on this topic is that such cases must necessarily go on multiplying ad in- fmitum till mothers regain the vigor which alone permits them to transmit a healthy constitution to their children. Next to hereditary petite santé, we come to cases where the habits of the sufferers themselves are the cause of the mischief; and these are of two kinds—one resulting from what is good and unselfish, and one from what is bad and frivolous, in the disposition of women. Women are generally prudent enough about their money; that is, of their own money, not that of their husbands. I have heard an ob- servant man remark that he never knew a well- conducted woman who, of her own fault, became bankrupt. But, as regards their health, the very best of women have a propensity to live on their capital. Their nervous energy, stimulated either by conscience or affection or intellectual inter- ests, suffices to enable them to postpone perpetu- ally the calls of their bodies for food, sleep, or exercise. They draw large drafts on their physi- eal strength, and fail to lodge corresponding sums of restoring rest and nutriment. Their physical instincts are not imperious, like those of men; and they habitually disregard them when they make themselves felt, till poor Nature, continually snubbed when she makes her modest requests, ceases to press for daily settlement of her little bill, and reserves herself to put in an execution by-and-by. The vegetative and the spiritual part of these women flourish well enough; but (as Kingsley’s Old Sandy says) “ There is a lack of healthy animalism” between the two. They THE LITTLE HEALTH OF LADIES. out of a rose, flitting hither*and thither to brighten the world, not creatures of flesh and blood, need- ing to go to bed and eat roast-mutton. If we study the condition of Mr. John Bull in his robust middle age, we shall notice that for forty years, with few interruptions, he has en- joyed those “reg’lar meals,” on which Tennyson’s Northern Farmer lays such stress as the founda- tion of general stability of character. He has . also walked, ridden, rowed, skated, smoked his cigar, and gone to his bed (as nearly as circum- stances permitted) when the inclination seized him. If now and again he has omitted to gratify his instincts, it has been for a business-like reason, and not merely because somebody did not hap- pen to wish to do the same thing at the same time. He has not often waited for an hour, half- fainting for want of his breakfast, from motives of mere domestic courtesy ; nor sat moped in a hot room through a long, bright day to keep some old person company; nor resolved his dinner into tea and muffins because he was alone and it was not worth while to trouble the servants; nor sat up cold and weary till three in the morning to hear about a parliamentary debate wherein he took only a vicarious interest. At the end of the forty years of wholesome indulgence, the man’s instincts are more imperious and plain- spoken than ever, and, as a reward for his obe- dience to them, his organs perform their respec- tive offices with alacrity, to the great bénefit of himself and of all dependent upon him. Pretty nearly the reverse of this has happened in the ease of Mrs. Bull. Almost ber first lesson in childhood was to check, control, and conceal her wants and miseries; and by the time she has grown up she has acquired the habit of postpon- ing them, as a matter of course, to the smallest convenience of A, B, C, and D, father, mother, brothers, even servants, whom she will not “ put out of their way” for herself, though no one would so much as think whether they had a way to be put out of, for her brothers. The more strain there is upon her strength, by sickness in the house or any misfortune, the more completely she effaces and forgets herself and her physical wants, recklessly relinquishing sleep and neglect- ing food. When the pressure is relieved, and the nervous tension which supported her relaxed, the woman breaks down, as a matter of course, perhaps never to enjoy health again. It must be borne in mind, also, in estimating a woman’s chances of health, that, if she neglect to think of herself, there is seldom anybody to seem to consider themselves as fire-flies issuing do for her what she does for her husband. No-

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358 body reminds her to change her boots when they are damp; nobody jogs her memory as to the unwholesomeness of this or that beverage or comestible, or gives her the little cossetings which so often ward off colds and similar petty ills. Unless the woman live with a sister or friend, it must be scored one against her chances as compared to a man, that she Aas no wife. There must, of course, be set against all this the two facts that the imperiousness of men’s wishes and wants leads them often not only to do such wholesome things as those of which we have been speaking, but into sundry unwholesome ex- cesses besides, for which in due time they pay by various diseases, from gout up to delirium tremens. And correspondingly, women’s comparative in- difference to the pleasures of the table keeps them clear of the ills to which gormandizing and bibulous flesh is heir. We all know scores of es- timable gentlemen who can scarcely be prevailed on, by the prayers and tears of their wives, to re- frain from drinking a glass of beer or port wine which will in all probability entail a fit of the gout next day; but in my whole life I have never known a woman who consciously ate or drank things likely to make her ill, save one mild and sweet old lady, whose predilection for buttered toast overcame every motive of prudence, and, alas! even of re- ligion, which I have reason to believe she endeav- ored to bring to bear against the soft temptation. But for the purpose we have now in hand, namely, that of tracing the origin, not of acute diseases, but of general petite santé, this aspect of the sub- ject is unimportant. It is precisely petite santé which comes of the perpetual neglect of Nature’s hints—that she wants air, bread, meat, fruit, tea, wine, sleep, a scamper or a canter. It is definite disease which results from over-exercise, over- feeding, and over-drinking. Would it not be possible, I venture to ask, to cut off this source of feminine invalidism, at all events, by a somewhat more respectful attention to the calls of healthful instinct? I am very far from wishing that women should grow more self- ish, or less tenderly regardful of the convenience and pleasure of those around them. Even sound health of body—immeasurable blessing that it is— would be purchased too dearly if this should hap- pen. But there ought surely to be an adequate reason, not a mere excuse of whim and eaprice of her own or of anybody else, why a woman should do herself hurt or incapacitate herself for fature usefulness. Another source of petite santé, I fear, may be THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. found resulting from a lingering survival a us of the idiotic notion that there is peculiarly “lady-like” in invalidism, pallot; am appetitdend's tesigul tele 4? apeearaaneleall ners. The very word “delicacy,” properly a term of praise, being applied vulgarly t» a valetudinary condition, is evidence that the impression of thé “ dandies” of sixty years ago, that refinement and — sickliness were convertible terms, is not yet wholly exploded. “Tremaine” thought morbidea=@ “ charming morbidezza”"—the choicest epithet he could apply to the cheek of beauty; and the ‘her. oines in all the other fashionable novels of the period drank hartshorn almost daily, and died of broken hearts, while the pious young Protestants who converted Roman Catholics in the religious tales, uniformly perished of consumption. By: ron’s admiring biographer records how, at a large dinner-party, he refused all viands except pota- toes and vinegar (horrid combination !), and then retired to an eating-house to assuage with a beef- steak those cravings which even Childe Herold could not silence with “chameleon’s mare “light and air.” We have advanced indeed NE : this wretched affectation in our day, and young ladies are not required by /es bienséances to exhibit at table the public habits of a ghoul. Ina few cases, perhaps, we may opine that women have gone to the opposite extreme, and both eat aud drink more than is desirable. But yet we are obviously not wholly free from the “delicacy” delusion. We are not so clear as we ought to’ be on the point that, though beauty includes ofher — elements, yet health is its sine gua non, and thatno statuesque nobility of form (much less a pinched waist and a painted face) can constitute a beauti- ful living human creature, who lacks the tokens of health—clear eyes, clear skin, rich hair, good teeth, a cool, soft hand, a breath like a bunch of cowslips, and a free and joyous pera. e-. head and limbs. Have we not, in the senseless wtsitettiels of feebleness and pallor (to obtain which a fashion- able lady not long ago literally bled herself by degrees to death), an illustration of the curious fact pointed out by Miss de Rothschild im her ad- mirable essay on the “ Hebrew Woman,” ' naniely, that the homage which Christianity won for weak- ness bas tempted women to cultivate weakness to secure the homage? Just as Obristian charity to the poor has fostered mendicancy, so has chiv- alrous tenderness to the feeble inspired a whole sex with the fatal ambition of - becoming feeble 1 New Quarterly Magazine, No. X -— nen wminmnmenmneanaes & Fa.

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=F FT» FF = a = => |. & ae Sao eeee Seo OS 2S eS SD eee d € it e d e " “a r o d i. 8 d f e i a a a a ‘ iP eae Sas ny =e : Te 2 Ze OP tas a” \ as Pees es Ee sad chapter of history. I do not think it a less sorrowful one that an analogous abuse has led toa sort of canonization of bodily and mental feeble- ness, cowardice, and helplessness, among women. Can we question which is the nobler ideal—the modem, nervous, pallid, tight-laced, fine Lady of Little Health—or the “valiant woman ” (as the Vulgate calls her) of whom King Lemuel saith, “he girdeth her loins with strength, and strength- eneth her arms. Strength and honor are her cloth- ing;-and she shall rejoice in time to come ?”? We have now touched on the subject of dress, which plays so important # part in the health of wowen that it must here be treated somewhat at length. A little girl in a London Sunday-school, being asked by a visitor “why God made the flowers of the field?” replied (not unconscious of the gorgeous paper poppy in her own bonnet), “ Please, ma’am, I suppose for patterns for arti- ficial flowers.” One might anticipate some an- swer scarcely less wide of the mark than that of this sophisticated little damsel, were the question to be pat to not « few grown women, “ Why do you wear clothes ?” Their most natural response would obviously be, ‘To be in the fashion.” When we have visibly wandered a long way from the path of reason, the best thing we can do is to look back to the starting-point and find out, if possible, where we have diverged. In the mat ter of raiment that starting-point is not hard to find—indeed, to mark it ts only to state a series of truisms. Haman clothing has three raisons d'étre, which, in order of preeedence, are these: 1. Maintenance of proper temperature of the body by exclusion of excessive heat and cold. 2. Protection from injury by rain, snow, dust, dirt, stones to the feet, insects, etc. 8. Preservation of liberty of action to all the organs of the body and freedom from pressure. _ Decency demands— 4. Concealment of some portions of the hu- man frame. 6. Distinction between the habiliments of men and women sufficient to avert mistake. 6. Fitness to the age and character of the wearer. 4. Concealment, when possible, of any dis- gusting personal defect. Beauty demands— 8. Truthfulness. The dress must be genuine throughout, without any false pads, false hair, or false anything. 9. Graceful forms of drapery. + 10, Harmonious colors. 11. Such moderate consistency with prevail- inig modes of dress as shall produce the impres- sion of sociability and suavity, and avoid that of self-assertion. 12. Individuality: the dress suiting the wear- er as if it were an outer body belonging to the same soul. (Be it noted that the fulfillment of this highest condition of tasteful dress necessarily limits the number of costumes which each person should wear on similar occasions. No one body can be adorned in several equally suitable suits of clothes, any more than one soul could be fittingly housed in twenty different bodies.) Glancing back over the above table, we find this curious fact: The dress of men in all Western nations meets fairly all the conditions of health and decency, and fails only on the side of beauty. The dress of women, on the contrary, ever variable as it is, persistently misses the conditions of health; frequently violates the rules of decency ; instead of securing beauty, at which it aims first instead of last, achieves, usually, ugliness. It is to be remembered for our consolatibn and encouragement that men have arrived at their present good sense in dress only within two or three generations. A hundred years ago the lords of creation set beauty above health or convenience, just as the ladies do now, and pea- cocked about in their peach-blossom coats and embroidered waistcoats, surmounted by wigs, for whose stupendous discomfort even a seat on the judicial bench can scarcely reconcile the modern Now, when the men of every Eu- ropean nation have abjured such fantastic ap- parel, we naturally ask, Why have not the women followed their example? Why is the husband, father, and brother, habited like a being who bas serious interests in life, and knows that his per- sonal dignity would be forfeited were he to dress himself in party-colored, be-ribboned garments, and why is the wife, mother, or sister, bedizened like a macaw, challenging every observer to note 1. Proverbs xxxi. how much of her time, thoughts, and money, must

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THE have been spent on this futile object? The an- swer is one which it is not pleasant to make, dis- creditable as it is to both sexes. The women who set the fashions dress for admiration; and men like women who dress to be admired; and the admiration given and received is a very poor and unworthy admiration, not much better than a salmon gives to a glittering artificial fly, and hav- ing very little more to do with any real esthetic gratification—as is proved too clearly by the thoroughly un-beautiful devices to which fashion has recourse. It is the well-got-up woman (to borrow a very expressive phrase), not the really well-dressed woman, who receives by far the largest share of homage. And now let us see how all this concerns the health of women—how much of their petile santé is due to their genera] neglect to make health the first object of dress, or even an object at all com- pared to fashion. Tight-lacing among habits resembles envy among the passions. We take pride in all the rest, even the idlest and worst, but tight-lacing and an envious heart are things to which no one ever confesses. A small waist, I suppose, is un- derstood to belong to that order of virtues which Aristotle decides ought to be natural and not ac- . quired, and the most miserable girl who spends her days in a machine more cruel (because more slowly murderous) than the old “ Maiden” of Se- ville, yet always assures us, smiling through her martyrdom, that her clothes are “ really hanging about her!” It would be waste of time to dwell on this supreme folly. Mrs. Haweis, in her very noteworthy new book, “‘ The Art of Beauty,” has given some exceedingly useful diagrams, showing the effects of the practice on the internal organs and skeleton'—diagrams which I earnestly recom- 1 Pp. 49 and 50. The preceding pages on what I conceive to be the raisons d’étre of drees were written before I had seen this exceedingly clever, brilliant, and learned little book. While giving the authorers thanks for her most sensible reprobation of many senseless fashions, and not presuming for a moment to question her judgment in the matters of taste, on which she speaks with authority, I must here enter * my humble but earnest protest against the over-im- portance which, I think, she is inclined to attach to the art of dress, among the pursuits of women ; and , (most emphatically) against her readiness to condone —if it be only committed in moderation—the offense againet both truth and cleanliness of wearing false hair (eee page 173). It seems to me quite ciear that here the whole principle of honesty in attire is sacri- ficed. If no woman would wish it to be known that the hair on her head never grew there, but on the scalp of some poor French girl, so poor as to be bribed to part with it, or some unkempt Russian peas- POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. 2 : "s , o mend to the study of ladies who may feel a “cali” to perform this sort of English suttee for a living husband. Mrs. Haweis says that sensible men do not love wasps, and have expressed to her their “ overallishness” when they behold them, Con sidering how effectively they have hitherto man. aged to display their disapproval whenever women have attempted to introduce rational attire, it.ig a pity, I think, that they do not “ pronounce” a little more distinctly against this literally mortal folly. 6 I have already alluded to the brain-heating chignons, just gone out of fashion after a long reign of mischief; and along with them should he classed the bonnets which expose the forehead to the cold, while the back of the head is stewed under its cushion of false hair, and which have the still more serious disadvantage of affording ne shelter to the eyes. To women to whom the glare of the sun is permanently hurtful to the sight, the necessity of wearing these bonnets on pain of appearing singular, or affectedly youthful, constitutes almost a valid reason against living in London. And the remedy, forsooth, is to hold up perpetually a parasol!—a yet further incum- brance to add to the care of the draggling train, so that both arms may be occupied during a whole walk, and of course all natural ease of motion . rendered impossible. In this, as in a dozen other © silly fashions, the women who have serious con- cerns in life are hampered by the practice of those who think of nothing but exhibiting their persons; and ladies of limited fortune, who live in small rooms and go about the streets on foot or in cabs, are compelled (if they wish to avoid being pointed at) to adopt modes of dress whose sole raison @étre is that they suit wealthy grandes dames who lounge in their ba: suches or display their trains over the carpet . f forty-feet-long drawing-rooms, What snobbery ail this im:lies ir our whole so- cial structure! Some ten millions of women dress, as nearly as they can afford, ia the style fit atthe most for five thousand ! The practice of wearing décolletée dresses, sin- ning equally as it does against health and decen- ant who rarely used a comb in her life—then the wear- ing of that false hair is an act of deception, and in s0 far, I hold, both morally and even esthetically wrong. Icannot conceive why the lamp of truth, which we are now perpetually told must shine on our architect- ure and furniture, so that nothing must appear stone that is iron, and so on ad infinitum, should not shine equally lucidly over the dress of women, Where no deception is meant, and where the object is to supply # want, not to forge a claim to beauty—e. g., in the case of artificial teeth—there is no harm involved.

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” “ ht a EEE ST 2 ss ey 7 re Se 2 ae oe ee TS SS RRS SR SP RESP PC SSTES ESS S ASTER EC , > ey, seems to be gradually receding—from ordi- pary dinners, where it was universal twenty years ago, to special occasions, balls, and court draw- ing-rooms. But it dies hard, and it may killa good many poor creatures yet, and entail on others the lifelong bad health so naturally resulting from the exposure of a large surface of the skin to sudden chills. The thin, paper-soled boots which leave the wearer to feel the chill of the pavement or the damp of the grass wherever she may walk, must have shortened thousands of lives in Europe, and even more in America. Combined with these, we have now the high heels, which; in a short period, convert the foot into a shapeless deformi- ty, no longer available for purposes of healthful exercise. An experienced shoemaker informed the writer that, between the results of tight boots and high heels, he scarcely knew a lady of fifty who had what he could call a foot at all—they had tiere clubs. And this is done, all this anguish endured, for the sake of—beauty ! Bad as stays, and chignons, and high heels, and paint, and low dresses, and all the other fol- lies of dress are, I am, however, of opinion that the culminating folly of fashion, the one which has most wide-spread and durable consequences, is the mode in which for ages back women have éontrived that their skirts should act as drags and swaddling-clothes, weighing down their hips and obstructing the natural motion of the legs. Two hundred years ago the immortal Perrette, when she wanted to carry her milk-pail swiftly to market, was obliged to dress specially for the purpose : “Légére et court vétue, elle allait & grands pas, Ayant mis ce jour-lA, pour @tre plus agile, Cotillon simple et souliers plats.” From that time to this the “ cotillon simple ”— modest, graceful, and rational—has been the rare exception, and every kind of flounce and furbe- low, hoops and crinolines, panniers and trains, “ tied-back ” costume, and robe collante, has been successively the bane of women’s lives, and the slow destroyer of their activity. It has been often remarked that the sagacity of Romish seminarists is exhibited by their prac- tice of compelling boys destined for the priest- hood to flounder along the streets in their long gowns, and never permitting them to cast them aside or play in the close-fitting clothes wherein English lads enjoy their cricket and foot-ball. The obstruction to free action, though perhaps slight in itself, yet constantly maintained, gradu- ally tames down the wildest spirits to the level : * THE LITTLE HEALTH OF LADIES. of ecclesiastical decorum. But the lengthjest of soutanes is a joke compared to the multitudinous petticoats which, up to the last year or two, every lady was compelled to wear, swathing and flowing about her ankles as if she were walking through the sea. Nor is the fashion of these later days much better, when the scantier dress is “tied back "—as I am informed—with an elas- tic band, much on the principle that a horse is “ hobbled ” in the field ; and to this a tail a yard long is added, which must either be left to drag- gle in the mud or must occupy an arm exclusive- ly to hold it up. In youth these skirts are bad enough, as exercising a constant check on free and healthful movement; but the moment that the elastic steps begin to give place to the lassi- tude of middle life, the case is desperate. TheMe is no longer energy to overcome the impediments created by the ridiculous spancels, and the poor . donkey of a woman hobbles daily round a shorter and shorter course, till at forty or fifty she tells her friends with a sigh that she finds (she cannot imagine why) that she cannot walk at all! Does decency require such a sacrifice as this? Does the utmost strain of feminine modesty ask for it? If it were so, I, for one, should leave the matter with a sigh, as not to be remedied. But who in his senses dreams that such is the case? Who, in the age of robes collantes and décolletée | dresses, can pretend that a reasonably full, sim- ply-cut silk or cloth skirt, reaching to the ankles and no longer, would not fulfill immeasurably better than any fashion we have seen for many a day the requirements of true womanly delicacy? It is for fashion, not decency, that the dctivity of women is thus crushed, their health ruined, and (through them) the health of their children. I hold it to be an indubitable fact that if twenty years ago a rational and modest style of dress had been adopted by Englishwomen and encour- aged by Englishmen, instead of being sneered down by fops and fools, the health not only of women, but of the sons of women, i. e¢., of the entire nation, would now be on altogether a dif. ferent plane from what we find it.' 1 The inquiry, “ How fashione originate and with whom ?* would lead us too far from the subject in hand, but some light is thrown on the way in which complicated of dress are maintained under every variation and in defiance of the true prin- ciples of taste, as well as of health and economy, by the reflection that it would never pay drapers and dress-makers that their customers should readily cal- culate how much stuff they require for each garment. For further criticism of the follies of female dress— the torrid and frigid zones of body and limbe—the “panniers” or “busties” creating kidney-disease ;

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“$62 THE POPULARES SOIENOE MON THLY<9UPPLEMENT. _ Reviewing all these deplorable follies, we may learn to make excuses for legislators who classi- fy. women with “criminals, lunatics, idiots, and minors.”’ It needs a woman’s knowledge of the pernicious processes to which the opening minds of girls are commonly subjected—the false and base aims in life set before them, the perverse distribution toward them of approval and blame, adwiration and neglect, and even of love and dis- like, from parents, teachers, servants, brothers, and ;finally.from the ballroom world into which they are now launched in childhood—to enable us to make allowances for them, and retain faith " that there sometimes beats a real woman’s heart under the ribs of a tightly-laced corset, and that a head surmounted by a pile of dead women's lmir is not invariably devoid of brains. How is the remedy for this dreary round of _ silly fashions ever to be attained? No woman who knows the world and how severe is the pen- alty of eccentricity in attire, will ever counsel her sisters to incur it for any motive short of a dis- tinct duty. But if the hundreds of ladies who recognize the tyranny of senseless and unhealth- ful fashions were to combine forces to obey those fashions just as little as may be, to go as near the wind in the direction of simplicity, wholesome- mess, and ease in their dress, as they dare, there would by degrees be formed a public opinion, rising year by year with the numbers and social standing of the representatives of common-sense. It must have been in some such way that our great-grandfathers dropped their swords and bag- wigs and ruffles and embroidery, and took to dressing—as even the ailliest and vainest men do in these days—like rational beings. Next to unhealthful dress, women may lay their petite sanié at the door of their excessive addiction to pursuits giving exercise neither to the brain nor yet to the limbs. If the problem had been set to devise something, the doing of which would engage the very fewest and smallest powers of the mind or body, I know not whether we should give the prize for solving it to the in- ® ventor of knitting, netting, crochet, or worsted- work. Pursued for a reasonable period in the day, chese employments are no doubt quite harm- less, and even perhaps, as some have urged, may the skewering down of the arms by tight arm-holes ; the veils which cause amaurosis, ete—and also for some excellent suggestions of reform, see ‘* Drese and Health,” a little book printed by Dongall & Son, Mon- treal, to be obtained in London for the present only Wheending te 06, fn stamps, 0 8. Belsize Square,

be useful as sedatives. Riot. thas o.srensen whedil driven. by no dire necessity to Votece vial stitch,” who has plenty of books to.read, and two legs and fe ’ 4! withal, should volup, tarily limit th: <u. we of niggling moth 2 ve ¢ redby these works, and the labor vo . mind to counting stitches, is all but incomp: hensible, That. the consequences should be sickliness and feebleness seems to follow of course. In old times the ever revolving spinning-wheel had its full justification in its abundant usefulness, and also in the dearth of intellectual pursuits for women. ..But it,is marvelous that a well-educated Englishwoman, not yet sinking into the natural indolenge of age, should choose to spend about a fifth or fourth of the hours God has given her on this beautiful earth in embroidery or worsted-work. A drawing-room crammed with these useless fads—chairs, cush- ions, screens, and antimacassars—is simply a mausoleum of the wasted hours of the female part of the family. Happily, there is a sensible diminution in this perpetual needling, and no future Mrs. Somerville will be kept for the best hours of her girlhood “ shewing” her daily seam. More intelligent and more active pursuits are multiplying, and the great philanthropist who in- vented Jawn-tennis has done more to remedy. the little health of ladies than ten thousand doctors We have now glanced over a numberof causes of petite santé, for which the sufferers themselves are more or less responsible. Let us turn to some others regarding which they,are merely passive. It is many years since, in my pes was struck by a singular coincidence. Several of my married acquaintances were liable to a pecul- iar sort of headache. They were obliged, owing to these distressing attacks, to remain very fre- quently in bed at breakfast-time, and later in the day to lie on the sofa with darkened blinds and a considerable exhibition of eau-de-Cologne, A singular immunity from the seizures seemed to be enjoyed when any pleasant society was ex- pected, or when their husbands happened te be in a different part of the country. By degrees, putting my little observations together, I came in my own mind to call these the “ bad-husband headaches,” and I have since seen no reason 40 alter my diagnosis. On the contrary, 1,am of opinion that an incalculable amount of feminine invalidism arises from nothing but the depressing influences of an unhappy home. Sometimes, of course, it is positive unkindness and cruelty Py Si a , dy to the little

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ey Ot which the poor creatures endure. Much more often it is the mere lack of the affection and care and tenderness for which they pine as sickly plants for sunshine. Sometimes it is the simple of an iron will over them which bruises their pleasant fancies, and lops off their innocent whims, till there is no sap left in them to bud or blossom any more. Not seldom the misery comes of frequent storms in the house- hold atmosphere—for which the woman is prob- ably as often to blame as her companion, but frem which she suffers doubly, since, when they have passed, he goes out to his field or his mer- ehandise with what spirit he can muster, poor fellow! while she sits still where the blighting words fell on her, to feel all their bitterness. Of course it is not only unkind Awsbands who make women down-hearted. There are unkind people in every relation, and the only specialty of a woman’s suffering from unkindness is, that she is commonly almost like a bed-ridden creature, for whom a single thorn or even a hard lump in her bed iz enough to create a soreness. To those who can get up and walk away, the importance which she attaches to the thorn or the lump seems inexplicable. This balking of the heart is, I suppose, the worst evil in life to nine women out of ten, whether it take place after marriage in finding an uncongenial husband, or before marriage when a lover leaves them in the lurch and causes them a “disappointment.” This word, I observe, is always significantly used with reference to such events, among a certain class of women, as the disappointment par éminence, When a lady fails to get her book published or her picture hung at the Academy, nobody speaks of her as having undergone a “disappointment.” I have nodoubt the grief of losing the lover is generally worse than these; but I wish that pride would teach every woman under such circumstances not to assume the attitude of an Ariadne, or settle down after @ course of sal-volatile into languor and little health till she is found at sixty,as M. About deliciously describes an English old maid, “tant soit peu desséchée par les langueurs du célibat.” Of this kind of thing I would fain hope we might soon see the end, as well as of the actions for breach of promise, which are a disgrace to the whole womanhood of the country. But besides heart-sorrows, real and imaginary, there are other departments of women’s natures wherein the balking of their activities has a de- plorable effect on their physical as well as mental condition. Dr. Bridges once gave an admirable lecture at the Royal Institution, concerning the laboring and pauper class of Englishmen. He made the remark (which was received with emo- tion by the audience) that it was not enough to supply a human being with food and shelter, “ Man,” he said, “does not live by bread alone, he must have Aope.” May we not say likewise, “ Woman does not live by bread alone—nay, nor by the richest cake?” She, too, must. have hope—something to live for, something which she may look to accomplish for herself or others in God’s world of work, ere ber night shall fall. A Hindoo lady, lately speaking at a meeting in India, compared Mary Carpenter's beneficent existence to a river bearing fertility to many lands, while the life of a woman in the zenana, she said, resembled rather a pond. Surely every woman worthy of the name would desire to be something more than the pool, were it only a little trickling rill! But in endless cases she is dammed up on all sides, and none the. less effectually that the soft mud of affectionate pre- jadice forms the dam. If her friends be rich, she is sickened with excess of luxury, but, pro- hibited from stooping down out of the empyrean of her drawing-room to lend a finger to lift the burdens. of a groaning world, If the family in-. come be small, and the family pride proportion- ately great, she is required to spend her life—not in inspiriting, honorable money-earning, but in depressing, heart-narrowing money-saving. When the poor soul has borne this sort of pecuniary stay-lacing for a dozen years, and her forehead has grown narrow, and her lips pinched, and her eyes have acquired a certain anxious look (which I often fancy I recognize) as if of concern about sixpences, then, forsooth, the world laughs at herandsays, ‘‘ Women aresostingy!” How glad- ly, in a hundred cases, would that poor lady have toiled to earn—and not to save—and have been no- bly generous with the proceeds of her industry | We have heard a great deal of late of the danger to women’s health of over-mental strain or intellectual labor. I do not say there is never danger in this direction, that girls never study too much or too early, or that the daughters of wom-@ en who have never used their brains may, not have inherited rather soft and tender organs of cogitation to start with. I am no enthusiast for excessive book-learning for either women or men, though in books read and books written I have found some of the chief pleasures of a happy life. Perhaps if it were my duty to supervise the edu- cation of girls I should be rather inclined to say, like the hero of “ Locksley Hall :”

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “They shall ride and they shall ron, «+ » » Leap the rainbows of the brooks, Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books.” But of one thing I am sure, and that is, that for one woman whose health is injured by excessive study (that is, by study itself, not the baneful anxiety of examinations superadded to study), there are hundreds whose health is deteriorated by want of wholesome mental exercise. Sometimes the vacuity in the brains of girls simply leaves them dull and spiritless. More often into those swept and empty chambers of their skulls enter many small imps of evil omen. “ The exercise of the intellectual powers,” says an able lady M. D., “is the best means of preventing and counteracting an undue development of the emotional! nature. The extravagances of imagination and feeling en- gendered in an idle brain have much to do with ' the ill-health of girls.” Another observer, an eminent teacher, says, “I am persuaded, and my experience has been confirmed by experienced physicians, that the want of wholesome occupa- tion lies at the root of the languid debility, of which we hear so much, after girls have left school.” * And another, the principal of one of the largest colleges for women in England, adds: “There is no doubt whatever that sound study is an eminent advantage to young women’s health ; provided, of course, that the general laws of health be attended to at the same time.” Let women have larger interests and nobler pursuits, and their affections will become, not less strong and deep, but less sickly, less craving for demonstrative tenderness in return, less vari- able in their manifestations. Let women have sounder mental culture, and their emotions—so long exclusively fostered —will return to the calm- ness of health, and we shall hear no more of the intermittent feverish spirits, the causeless de- pressions, and all the long train of symptoms which belong to Protean-formed hysteria, and open the way to madness on one side and to sin on the other. And now, in conclusion, I must touch on a @difficult part of my subject. Who is to blame for all the misery resulting from the little health of ladies ? Of course, a large portion of the evil must be impartially distributed throughout society, with its false ideals of womanhood. Another portion rests on parents and teachers ; and, of course, no inconsiderable part on the actual sufferers, who, 3“ The Education of American Girls,” p. 229. in many cases, might find healthful aims in life — if they had the spirit to look for them, and cep ~ tainly need not carry the destructive fashions of dress to the climax they reach in the red-hot race | of vanity. There remains yet a share of guilt with the childish and silly men who systematically sneer down every attempt to make women some thing better than the dolls they play with (just as if they would be at a ioss for toys, were the dolls to be transformed into rational creatures), and those others, even more cruelly selfish, who de liberately bar every door at which women knock in search of honorable employment. After alf these, I find one class more. eh There is no denying the power of the great medical order in these days. It occupies, with strangely close analogy, the position of the priests hood of former times, assumes the same airs of authority, claims its victims for torture (this time among the lower animals), and enters every fam: ily with a latch-key of private information, only comparable to that obtained by the confessional, If Michelet had written for England instead of for France, he should have made a book, not on “ Priests, Women, and Families,” but on “ Docs tors, Women, and Families.” The influence of the family medical man on wives and mothers, and, through them, on husbands and children, is almost unbounded, and if it were ever to be ex- erted uniformly in any matter of physical educas tion, there is little doubt that it would be effec. tive. 3 What, then, we may reasonably ask, have these omnipotent doctors done to prevent the repetition of deadly follies in the training of girls generation after generation? Now and then we have heard feeble cautions, given in an Eli-like manner, against tight-lacing, late hours, and ex- citement; and a grand display of virtuous indigs nation was, if I remember rightly, exhibited about a year ago in a medical round-robin, against fem inine dram-drinking—a vice for which the dow tor’s own prescriptions are in too many cases Tes sponsible. But the steadily-determined pressuré on mothers and young women, the insistence on free, light petticoats, soundly -shod feet, loose stays, and well-sheltered heads—when has it been exercised? An American medical lady says that at a post-mortem examination of several women killed by accident in Vienna, she found the inter nal organs of nearly all affeeted by tight-lacing: “ Some ribs overlapped each other; one had been found to pierce the liver; and, almost without exception, that organ was displaced below the ribs. . . . The spleen in some cases was much

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ee ee a ee a ee ef RP SS@SCSSESHSSPES RRFESSESER SES. THE enlarged, in others it was atrophied,” ' and s0 on. Do the male doctors, who behold these and other hideous sights continually, go out to warn the mothers who encourage girls to this ghastly self- destruction, as they do denounce the poor, mis- guided, peculiar people and anti-vaccinators who cheat Science of her dues ? At last, after the follies of luxury and fashion have gone on in a sort of crescendo like the de- scent of Vathek into the ball of Eblis, till we seem nearly to have reached the bottom, a voice of warning is heard! It bas pealed across the At- lantic, and been reéchoed on the shores of Eng- land with a cordiality of response which our men of science do not often give to American “ no- tions.” “ Women, beware!” it cries, ‘ Be ware! you are on the brink of destruction! You have hitherto been engaged only in crushing your waists ; now you are attempting to cultivate your minds! You have been merely dancing all night in the foul air of ballrooms; now you are begin- ning to spend your mornings in study! You have been incessantly stimulating your emotions with concerts and operas, with French plays and Fretich novels; now you are exerting your under- standing to learn Greek and solve propositions in Euclid! Beware—oh, beware! Science pro- nounces that the woman who—studies—is lost |” Perhaps there are some women, now alive, who did study a little in youth, who even spent their nights occasionally over their books while their contemporaries were running from one evening patty to another—who now in middle and advanced life enjoy a vigor which it would be very well for their old companions if they could share. These women know precisely @ quoi ven tenir concerning these terrific denunciations. There is another point on which it seems to me that a suspicion of blame must attach to the medical profession. We all believe that our doc- tors do the utmost in their power to cure acute diseases. When any patient has scarlet fever, or small-pox, or bronchitis, he may be sure that his medical attendant will exert all his skill and care to pull him through. But is it equally cer- tain that out of the 20,000 men, or thereabouts, who are qualified to practise medicine and sur- gery in this kingdom, there are net a few who feel only a modified interest in the perfect re- eovery of chronic sufferers who represent to them an annual income of £50 or perhaps £200? A few months ago there appeared an article in one of the magazines expounding the way in which legal business was made to grow in hydra-fashion. 1“ Dress and Health,” p. 20. ’ We have all heard similar accusations against slaters and plumbers, who mend one hole in a roof and leave another. In short, we unhesitat- ingly suspect almost every other trade and pro- feasion of making work for itself. Is it clearly proved that doctors are in this respect quite dif- ferent from lawyers and other men, or that the temptation to keep a wealthy patient coddling comfortably with an occasional placebo for twenty years is invariably resisted? The question is not easy to answer uvhesitatingly in the affirma- tive: “Suppose a really radical cure were dis- covered whereby all the neuralgic, and dyspeptic, and gouty patients could be made in an hour as sound as so many trevets, do we believe implicitly and au fond du ceur that that Heaven-sent rem- edy would be rapturously welcomed by the whole medical profession?” Is there no truth at all in the familiar legend of the elderly lady whose | physician, after many years of not unprofitable attendance, advised her to go to Bath, promising to give her a letter to the most eminent local doctor, his intimate friend, to whom he would thoroughly explain her case? The lady, armed with the introductory letter, it is said, proceeded on her way; but the curiosity of a daughter of Eve unhappily overcame her discretion. “It is only about myself after all,” she said, to pacify her scruples; “and once for all I will learn what dear Dr. D—— does think is my complaint. IfI am doomed to die, it is better than this pro- longed uncertainty.” The seal was broken, and the lady read: “ Keep the old fool for six weeks, and be sure to send her back to me at the end, Yours traly.” There are at this day, in Mayfair and Belgra- via, in Bayswater and South Kensington, a dozen houses in every street and square at the doors of which the doctor’s carriage stops as regularly as the milkman’s cart ; and apparently there is just as little likelihood that either should cease to stop. If the old Chinese custom were introduced among us, and patients were to pay their physi- cians a salary so long as they were in health, and ceased to pay whenever they required medical attendance, I very much question whether we should see quite so many of those broughams about those doors. I cannot help fancying that if the clock-makers who undertake to wind up our domestic timepieces were to keep them in the same unsatisfactory and perpetually running- down condition as the inner machineries of these doctors’ patients, we should in most cases bring our contract with the clock-maker to a close, and wind up our timepieces in future for ourselves. _

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But more, and in a yet more serious way, the doctors have, I conceive, failed, not only as guar- dians of the health of women, but as having (as @ body) opposed with determined and acrimo- nious resistance an innovation which—i/ medical science be good for anything—they could searcely doubt would have been of immense benefit to them. No one is ignorant how often the most ago- nizing diseases to which female nature is liable follow from the neglect of early premonitory symptoms, and how often, likewise, life-long inva- lidism results from disregard of the ailments of youth. It is almost equally notorious how often these deplorable catastrophes are traceable di- rectly to the poor victim’s modest shrinking from disclosing her troubles to a male adviser. When such- events are spoken of with bated breath among friends, it is sometimes said that it was the sufferer’s own fault—that she ought not to have felt any shyness about consulting a doctor —and that it is proper for everybody to “look on # doctor as an old woman.” I confess I do not understand precisely such playing fast and loose with any genuine sentiment of modesty. The members of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and of the Society of Apotheca- ties; are not “old women.” They are not even all old, nor all good men. A few months before they begin to practise—while they are in the “Bob Sawyer” stage—they are commonly sup- posed to be among the least steady or well-con- ducted of youths ; and where a number of them congregate together—as in Edinburgh, for exam- ple—they are apt to obtain an unenviable noto- riety for “‘ rowdyism.” I have more than once myself witnessed conduct on the part of these lads at public meetings which every man on the platform denounced as disgraceful. I could not but reflect as I watched them: “ And these youths a year hence will be called to the bedsides of la- dies to minister at hours of uttermost trial when the extremest refinement of tact and delicacy must scarcely make the presence of a man endurable ! Nay, they now attend in crowds the clinical in- structions in the female wards of the hospitals, and are invited to inspect miseries of disease and horrible operations on women, who, if of humbler Class, are often as sensitive and modest as the noblest lady in the land!” The feelings of Englishwomen on all matters of delicacy are probably keener than those of the women of any other Western country, and in some particulars may possibly be now and then overstrained. But who could wish them to be THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY —SUPPLEMENT. changed? Who questions their almost infinite — value? In every instance, except the one we are discussing, they receive from Englishmen there spect which they deserve. To propose deliberate. ly to teach girls to set those sacred feelings aside on one point, and that point the one where they are necessarily touched immeasurably more close. ly than anywhere else, is simply absurd. They could not do it if they would, and they ought not to do it if they could. A girl who would willing. ly go to a man-doctor and consult him freely about one of the many ills to which female flesh is heir, would be an odious young woman. Vio. lence must be done to her natural instinets, either by the pressure of the mother’s persuasion (who has undergone the same peine forte et dure before her), or else by unendurable anguish, before she will have recourse to aid which she thinks worse than disease, or even death. And so the time when health and life might be saved is lost by delay, and when the sacrifice is made at last, the doctor observes compassionately, “If you had come to me long ago I might have restored you to health—or an operation could have been per formed which might have saved your life, — I grieve to say, it is too late.” That the admission of qualified womemut practise medicine is the proper and only effectual remedy for this evil is of course obvious to all, — In opposing such admission relentlessly, as they have generally done, medical men have incurred a responsibility which to me seems nothing short of tremendous. Whatever motive we may be willing to assign to them above mere pitiful rival ry for practice and profit, it is scarcely possible to suggest one which is not grossly injurious and insulting to women, or which ought for a moment to weigh in the balance against the cruel woes to which I have referred, or the just claim of all women to receive, if they prefer them, the minis- trations of their own sex in their hours of suffer- ing and weakness, vid Doctors are wont to speak—apparently with profound feeling—of the sympathy they entertain for their patients, and to express their readiness (in a phrase which bas passed into cant) “to sacrifice a hecatomb of brutes to relieve the small- est pain of a human being.” May not women justly challenge them to sacrifice something * little nearer to themselves—their professional pride, their trades-unionism, and a certain frae- tion of their practiee—to relieve their entire sex of enormous pain, mental and physical? «| © I rejoice to believe that the long contest draws to a close, and that, thanks to men like Mr. Stans

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a a ee Y Fee aaa oC a ea feld and Mr. Cowper Temple, there will soon be women-doctors, and women's hospitals attended by women-doctors, in every town in the kingdom. I rejoice to know that we possess already a few qualified ladies who every day, without wound to the feelings of the most sensitive, receive the full and free confidence of girls and women, and give “emo FP SSS OSE OST 24 PSST Se ee a" Chel ane Sgt ye | in retarn counsels to which many attribute the — preservation of life and health; and which—if medical science have any practical value—must afford the rising generation a better chance than ever their mothers have had of escaping the end- less miseries to themselves and all belonging to them attendant on the Little Health of Ladies. —Contemporary Review. THE ACTION OF LIGHT UPON, THE COLORATION, OF... THE ORGANIC WORLD. NTIL the earlier portion of the present cen- tary, light, by the vast majority of civil- ized persons, was regarded as a medium for the sense of sight, and as very little more, With the discovery of its chemical functions, brought home to the popular mind by the invention of photography, a revolution in opinion took place, and the danger now is, not that its real powers should be overlooked, but that it should be cred- ited with effects in which its part is very doubt- ful. It has been especially proclaimed to be at once the creator and the destroyer of coloration in the organic world. The superior intensity of the light to which they are exposed has been pronounced the chief cause why diurnal species are more gayly colored than their nearest noctur- nal allies, and why the flora and the fauna—es- pecially the insects and the birds—of tropical regions are so rich in hues of a gorgeous char- acter. It may, therefore, be not uninteresting to inquire into this supposed double function of light, and ascertain, if possible, its limits in either direction. In so doing it will be impossi- ble for us to overlook the views put forward by Mr. A. R. Wallace in a recent issue of Macmillan’s Magazine. The bleaching power of the sun’s rays, and to a less extent of ordinary diffused daylight, has been fully recognized in the affairs of daily life. Tt has been observed that this same agency, utilized formerly in preparing vegetable fibre for the reception of colors, gradually destroys, in al- most every instance, the work of the dyer and the printer, and exerts a corresponding influence tpon the hues of plants. There is, however, a distinction by which its effects upon the integu- ments of animals are limited. It is well known that what we designate as color may be produced either by the interference or by the absorption of rays of light, and hence the colors of animals may be divided into two well-marked classes. On the one hand, especially in birds and insects, we find hues which are iri- descent, changeable according to the relative po- sitions of the observer and of the light, and are possessed of an intense, so-called, metallic lustre. Such colors—to take familiar examples—may be seen in the plumage of the peacock, of the star- ling, on the wings of the “purple emperor” butterfly (Apatura Jris), on the entire coating of the rose-beetle (Cetonia awrata), of the fire- wasp (Chryseis ignita), and of many other com- mon native insects. In the vegetable kingdom they may be pronounced unknown. Such colors are due to the interference of certain rays of light, whether reflected from superimposed trans- parent films or reflected from or refracted through minute striw. These colors are permanent, even on the most prolonged exposure to air, to atmos- pheric moisture, or to full sunlight. Unless the very texture of the feather, the wing-scale, the elytron, ete., be destroyed by putrefaction or combustion, the color remains unhurt. Nor can - we by any means extract from such colored sur- faces a dye or pigment capable of being applied to other objects. On the other hand, there are colors which do not change their shade from whatever position they are regarded, and which possess little of that intense lustre which marks the former class. To this kind belong the colors of all flowers, of caterpillars, of the great majority of our na- tive butterflies and moths, and, in short, of the vast bulk of organic beings. These colors are due to the absorption of certain of the rays of light, such absorption being effected by sub-

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE stances known as pigments, and capable, when present in sufficient quantity, of being extracted by solvents, and used to dye or stain other bodies. Such colors have not the permanence of the first- mentioned class. Every entomologist knows that if a case of butterflies be kept constantly exposed to the sun, or even to diffused daylight, then—no matter how completely air, damp, and mites, may be excluded—the specimens fade, even though the minute scales which clothe the wings may still be found in their places. Yet the golden spots on the wings of the Plusia and the pearl- mother markings of the “ fritillaries ” remain un- changed. The colors of most other insects be- have ini a very similar manner. Beetles are gen- erally supposed to wear a more permanent livery ; .\but every coleopterist must have observed how the reds of lady-birds, of Aphodius fimetarius, of Hater sanguineus, etc., lose their purity and brightness on exposure, and to some extent even on preservation in darkness. Even darker and more intense colors are gradually affected. Thus in the collection of native beetles in the British Museum, which have doubtless been exposed to the light for some years, the jet-black Typhaus vulgarie—absurdly known as the “ bull-comber ” —has taken a decided chestnut-brown, while a similar change has come over the blue - black elytra of the common dung-beetle. ’ To test the speed of the bleaching power of light upon deep-colored Coleoptera we placed in & glass case, outside a southwestern window, spec- imens of the following species: Cetonia aurata, Bupacilia Australasia, Typhous vulgaris, Geo- trupes stercorarius, Abaz striola, and Sternocera orientalis ; and exposed them to the sun during the months of June, July, and August, 1876. The Cetonia and the Sternocera, whose colors are of the interference class, were unaffected; but the black of the 7ypheus, the Geotrupes, and the Abaz, was changed to a brown, and the brown of the Zupecilia to a very dirty yellow. Thus we see that even the darkest and most intense pigment or absorption colors are affected by light ; and this fact accounts for one class of the variations which are met with in different speci- mens of one and the same species. An insect that has lived long, and has been much exposed to the sun, may have more degraded colors than such as are captured soon after reaching full per- fection. If we examine the nature of the changes produced by the action of light, we shall notice the following facts: Pigment greens, blues, lilacs, pinks, and roses—shades not very abundant in the MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. a + 4 animal kingdom—are the first to fade. Full reds; purples, and blacks, resist longer. Oranges, yel. greater permanence, merely taking a duller or rection. Blues and pale greens turn to a gray oF a yellowish drab; darker greens to an olive; lilacs, pinks, and roses, to various shades of gray; ples a very dirty brown; yellows and oranges verge more to a pale brown, and may rank as buffs or fawns. The alteration is, therefore, from the primary or secondary toward the tertiary colors, accompanied with a decrease in depth? But we have never seen a primary color, when fading under the influence of light, pass into an- other primary color; nor does any secondary or tertiary color ever pass into-a primary. ~The change which blacks undergo will not seem sar prising if we reflect that in Nature, as well as in art, they generally consist of an intense olive or brown to which a deep blue or purple is super added. The latter hues, being the more fugitive, fade first on exposure to light, and thus a dirty olive or a rusty brown must remain. These changes are in partial harmony with what we observe in the vegetable kingdom. A dull, dirty brown is the ultimate goal toward which leaves, flowers, and fruits, as well as in- sects, tend while fading; but those splendid in- termediate changes which we find in autumnal foliage have nothing analogous in the decaying colors of insects. It is curious that in the manufacture of those artificial colors which now play so important part in tinctorial operations a corresponding rule holds good. If these dyes, during their elabora- tion, are submitted to a heat too high or too pro- longed, the product becomes dusky, and a dirty brownish gray is the final result. We must further note how, in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, pure and bright colors are connected with the highest vitality only. We plant the dusky seed in the earth amid the dark remains of decomposing organic matter, and as it grows up we see it put on higher and higher colors, till, in the culminating moment of its life, in the act of inflorescence, prismatic hues are all but universal. Then begins the process of de- cay, attended by a degradation of color. Similar changes may be traced in animals. Externally we need merely compare the dull-colored larva with the brilliant imago, or the sombre-coated nestling with the brighter plamage of the matare bird. Internally we may contrast the intensely- bi lows, fawns, drabs, browns, and olives, have still dirtier tone. The changes ensue in a definitedi. — reds become a reddish or yellowish brown; pur

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i HE lig Veeck oa eee ayes are vitalized scarlet arterial blood with the darker- colored and more contaminated venous blood, and still further with excrementitious matters. The great truth to which we are here calling at- tention has not altogether escaped the notice of Mr. Wallace, who writes: “The very frequent superiority of the male bird or insect in bright- ness or intensity of color, even when the general tints and coloration are the same, now seems to me to be due to the greater vigor and activity and the higher vitality of the male. The colors of an ani- mal usually fade during disease or. weakness, while robust health and vigor add to their in- tensity. This intensity of coloration is most when the vitality is at a maximum.” But we are not aware that either Mr. Wallace or any one else has fully grasped the principle laid down above, or traced its numerous applications, esthetic as very great diversity in permanence due to the na- ture of the colors themselves, or to that of the tissues in which they inhere. Dr. Hagen divides such colors into epidermal, placed in hair, in feathers, and in the chitinic exo-skeleton of in- sects; and hypodermal, situate in the softer inter- nal layers of the skin. That the latter are the more easily affected by any external influence is natural. - Alterations and degradations of color similar to those above mentioned may, indeed, under cer- tain circumstances, be produced even in the ab- sence of light. But we have direct experimental evidence to show that, other things being equal, animal matters retain their colors most complete- lyin the absence of light, and fade the more rapidly in proportion to the intensity of the illumination to which they are exposed. Hence we are compelled to recognize light as a destroyer of animal coloration. But light is generally regarded not merely as a color-destroyer, but as a color-producer, and it is-with this its supposed function that we have new to deal. Those who take here the affirma- tive view rely mainly on two facts, or supposed facts, to which we have already briefly referred— the higher coloration and the superior brilliance of the tropical fauna, and the sombre hues of necturnal and subterranean beings. At these facts we must look, and seek to ascertain their 1 Those who are brought practically in contact with animals have long been familiar with the fact thats “@ull coat” is indicative of disease, or at least of weakness. 60 ss i vik Ss ‘ THE ACTION OF LIGHT, ETC. Fn tae ~ pane 2 oat NG 2 lt meaning. We must of course admit that Europe produces no humming-birds or trogons, no Be lionota or Pachyrhynchi ; but we must also re- member that the total number of species of birds, of reptiles, and of insects found, say in South America, is far greater than the sum total exist- ing in Britain or on the European Continent. Hence, even if the tendency to produce a gay coloration were equal in either case, the proba- bility is that South America would be the richer in gorgeous species. Again, travelers who visit tropical countries not unnaturally select the most showy forms, and their collections are therefore not a fair average. Naturalists, such as Mr. Wallace, who have taken the trouble to examine closely, find that even in New Guinea, Borneo, or Brazil, dull-looking species exist in numbers. Had we catalogues of the insects of such coun- tries as complete as those we possess for Britain, France, or Germany, our views as to the general character of a tropical fauna would be doubtless modified. As the insects of warm climates, also, are upon the whole larger than those of our hyper- borean latitudes, they necessarily attract atten- tion, and their beauty does not pass unseen; yet every entomologist knows that even in Britain we possess “tiny miracles of Nature” which, if viewed with a lens of low power, display a splen- dor little—if at all—inferior to the most richly- attired tropical species. We will merely mention, as instances, Chryseis iynila, Chrysomela cerealis, Donacia proteus, Polydrusus micans and flavipes, Rhynchites betula and populi, Lampra rutilans,and Anthrazia salicis, Calosoma sycophanta, also, if very rare in Britain, is very common in certain parts of Central Europe, and may be fairly con- sidered one of the most gorgeous species of the entire family of Carabidae to be met with in any part of the world. The case, then, seems to stand thus: We have in Britain certain species, small, and it may be rare, which display the very same shades of color and the same brilliance as we find in the most admired forms of tropical life. This fact seems to us scarcely consistent with the theory that the more intense light of low latitudes is a prominent factor in the production of splendid colors. Were such the case, gayly-colored spe- cies in our climate would not merely be fewer and smaller ; they would rather be altogether wanting. Again, different portions of the torrid zone differ very widely as regards the number, and even the beauty, of the richly-attired birds and insects they produce. Thus, as Mr. Wallace has pointed out, in New Guinea 50 per cent. of the

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ee t THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. birds are brilliantly colored, while in the Malay Islands and in the valley of the Amazon the pro- portion does not exceed 33 per cent, Can this distinction be rationally ascribed to any excess of light enjoyed by New Guinea over and above the amount received by the valley of the Ama- zon? Both these respective districts lie under the equator; both are fruitful, plentifully sup- plied with moisture, well-wooded, and exposed, as far as we can perceive, to very similar mete- orological conditions. But if excess of light can- not be the cause of the superiority of New Guinea over equinoctial Brazil, why should it be put forward to explain the superiority of Brazil as compared with Britain? Why sbould the fauna of the Philippine Islands, as is remarked by Mr. Wallace in his invaluable “Glasgow Address,” be so rich in species of exceptionally splendid colors? Can there be in those islands either any excess in the quantity or any peculiarity in the quality of the sunlight? That there is, no one has yet even attempted to show, and were such the case it would doubtless be traceable in a va- a aR REN EE Reg world. Another important point has been raised by Mr. Bates. He shows that while in many tropi- cal butterflies the males are most splendidly col- ored, the females—in numbers of cases at least— are sombre and insignificant in appearance, so much so that in former times they were often regarded as specifically distinct from their mates. If excess of light, therefore, be the producing cause of the splendor of the tropical Lepidoptera, why should not the effect appear alike in both sexes? To this argument, however, the reply has been made that in these very species the fe- males are exceedingly sedentary in their habits, remaining generally concealed in shady thick- ets, while the males flutter about in the sun- shine, and, being thus more exposed to light, ex- perience modifications which—transmitted with constant accumulation from one generation to another—have produced the splendor now char- acteristic of their sex. To this question of the relative amount of exposure to light in different stages of existence we shall have to return. But the amount—or at least the intensity and clearness—of the sun does not necessarily vary with latitude alone. The air of some countries is more transparent, less obscured by fogs and clouds than that of others. More light evidently reaches the earth’s surface on open plains or on table-lands and in deserts than in dense forests and in narrow valleys. Do we find any corre- | sponding variation in the prevalent hues of thy animal population of these respective lo Mr. Wallace points out that the most clad birds and insects are dwellers in the forests where the amount of light received is compar. tively scanty. On the other hand, in the deserta, where—as we have already mentioned—light must attain its terrestrial maximum, the prevalent coloration, if not dark, is certainly neither light nor brilliant. As the Rev. H. Tristram remarks, in such regions the smaller mammalia, the birds, the snakes, and lizards, are alike sand-colored, their hues having evidently more reference to concealment than to the influence of an intense illumination. There is indeed, if we wish to come to details, a curious want of harmony in the effects which light is expected to produce. We know that it bleaches in certain cases and darkens:in others ; but it is no easy task for us to predict when either of these opposite effects will be mani- fested. Still it is perfectly possible that light might have a bleaching power upon some living orgap- isms, and a darkening effect upon others, according to their different molecular structure. There;is, for instance, little doubt but that the air of Persia is, as a rule, exceedingly transparent ; the climate is dry, mists and clouds comparatively rare, wood lands scanty, and the country generally open We have even heard it stated that there thesat- ellites of Jupiter are occasionally visible with the naked eye. Here, therefore, we have doubtless a case of light in its greatest intensity; butjae cording to Mr. Blanford, Persian specimens, are generally paler than their nearest European repre sentatives. Here, if light be directly concerned, its action must be of a bleaching character ; yet — we generally find in mammals, in birds and rep tiles, as well as in insects, the upper surface,or portion most exposed to the sun, is darker than the under side, or than parts generally kept.ia the shade. An animal in whom the contrary.a> rangement prevails—such as the common badger — —has much of the appearance of a caricature This darkening of the superior surface of animals is again adduced as an instance of the chrome genic power of light, a view to which we shall afterward take occasion to revert. ” As regards the comparison between the trop ical and the extra-tropical faune the case maj, perhaps, be fairly summed up thus: There ae — certain cosmopolitan groups whose member, — wherever found, are alike devoid of rich or brill- iant coloration ; there are other groupe—such as the Ornithoptera, the Papiliones, the Buprestida, the Cetoniadee, the trogons, humming-birds, birds

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FRRPSRSS EFES Ree EeGahGasTePREESSTSEE CHEER AESELESTAeie THE ACTION: ment of splendid hues, and which, if not exclu- sively tropical, have their headquarters and pro- duce their largest representatives within the tor- rid zone. Other groups, again, attain their great- est splendor beyond the tropics, e. g., the ducks, the pheasants, and, among insects, the ground- beetles, or Carabide. It has, indeed, been sug- that if the colder regions of the earth are now inferior to the tropical districts in the beauty of their fauna, the cause may be sought in the tavages of the Glacial epoch. If the most mag- nificent species were forest-dwellers, as we now find it to be the case in warm climates, their de- struction would be almost inevitably involved in the desolation of their haunts, and the annihila- tion of their food. Perhaps, too, the very splen- dor of such supposed forms would render them more conspicuous to their enemies, and thus ac- celerate their extirpation. All such speculations, however, are little more than conjectural. We conclude, indeed, judging from the fossil remains of insects discovered at (ningen and elsewhere (see Quarterly Journal of Science, vii., 255), that certain groups, now mainly tropical or sub-tropi- cal, were very extensively developed in Central Europe ; but at the same time we find indications ‘that the climate, at least as far as warmth is con- cerned, was almost tropical in its character. We may next inquire whether the relative ‘rilliance of color in various animal groups is ‘at all connected with their diurnal or nocturnal habits, or with their greater or less exposure to light at different stages of their development. It is a truism that the diurnal Lepidoptera are upon the average much more highly colored than the nocturnal species, the moths. Some weight has been laid on the circumstance that in butterflies both sides of the wings are freely exposed to light, and that both are also adorned with a vari- ety of hues, while in moths, where the ander sur- face of the wings is not turned to the light, it generally exhibits a dull and uniform coloration ; but these facts admit of much qualification. Even among the small number of beetles indig- enous in Britain there are some—such as Ere- bia Cassiope, Cenonympha Davus, and Thanaos Tages—certainly less brightly colored than many moths. Many species of butterflies, also, if rich- ly colored on the upper surface of the wings, can boast no gay or varied tints beneath. We need only mention the common peacock (Vanessa Jo), Again, in certain genera of moths we find colors 28 vivid as can be met with in butterflies—e. g., eae “” Callimorpha, Huchelia, Chelonia, and Catocala, The most remarkable feature in these genera is that the chief display of color appears on the upper surface of the hind-wings—a part as lit- tle exposed to light as the lower surface, since when the insect is at rest, in the daytime, it is completely screened by the anterior pair of wings. In the larva state it cannot be said that Lepi- dopterous insects are much exposed to light. As a rule the caterpillars of the diurnal as well as of the nocturnal species prefer shade to sunshine. It is perhaps somewhat curious that the habits of the larva stand in no regular connection with the diurnal or nocturnal character of the mature insect. Turning to the Coleoptera, we find further facts unfavorable to the supposed predomi- are the majority—as live in total darkness are, indeed, generally of a dull, dirty gray, con- trasting strongly with caterpillars which are more or less exposed to light, and many of which exhibit a bright and pleasing coloration. This circumstance, like the etiolation of plants reared up in darkness, is certainly in favor of the view that light is not without influence upon or- ganic coloration ; but, on the other hand, let us consider the after-life of some of these dull-look- ing beetle-grubs. The most gorgeous, perhaps, of all Coleoptera are the Buprestidw. These creatures spend the whole of their larval and pupal life within the trunks of trees, and conse- quently in total darkness. When mature, in- deed, they sport for a time in the checkered sun- light of the woodlands. But why, if light be the main cause of animal coloration, should they be so far superior in brilliance to the Longicornes, or wood-beetles, which from birth té death are exposed to precisely the same circumstances ? Taking the opposite extreme, the Staphylinidw— of which the common “ devil’s coach-horse” is a familiar example—rank in appearance among the dullest and least decorated of all the insect tribes, whether they inhabit cold or warm cli- mates ; yet these creatures, instead of leading the earlier part of their life in complete and con- stant darkness, are active when larve, and may be seen running about in the daylight, seeking for prey. Surely, therefore, being eo much more exposed to light than the Buprestidew or the Ce- toniade, they ought, on the theory we are exam- ining, to be at least correspondingly beautiful. Let us turn to the Melolonthide, of which the

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE .MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. common and destructive insect known as the cockchafer may serve as the type. Their early life is spent in darkness, since when larve they live underground, devouring the roots of plants. When mature their colors must be pronounced far less brilliant than those of their near allies, the rose-beetles (Cetoniadw), which are equally nursed in darkness. It will be, of course, ob- jected that the adult cockehafer is a nocturnal —or, at least, a twilight-loving—insect, while the rose-beetle feeds and flies by day. We will, therefore, take another instance—that of the Elaterids, or click-beetles. As larve they, like the immature cockchafer, live underground, but when mature they are diurnal in their habits; yet the general coloration of the family is what some people call “sober,” scarcely more gay than that of the Melolonthide, and forming a most striking contrast to that of the Buprestide, whom they so closely approach at once in their structure and in the degree of light which they encounter, both in their earlier stages and in ma- ture life. Again, we may consider the weevils (Curculionide), all of them when larve burrow- ing from daylight in the interior of fruits and in the buds and stems of plants; yet, when mature, some of them—e. g., the diamond-beetle—are as remarkably brilliant as others are conspicuously sombre. On the other hand, attention is drawn to the Chrysomelide, to which the redoubtable Colorado beetle—vilely called the potato-bug—belongs, a family very richly and brightly colored. Their ’ Jarve are active, and they are thus throughout their lives exposed to the sunshine. Among the animal population of the seas and rivers, also, we meet with facts, not a few, diffi- cult to reconcile with the hypothesis under ex- amination. It must be admitted that in all waters, save the very shallowest, the amount of light enjoyed must be very decidedly less than that which falls upon the surface of the land in similar climates ; -yet we do not find that the denizens of the waters are, as a general rule, less vividly colored than those of the dry land. On the contrary, fishes, crustaceans, mollusks, be- sides aquatic forms lower in the seale of exist- ence, such as the sea-anemones, display all the colors of the rainbow in a purity and in a pro- fusion rivaling what we observe in the most gor- geous birds and insects. We admit that splendid oceanic forms are more abundant in tropical waters than in higher latitudes, and also that in a majority of cases the inmates of shallow waters are more vividly colored than the dwellers in deeper and consequently darker seas. But what must be inferred from the following observations, extracted from a paper by H. N. Mosely, late naturalist to the Challenger Expedition, read be fore the Linnean Society on February 15, 18779 “A species of Edwardsia, from 600 fathoms, has undergone but little modification from the littoral form. The Cerianthus, from 2,750 fathoms, i like its shore-brethren. Thus one species ig found in shallow water at the Philippines, under the full glare of the tropical sun, while another species exists at three miles’ depth, where solar rays never penetrate, and where the water is at freezing-point. The deep sea-anemones retain vivid colors in the dark.” a This fact is very suggestive. It agrees with the often-expressed view of teleologically. disposed naturalists, that all the brilliant hue of animal and vegetable life have been called inte existence for man’s delectation ; but no less does it clash with the conclusions drawn from the paleness and obscurity of certain nocturnal, sub. terranean, or cave-haunting animals, such as the Coleopterous larve to which we have referred, wood-lice, crickets, ete. Light, it would seem, is not the sole condition for the production of positive color; nor are the dwellers in darkness — necessarily restricted to a garb of whites, blacks, and grays. It can, further, scarcely be contended that the land-shells of any country are more vividly and intensely colored than the maring shells of its coasts, many of which are as highly decorated within as without; yet a land-shél will doubtless receive a larger share ‘a radiations than a sea-shell. Again, while there is thus chesteabegell that an aquatic or even a deep-sea existence & not necessarily incompatible with a rich colors tion, we find certain groups—the aquatic insects —ordinarily plain in their hues. The water-bee tles, chiefly frequenting shallow pools and rivers, present ordinarily a dark-olive, black, or brown coloration, relieved at most with rusty yellow, and those of tropical climates show little, if any, . preéminence in this respect over their allies from colder regions. But these beetles, be it noted, if devoid of splendor, are not etiolated. The water-scorpion, water-boatman, and other aquatie Hemiptera, though living rather on than in the water, ep ORpenntts es: ee markably plain in their coloration. We have repeatedly referred to fate mals ; but it will be observed that in the higher forms of life the common views concerning theit — dominant colors scarcely hold good. Thus the

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Sv EhE : obethiecd Fe Peaeg mo BS CEEPARSASA TSG eR RESSSRES i) Fas & THE ACTION OF LIGHT, ETO. though not decked out with any metallic soe differ little in the general character of their coloration from their diurnal kindred, the hawks, bold, well-defined patterns, and a va- riety of black, fawn, brown, buff, and white shades. Few mammals display more vivid hues than the Felidz, most of which are unquestiona- bly nocturnal. Many nightly or subterranean in- sects also, such as Sphodrus leucopthalmus and Pristonychus terricola, show no signs of etiolation. Even the common cockroach makes no approach to that pallid, ghastly hue which is commonly supposed characteristic of animals inhabiting sunless localities. Among nocturnal species we believe few, if any, instances can be found where the male surpasses the female in brightness or depth of coloring. Mr. Wallace, however, while going perhaps even further than we should be prepared to ac- company him in the rejection of the theory which regards animal coloration as directly proportion- ate to the intensity of solar radiation, gives some curious instances of phenomena proving that in certain cases light has a direct action upon the colors of organic beings. Thus Mr. T. W. Wood, some time ago, pointed out that the chrysalids of the small “ cabbage white” (Pontia rapa) va- ried in color when the larve had been fed up in boxes lined with different colored materials. Those which were kept in black boxes were nearly black, while such as had lived in white boxes were almost white. He observed corresponding changes in the same species in a state of Nature: chrysalids fixed against a whitewashed wall being whitish; those secured to a red-brick wall being ' geddish; while those fixed against a pitched pal- ing were nearly black. The cocoon of the em- peror moth is also observed to be either white or brown, in accordance with the colors of surround- ing objects, A still more decisive instance of such changes has been observed in the chrysalis of Papilio Nireus, a South-African butterfly which has been studied by Mrs. Barber. It acquires, more or less exactly, the color of any contiguous object. “A number of the caterpillars were placed in a case with a glass cover, one side of the ease being formed by a red-brick wall, the other sides being of yellowish wood. They were fed on orange-leaves, and a branch of the bottle. brush tree (Banksia) was also placed in the case. When fully fed, some attached themselves to the orange-twigs, others to the bottle-brush branch— and these all changed to green pupe; but each corresponded exactly in tint to the leaves around it, the ove being a dark and the other a pale, faded green. Another attached itself to the wood, and the pupa became of the same yellowish color ; while one fixed itself just where the wood and brick joined, and became one side red, the other side yellow.” , This Mr. Wallace pronounces “a kind of nat- ural photography, the particular colored rays to which the fresh pupa is exposed in its soft,-semi- transparent condition effecting such a chemical change in the organic juices as to produce the same tint in the hardened skin.” This power of the pupa to assume the color of closely-adjacent objects, however, is limited, since when Mrs.. Barber surrounded one of her caterpillars with a piece of scarlet cloth the pupa displayed its ordi- nary green tint, though the small red spots with which it is marked were rendered abnormally bright. It must be recorded, however, that these very interesting changes are confined to the chrys- alis, and do not appear to have extended in any way to the mature butterfly. We have never been able to trace any modification in the colors of butterflies reared, for one generation, in ab- normally-colored light, nor, as far as we are aware, has any other observer been more suc- cessful. A correspondence has also been in some in- stances traced between the colors of animals and those of the localities which they inhabit and the food which they eat. Spiders have been found of exactly the same tint as the flowers in which they lurk. Mr. Wallace, on the authority of Sir Charles Dilke, mentions a pink-colored Mantis which, when at rest, closely resembles the pink flower of an orchis, and is thus enabled to seize unsuspecting butterflies. But we should be wrong in ascribing such similarity of coloration to the effects of reflected light, or, indeed, of any merely physical influence. They are almost certainly due to physiological causes, and are instances of what is called “ protective coloration.” There is another class of phenomena which at first sight seems due to the action of light. Many insects when they first emerge from the pupa are abnormally pale, and do not take their full ma- ture coloration until after a longer or shorter in- terval of time. It was in virtue of this property that an entomologist, commissioned by the Ger- man Government to inspect a field where the dreaded Colorado beetle had made its appear- ance, was enabled to decide that these insect en- emies had only just appeared in the mature form, and that on turning up the ground a further stock would be found in a rudimentary state, as on actual trial was found to be the case. But this

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8T4 THE POPULAR SOIENCE gradual development of color has not been proved to be the result of light. We have reared up caterpillars in perfect darkness, and have found their colors on reaching maturity no less brilliant than those of their fellows which had been ex- posed to light in the ordinary course of Nature. In the case of interference-colors a change in the physical condition of the integuments, conse- quent of their drying and hardening on exposure - to the air, is doubtless necessary for their devel- opment. The evolution of the pigment-colors we are at present investigating, and believe that it is simply due to a process of oxidation. Some other of the phenomena advanced in support of the “light-theory” of organic color- ation may also be, with great probability, referred to other causes. Thus some ascribe to light the fact that the upper surface of most animals is more intensely colored than their under side. Many fishes have a dark back, and a pale grayish blue or greenish belly; but, as Mr. Wallace points out, this arrangement seems more protective than due to the action of light. An enemy—say a sea- bird—looking down from above will have diffi- culty in distinguishing the dark back of the fish amid the water. On the other hand, an enemy looking from below will see the pale belly of the fish against the dull bluish color of the sky as seen on looking up through the water, and will scarcely detect its presence. Now, were this ar- rangement of colors reversed, the fish would be much more readily seen, either from above or from below, and the chances of its escaping from its enemies would be much reduced. At the same time it‘must be confessed that this explanation is not admissible in all cases of a similar arrange- ment of color. Thus in many crustaceans unable to swim, and therefore not liable to be seen by any enemy from below, the under surface is much paler than the back. Similarly slugs—whether creeping upon the ground, upon the stems or leaves of vegetables—are liable to be espied from the back or the sides, but never from beneath ; yet in most cases their under surface ix decided- ly paler than their back. These instances, and others which might be adduced, certainly seem to agree better with the supposition of a darken- ing influence due to the freer action of light upon the upper side than with that of a protective dis- tribution of color. But from the whole of the evidence before us, | especial attention being paid to the case of the deep-sea anemones, we are forced to conclude that the coloration of an animal species is not, in the mathematical use of the word, a function of the MONTHLY.—S8UPPLEMENT. pe: rt amount of solar radiations to which it’ is% to deny the influence of sunlight upon the hues of seareely needs to be stated. alt The fact that Lepidopterous larve are in majority of cases, partially at least, of a green color, is not inexplicable. They retain in their bodies, in an undecomposed state, the chlorophyll on the other hand, whether Lepidopterous or Col leopterous, which feed not upon leaves, but upon wood, roots, seeds, ete., not containing chiore green color, without our taking the presence or absence of light into account. Hence we need not wonder that the caterpillars of the goat-moth cornes, Buprestide, Dynastide, etc., are not green: they have not been consuming a green pigment. But why have we comparatively so few green but- terflies and moths, and so many green birds and green beetles? The green colors found in birds and in beetles—with the exception of such forms as Cassida, a leaf-feeder—are due not to a pig- ment, but to the interference of light, so that theit formation must be explained on different princ- ples. The paucity of green butterflies may, per haps, be traced to the fact that chlorophyll iss mixture of two coloring principles '—cyanophyill, which is blue, and xanthophyll, which is yellow the latter of these colors being much more'pet manent that the other. Hence if, as appears ex- ceedingly probable, chlorophyll is assimilated by leaf-eating insects, a number of phenomena cod- nected with their coloration become at once intel ligible. We have mentioned in an earlier part of this paper that among animal tints pigment-greens are generally the first to fade, and that they be- come a dull yellow or a yellowish drab, as may be observed in a specimen, say, of Cassida eques- tris, which, however carefully preserved, s00n loses its pale-green hue, and turns yellowish. The reason of this change, we contend, is that the ¢y- anophyll or blue coloring-matter first undergoes decomposition, while the yellow xanthophyll alotie remains. A similar change, taking place in the _ living animal in its pupa condition, is the cause | why pigment-greens are so rare alike among Lep- | “eal | 1 Some authorities consider that chlorophyll fs 8 mixture not of two, but of three coloring principles (Fremy and Cloéz), or of four (Stokes). As these, however, are in all cases found to be respectively bine and yellow, the view we have taken will not be affected | by these discordant results.. ie posed. That this conclusion does not compel is all animals, under all conceivable circumstances; — of the leaves upon which they have fed. Larva, — phyll, may naturally be found deficient in: this ; and the wood-leopard, the larve of the Longi ©

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THE ACTION OF LIGHT, ETC. idoptera and Coleoptera, while yellows and browns of different shades are so exceedingly common, and relatively so permanent. We find also that certain caterpillars, green in the earlier part of their life generally, though not invariably, take a brown color as they approach the time of their assuming the pupa state. But even supposing that chlorophyll is de- monstrably assimilated or deposited in the tis- sues of certain insects, the hypothesis we have been suggesting takes us but a very little way. We have still to ask why the green color in cer- tain species remains undecomposed to the mature condition, while in others it disappears in the pupal or even in the larval state, and how, after disappearance or absence in the larva, as in Cherocampa Elpenor, it appears in the perfect insect? We have to inquire why certain diurnal caterpillars, consuming as much chlorophyll as do any others—e. g., Vanessa Jo, V. zanthomelas, V. urtice, etc.—are free from a green colora- tion? At the same time we must admit that in caterpillars of this class a yellow pattern is very rarely absent, as if the xanthophyll had already been separated from the cyanophyll. We have to explain the pigment-blues, of which there seem to be two, if not three, the identity of which with éyanophyll must not be too rashly assumed, though in’ many cases we see both blue and yel- low spots appearing in a butterfly, as if the two colors, which in its earlier state had been blended together, were now separated, as in Papilio Ma- chaon. We have, further, to throw a light upon the origin of the pigment-reds, to two of which Mr. Wallace refers as being different in their chemical constitution and behavior. But chlorophyll is not the only substance which has been called into requisition in order to explain the mysteries of animal coloration. It has not escaped the attention of biologists that all those creatures which develop, more or less frequently, beautiful hues, are precisely the same imwhich uric acid is abundantly secreted—i. e., birds, reptiles, insects—while in the mammalia, in which the secretion of uric acid is trifling, the prevailing colors are dull, It was asserted that while uric acid is abundantly found in the excre- Sions of parrots, humming-birds, ete., at other times of the year, during and immediately before the moulting season it was absent. Hence the inference that this compound might play a part in the elaboration of the new plumage was not ‘warrantable. In addition came the fact that a beautiful violet color, known as murexide, and capable of producing a variety of shades, was ar- tificially obtained from uric acid.' Unfortunately, when these investigations were carried on, the distinction between interference-colors and ab- sorption-colors had not been fully apprehended, and the iridescent hues of humming-birds, tro- gons, Belionote, were supposed to be due to some peculiar pigments of unknown composition, Nor has it, as far as we are aware, ever been shown that the excreta of splendidly-colored birds are richer in uric acid than those of sea-fowl. For the present, therefore, the uric-acid theory must be considered as useless. A consideration of the food of different spe- cies might at first sight appear likely to throw some light upon the nature of their coloration, But we find intense splendor and varied tinta alike among carnivorous species (Cicindelide and certain Carabide), wood-eaters (Buprestide), and leaf-eaters (Chrysomelide). We find dull and sordid colors among many carrion and dung- feeders (Silphide, Aphodiide, Staphylinide), while others addicted to a similar diet—such as most species of the genus Phaneus—display the most splendid hues, Nor is an examination of the diet of birds more satisfactory.* It may perhaps be thought that in an inquiry into the influence of light upon the coloration of animals a consideration of their diet, or of their peculiar secretions and excretions, is out of place. But whether solar radiations, or local atmospheric influences, or the need of protection take a great- er or smaller share in the development of color, there must be essential differences in the material upon which these causes act. Mammals are ex- posed to the same climatic influences as birds and insects, and are likewise exposed to dangers which they might escape by a coloration favor- able to concealment. Their hair is, chemically considered, a material no less suitable for the display of gay and brilliant colors than are the feathers of birds, the scales of serpents, or the chitinous coating of insects; yet neither in lus- tre, in varying play of color, nor in delicacy and 1 Murexide, known in the commercial world as “Roman purple” and “ Tyrian purple,” was some time ago prepared from guano—i. e., the excreta of sea-fowl—and was in considerable demand among dy- ers and calico-printers. Being costlier than the coal- tar colors, it is now superseded. 2 In addition to the case of chlorophyll] above men- tioned there seem to be individual instances where the coloring-matter of a plant, if eaten by insects, may be traced in their secretions. We do not know whether the deep reddish violet liquid which exudes from Timarcha levigata, an insect feeding upon bed- straw, « plant of the madder tribe, has ever been ex- amined for alizarin or purpurin. ;

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816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.--8UPPLEMENT. elaborateness of design, do they make even the faintest approach to a rivalry with these groups of animals. There must therefore be an internal source of coloration, not everywhere present, upon which external influences may react. Mr. Wallace, while rejecting the light-theory, brings forward certain principles which he con- siders throw a light upon the phenomena of color in organic Nature. While demurring to the com- mon conclusion that tropical light and heat are the cause of color, he fully recognizes the general fact that “all the more intense and gorgeous tints are manifested by the animal life of the tropics, while in some groups, such as butterflies and birds, there is a marked preponderance of highly-colored species.” This phenomenon he ascribes to a variety of causes, some of which yet remain to be discovered. The foremost place is given to the following consideration: “The luxuriant vegetation of the tropics throughout the entire year affords so much concealment that color may there be safely developed to a much greater extent than in climates where the trees are bare in winter, during which season the ‘ struggle for existence is most severe, and even the slightest disadvantage may prove fa Fully admitting the force of this consideration in the case of birds, we must yet, with all the deference due to so eminent an authority as Mr. Wallace, point out that it can have very little moment as regards insects which during the win- ter are in a dormant condition, as larve or pups, either in the earth, in the trunks of trees, or other localities where neither beauty can be- tray them nor its lack screen them from the pur- suit of any enemy. As the first among the causes of coloration he places the need of protection. He points out that browns and other tertiary colors, being most readily produced by “an irregular mixture of many kinds of solar rays, are most likely to occur when the need of protection is slight, or even when it does not exist at all, always sup- posing that bright colors are not in any way use- ful to the species.” Hence browns, olives, and other dirty colors, may naturally be expected to predominate. Brilliant colors, again, often serve as a sign that their wearer possesses some unpleasant or dangerous property, and hence warn possible enemies to pass on and seek some less nauseous prey. The number of apparently feeble and de- fenseless species which are clad in the most con- spicuous colors, and which are avoided and re- * fused by birds, monkeys, spiders, etc., is aston- ishing. The present writer, in a paper read before the Entomological Society (‘‘ Transactions of the Entomological Society,” 1877, Part Ill, page 205), has shown that, in a great number of cases at least, the most showy and conspicuonug caterpillars feed upon plants either absolutely. poisonous or possessing offensive flavors and. odors, whence the rejection of such larvae by in. sectivorous animals. Their brilliant coloration ig, therefore simply a danger-signal. The theory of “ Sexual Selection,” upon which, Mr. Darwin lays great weight, Mr. Wallace finds. himself unable to accept as in any way an ex planation of the distribution of color in animals,. He remarks that “while male butterflies rival; or even excel, the most gorgeous male birds im bright colors and elegant patterns, there is liter. ally not one particle of evidence that the female is influenced by color, or even that she has any, power of choice, while there is much direet evi-, dence to the contrary.” In the case of the silk-, moth Mr. Darwin admits that “the females ap- pear not to evince the least choice in regard to’ their partners.” On the principle of natural) selection among a number of rival male butter- flies, “the most vigorous and energetic” will, probably be successful, and, as these properties are very generally correlated with intensity of, color, natural selection ‘‘ becomes a prestrver and: intensifier of color.” Very similar is the case’ among birds. We know that in many species the male displays his colors and ornaments, but, as Mr. Wallace contends, there is a total absence of any evidence that the females admire, or even notice, this display. ‘‘ The hen, the tur- key, and the peafowl, go on feeding, while the male is displaying iis finery, and there is reason to believe that it is his persistency and energy, rather than his beauty, which wins the day.” Here, again, vigor and intense vitality seem to be the chief recommendations of the male in the eyes of the female, and these—as is very strik- ingly manifest in the game-cock—appear corre-, lated with intense coloration. Mr. Wallace re sumes : ‘ Evidence collected by Mr. Darwin him-. self proves that each bird finds a mate under any, circumstances. He gives a number of cases of. one of a pair of birds being shot, and of the sur-. vivor being always found paired again almost, immediately.. This is sufficiently explained on, the assumption that the destruction of birds by. various causes is continually leaving widows and. widowers in nearly equal proportions, and thus. each one finds a fresh mate; and it leads to the conclusion that permanently unpaired birds are a Geb Oe ate of: ae 6k oetlUcee CUeelC el” CU Le Cl Ue eee CO Ce ls “ee wa ears es = «= «© = «8

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Bressarese ” $838 O=- FS reese MT SMS OSCE SS PAS STESTSETSESS See PTs THE ANCIENT SILK-TRADERS’ ROUTE. very scaree, so that, speaking broadly, every bird finds a wate and breeds. But this would almost or quite neutralize any effect of sexual selection, of color, or ornament, since the less highly- colored birds would be at no disadvantage as regards leaving healthy offspring.” While ac- cepting this conclusion, we may ask whether the same argument is not capable of further applica- tion? It is generally stated that the “ fittest” male—i. e., the one most in harmony with the circumstances in which he is placed—will have the best chance of securing a mate and of leaving offspring, while the feebler, the slower, the less energetic, and those least in harmony with the situation, will be left in a state of single blessed- ness, and will not transmit their attributes to posterity. But, on the principles laid down in ‘the passage we have just quoted, the effects of natural selection will be greatly neutralized. It must, however, be remembered that the destruc- tion of birds, especially in a state of Nature, will not fall exclusively or mainly upon those which have secured mates, but will likewise extend to the unwedded, , While combating Mr. Darwin’s view, that the brilliant colors of butterflies have been ac- quired for the sake of protection, Mr. Wallace remarks: “It is, in fact, somewhat remarkable how very generally the black spots, ocelli, or bright patches of color, are on the tips, margins, or disks of the wings; and, as the insects are necessarily visible while flying, and this is the time when they are most subject to attacks of insectivorous birds, the position of the more com _ spicuous parts at some distance from the body may be a real protection to them.” This rule, however, is by no means universal. The fire-wasp (Chryseis), and not a few other Hymenoptera, have brilliantly-colored bodies, but colorless and transparent wings, which, when expanded and in action, are scarcely visible. In numbers of Lepi- doptera the more intense colors, especially reds, are found entirely or mainly on the posterior wings, which extend to a less distance from the body than do the anterior pair. In many cases, again, Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Hymenoptera, display conspicuous colors at the extremity of the abdomen, where a blow from the beak of a bird would doubtless permanently disable. A question may here arise concerning the use of the coloration of the posterior or true wings in certain beetles, a circumstance not sufficiently examined. While these wings in the vast ma- jority of Coleopterous species are colorless, or, at” most, of a very faint yellowish hue, in the Colo- rado beetle they are pink, and purple in several Chrysochroas, Pachnodas, and Lomapteras. Why should these species thus differ from other close- ly-allied forms, with whom they appear to agree most closely in their habits ? We have no doubt that Mr. Wallace’s formal declaration against the doctrine of sexual selec- tion will attract the attention of disbelievers in evolution, and we venture to hope that all the comments which will be elicited may not be be- side the question.— Quarterly Journal of Science, THE ANCIENT SILK-TRADERS’ ROUTE ACROSS CENTRAL ASIA. HE paper on the above subject read by Baron Richthofen before the Berlin Geo- Praphical Society, on the 5th of May last, was based, in a great measure, on the general views enumerated in the author’s recently-published work on China, the more detailed information being derived from Ptolemy and Chinese sources. It opened with a general sketch of Central Asian geography, in which the parts played by the Him- : Kuen-Lun, Tien-shan, and Altai systems were clearly expounded. The Tarim Basin the author likened to a gigantic horseshoe-shaped Plain, the sides of which are formed by the Tien- shan and the Kuen-Lun. This horseshoe was the western part of a former extensive sea, which was bounded on the north by the Altai Range. Its eastern limit cannot at present be defined with accuracy, but it nowhere trenched on the confines of modern China. One noteworthy feature of this great inland sea, which is even now testified to by the name Han-hai, or “ dried-up sea,” ap- plied by the Chinese to its former site, was the depression or arm between the Tien-shan or Altai Ranges, by which it communicated with another extensive sea, beginning about Lake Balkash. In the recesses formed by the spurs of the Tien-

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378 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY-—SUPPLEMENT. mention of silk, and it is probable that the pre _ shan and of the North Persian Ranges, civilized | nations formerly existed, and extended to the banks of the Jaxartes and Oxus, and their tribu- taries. With the exception of the less important oases in the Tarim Basin, they were the first civil- ized countries to be found west of China, from which they were separated by thirty degrees of longitude, the only practicable line of communi- cation lying across steppes and deserts. The migrations of nations and the movements of traders are very unlike, though both follow distinct laws. The former have always chosen localities which have afforded them broad, easy, and natural routes into warm and fertile plains. Mountains were only crossed where a low pass gave easy access to the wished-for goal. These successive waves of migration came from the northeast ; but when they ventured into the basin of the Tarim, they were caught in a cui-de-sac, whence they could only escape by the way they came. In prehistoric times migrations toward China may have found their way into the re- gion referred to. But as soon as its people were capable of looking after their own interests, the only available exit lay through the Dzungarian trough between the Tien-shan and Altai Ranges, mentioned above. Thence they invaded Europe, Persia, and India. Mountain-passes naturally did not present such insuperable difficulties to pass- ing armies, and on several occasions large hosts have made their way from China to Turan over passes near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and from Turan to the western oases in the Tarim Basin. The movements of traders follow entirely dif- ferent laws. They invariably sought the short- est routes between the two countries whose goods they wished to exchange one for the other, Among these goods, silk has played an important part since the earliest ages. The duration of this silk-trade is most conveniently divided into two periods: the first from remote and uncertain ages to about 114 . c., being the period of indi. rect traffic; and the second from 114 B.c. to 120 a. p., being the period of direct commerce between China and the Turanian plains. In the book “ Yue-kung,” which treats of the history of China during the last 4,000 years, silk is men- tioned as an article of tribute in some of the provinces, and we learn therefrom that the great Yue aimed at introducing the growth of the mul- berry and silk culture in the lands about the mouth of the Yellow River. A thousand years _ later the “ Chuli Book,” which contains the offi- cial precepts of the Chu dynasty, makes frequent cious jade of Khotan was largely exchanged for — tween the two countries. first exported to India and Western Asia. The Chinese name for silk was Se’, and it is curious to observe that both this name and the produet. itself made their way into Corea, Japan, Mongos lia, and (especially) Central Asia, and in later times into Greece and the other European coun- tries, After a time the letter r got affixed, and the root-word was thus changed into ssir or sser, The word Sherikoth in Isaiah probably refers to, the same, and the Arabs to this day call a piece of silk goods saragat. It is probable that Herod. otus, in speaking of the fineness of the Median dresses, alludes to silken stuffs. The first, um doubted mention of the manufacture is te be found in Nearchus (320 B. c.), who speaks of the Seric stuffs of India, of the people called Seres, and of their country Sera. There is no evidence to show by what reute these silks reached Indiay Persia, and Media. It is supposed that the prinees of the house of Tsin, who since the eighth cen tury before Christ occupied a small principality, in the western part of Shensi, extended theip dominion into Central Asia, and that by thig means the Chinese carried on direct trade with the lands about the Oxus. This supposition rests on three points: the mention of a coum try called Sinim by Isaiah, the frequent mem tion of the name M&tchin (which was suppesed to refer to China) by Firdusi in speaking of early Persian history, and the frequent allusion in the Mahabharata to the Zchina people in the north west of India. Against this, however, must be remarked that the Tsin princes certainly never penetrated into Central Asia, nor, as far as canbe shown, beyond the Yellow River; that the name. MAtchin was used to designate any powerful intercourse ; while the researches of recent elers have disclosed the existence of a called Tchina in the Northwestern There is no proof that the Chinese ever beyond their western borders before the second century of our era, or even that they knew of the existence of other nations beyond their immediate neighbors in Central Asia. The producers,and consumers of the silk were thus equally of its destination and origin. There is,g reason for supposing that the inhabitants,.of + were known to the Greeks under the name of Issedones, were the chief medium of it, though, probably, not by a direct ee It ie uncertain how far back silk-stufle wong | princes of Turan, with whom the Persian kings had

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PALS SSS SRE SS SSSS OCLC SSE SESE SST SLES STF ASESL STS RSE ERs FS RP ciel 7 A * & e | [HE ANCIENT SILK-TRADERS’ ROUTE. transmission of the silk-trade across the passes into India and over the Pamir. The sevond period of the silk-trade, embracing the period of direct traffic between China and Taran, began with the year 114 8.c., in which the first caravan set out westward, and ended about 120 a.p., when the power of the Han dynasty was on the wane. The direct traffic only flourished when all Central Asia was subject to @ne sovereign will. It was never more prosper- ows than when the Mongols exercised supremacy over the lands between China and Europe, but before that time it had revived in the seventh and dighth centuries, when the Tang dynasty extended their'rule to the Caspian Sea. One of the chief circumstances which helped to develop it was the building of the Great Wall, which the great Tsin- shi-wang-ti erected to protect his kingdom from the attacks of the Hiungna, who had for centuries molested the vassal princes and chiefs on the north- em borders of the empire. During the Han dynasty (205 ». c.) the successive waves of invading hordes from the steppes broke themselves against the wall, and gradually falling out among themselves, dispersed and retired through the Dzungarian Val- ley or depression into the Aralo-Caspian Basin. At the beginning of the second century, the Usun people, who lived in the Alashan Mountains and feat the Etsina River, engaged in conflict with the Yuétchi people, who lived about Kan-chow- fé;and were vanquished by the latter, who mi- grated through Dzungaria to Ili, where they came tpon the Sz’ people. Twenty-two years later, the Usun revenged themselves by driving thf Yuttehi out and settling themselves in [li and the Tien-shan, while the Yuétchi and the Sz’ mi- grated toward the Jaxartes. ‘These wanderings now began to have their fect on the silk-trade. In 140 3. c. Hsia-wu-ti, ‘the greatest king of the Han dynasty, wishing to break the power of the Hiungnu, sent his gen- eral, Tchang-kien, into Central Asia to conclude streaty of alliance with the Yuétchi. This is the first Chinese expedition to the west of which we hear, and the report which, after thirteen years’ ad- heard. The emperor recognized the impor. -tance of acting on this wish, and endeavored by every means in his power to further its fulfill. ment. The ways by which this was attempted to the entrance to the Tarim Basin. But he sug- gested an alternative. Among the Tabia, a peo ple dwelling in towns south of the Upper Oxus, he was surprised to see a certain sort of reed or grass, and a stuff which in his opinion must have come from his native home, Shu (the plain of modern Ching-tu-fu). He was informed that they came from a land called Yin-tu, which lay some thousand 4 southeast of Tahia, and where the people lived in hot plains and rode on elephants. Through this land of Yin-tu (i. e., India) Tchang- kien thought it would be easy for people from Shu to reach Tahia. This suggestion was fol lowed up with energy, and a number of expeditions were sent, but unfortunately failed through the hostility of the mountain tribes, and led to no other result than the discovery by some merchants of Burmah and of the great rivers of Southeastern Asia. In the mean time, affairs in the north took a more favorable turn. A young leader, called Ho-kiu-ping, placed himself at the head of a Chi- nese army, and for the first time in Chinese his: tory advanced into the Steppe, and easily ven- quished the Hiungnu, opening the road into the Tarim Basin. * This was an event of great importance for the future history of China. The road referred to was called the Yue-monn passage, or the way of the Yue gate: yuwe being the name applied to the jade of Khotan, and the Yue-gate being a rocky defile through which the precious mineral was conveyed along the only natural way between the Tarim and China—a sort of depressed road be- tween high mountains on the one side and a steppe plateau on the other. This approach proved to be the key of Central Asia and of great future moment, both in political and commercial exi- tenturous wanderings, the general furnished, on | gencies. his return home, has the appearance of a descrip- tion of previously-unknown wonders. Although the expedition failed in its immediate object, it fettrned with the novel intelligence that in the far west of Turan there dwelt great and civilized tations, who owned grand cities and engaged in commerce, who esteemed very highly the Chi- hese silk, and wished further to do direct trade . With China, of whose greatness they had often The inhabitants of the oases on the south of the Tarim, freed from the presence of the Hiung- nu, received the Chinese with open arms, and in the year 114 8. o. the first caravan started for the West. Judging from the fact that it reached the land of Tahia and Ansi, it must have crossed the Pamir. But the city of Tawan formed the chief mart; it lay on the Jaxartes and the way to it was.over the Terek Pass. From five to ten large

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. Ween eae b: a ake 5s oc caravans visited the town yearly, and the first sudden effect of this was to depreciate the value of the silk, On the approach, however, of a Chinese army in 104 8. c., matters improved, and the mar- ket for the silk extended farther and farther west- ward, until the Roman Empire was reached. For 120 years the way remained open, but at the expiration of that time the Hiungnu again gained possession of the trade-route, and the Tarim Basin was lost to the Chinese for fifty-six years. General Pan-chow then not only regained the whole of the lost country, but also (95 a. p.) led a victorious Chinese army across the Pamir Steppe to the Caspian Sea, where, for a brief time, the Chinese and Roman Empires were brought into close proximity, without, however, any per- manent result. In 120 a.p, the Chinese again lost their control of Turanian lands, and in 150 a. pd. all direct communication with the west of the Tarim Basin ceased. As regards the geography of this subject, one of the most important points is to fix the site of Tawan. Baron Richthofen considers that Rému- sat’s opinion that Tawan was the capital of the modern Khokan or Ferghana is erroneous. Ta- wan, he points out, was not the first kingdom reached after crossing the Tsung-ling Pass (Terek- dawan), but Hiusiun, whose king lived in Usi (Osh ?), 500 4i from the mountain-pass. It was 920 i from Usi to Tawan, which would bring us to the great bend of the Jaxartes, near Oratepe, which was called Sutrushna by the Arabs, a name which we easily recognize in Su-tui-sha-na, which it appears from Chinese sources was the subse- quent name of Tawan. The people of Tawan were a commerce-loving people, but brought the silk only to the nearest markets, while the Ansi, who possessed many towns, vessels, and wagons, who were addicted to agriculture, and had stored up riches, conveyed it to t*+e northern slope of the Iranian Plateau and the shores of the Caspian. As regards the nationality of these traders, it would appear from Tchang-kien’s description that they were Tajiks. They spoke different tongues, but also had one common lingua franca for trad- ing purposes, and there is ground for concluding that the trading inhabitants of the Tawan, Tahia, and Ansi kingdoms, were the Persian-speaking predecessors of the Tajiks. In the Han annals, the Chinese complain that they were prevented by the Ansi from entering into direct commercial relation with the 7a-tsin, or Romans. The silk reached India through the medium of the Tahia, who inhabited the oases of Balkh and Kunduz, and other districts south of ene a ) Se a MEQ ae ee . THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the Oxus. In the last century before Christ the Roman authors begin to speak of Seric stuffs, of the land Serica, and its people, of which they heard only indirectly and from vague report There is no proof that the Romans ever held dt rect intercourse with the Chinese. 1g With regard to the routes of the silk-traders, we gather most information from Chinese sources, and first among these we must place the annals of the Han dynasty. At present we know of one route in the valley of the Tarim which follows the western and northern edge of the horseshoe above referred to. Medieval travelers, Buddhist pilgrims from China, Marco Polo, and Shah Rukh’s embassadors, testify to the existence in their time of kingdoms and towns along the southern edge of the basin between Khotan and Lob-Nor, and these were united by diverse routes; but in the middle ages these latter were fast dis appearing, and there were traditions of buried treasures, sand-covered towns, and even king. doms which had disappeared beneath the em croaching sand-desert. In the time of the Ham dynasty things had not got so far, and these dis tricts were in a better condition. There were then two kingdoms, called Liulan and Kuchi, of Lake Lob, and Yutien (Khotan), which are gem erally mentioned. There were roads betweel Lob-Nor and Khotan, called the “ southern roads,” one along the Tarim, and one along the southerh foot of the Tien-shan (the northern one). But the latter, west of Kucha, was occupied in a cient times by hostile tribes, and the southem Yoad was more frequently used. The official road extended from Liulan, on Lake Lob, for 720 li to Tsie-mo, where roads to the north and south diverged. Hsiau-wan and Yung-lin appear t have been situated on southern tributaries of the Tarim which are now filled up with sand. The road then led to Yutien (Khotan), Sokiu (Yar kand), and Suléi (Kashgar). The roads over the Pamir and Terek Passes were certainly much used; but, unfortunately, a detailed description — of them is wanting. . Turning to Western writers, we come first — upon Ptolemy, who wrote about 150 a. 0. atid who derived much of his information from Math nus (contemporaneous with Pan-chow, who con- quered the Tarim Basin, and led his army as fat as the Caspian). The weight of evidence ge to prove that Ptolemy’s Serica denoted not merely China, but also the basin of the Tarim, or the — greater portion of it, and the old silk-tradett? route lay at the southern foot of the Tien-sham. The difficulty of identifying the places mentioned ~

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st the hs, of they port, id di 1g ders, res, nnals f one lows shoe dhist Shah e in the | and ites; ; dis. ried cing. et Han dis. were aa gen reen ds,” hern. But an hern icial 70 uth r to ‘the The Y ar- uch tion iret ud ari ’ on far 0e8 ely the an, ned . THE ANCIENT SILE-TRADERS ROUTE. by bim arises partly from the erroneous idea that | the present route was the only one then in use, partly from the omission to consult the Chinese authorities, and partly from a failure to take an- cient names in preference to modern ones for purposes of comparison. In expounding the geography of Serica, Ptolemy found himself in the position in which many geographers stood at the beginning of this eentury as regards their knowledge of diverse continents; i. e., they possessed a knowledge of the countries which in some particulars was pre- cise, but had to lay down the courses of rivers and the direction of mountain-ranges, the posi- tions of cities and districts, out of itineraries and vague information. By this means rivers, which later information showed to be sepa- rate, got thrown into one, mountains were in- correctly laid down, and maps were generally erroneously constructed. Ptolemy's knowledge was of an analogous character. On the In- dian side the districts at the foot of the Hima- layas were known among the Greeks by the name of Emodus. Of the mountainous land be- tween the Indus and Oxus little was known be- yond the road between Balkh and Peshawvr. The region of the Upper Oxus and Jaxartes was somewhat better known, and its supposed merid- ional range and water-parting was called Imaus, and supposed to be a spur of the Emodus. Silk was brought across both the Imaus and the Emodus: across the former to Sogdiana and Bactriana, and across the latter to India. Be- youd was Serica; but as this was partly identi- fied with the political limits of China, which was known not to reach as far as the Imaus, the re- gion immediately beyond was called Scythia eztra Imaum. Ptolemy acquired his information re- specting Serica both from India, in regard to the regions across the Emodus, and from Sogdiana and Bactriana, with reference to the regions east of the Imaus ; but, as Colonel Yule has remarked, he was unable to focus the two stereoscopic pict- ures into one. Marinus, on whom Ptolemy main- ly relied, was exposed to the danger of misspell- ing names, as he acquired his information second- hand; and of the agents of Maés Titianus, the Macedonian merchant, who went to China for silk, we do not know of what nationality they mere, but it is probable that they were Persians, or Persian-speaking Tajiks. Bearing this in mind, as well as the fact that in Marinus’s time Western travelers entered on Chinese ground not far distant from Kashgar or Yarkand, and that the names of places must be identified with names of some antiquity, and not with modern ones, we shall be in & position to form a tolerably correct notion of the silk-route of Marinus and Ptolemy. Its point of departure was Baktra (Balkh), and its terminus Tshang-ngan (Hsi-ngan-fu), whether the traders managed to reach this latter place or not. It is probable that the embassies sent by the princes between Persia and the Altai to the court of China during the two preceding centu- ries did not go beyond it, and that it was not even visited by the foreign merchants. The lat- ter appear to have converged from different diree- tions on Sha-chow, and the stations Yang-kwan and Yu-monn-kwan were points of departure for the same. The position of the kingdom of the Issedo- nese is of importance in determining the route of the silk-traders, Greek writers had spoken of this people as a great nation. And in the whole basin of the Tarim there was only one kingdom corresponding entirely to the descrip- tion given by them, and that was the Yue-tien of the Chinese, the capital of which was Khotan. Ptolemy represents the country of the Issedones as lying north of a mountain-range which he calls the Kasian Mountains. The similarity of the name has led Deguignes, D’Anville, Lassen, Ritter, Humboldt, and other commentators on Ptolemy, to identify the same with the modern Kashgar. But the name of Kashgar was not then in existence, the town being called Suléi for several centuries after. A glance at the map, however, will show a striking analogy between the Kasian Range and the western Kuen-Lun, and a further link is found in the name of the chief product of the country, i. e., jade, which among the Chinese was called yue, but among the Persian and Turkish nations appears to have been generally called kash: The range seems thus, by a practice common elsewhere, to have been named after its most important mineral product. The identification is clinched by the fact that ‘Issedon Serica is described by Ptolemy as the most important place along the trade-route, and the Chinese accounts give Yue-tien as the chief place. A second phase of importance on the line of route was Daxata, which Hager has shown to be a Grecized form of the Persian Deshti—sand—a term which is to be found in the name of the town, Sha-chow, referred to above, which really means “ Sand-town.” Turning to that portion of the route between Issedon Serica (Khotan) and Daxata (Sha-chow) we come upon two localities, Thogara and Drosache, The latter Baron Richt

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wea re n iia — ns, ge te He CORES CAME ee { ee lp 4 Fy gaa AM . ~~ ag ln ~ a ha any Fi THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ~ jhofen has been unable to identify, but the for- mer name has, he points out, similarity to the Tukh4ra of the Indians, or Tu-hd-lo of the Chi- nese, a people who during the seventh century of the Christian era were found by Hwen-Tsang to have once dwelt a few days’ journey east of Kho- tan, and whose name still prevailed there at his time, although the people themselves (who are probably identical with the Yuétchi above men- tioned, or, at all events, the greater part of them) had, in the second century a. p., lived in the vicin- ity of Kan-chow-fu, and at the time of the Buddh- ist pilgrim’s journey settled partly on the Upper Oxus and partly on the Upper Indus. It is not unlikely that the encroachment of the sandy des- ert had caused a portion of the people to migrate from their ancient oasis in the valley of the Ta- rim, but that enough of them remained to give their name to the old site. The identity of the site with Ptolemy's Thogaroi is confirmed by the mame Aspacares, which is very like the Persian name for nation of riders, and which referred to the great Thibetan nomad race called No-kiang, which, we learn from Chinese sources, dwelt south of the oasis. Asmira, too, is described by Ptolemy as lying south of the river Oikhardes, which must be the Tarim. The important town of Tsiémo, where the northern and southern roads diverged, is the only name which has any similarity to Asmirea. Eastward of Daxata, or Sha-chow, the old silk- route rested only on vague hearsay evidence. The traders reported that a river and a mountain had to be crossed before reaching the Sera metrop- olis. The river is given as a branch of the Baw- tisos, which must be the Hwang-ho. But Bau- tisos is the name of the stream flowing north of the Emodus through the land of the Baute (i. e., Bhot, or Thibet in its restricted sense), or, in other words, the Yarudzangbo, or Upper Brahmapootra. It is evident that Ptolemy’s information derived from India here occasioned him some confusion, and that he has assumed that the Hwang-ho, which flowed out of a little-known mountainous country, and the Brahmapootra, which, according to the Thibetans, flowed eastward into an un- ‘known region, were one and the same. Similar instances of erroneous geographical conclusions may be found in Livingstone’s supposition that the Lualaba and Nile formed one river, and the theory, not long since held, that the Sanpu and the Irrawaddy were one and the same. The western limit of Serica would appear to have been near Kashgar and Yarkand, where -Marinus's information leads him to place them. Kashgar (Suléi) was a small kingdom, while Yarkand (Sokiu) was more important, and way often united with Yue-tien, or the Issedon dom. In 87 a. p; the Chinese and Yue-tien made common cause against Sokiu and overthrew it, and from that time the western limit of Serigg appears to have been where the agents of Mags Titianus placed it. Before 87 a portion of the Issedon kingdom belonged to Scythia, i. e., torthe nov-Seric country, and Issedon Scythica was, therefore, a natural form of expression: ‘~The western boundary then lay between Yarkand aid Khotan, and this corresponds with Ptolemy's map. Another possible explanation is, thates the Greeks designated all nomads by the name of Scythians, and as they heard of the existence of many of these nomad tribes eastward of the Imaus, Ptolemy was induced to lay down a shazp eastern boundary to Scythia extra Jmaum, anil that the same boundary formed the westem boundary of Serica, which was thus shifted:teo far eastward. isd In endeavoring to fix the direction ofvthe route of the agents of Maés Titianus between Baktra and the Tarim Basin, we meet with many difficulties. In settling this question the position of Issedon Seythica becomes of great impot- tance. On Ptolemy’s map it lies east of Imaus, west of the sourees of the (chardus, south of the Auxacian Mountains, which were probably the mountains on the west of the Tarim depres sion, where they approach Aksu, and northwest of Issedon Serica. This description would cor respond to Kashgar and Yarkand, and the pass leading to it would be either the southernmost Pamir Pass from Badakshan or the Terek Pass'to the north, The latter answers best to the descrip- tion. From Baktra there ran an important route, i. e., that past Samarcand throughout the length of Ferghana, and it appears, from Chinese author- ities, that this was once a great commercial lineéf route. In the Takht-i-Suleiman, near Osh, some — professed to recognize Ptolemy’s “stone fort’ which was west of the Imaus; but inasmuch ® important places such as Samarcand are ‘nét mentioned, Colonel Yule suggested, in 1866, tht some intermediate line was the one sought fer. Later research has proved that there are varidls routes through Karateghin, and the Alai country, which might have been utilized for trade put- poses. It is possible, therefore, that at the tite when Baktra was the centre of a merce, a direct way to the Tarim Basin was ptt ferred to the circuitous route by Samareand, along which also heavy dues were exacted, The land

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PERSP ETEE ce FE: pSaS ei Gas RESEEE: a 2 BR*PESSERESSASSISES SRE RELIES ieee a : ree) . ’ fi Me am & aa er F ‘ BRIEF NOTES. . of the Comeda is probably the Kiumito of Hwen- tsang, and the land of Komédh in Ibn Dasta, which probably lay northeast of the great bend of the Oxus. The stone tower would thus have been situated at the upper end of Karateghin, where the valley rises up to the steppe country of the Alai. This, however, does not coincide with the theory that Osh was the site of the stone fort. There is much room for conjecture in the question as to the route from the Stone Fort to Isseden Scythica. Ptolemy gives a caravansary on the line of the Imaus, i.e. near the water- parting. This would naturally be situated at the point of junction of two important trade-routes, and was very probably at the point where the way from Karateghin joined that from Ferghana and the Terek Pass. At the present time Balkh has lost its importance, so that the Karateghin route has fallen into disuse; but, in the fifteenth century, Shah Rukh’s embassy, on its return, separated into two parties in the “defile of An- dijan,” one going toward Balkh, and the other toward Andijan and Samarcand. The summary of his researches is thus given by Baron Richthofen: From 114 Bs. o. to 120 4. D. (with a break of fifty-six years between), the silk was brought along routes from Sha-chow and Lob-Nor which traversed the southern part of the Tarim Basin, and preferably used the Terek Pass for those caravans resorting to the great mart of Tawan, or Ora-tepe. Thence the silk went to Samarcand, and thence partly through the lands of the Upper Oxus to India, and partly through the lands of the Parthians to Farther Asia and the Roman market. The only journey of Western traders of which we possess detailed information did not, however, follow the Samarcand route, but diverged probably, at Merv, and passed through Balkh, probably through Karateghin and the Alai, entered the Tarim Basin at Kashgar, proceeded to Khotan, and followed the southern border of the basin of the Tarim, till they reached Sha-chow. Thence to the chief mart of China the account is too vague to fol- low. When the Chinese lost their hold on the Tarim Basin in 150 a. p., they could no longer protect their caravans, and the trade fell into the hands of the Persians, and Kan-chow-fu became the frontier mart of China. The introduction of the silk into Europe dates from the sixth century, when Dizabul, the prince of the Tukin, sent an embassy to Constantinople to secure a market for the silk. From the following century the overland route of the silk-traders lost all its for- mer importance.— Geographical Magazine. BRIEF NOTES. Dr. Paul Broca on the Antiquity of Man.— M. Paul Broca, in his opening address at the meeting of the French Association for the Ad- vancement of Science, sketched the history of scientific opinion concerning the antiquity of man. M. Broca frankly admitted that the evidence for the existence of man in Tertiary times is not yet * ‘onclusive. He classified into three races the prehistoric men whose bones havé been found in Europe. The oldest of these three types of man is the Canstadt race. To this we must refer the Neanderthal skull. The Canstadt people were ef short stature, with very long heads, much flattened at the top, the flattening being mainly due to the retreating forehead : they were doli- ic, or with long and flattened heads. These people were, according to M. Broca, more savage than any in existence now. They date back to the Quaternary period, and appear to have had a very wide geographical distribution. Next comes the Cromagnon race, a dolichocephalic, or long-headed, people, like those of Canstadt, but of vastly superior organization; they flour- ished as far back as the second half of the Qua- ternary period, and were at their zenith during the reindeer age. _ Finally, there is the Purfoog type, so called from Furfooz, in Belgium, where some remains were found a few years ago. The men of this race were extremely short, with a type of cranium decidedly lower than that of the Cromagnon people. The head is rounded, but not decidedly brachycephalic. This race arrived in Belgium at the close of the reindeer age. They were acquainted with the art of making pottery. Impervious Coatings on the Skin.—Dr. Sena- tor, of Berlin, cites experiments made by himself to prove that the covering of the skin of human beings with an impermeable coating (varnish, for

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~ : Wine SP ee Mee ye THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. x instance) is, contrary to the received opinion, a harmless operation. Dr. Senator subjected a patient suffering from subacute rheumatism to a gradual envelopment, until both legs, from the tips of the toes to the hips, both arms, from the tips of the fingers to the shoulders, were incased in sticking-plaster, and his back, abdomen, and breast, painted with collodion, which was daily repeated. The patient remained a week in this condition without reduction of temperature or albuminuria. Another case is cited, where a patient remained for three days under similar conditions. A third patient had a coating of tar all over the body for a week, but presented no abnormality, except blackening of the urine, which was shown to be due to the presence of carbolic acid. In considering the grounds of the prevailing opinion as to the necessarily fatal effect of an impermeable coating on the skin, Dr. Senator refers to the case of the gilded boy—a ~ child who was covered with gold-leaf in order to act the character of an “angel” in a miracle- play. This child, he says, died so soon that it is probable that there was something poisonous in the gold leaf. He also quotes current American history, to show that a coat of “ tar and feathers” of itself produces no ill effects. Utilizing the Flood- Water of the Nile.—Anoth- er gigantic engineering project has been suggested, namely, diverting a portion of the flood-water of the Nile into the deserts of Nubia, Libya, and Soodan. As is well known, the main stream of the Nile is fed by the great equatorial lakes of Africa, and its annual inundations are caused by the in-rush of torrent-water, laden with soil from the fertile slopes of the Abyssinian plateau. This silt is now for the most part deposited in the bed of the Mediterranean, where it is gradually forming a new delta. Sir Samuel Baker, in a letter to the London Times, after rehearsing these facts, proposes a plan by which not only the water of the Nile, but the mud which it now deposits wastefully, may be utilized as a means of fertilizing the deserts south of Egypt. He proposes, by suitable engineering works, to divert a portion of the Nile flood-water into these deg. erts, where it can deposit its rich sediment ig the sands, and also irrigate them so as to trang form them into “ -fields that would render England independent of America.” He would construct sluices and dams at different poin the Nile; at the cataracts, for instance. dams and sluices, by enabling craft to pass the cataracts, would also render the Nile navigable from the Mediterranean to Gondokoro., When and how much to eat,—The following remarks on “ Regularity of Meals” occur in paper by Dr. Wilson, read at the recent Domestic Economy Congress at Birmingham : For the ac! tive out-door laborer and artisan, an early break fast before work, a mid-day dinner, with an inter. val of rest, and supper after the day’s work is over, have long been proved by experience to be the most conducive to health. For the business! man, a later breakfast, a mid-day luncheon, and @ late dinner after the day’s work is over, is the best arrangement, For literary men, who write more in the evening than during the day, an early dinner and a light supper will be found to be the most advantageous for steady work. Idlert, to enjoy life, if they possibly can, should early if they intend to spend the evening at thea! tres and the like ; but if they accept dinner-invi tations freely, they should be very careful not to eat too much at the mid-day meal. The break’ fast-hour should be determined, in great measure, by the hour of rising, but in any case food should be partaken of before the material business of the day is commenced. Those who like to take a “constitutional” before breakfast would find their appetite whetted, and their walk made aff the more enjoyable, if they took a little milk, oF café-au-lait, with bread or biscuit, before start ing. Work done before breakfast is always irk- some and fatiguing, and on that account is very likely to be badly done. The last meal should be sufficiently late for the whole not to be absorbed before retiring to rest. To a person in healt, three meals a day ought to be quite sufficient? — and the practice of continually “taking some- thing ” is sure to bring on indigestion. *

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a becitsdta. Eeiiire igedes RSREGGES ee Rbaaa be ik WILLIAM HARVEY. Br T. H. HUXLEY. N the coming Ist of April, three hundred years will have elapsed since the birth of Wiut1aw Harvey, who is popularly known as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Many opinions have been held respecting the exact nature and value of Harvey's contributions to the elucidation of the fundamental problem of the physiology of the higher animals ; from those which deny him any merit at all—indeed, round- ly charge him with the demerit of plagiarism—to those which enthrone him in a position of su- preme honor among great discoverers in science. Nor bas there been less controversy as to the method by which Harvey obtained the results which have made his name famous. I think it is desirable that no obscurity should hang around these questions ; and I add my mite to the store of. disquisitions on Harvey which this year is likely to bring forth, in the hope that it may help to. throw light upon several points about which darkness has accumulated, partly by accident and partly by design. . Every one knows that the pulsation which can be felt or seen between the fifth and sixth ribs, on the left side of a living man, is caused by the beating of the heart; and that, in some way or other, the ceaseless activity of this organ is-essential to life. Let it be arrested, and, in- stantaneously, intellect, volition, even sensation, ate abolished, and the most vigorous frame col- lapses, a pallid image of death. Every one, again, is familiar with those other - pulsations which may be felt or seen, at the wrist, behind the inner ankle, or on the temples ; and which coincide in number and are nearly timultaneous with those of the heart. In the region of the temples, it is easy, especially in old people, to observe that the pulsation depends on the change of form of a kind of compressible branched structure which lies heneath the skin, and is termed an artery. Moreover, the least ob- servant person must have noticed, running be- neath the skin of various parts of the body, no- tably the hands and arms, certain other bluisb- looking bands which do not pulsate, and which mark the position of structures somewhat like the arteries, which are called veins. Finally, accidental wounds have demonstrated to all of us that the body contains an abundance 61 of a warm red fluid—the blood. If the wound has traversed a vein, the blood flows in torrents from its interior, in an even stream ; if it has in- volved an artery, the flow takes place by jerks, which correspond in interval with the pulsations of the artery itself, and with those of the heart. These are facts which must have been known ever since the time when men first began to at- tend to and reflect upon the every-day course of Nature, of which we form a part. I doubt not, also, that butchers, and those who studied the entrails of animals for purposes of divination, must very early have noticed that both the ar- teries and the veins are disposed in the fashion of a tree, the trunk of which is close to the heart, and connected with it, while the branches ramify all over the body. Moreover, they could not fail to observe that the heart contains cavi- ties, and that some of these communicate with the stem of the arteries, and some with the stem of the veins, Again, the regular rbythmical changes of form, which constitute the beating of the heart, are so striking in recently-killed ani- mals, and in criminals subjected to modes of pun- ishment which once were common, that the dem- onstration that the heart is a contractile organ must have been very early obtained, and have thus afforded an unintentional experimental ex- planation of the cause of the pulsation felt be- tween the ribs. ' These facts constitute the foundation of our knowledge of the structure and functions of the heart and blood-vessels of the human and other higher animal bodies. They are to be regarded as parts of common knowledge, of that informa- tion which is forced upon us whether we desire to possess it or not; they have not been won by that process of seeking out the exact nature and the causal connection of phenomena, to the re- sults of which the term science may properly be restricted. Scientific investigation began when men went further, and, impelled by the thirst for knowl edge, sought to make out the exact structure of all these parts, and to comprehend the mechani- cal effects of their arrangement and of their ac- tivity. The Greek mind had long entered upon this: scientific stage, so far back as the fourth century’ before the commencement of our era. For, fh.

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the works attributed to Aristotle, which consti- tute @ sort of encyclopedia of the knowledge of | that time, there is evidence that the writer knows ' had the thick coat of an artery, while the “gp. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. | the thin-walled veins collapse. But the “

which connected the right ventricle and the lung as much as has been mentioned, and he refers to | tery” which connected the left ventricle and the the views of his predecessors. Twenty-two hun- dred years ago the sciences of anatomy and phys- fology existed, though they were as yet young, and their steps tottered. Aristotle’s description of the heart is often cited as an example of his ignorance, but I think unjastly. However this may be, it is certain that, not long after his time, great additions were made to anatomical and physiological science. The Greek anatomists, exploring the structure of the heart, found that it contained two principal cavi- ties, which we now call the ventricles, separated by a longitudinal partition, or septam: the one ventricle is on its left, the other on its right side. It was to the fleshy body which contains the ven- tricles that the ancients restricted the title of “heart.” Moreover, there is another respect in which their terminology was so different from that of the moderns that, unless we recollect ~ that the facts may be just as accurately stated in their fashion as in ours, we are liable to fall into the mistake of supposing that they are blunder- ing. What they speak of as the auricles of the heart, we term the appendices of the auricles; and what we call the auricles are, for the ancients, on the right side, a part of the great vein or vena cava, and, on the left side, a part of the arterial system—the root, in fact, of what they termed the arteria venosa. Thus they speak of the au- ricles as mere appendages, or dilatations, situated upon the arterial and venous trunks respectively, Close to the heart ; and they always say that the vena cava and the arteria venosa open into the right and left ventricles respectively. And this was the basis of their classification of the ves- sels, for they held all those vessels which, in this sense, open into the right ventricle to be veins, and all those which open into the left ventricle to be arteries. But here a difficulty arose. They observed that the aorta, or stem of the arteries, and all the conspicuous branches which proceed from it to the body in general, are very different from the veins; that they have much thicker walls, and stand open when they are cut, while 1 We eay that the heart, in man and the higher ani- mals, consists of two auricles and two ventricles; and ‘that each auricle has an appendix in the form of a pouch. We term the vessel! which arises from the right ventricle the pulmonary artery, because it sup- _ plies the lunge with blood. Thoee veesels which bring away the blood from the lungs to the left auricle we €all the pulmonary veins.

lungs had the thin coat of a vein. Hence they called the former the vena arteriosa, or like vein, and the latter the arteria vein-like artery. * The vena arteriosa is what we call the pul monary artery, the arteria venosa is our pal monary vein ; but in trying to understand the od anatomists it is essential to forget our nomem elature and to adopt theirs. With this precag. tion, and with the facts before our mind’s eye, their statements will be found to be, in the mai, exceedingly accurate. ry About the year 300 B. c. a great discovery, that of the valves of the heart, was made by — Erasistratus. This anatomist found, around the opening by which the vena cava communicates with the right ventricle, three triangular mem- branous folds, disposed in such a manner as to allow any fluid contained in the vein to passinto — the ventricle, but not back again. The opening of the vena arteriosa into the right ventricle is quite distinct from that of the vena cava; and Erasistratus observed that it is provided with — three pouch-like, half-moon-shaped valves; the arrangement of which is such that a fluid can pass out of the ventricle into the vena arteriogs, but not back again. Three similar valves were found at the opening of the aorta into the left ventricle. The arteria venosa had « distinct — opening into the same ventricle, and this was provided with triangular membranous valves, like those on the right side, but only two in number. Thus the ventricles had four openings, two for each ; and there were altogether eleven valves, disposed in such a manner as to permit fluidsto — enter the ventricles from the vena cava and the arteria venosa respectively, and to pass out.of the ventricles by the vena arteriosa and the sorta respectively, but not to go the other way. It followed from this capital discovery that, if the contents of the heart are fluid, and if they ; move at all, they can only move in one namely, from the vena cava, through the <i and toward the lungs, by the vena arteriosa, onthe | right side; and, from the lungs, by way of thear teria venosa, through the ventricle, and vut by the sorta for distribution in the body, on the left side Erasistratus thus, in a manner, laid the fowa dations of the theory of the motion of the blood. Bat it was not given to him to get avy further. — What the contents of the heart were, and whether

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§ a5 fe eet shiesi.§ SRUESGS REECE . . SSECRESEESSE Sates isin “ they moved or not, was a point which could be determined only by experiment. And, for want of sufficiently careful experimentation, Erasistra- tus strayed into a hopelessly misleading path. Observing that the arteries are usually empty of blood after death, he adopted the unlucky hy- pothesis that this is their normal condition, and that during life, also, they are filled with air. ‘and it will be observed that it is not improb- able that Erasistratus’s discovery of the valves of the heart and of their mechanical action strengthened him in this view. For, as the ar- teria venosa branches out in the lungs, what more likely than that its ultimate ramifications absorb the air which is inspired; and that this air, passing into the left ventricle, is then pumped all over the body through the aorta, in order to sup- ply the vivifying principle which evidently resides in the air; or, it may be, of cooling the too great heat of the blood? How easy to explain the dastic bounding feel of a pulsating artery by the hypothesis that it is full of air. Had Erasistratus @nly been acquainted with the structure of in- sects, the analogy of their tracheal system would have been a tower of strength to him. There was no prima-facie absurdity in his hypothesis— ‘and experiment was the sole means of demon- strating its truth or falsity. “- More than four hundred years elapsed before the theory of the motion of the blood returned ‘nce more to the strait road which leads truth- ‘ward ; and it was brought back by the only pos- ‘sible method, that of experiment. A man of ex- traordinary genius, Claudius Galenus, of Perga- mos, was trained to anatomical and physiological investigation in the great schools of Alexandria, and spent a long life in incessant research, teach- ing, and medical practice.! More than one hun- dred and fifty treatises from his pen, on philo- sophical, literary, scientific, and practical topics, ‘are extant; and there is reason to believe that ‘they constitute not more than « third of his works. No former anatomist had reached his ‘@ivellence, while he may be regarded as the ‘founder of experimental physiology. And, it is ‘precisely because he was a master of the experi- ‘mental method, that he was able to learn more “about the motions of the heart and of the blood than any of his predecessors; and to leave to a logacy of knowledge, which was not increased for more than thirteen a years. “"The-conceptions of the structure of the heart | 4 Galen was born in the year 131 4. p., and died in Of about the year 201. and vessels, of their actions, and of the motion of the bleod in them, which Galen entertained, are not stated in a complete shape in any one of his numerous works. But a careful collation of the various passages in which these conceptions are expressed, leaves no doubt upon my mind that Galen’s views respecting the structure of the organs concerned were, for the most part, as ac- curate as the means of anatomical analysis at his command permitted; and that he had exact and consistent, though by no means equally just, notions of the actions of these organs, and of the movements of the blood. Starting from the fundamental facts estab- lished by Erasistratus respecting the structure of the heart and the working of its valves, Galen's great service was the proof, by the only evidence which could possess demonstrative value, namely, by that derived from experiments upon living ani- mals, that the arteries are as much full of blood during life as the veins are, and that the left cavity of the heart, like the right, is also filled with blood. Galen, moreover, correctly asserted, though the means of investigation at his disposition did not allow him to prove the fact, that the ramifi- cations of the vena arteriosa in the substance of the lungs communicate with those of the arte- ria venosa, by direct, though invisible, passages, which he terms anastomoses ; and that, by means of these communications, a certain portion of the blood of the right ventricle of the heart passes through the lungs into the left ventricle. In fact, Galen is quite clear as to the existence of a cur- rent of blood through the lungs, though not of such a current as we now know traverses them. For, while he believed that a part of the blood of the right ventricle passes through the lungs, and even, as I shall show, described at length the mechanical arrangements by which he supposes this passage to be effected, he considered that the greater part of the blood in the right ventricle passes directly, through certain pores in the sep- tum, into the left ventricle. And this was where Galen got upon his wrong track, without which divergence a man of his scientific insight must in- fallibly have discovered the true character of the pulmonary current, and not improbably have been Harvey. Bat, even in propounding this erroneous hy- pothesis of the porosity of the septum, it is in- teresting to observe with what care Galen dis- tinguishes between observation and speculation. He expressly says that he bas never seen the " openings which he supposes to exist, and that he

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~ we must seek, not only the predecessors, but the spiritual progenitors, of modern men of science. The slumbering aptitude of Western Europe for physical investigation was awakened by the im- | portation of Greek knowledge and of Greek method; and modern anatomists and physiolo- gists are but the heirs of Galen, who have turned to good account the patrimony bequeathed by him to the civilized world. The student of the works of the anatomists and physiologists of modern Europe in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, will find that they were chiefly occu- pied in learning of their own knowledge what Galen knew. It is not strange, therefore, that they were overpowered by so vast a genius, and that they allowed themselves to be enslaved by his authority, in a manver which he would have been the first to reprove. Vesalius, the great reformer of anatomy, had a bitter struggle to carry on Galen’s work, by showing where he had erred in expounding the structure of the human body, on the faith of observations made on the lower animals; but it was not till the middle of the sixteenth century that anything was done to improve on Galen’s physiology, and especially to amend his doctrines concerning the movements of the heart and of the blood. The first step in this direction is very general- ly ascribed to Michael Servetus, the unbappy man whose judicial marder by slow fire was compassed by John Calvin ; he being instigated thereto by theological antagonism, intensified by personal hatred ; and aided and abetted in his iniquity by the Protestant Churches of Switzerland. The whole story has recently been clearly and fully told by Dr. Willis,’ and I refer to it only for the purpose of remarking that the name and fame of Calvin’s victim would probably have been as completely obliterated as his persecutor intended they should be, had it not happened that one or two copies of the “ Christianismi Restitutio,” the attempted publication of which was the immediate cause of Servetus’s death, were saved from de- struction. : Servetus was undoubtedly well acquainted with anatomy, inasmuch as he was demonstrator to Joannes Guinterus in the School of Paris, where he had Vesalius for his colleague; and, in his - later ‘years, he practised as a physician. Hence it is not wonderful to find that the “ Christianismi Restitutio,” although essentially a farrago of scat- terbrained theological speculations, contains much 1“*Servetus and Calvin,” by R. Willis, M. D., 1877. She He ie Sos brs, *T ; ’ ae aie THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. physiological matter, And it is in 2 conception of the relations between God and may _ that Servetus wrote the well-known passages which many have asserted his claim to the dig: covery of the course of the blood from the hearty — through the lungs, and back to the heart, of what is now termed the pulmonary circulation, ~ I have studied the passages in question with great care, and with every desire to give Servetug his due, but I confess I cannot see that he made much advance upon Galen.! As we have seen Galen said that some blood goes to the left : of the heart from the right side through the lungs,” but that the greater part traverses the Servetus appears, at first, to declare that all the blood of the right side goes through thie lungs t the left side, and that the septum is imperforate, But he qualifies his assertion by admitting that some of the blood of the right ventricle may tion between him and Galen becomes merely oné— of degree. Servetus cites neither observation not experiment in favor of the imperviousness of the septum ; and the impression upon my mind is that he really knew no more than Vesalius had already published, but that the tendency to headlong speculation, which is so characteristic of the — man, led him to rush in where his more thought © ful colleague held back. y Whatever may be thought of the moral claimi — of Servetus to be regarded as the discoverer of — the pulmonary circulation, there is no reason te believe that he had any influence on the actual — progress of science.’ For Calvin dealt with all the packages of the edition of the “Christian — mi Restitutio” he could lay hands on as he had served their author, and it is believed that only & few copies escaped the flames. One of these; the National Library of France, is the very book used by the counsel for the prosecution, whom Cak — vin prompted, at Geneva ; another is, in Vienna, The public had no access to the work untilit was — reprinted, more than two centuries afterward, + Tcamnot but think that ‘Dr.’ Willie's mabural alee tion for his hero has carried him too far when be sagt, “ Had his ‘ Restoration of Christianity’ been * to get abroad and into the hands of anatomists, #8 can hardly imagine that the immortality which now attaches eo truly and deservedly to the great name qt Harvey would have been reserved for him.” But with — in six years of Servetus's death the doctrine of the pulmonary circulation aid get abroad through Realdes Columbus, without the effect supposed. ‘ane 2 The arguments adduced by the learned and genious Tollin (“Die entdeckung der kreislaufs durch Michel Servet,” 1876), on the other side, will hardly bear cloee scratiny. - ms) te a ae em ee eet oe ae aoe CL COU Cee

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Par Pee in Mather Br Sw - a aS rB f ey, ice ee, ye eat. he ee a nD SS Oe. ee ee ae SS Ce es ee ee ee Se ee wind : ' * eee 7 - - yet " . ' ety er Paes @. Aes 9 =~ oe eee ey C é eee RS ge ae ee ¢ at a sa Be git 2 a eda Rd is ‘ oe _ The firet author who declared, without any, qualification, that the septum of the ventricles is imperforate, and that all the blood of the right ventricle traverses the lungs and (except so much ag may be retained for the nutrition of these or- gans) passes to the left ventricle, was Realdus Columbus, Professor of Anatomy in the famous School of Padua. The remarkable treatise, “ De Be Anatomica,” of this able anatomist, was pub- lished in 1559, or only six years after the death of Servetus, of whose notions there is no evidence that Columbus had any cognizance. Moreover, Columbus, as able an experimenter as he was a skillful dissector, deals with the question in a very different way from Servetus; so that, from his time, the existence of the pulmonary circulation, in the modern sense, may be said to have become established. Ambroise Paré, the great surgeon, writing in 1579, refers to the course of the bleod through the lungs as notoriously the dis- covery of Columbus. And I think not only that Realdus Columbus is entitled to the whole credit of this very considerable advance upon Galen’s views, but that he is the only physiologist, be- tween the time of Galen and that of Harvey, who made any important addition to the theory of the circulation. » The claim which is put forward on behalf of the celebrated botanist Cesalpinus appears to me.to be devoid of any foundation.*> Many years after the publication of the work of Realdus Columbus, who was professor at the most famous and most frequented anatomical school of the time, and who assuredly was the last man to hide his light under a bushel, Cesalpinus incidentally describes the pulmonary circulation in terms which simply embody a statement of Columbus’s doctrine, adding nothing, and, to his, credit be it said, claiming nothing. Like all the rest of the .4“"The Works of Ambrose, Parey,” translated by | fee; alimentum anctivum e venis in arterias, per escula mutua vasorum sibi invicem commissorum, eli- eitam invita experientia docuisse.” Not one of the ingenious pleaders for Cxealpinus has yet, in my judgment, shown cause for the reversal of the verdict thus delivered by the learned blographer the edition of his “Opera Omnia,” which Was published by the College of Physicians in 1766. e.2 > - “y i Lg i oy ess Fated Parl a? aaa - - # . eg Pa eng WILLIAM: HARVEY, 9 world since venesection was invented, Cesalpinus noticed that the vein swells on the side of the ligature away from the heart; and he observes that this is inconsistent with the received views of the motion of the blood in the veins, If he had followed up the suggestion thus made to him by the needful experimental investigation, he might have anticipated Harvey; but he did not. Again, Cannani discovered the existence of valves in some of the veins in 1547; and Fabri- cius rediscovered them, and prominently drew attention to their mechanism, in 1574. Never- theless, this discovery, important as it was, and widely as it became known, had absolutely no effect in leading either the discoverers or their contemporaries to a correct view of the general circulation. In common with all the anatomists of the sixteenth century, Fabricius believed that the blood proceeded from the main trunk, or vena cava, outward to the smallest ramifications of the veins, in order to subserve the nutrition of the parts in which they are distributed; and, instead of being led by the mechanical action of the valves to reverse his theory of the course of the venous blood, he was led by the dominant theory of the course of the blood to interpret the mean- ing of the valvular mechanism. Fabricius, in fact, considered that the office of the valves was to break the impetus of the venous blood, and to prevent its congestion in the organs to which it was sent; and, until the true course of the blood was demonstrated, this was as likely an hypothe- sis:as any other. The best evidence of the state of knowledge respecting the motions of the heart and blood in Harvey's time is afforded by those works of his contemporaries which immediately preceded the publication of the “Exercitatio Anatomica,” in 1628.!_ And none can be more fitly cited for this purpose than the “De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Libri decem,” of Adrian van den Spie- ghel, who, like Harvey, was a pupil of Fabricius of Aquapendente, and was of such distinguished ability and learning that he succeeded his master in the chair of anatomy of Padua. 1 The whole title of the copy of the rare firet edition in the library of the College of Physicians runs: “ Ex- to Charlies L. iz pasted in, as if it had been an after-* thought, extend to p. 9; the Proemium to p. 19; while the Exercitatio itself occupies pp. 20 to 72 inclusively. There are two plates illastrative of experiments on the veins of the arm.

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en J Ete Sgils “ag ) Se he 392 «THE ‘* Van den. Spieghel, or Spigelius, as he called himself, in accordance with the fashion of those days, died comparatively young in 1625, and his work was edited by his friend Daniel Bucretius, whose preface is dated 1627. The accounts of the heart and vessels, and of the motion of the blood, which it contains, are full and clear; but, beyond matters of detail, they go beyond Galen in only two points, and, with respect to one of these, Spigelius was in error. The first point is the “pulmonary circula- tion,” which is taught as Columbus taught it nearly eighty years before. The second point is, so far as I know, peculiar to Spigelius himself. He thinks that the pulsation of the arteries bas an effect in promoting the motion of the blood contained in the veins which accompany them. Of the true course of the blood as a whole, Spi- gelius has no more suspicion than had any other physiologist of that age, except William Harvey ; no rumor of whose lectures at the College of ; commenced six years before Spieghel’s death, was likely in those days of slow communi- cation, and in the absence of periodical publica- tions, to have reached Italy. ~ Now, let any one familiar with the pages of Spigelius take up Harvey’s treatise and mark the contrast. The main object of the “ Exercitatio” is to put forth and demonstrate, by direct experimental and other accessory evidence, a proposition which is far from being even hinted at, either by Spi- gelius, or by any of his contemporaries or prede- cessors ; and which is in diametrical contradiction to the views, respecting the course of the blood in the veins, which are expounded in their works. From Galen to Spigelius, they one and all believed that the blood in the vena cava and its branches flows from the main trunk toward the smallest ramifications. There is a similar con- sensus in the doctrine, that the greater part, if not the whole, of the blood thus distributed by the veins is derived from the liver; in which Organ it is generated out of the materials brought from the alimentary canal by means of the vena porte, And all Harvey's predecessors further agree in the belief that only a small fraction of the total mass of the venous blood is conveyed by the vena arteriosa to the lungs and passes by the arteria venosa to the left ventricle, thence to be distributed over the body by the arteries. Wheth- ‘er some portion of the refined and “ pneumatic ” arterial blood traversed the anastomotic chan- nels, the existence of which was assumed, and so s. “va 2 . wiontd , : Fy POP reached the systemic veins, or whether, on the | Facultatibus,” vol. ili, cap. xv, = ie On ‘ all 2 a se mwas ray Soe ei gc gf hi agt %. t ” ™ [2 SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “ike p20 aay HK . pa 5 ¢ s satel atc eal ee . Nate Le ¥ 2A: oo contrary, some portion of the venous blood - its entrance by the same passage into the arteriey depended upon circumstances. Sometimes the — current might set one way, sometimes the other; — In direct opposition to these universally pe, ceived views, Harvey asserts that the natural course of the blood in the veins is from the pe: ripheral ramifications toward the main trunkg that the mass of the blood to be found in«thé veins at any moment was, a short time befor — contained in the arteries, and has simply flowed out of the latter into the veins; and, finally, that the stream of blood which runs from the arteries intu the veins is constant, continuous, and rapidy According to the view of Harvey's -predeves: sors,' the veins may be compared to larger andj smaller canals, fed by a spring which trickles, into the chief canals, whence the water flows:ta, the rest. The heart and lungs represent aneme — gine set up in the principal canal to aérate some! of the water and scatter it all over the gardemy — Whether any of this identical water came back) to the engine or not would be a matter of chance, and it would certainly have no sensible effeetom the motion of the water in the canals. In Ham vey’s conception of the matter, on the other hand, the garden is watered by channels soatm ranged as to form a circle, two points of wiiich, — are oceupied by propulsive engines. The wate is kept moving in a continual round within: ite channels, as much entering the engines on one side as leaves them on the other; and the mio tion of the water is entirely due to the engines, .@ It is in conceiving the motion of the bloody as a whole, to be circular, and in ascribing that) circular motion simply and solely to the contrac) tions of the walls of the heart, that Harvey isso; completely original. Before him, no one, that; can discover, had ever so much as dreamed that; a given portion of blood contained, for example, in the right ventricle of the heart may, by mere mechanical operation of the working of organ, be made to return to the very place from) which it started, after a long journey through the lungs, and through the body generally. And it should be remembered that it is to this com) plete circuit of the blood, alone, that the term “ circulation” can, in strictness, be applied, ..It, is of the essence of a circular motion that thet which moves returns to the place whence it, started. Hence, the discovery of the course of, the blood from the right ventricle, through the: Su the comparoon of the veins to te cn for irrigating a garden, m Galen, ‘De N », oe

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‘ * wey midoeyy sings, to ti Lah vemtitohh en tl mo wise anes ticipation of the discovery of the circulation of the blood. For the blood which traverses this part of its course no more describes a circle than the dweller in a street who goes out of his own house and enters his next-door neighbor's does so. Although there may be nothing but « party-wall between him and the room he has just left, it constitutes an efficient défense de circuler. Thus, whatever they may have known of the so-called pulmonary circulation, to say that Servetus, or Columbus, or Cesalpinus, deserves any share of the credit which attaches to Harvey, appears to nie to be to mistake the question at issue. © Tt must further be borne in mind, that the de- termination of the true course taken by the whole mass of the blood is only the most conspicuous of the discoveries of Harvey; and that his analy- sis of the mechanism by which the circulation is Broaght about is far in advance of anything which had previously been published. For the fitst time, it is shown that the walls of the heart ate active only during its systole or contraction, ahd that the dilatation of the heart, in the dias- tile, is purely passive. Whence it follows, that the impulse by which the blood is propelled is a tiv dtergo, and that the blood is not drawn into the‘heart by any such inhalent or suctorial action a not only the predecessors but many of the successors of Harvey imagined it to possess. © Harvey is no less original in bis view of the eause of the arterial pulse. . In contravention of Galen and of all other anatomists up to his own tithe, he affirms that the stretching of the arteries Which gives rise to the pulse is not due to the active dilatation of their walls, but to their pas- sive distention by the blood which is forced into them at each beat of the heart ; reversing Galen’s dictum, he says that they dilate as bags and not asbellows. This point of fundamental, practical a8 well as theoretical, importance is most admi- “One of the weightiest arguments in Harvey's demonstration of the circulation is based apon the comparison of the quantity of blood driven out of the heart, at each beat, with the total quantity of blood in the body. This, so far as I kitow, is the first time that quantitative consid. efations are taken into account in the discussion of a physiological problem. But one of the most striking differences between ancient and modern Physiological science, and one of the chief reasons of the rapid progress of physiology in the last ph ai: pecs gland quantitative determinations into physiological ex- perimentation and observation. The moderns use means of accurate measurement, which their forefathers neither possessed nor could conceive, inasmuch as they are products of mechanical skill of the last hundred years, and of the advance of branches of science which hardly existed, even in germ, in the seventeenth century. Having attained to a knowledge of the circu: _ lation of the blood, and of the conditions on which its motion depends, Harvey had a ready deductive solution for problems which had puzzled the older physiologists, Thus the true significance of the valves in the veins became at once apparent. Of no importance while the blood is flowing im its normal course toward the heart, they at once op: pose any accidental reversal of its current, which may arise from the pressure of adjacent muscles, or the like. And, in like manner, the swelling of the veins on the farther side of the ligature, which so much troubled Cxsalpinus, became at once intelligible, as the whnaral Senet of Cees ming up of the returning current. In addition to the great positive results which are contained in the treatise which Harvey mod- estly calls an “ Exercise ”"—and which is, in truth, not so long as many s pamphlet about some wholly insignificant affair—its pages are charac- terized by such precision and simplicity of state- ment, such force of reasoning, and such a clear comprehension of the methods of inquiry and of the logic of physical science, that it holds a unique rank among physiological monographs. Under this aspect, I think I may fairly say that it has rarely been equaled and never surpassed. Such being the state of knowledge among bis _ contemporaries, and such the immense progress effected by Harvey, it is not wonderful that the publication of the “Exercitatio ’’ produced a pro- found sensation. And the best indirect evidence of the originality of its author, and of the revolu- tionary character of his views, is to be found in the multiplicity and Se to which they were at once subjected. Riolan, of Paris, had the greatest epee of any anatomist of those days, and he followed the course which is usually adopted by the men of temporary notoriety toward those of enduring fame; According to Riolan, Harvey's theory of the circulation was not true ; and, besides that, it was not new; and, furthermore, he invented a mongrel doctrine of his own, composed of the old views with as much of Harvey’s as it was safe half-century, lies in the introduction of exact | to borrow, and tried therewith to fish credit for

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himself out of the business. In fact, in wading ‘through these forgotten controversies, I felt my- self quite at home. Substitute the name of Dar- win for that of Harvey, and the truth that history repeats itself will come home to the dullest appre- hension. It waa said of the doctrine of the cir- culation of the blood that nobody over forty could be got to adopt it; and I think I remember a passage in the “Origin of Species,” to the effect that its author expects to convert only young and flexible minds. -. There is another curious point of resemblance in the fact that even those who gave Harvey their general approbation and support sometimes failed to apprehend the value of some of those parts of his doctrine which are, indeed, merely auxiliary to the theory of the circulation, but are only a little less important than it. Harvey's great friend and champion, Sir George Ent, is in this case; and I am sorry to be obliged to admit that Descartes falls under the same reprehension. This great philosopher, mathematician, and physiologist, whose conception of the phenomena of life as the results of mechanism is now playing as-great a part in physiological science as Har- vey’s own discovery, never fails to speak with admiration, as Harvey gratefully acknowledges, of the new theory of the circulation. And it is astonishing, I had almost said humiliating, to find that even he is unable to grasp Harvey’s pro- foundly true view of the nature of the systole and the diastole, or to see the force of the quantita- tive argument. He adduces experimental evidence against the former position, and is even further from the truth than Galen was, in his ideas of the physical cause of the circulation. "' Yet one more and a last parallel. In spite of all opposition, the doctrine of the circulation propounded by Harvey was, in its essential feat- ures, universally adopted within thirty years of the time of its publication. Harvey's friend, Thomas Hobbes, remarked that he was the only man, in his experience, who had the good fortune to live long enough to see a new doctrine aceept- ed by the world at large. Mr. Darwin has been even more fortunate, for not twenty years have yet elapsed since the publication of the “Origin of Species ;” and yet there is no denying the fact that the doctrine of evolution, ignored, or de- tided, and vilified, in 1859, is now accepted, in one shape or other, by the leaders of scientific thought in every région of the civilized world. I proposed at the outset of this essay to say something about the method of inquiry which 308 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. i2 he iggy ay» py rgtbice« Pr itce ee - . OF ne ene . Harvey. passed, snd, which guided, him out his suecessful career of discovery. It is, I believe, a cherished belief of E men, that Francis Bacon, Viscount St, Albang and sometime Lord Chancellor of Rete vented that “Inductive Philosophy” they speak with almost as much sy do of church and state; ant thet, tile hekaaee been for this “ Baconian . Induction,” would never have extricated itself from the misen, able condition in which it was left by a set of hair-splitting folk, known as the ancient Greek — philosophers, To be accused of departing from the canons of the Baconian philosophy is almost as bad as to be charged with forgetting yourag, — pirates; it is understood as a polite way of saying — that you are an entirely absurd speculator. .. — Now the “ Novum Organon ” was published in 1620, while Harvey began to teach the doctring of the circulation in.hie, public Jootnege ln: 1600 Acquaintance with the “ Baconian Indecent r therefore, could not have had much to do with Harvey's investigations. The “ Rnercitatio” heaial ever, was not published till 1628, Do we it any trace of the influence of the “Novum Orga, non?” Absolutely none, So far from the short-sighted and profoundly unscientific de, preciation of the ancients in which Bacon Harvey invariably speaks of them with that, spect which the faithful and intelligent study the fragments of their labors that remain 10 at must inspire in every one who is practically ac, — quainted with the difficulties with which they hi to contend, and which they so. often And, as to method, Harvey’s method is the of Galen, the method of Realdus Columbus, the method of Galileo, the method of eyery genuine worker in science either in the past or the On the other hand, judged strictly by the of his own time, Bacon’s ignorance of the progress — which science had up to that time made, is be equaled by his insolence toward men in parison with whom he was the merest 4 Even when he has some hearsay knowledge of bat has been done, his want of acquaintance with thé facts and his abnormal deficiency in what I may — ing its importance. Bacon could. see nothing ne 4 markable in the chief contributions to science of Copernicus, or of Kepler, or of Galileo ; i his fellow-countryman, is the subject of s é while Galen is bespattered with a shower of im; - pertinences, which reach their climax in the ep thets “ puppy” and “ plague.” * - 1 “ Video Galenum, virum angustiesimi animi, der tg Range >

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ch Hig Ran dade “ « dd. pt i Dis » Cp eT ee ASRS OARSRA ESE RCRA EESEES 29S FSG ES ES, I ventare to think that if Francis Bacon, in- “ stead of spending his time im fabricating fine phrases about the advancement of learning, in order’ to play, with due pomp, the part which he to himself of “trumpeter” of science, employed his time to better parpose ; and, at any rate, would not have deserved the just but sharp judgment which follows: “that his (Bacon’s) method is impracticable, cannot, I think, be de- nied, if we reflect, not only that it never has pro- duted any result, but‘ also that the process by Which scientific truths have been established can- not be so presented as even to appear to be in accordance with it.” I quote from one’of Mr. Ellis's contributions to the great work of Bacon's most learned, competent, and impartial biogra- pher, Mr. Spedding.’ Few of Harvey's sayings are recorded, but Au- brey* tells us that some one having enlarged upon the merits of the Baconian philosophy in his presence, “Yes,” said Harvey, “ he writes philos- ophy Vike a chancellor.” ‘On which pithy reply diverse persons will put diverse interpretations. The ‘illumination of experience may possibly tempt 2 modern follower of Harvey to expound "the dark saying thus: “So this servile courtier, this intriguing politician, this unscrupulous law- yer, this witty master of phrases, proposes to téach me my business in the intervals of his. I have borne with Riolan, let me also be patient With him ;” at any rate, I have no better reading to offer. I the latter half of the sixteenth and the be- gimning of the seventeenth centuries, the future of physical science was safe enough in the hands sertorem experientie et vanissimum causatorem. . . . Ocanicula! O pestis !—Temporis Partus Masculus!" * Canicals ” has ¢ven @ coarser meaning than {Geen Preface to the Philosophical Works, vol, 5.08. » 2 Aubrey says: “ He had been physitian to the Lord Ch. Bacon, whom he esteemed mach for his witt and style, but would not allow to be a great philov- opher. Said he to me, ‘ He writes philosophy like a my journey dictated to me what to see, what company to keep, what bookes to read, how to manage my stadyes; in short, he bid me go to the fountaine bead, and read Aristotle, Cicero, Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques "— something almost as bad as “cani- tala :" the little ewarthy, black-eyed, choleric man. of Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey, Descartes, and the noble army of investigators who flocked to their standard, and followed up the advance of their leaders. I do not believe that their wonderfully rapid progress would have been one whit retarded if the“ Novum Organon” had never seen the light; while if Harvey’s little “ Exercise” had been lost, physiology would have stood still until another Harvey was born into the world. There is another point in reference to method on which I desire to contribute my mite toward the dissipation of a wide-spread popular delusion. On the faith of a conversation reported by Robert Boyle, Harvey is said to have declared that he discovered the circulation of the blood by rea- soning deductively from the disposition of the valves of the veins. On this I may remark, firstly, that the words imputed to Harvey by no means warrant this conclusion ; secondly, that if they did, the statement could not be true, be cause we have Harvey's own evidence to the contrary ; and, thirdly, that if the conclusion were warranted by the words reported, and were not contradicted by Harvey himself, it would still be worthless, because it is impossible to prove the cireulation of the blood from any such data, What Robert Boyle says is this: “ And I remem ber, that when I asked our famous Harvey, in the only discourse I bad with him (which was but a while before he died), what were the things that indaced ‘him to think .of a circulation of the blood? he answered me that when he took notice that the valves in the veins of so many parts of the body were so placed that they gave free passage to the blood toward the heart, but op- posed the passage of the venal blood the con- trary way: he was invited to imagine. that so provident a cause as Nature had not so. placed 80 many valves without design; and no design seemed more probable, than that sinee the blood could not well, because of the interposing valves, be sent by the veins to the limbs, it should be sent through the arteries and return through the veins, whose valves did not oppose its course that way.”! I have no doubt that it may be quite true that Harvey was “ induced” to “ think of a circulation of the blood” by considering the disposition of the valves of the veins ; just as Cesalpinus might have been led to the same thought; and then might have found out the true state of the ease if he had taken the hints whick Nature gave him and had used the proper means of investigation 1“ A Disquisition abont the Final Causes of Natu- ral Things.”—Boyle’s Works, vol. v., p. 427, t

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in order to discover whether those hints were val- uable or worthless. Harvey must have learned the views of his master Fabricius; and it is likely enough that to his acute mind Fabricius’s explana- tion of the functions of the valves seemed rather lame. But, as a matter of fact, Harvey did not reason out the circulation from the datum of the valves. On this point his own words, in the pas- gage which contains the fullest account of the considerations which led him to the doctrine of the circulation, leave no doubt whatever : “Thus far I have spoken of the passage of the blood from the veins into the arteries, and of the manner in which it is transmitted and distrib- uted by the action of the heart; and thus far some, perhaps, moved by the authority of Galen or of Columbus, or by the reasonings of other au- thors, will agree with me. But when I proceed to what remains to be said concerning the quanti- ty and the origin of the blood thus transmitted (though it is highly worthy of consideration) it will seem so new and unheard of, that I not only fear injury to myself from the envy of a few, but I dread lest I make all mankind my enemies. So much does custom, or teaching once accepted and fixed by deep roots, weigh with all; and such is the influence of the venerable opinion of antiquity. However this may be, now that the die is cast, my hope lies in the candor of lovers of truth and of learned minds. Indeed, when I thought often and seriously upon how large the quantity [of transmitted blood] is; upon my dissections of living animals (for the purposes of experiment) and the opening of arteries and the many consid- erations arising therefrom; as well as upon the magnitude and the symmetry of the ventricles of the heart and of the vessels which enter and leave them (since Nature makes nothing in vain, so great a size proportionally would not be given to these vessels without an object); and upon the @laborate mechaniam of the valves and fibres, and ofthe rest of the structure of the heart ; as well as of many other things ; and when I long turned over in my mind, what might be the quantity of the transmitted blood, in how short a time its trans- mission might be effected; whether that quantity could be supplied by the juices of the food ip- gested: I came at length to the conclusion that the veins would become collapsed and empty, ‘while the arteries, on the other hand, would be raptured by the excess of blood poured into them ; . In the preceding chapter (vii.) Harvey has been discussing the passage of the blood through the lungs, supporting his views, among other arguments, by the aathority of Galen and of Columbus ; and it must be re- membered that he termed the pulmonary artery vena G@rterioea and the pulmonary vein arteria venoea. ‘Wherefore he properly speaks of the passage uf the blood “ from the veins into the arteries.” THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. unless there were some road by which the could at length run back from the arteries the veins, and return to the right ventricle of ¢ heart. So I began to think whether there kind of motion as it were in a circle; this Ia ward found to be true.” 2 7 In all this very full and interesting of the course of Harvey's inquiry, it will be served that not one word is said about the those of the heart, which had been known, ag have pointed out, ever since the days of tratus. Finally, I venture to affirm that Harvey not deduce the circulation from the of the valves of the veins, because it is impossible that any such conclusion should | deduced from such premises. The only sion which is warranted by the presence of innraere place a certain amount of obstacle in the way @ liquid flowing in a direction opposite to in which the valves are inclined. The amount of obstacle, from mere impediment to barring of the way, will depend upon the f and disposition of the valves; upon their or stiffness of motion, in relation to the force the current of liquid; and, above all, upon firmness or yigldingness of the walls of the to which they are attached. The valve whi hermetically closes the passage through an ir pipe may be of no use in an India-rubber tub Therefore, unless the action of such valves 1 exist in the veine were carefully tested by ment on the living animal, any conclusions th might be based upon their presence would be doubtful value, and might be interpreted in the sense of Fabricius, or in that of Harvey, — Moreover, supposing that it could be that in those veins in which valves exist blood can move only in one way, what is to valves? And, unless we already know upon @ perimental grounds that the walls of the of the heart contract in a certain definite order} that the arteries are full of blood and not of alr} and a number of other important facts which only be experimentally determined—what good | it to know that there are valves in the velit There are valves in the lymphatics as well a8 fi the veins, and yet any one who concluded there from that the lymph circulates after the mannet of the blood would make a woful mistake. Me “Galielmi Harveji Exereitationes Anatomica” Reocehatie, cap. viii., edition 1660. of the veins. =r nto : said about the numerous veins which have’ 10 i’ -

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o's . ee OE Ree R Tee Se ” - : | ee ~ The fact is, that neither in this nor in any prob'em can mere deductive rea- soning from dead structure tell us what part that structure plays, when it is a living component of a living body. Physiology attempts to discover the laws of vital activity, and these laws are ob- viously ascertainable only by observation and experiment upon living things. In the case of the circulation of the blood, as in that of all other great physiological doctrines, | tions. take away the truths which have been learned by observation and experiment on living structures, and the whole fabric crumbles away. Galen, Columbus, Harvey, were all great vivisectors, And the final ocular demonstration of the cireu- lation of the blood by Malpighi, seven years after Harvey’s death—the keystone of the fabric he raised—involved an experiment on a living frog. '. This experiment can be performed on a de ly insensible animal. Nevertheless, any subject who repeats it, in these days, may be subjected to fine or imprisonment, as a common malefactor, whenever the chances of strife give the home office to some min- ister of less knowledge, less justice, and, above all, less firmness in resisting open and underhand than the present Secretary of State for fhe Home Department. , Ido not think the present is a fitting occasion for the discussion of the burning question of vivi- section. My opinions on the subject have been formed and expressed under a due sense of re- ee Tee. bis “ae unquestionable fact that physiology is based upon experiment, and can only grow by experi- ment ; and that the discovery of the true motion of the blood, which is one of the cardinal doo. trines of that science, and a doctrine the truth of which is implied in the diagnosis and the treatment of nine diseases out of ten, has been made in no other way than by reasoning on the data supplied by repeated and multiplied vivisec- The other is a mere suggestion, which, per- haps, may be dictated by a want of power on the part of a man who is growing old, to adjust hims self to a changing world. The great mark of senility, I believe, is to be a “ laudator temporis acti,” But, as Harvey says, “the die is cast, and I put my faith in the candor of the lovers of truth and of learned minds.” , I have had occasion to remark that the seci- ence of former days was not so despicable as some think; and that, however foolish undue respect for the wisdom of the ancients may be, undue disrespect for it may be still more repre- hensible. Now I fancy that a candid mind will admit it to be within the limits of possibility, that the like may apply to the public opinion and the moral sense of former Harvey was the favored friend of his sov- ereign, the honored Nestor of his profession, the pride of his countrymen. If he lived now, and were guilty of serving mankind to the same extent and in the same way, so far from any sponsibility, and they have not been, and are not | such marks of favor reaching him, he would likely to be, affected by the preposterous misrep- resentations and unseemiy abuse which they bave evoked. The good Harvey, in one of his fits of tholer, I suppose, said that “man was but a mischievous baboon,” ' and yet for twenty he kept silence, and at the end answered liolan with quite angelic mildness. I can imi- his silence, if not his mildness; and there- fore I have nothing further to offer on this subject. Ts may be that those are right who say, “ Perish the human race, rather than let dog suffer.” It May be that those are right who think that a man is worth a wilderness of apes, and that he who will not save human life when he could do 80, by sacrificing a hecatomb of animals, is an ‘eomplice in murder. "But, without touching upon this debatable ground, I may be of some use in cleansing the ground of mere rubbish. I submit two points for your consideration. The one of these is the 2 Aubrey. find himself to be a mark of a different kind—a mark, I mean, for immeasurable calumny and scandalous vituperation; and, though his pro- fessional brethren would surely pay him all honor, so far from being the pride of his cour- trymen, a goodly number of them, of all grades in the social scale, would be spending a world of energy in the endeavor to give him the legal status of a burglar. I venture to ask you to consider seriously whether, under these circumstances, it is quite 60 certain, as some seem to believe, that the pub- lic opinion of the England of Harvey’s day—that time when Englishmen could hurl back a world arrayed in arms against them, because they feared neither to suffer, nor to inflict, pain and death in a good cause ; that age within which Shakespeare and Milton, Hobbes and Locke, Harvey and New: ton, Drake and Raleigh, Cromwell and Strafford, embodied the powers of our race for good and evil in a fashion which has had no parallel before _ or since—was absolutely contemptible when set un

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‘against that of this present enlightened and softly-nurtured, not to say sentimental, age. _ ‘Maybe it is; possibly the world is entering - wpon a phase in which the recognized whole duty of man will be to avoid the endurance, or the in- _ fiction, of physical pain, whatever future allevia- tion of misery may be its consequence, however great the positive benefit to mankind which may flow thereupon. If so, “Finis Physiologia.” When that time arrives, there will be an end to all progress in our knowledge of the laws of life, to all advance toward rational medicine. And, if Ido not greatly err, these are not the only things which the logical outcome of such premises will have abolished. Crime must go unpunished—for what justification is there for “ torturing” a poor thief or murderer except the general good of “society? The “voice of the sluggard” will not “be heard to complain,” for no one will dare to “torture” him by disturbing his slumbers. There will be‘no means of transport, and nothing to tide, except steam-engines and bicycles, for the “torture” involved in the training and in the labor of beasts of draught and burden will be insufferable. No man will think of eating _ meat, though it may be proper for him to serve $98 | THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT., as meat to other creatures; for what right | men have to “torture” fleas by the ad don of tnavetichde powder, marcly forthe teal of mankind? Sport, I need not say, will hay been abolished, and war will have followed it; not so much because war is fraught with evil fog men, but because of the awful “torture” whigh — it inflicts directly upon horses and mules, to say nothing of the indirect dyspeptic sufferings of the vultures and wolves, which ees ca our wickedness to overeat themselves. As I have confessed, I find myself to be regrettably out of harmony with many worthy — and enthusiastie people among my contempors ries ; and perhaps the prospect of the coming of the new era, in which these things shall be, does not affect others as it does me. To say truth] | am rather glad to think that the species. can hardly be perfected thus far, in my time. I must distinctly admit that I should be loath tobe obliged to exist. in a world in which my notions — of what men should be and do will have no ap plication. As the old Norseman said, whenthe~ choice between heaven with the new generation, and hell with the old, was offered him, “I prefer — to be with my ancestors.” — Fortnightly —_— N this day the cultivation of the mental facul- ties is made to hold the first place in educa- tion. There be some who still maintain the su- periority of physical over mental culture, and there be many who insist on the necessity of & high degree of physical culture of a certain extreme and artificial kind. But, as a rule, the favor once too exclusively tendered to a purely physical training is on the decline. The admira- tion which once was bestowed on men of great strength has almost ceased in civilized circles. “ Physical strength may, if it show itself in some singular and abnormal manner, create for a time an excitement and noise, but the excitement ends in the silence that follows clamor. Men who per- form great feats of strength are no longer heroes to be courted and immortalized. Hercules him- self would be a nine days’ wonder in these days. ! Lecture delivered at the London Institution, on Monday, January 14, 1878. LEARNING AND HEALTH.’ Br BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON. The evidence now is fairly clear, moreover, men who even combine heroism with power are not the demi-gods they were. In wi the man, in these days, who displays the deepest — is the great general. It is nut necessary that should lead a column or expose himself todanget — for a moment. His power lies in his knowledge, and his knowledge in his power, af To attain knowledge is one of the most San ontannky Rone Maa objects, and so much of admiration of man for man as yet remains (it is not really very expended on those who show the greatest gifts or possessions, The admiration, ¢ re val, fone air tas vee tion. Men who wish to be honestly no mode of having what they long for the acquisition of knowledge and the toilsome — display of it. They are frequently disappointed; _ more frequently, I faney, disappointed than sstie 2 ieee if of fit thet

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a el bbshhihte! ‘ TREES ETERLE SEE FOESECRE STE SATU REEE Sa 4): ae : a ee afi! But what other course is open to laudable _ ‘the whole domain of the human understanding. ‘third, in Grecian history second, in Roman history ae e wast viks eek s ee s re | “ “> “ ‘ . TH. fied, when they even attain to all they aspire to és scholars. They feel themselves, perhaps justly know themselves, to be great scholars; and yet, how little are they recognized above the common who are well-to-do and are no scholars at There is in this way induced, therefore, a strain after knowledge as a means of getting that re- ‘taining part, that skeleton of distinction, which so soon will he put up as a curiosity of the past. ») The acquisition of much knowledge has, how- rer, another meaning and object beyond mere ‘ibition. In this so-called practical day it is imagined that knowledge must be extended with- ‘ut limitation among the young, in order that it ‘may be limited without extension among those who have passed their youth and have become ‘@igaged in the practical affairs of life. School- days and student-days must be given up to the ‘ttainment of mastery over subjects included in The days of active life, in which men are made or ibarted, riust be devoted to the perfect mastery, ‘@ supposed perfect mastery, of one particular subject. Branches of great divisions, and in time branches of divisions of great divisions, and in time again branches of little divisions derived from the secondary divisions, must be made the subjects of special study by special men. It is very singular to observe in common con- versation the expression of these two lines of mental activity. A fond parent, speaking in terms of admiration of his son at school, unfolds with pride the school report. His boy has been working with a zeal that cannot be too much ap- ‘Oiie lower down. In what is called English he is fitst, in English fourth. In geography he is first, ‘hi chemistry fifth, in natural philosophy second, | tiathematics third, in algebea third, in ‘arith. Ht * yh 4 a i 2 wr ry Fe Py bh. ye he aan tae *. fai 5 Py a senicuNe er a ee ry The father is delighted with the progress of the son. Suppose, however, you take the father on these very subjects, and see his position in re- spect to them. In nine cases out of ten you find that for him such learnings are vanities. He tells you he has no time for the gaining of any infor mation on other subjects save the one which is the matter of his life: You may hear him say of men placed as he is, that they must keep to the single calling. Division of labor is the soul of success. In these times, to master one subject is to do all that is required. An accomplished man! Where is there such a man, and of what use is he if he do exist, which is improbable? An accomplished woman! Yes, anaccomplished woman is now and then met with, but she, too, is | rare, and not of much use either; but women have more time, and may be excused if they let their minds run after many things in learning. This picture may perhaps be thought to have a mercantile or business character of too exclu- sive a kind. I do not think so. In science, the same kind of argument is not wanting in respect to the young and to middle-aged. men. The stu- dent of science must, in the period of his student- ship, go through the whole range of scientific learning. He must struggle for his degrees and get them. Once through the ordeal necessary for so much successful winning, he must settle down into minuteness; he must find some little point in the great world he has tried to traverse, fix on that, and seek to live on it in competency and reputation. He must touch no one else in his course, and let no one touch him. His magic cirele, his ground of specialistic thought, is to be considered sacred. The same fashion, for I can- not cal it a principle—nay, I cannot, without abusing the word, call it a method—is maintained in the professions ; in two of them, the medical and the legal, in the most marked degree. A modern medical student, through the ordinary term of his studies, from the day he enters school until the day he gets his diploma, may work like a galley-slave at the whole world of natural science, and then, having seized his envied prize, may settle in life to the exclusive study and prac- tice of disease of some section of the animal body. To be successful, he cannot draw the line too sharply round his particular pasture. Into that no man must enter unless he have a pasture somewhat similar, and such a one is not over- welcome. In deference to other men of other past- _ tres, our man of men must pot go out of his own. If he knows another department ever so well, he must not profess to know it—it is out of his line.

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In legal pursuits the same kind of exclusive- ness obtains, and I think in some instances in a more marked degree than in medicine. It is fortunate for the Church that, with all her backslidings and troubles, she has not yet tumbled down to so low a position as her sisters have, It is of happy omen for the clergy that they must keep up their learning as general schol- ars. It ie more than happy that in their case division of labor is not recognized as profitable ; for if they were to begin to specialize, if one clergyman were to take one sin for special study, and keep to it all his life, and another a different sin; if one took up the cure of swearing, for in- stance, and another of theft, and another of ly- ing, the confusion of the modern learned world would be complete indeed. This introduction to present modes of learn- ing and application of learning would well befit an essay on the subject of learning, as a practical development of civilization not altogether in ac- cord, as it is now carried on, with the welfare of our race. I trust soon some scholar, whose heart is on education as mine is on health, will be bold enough to declare the unity of knowl- edge, the connection of it with wisdom, and the utter vacuity that must soon be witnessed if the eurrent fashion be allowed to follow its fragmen- tary, self-repulsive, and self-destructive course. To me it falls to oppose the system of modern education as destructive of vital activity, and thereby of strength of mental growth. It is my business to declare that at this time health and education are not going hand-in-hand ; that the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. I cannot sit day by day to see failure of ' young brain, and of brain approaching its matu- rity, and of brain that is matured, and tamely accept the phenomenon as necessary and there- fore te be endured, To see the errors that pre- vail and not to speak of them were to be silent on errors which would lead a nation into trained feebleness, which shall lead to new generations springing out of that feebleness, and to the prop- agation of a community that should no more be illuminated bv those greatnesses of the past who, in less learned but freer times, gave forth the noblest of noble poetry, the most wonderful of wonderful art, and a science, philosophy, and literature, that have been hardly mortal. Such a poetry as Shakespeare has poured forth ; such an art as Gainsborough, and Reynolds, and Turner, and Herschel, and Siddons, and Kemble, and Kean, have presented ; such a science as Newton, and Priestley, and Davy, and Young, and Faraday, THE POPULAR SCIEN CE MONTHLY.~SUPPLEMENT. inlet ts eee nS have immortalized ; such a philosophy as Ps and Locke have contributed ; and such a lites ature as Johnson, and Scott, and Dickens have; in the freedom of their intellectual growths, be: queathed forever, To me, observing as » phy sician, the appearance and development of these men, under the circumstances in which they apy peared, is natural, the mere course of nature un. trammeled, regular, and divinely permitted ;. not forced but permitted, Nature being left to hem self, To me, observing as a physician, the ap: pearance of such men in similar greatness of form is at this time an all but impossible phe nomenon. The men truly may appear, for Ne — ture is always reproducing them, and the diving permission for their development is equally good’ now as of yore; but the development is checked: by human interference, and thereby hangs the reason of the impossible. Nature produces acorns - for future oaks, and is as free as of yore that oaks should make forests ; but if the young oaks be forced in their growth, and when they. are approaching to maturity be barbarously com pressed, head and trunk, into narrow, unyielding tubes, there will be no forests, nor so much af spare representatives of the forest, amid the brushwood of commonplace meadow or “—_ ploughed field of mental life, If it be true that education does not go in-hand with health, it is vain to expect that cation shall bring forth the first fruits of knowk” edge, and, what is more important, of wisdom) My argument is, that the present modes of edu. cation for the younger population, and for the older, are not compatible with healthy life; and that education, therefore, is not producing th mental product that is required for the and powerful progress of the nation. # There are many faults in the processes of cation of the young which tell meni direct mode, There are faults in the construdy tion of school-rooms still: there are faults in te spect to discipline in schools: there are faults respect to punishments in school-life. I do at this moment dwell on these, and for the simple reason that they are departing ) No one who has watched the im which have been made in schools during the past twenty years can fail to see how markedly have advanced ; what care is taken to secure” good ventilation ; how clean and warm the mod: erm school-room has become, compared with the school-room of the past day. No one, again, can doubt that the discipline of the modern school is much more correct thal = BEPSFBS2s BPBeaevenweaeueune a ke Oe bb ces

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a SUSERSELERR EF FLE GET ERTS. & - SEER CERSS Be EARNS | eS PNT 3 na fants ee sy Siege it used to be, and that the manners and customs of scholars in school, and out of school, are su- perior in every particular. Scholars are cleanlier than they were, less brutal than they were, and less subjected to those painful school accidents which, in our forefathers’ time, were wont to leave their marks for life. Lastly, it must be obvious to all that the law of kindness in schools is fast replacing the modes of raling by the rod, and other forms of punish- ment, which once stood out as solemn and legal- ized barbarities—modes which hardened many hearts in their first days, and broke more than they hardened ; modes which have left their im- press even yet in the men and women whom they trained into transmissible forms of character and mind. I may, then, leave these departing shadows on the school-day health, that I may touch more definitely on the shadows that are now deepening and daily falling. EDUCATION IN CHILDHOOD. The first serious and increasifig evil bearing " om education, and its relation to health, lies in too early subjection of pupils to study. Children are often taught lessons from books before they are properly taught to walk, and long before they ate taught properly to play. Play is held out to - them, not as a natural thing, as something which the parent should feel it a duty to encourage, but asa reward for so much work done, and as a rest * from work done; as though, forsooth, play were not itself a form of work, and often work of a most fatiguing nature. Play, therefore, is not used as it ought to be used—as a mode of work Which the child likes, but rather as a set-off . ‘gainst a mode of work which the child does not like, and which, in nine cases out of ten, he does not like because it is altogether unfitted for his Powers; because Nature is protesting, as loudly #s.she can and as plainly as she can, that the child has not arrived at a period of growth when the kind of mental food that is forced on it is fitted for its organization. For children under seven years of age the whole of the teaching that should be naturally conveyed should be through play, if the body is to be trained up healthily as the bearer of the mind, And it is wonderful what an amount of leaning can by this method be attained. Let- ters of languages can be taught; conversation in different languages can be carried on; animal life-can be classified; the surface of the earth ‘can be made clear; history can be told as story ; 62 2 LEARNING AND HEALTH. . . : and a number of other and most useful truths can be instilled without ever forcing the child to touch a book or read a formal lesson. Under such a system the child grows into knowledge, makes his own inventory of the world that surrounds him and the things that are upon it, and, growing up free to learn, learns well, and eats, and sleeps, and plays well. In a child trained after this method, not only is health set forth, but happiness likewise — a@ most important item in this period of life. Priestley, who was as good an observer of men as he was of inanimate Nature, was accustomed to say of himself, with much gratitude, that he was born of a happy disposition; that he was happy by heredity. So, in all his great triale—in his failures as a speaker because of his defective stammering habit; in his difficulties as a theo- logian ; in his persecution as a presumed politi- cian, flying for his life, having his house burned to the ground, and all the treasures he valued most flung out of window to a senseless, drunken, groaning mob; in all these trials, and others to come—the cruel cutting of his colleagues of the Royal Society, and the final parting forever, in his old age, from his beloved England that be had served so well; in all these trials, I say, which so few could have borne, he sustained the full share , of his hereditary gifts, his mental happiness and health—or, I should rather say, his health, and therefore his happiness. But this blessed health, which so distinctly propagates itself, is never at any period of life so tried asim the first years. Then it is confirmed or destroyed, made or unmade. In this period, in which so many die from various causes, Nature herself, at first sight, seems to set up continued irritations. It is only that she seems, for if she were allowed she would do all her spiriting gently, even to the cutting of teeth, and the modification of digestion to modi- fication of food. It is in this period that education is too often made for the first time to stand at variance with health. It is in this period that the enforced lesson too often harasses, wearies, and at last darkens the mind. It is in this period that the primary fault is committed of making play a set- off against work, and a promise of a good game an inducement for the persistence in hard labor. What is constantly-attempted to be taught in this period of life is the saddest detail. I have known a regular imposition of work per day equal to the full complement of natural work for many @ man or woman. There are schools in which

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, Ca eee < weap _ children of eight, nine, and ten years of age, and, _ it may be, younger children still, are made to study from nine o’clock until noon, and again, after a hasty meal and an hour for play, from two to five in the afternoon, and later on are obliged _ to go to lessons once more preparatory for the following day. The bad fact is, that the work is actually done, and as the brain is very active because it is di- verted from its natural course, the child it belongs to is rendered so unusually precocious that it may become a veritable wonder. Worse than all, this precocity and wonderful cleverness too often encourage both parents and teachers to press the little ability to some further stretch of ability, so that the small wonder becomes an actual exhibi- tion, a receptacle of knowledge that can turn up a date like the chronological table of the “En- cyclopedia Britannica,” give the whole history of Cleopatra, to say nothing of the Needle, carry you through a Greek verb without a stop, and prob- ably recite a dozen selections from the best poets. This is the outside of the marvelous picture. Let us look at the inside of it, as a skilled eye can easily look and read too. These precocious coached-up children are never well. Their men- tal excitement keeps up a flush, which, like the excitement caused by strong drink in older chil- dren, looks like health, but has no relation to it. If you look at the tongues of these children, you see them to be furred or covered with many red points like a strawberry, or to be too red and very dry. If you inquire into the state of the appetite, you find that the appetite is capricious ; that all kinds of strange foods are asked for, and that the stomach never seems to be in order. If you watch the face for long, you note that the frequent flush gives way to an unearthly paleness. If you watch the eyes, you observe that they gleam with light at one time and are dull, de- pressed, and sad at another, while they never are laughing eyes. Their brightness is the brightness of thought on the strain, an evanescent and dan- gerous phenomenon. If you feel the muscles, they are thin and flabby, though in some instances they may be fairly covered with fat. If you in- quire as to the sleep these children get, you hear that it is disturbed, restless, and sometimes broken. In @ healthy child the sleep comes on irresistibly at an early hour, and, when the eyes are shut and the body composed, the sleep is carried out till waking-time without a movement of position of the body. You ask the healthy child about his sleep, and he says that he is simply conscious of THE POPULAR SOLENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT.

having closed his eyes and opened them again.

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no such elysium. They sleep, perchance dream ; to dream during half the night, -

row crevices which it seems impossible to squeme into; and waking in a start, with the body egld, in what is commonly called a nightmare, and sometimes in somnambulism, or sleep-walking, The bad sleep naturally leads to a certain over wakefal languor the next day; but, strangay: enough, it interferes with the natural sleep the next night, so that night becomes a habit. The child must be read to sleep, or told stories until it is off, and thusit poner mgr tel worries, cares, and wonders. +; In this period of early education, frst state: of what may be fairly called the intemperance.of education, the recreations that are adopted.for the little scholar are often as pernicious as apy — other part of the system in which he or she is trained. During the day-pastimes, a want of freshness and ‘freedom prevails, almost of neces sity, in large towns ; and this want is often mate worse than it need to be by inattention or af ciency of knowledge. In a town like London there are three classes eS aeitoen, Real seneense RO of health. " The children of the poorer people, the chib dren that play in the open streets and squares, are constantly found to present the best specimens of health in the whole child comzcunily. If these children are well fed at home, and have moderately comfortable beds, and are not putto work for hours too long, they are singulatly healthy in many instances, even though they be the denizens of courts, mews, and alleys. Ibis true that numbers of them inherit sad constit» tional diseases; it is true that numbers of them exhibit deformities of the skeleton, owing to the circumstance that during their infancy were not properly fed with food that will bone-forming structure; still, among them ae the ruddiest and healthiest of the town comm — nities. They owe their health to the free sad out-door life. i. see There is next a class of children belonging #0 the well-to-do. These are taken out for walkeia — the public parks and gardens, or are driven out, — and if they be permitted really to enjoy the out ing, and are not harassed with long lessons at home or at school, they are bright and healthy, though it is rare for them to present all the asi

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uk * Sef Bideadaa va \ grow up irresolute, and yield a large—by far the ~e -eulties lie in the way of parents of children of “the classes I have just named. But there are no ‘intelligent public demand for an improvement “would very soon lead to an extension of what are “teaching by amusing lessons, or games of learn- $$$ $$ ta) ruddiness and strength of the spring-time of life. There is a third class of children who, least fortunate, lie between the rich and the poor, and who belong to the middle trading-classes. The parents of these children are anxious, for the most correct of motives, that their young shall not run wild im the streets to mix with children who are of a different class and ‘ander different influences. At the same time, they are unable to send their children out to the parks or suburbs, as their wealthier neighbors are. The consequence is, that these children are kept close at home or at school. They have to live in small rooms badly ventilated or irregularly oventilated, and, albeit they are well clothed and well fed and comfortably bedded, they grow up all but universally unhealthy. These children are they who specially suffer from too close work at books and educational labor generally. They are usually very pale, miuscularly feeble, and depressed in mind. They largest—number of those who fill up the death- roll of that disease of fatal diseases, pulmonary ‘eonsumption. For fourteen years of my life I was physician W one of the hospitals in this metropolis, to Which so many of those who are afflicted with consumption find their way. Twice, and occa- tionally three times a week, the duty of inquiry

fito the origin of this disease came to my share | ff professional work. The field of observation | Wes extensive, and no fact was yielded: in it 20 | definitely as this fact, that the larger proportion of the consumptive population have been brought Up under the conditions I have named above: in close school-rooms, during school-hours far too prolonged, and then in close rooms at home, ‘where other work, in confined space, filled the remaining lifetime. * It is to be confessed that many practical diffi- insurmountable difficulties to improvement. An called garden-schools for the young, in which ‘ing, in a pure air and in ample space, would se- ‘eure all the advantages whieh are now so much ‘desired. In our large and splendid board-schools, ‘which are becoming distinct and beautiful social ‘features of the age, something eae

‘tem is approached, if not attained. In the éducation which is bestowed on the young in the next stage of life—I mean on those © who are passing from the eleventh to the six- teenth or seventeenth year of life—the errors committed in respect to health are often as pro- nounced as in the earlier stage. . This period of life is in many respects ex- tremely critical The rapid growth of the organs of the body, the still imperfect and imperfected condition of the most vital organs: the quick changing, and yet steadily developing, form of mind, which, like the handwriting, is now being constructed : the imitative tendency of the mind : and, not to name other peculiarities, the intensity of feelings in the way of likes and hates—all these conditions, physical and mental, make this stage of a human career singularly liable to disorders of a functional or even of an organie kind, For one organ of the body, or for one propensity of the mind, to outgrow or out-develop another or others, is the easiest of all proceedings in this stage of life, unless care be taken to preserve @ correct balance. The lines of error carried out in this period run in three directions at least, all tending to im- pair the healthy and natural growth. The first of these errors is overwork, which often is useless overwork. The second is deficient skill or care in detecting the natural character of ability; in other words, the turn of mind, and it may be said capability, of the learner. The third is the sys- tem of forcing the mind into needless competi- tions, by which passions which are not intellect- ual but animal feed the intellectual soul with de- sire, and, by creating an over-development of the nervous-physical seats of passion, make or breed a soul of passions which may never be put out in after-life, until itself puts out the life abruptly by the weariness it inflicts. I have sketched from a trustworthy record the work of learning imposed on a pale and nervous boy at a school the discipline of which is by some felt to be rather light than heavy. Any four of the subjects therein named were really suffi- cient to occupy all the natural powers for work of that young mind. Five of the subjects, Latin or Greek, English, arithmetic, history, and French or German language, with writing superadded as an exercise, would be the extreme of lesson-work a prudent care would suggest. For these exercises of the mind eight hours of work would be neces- sary, and if this period of labor were enforced, with two hours for meals and ablutions, and four

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hours for play, it would require all the remaining ‘ten hours, out of the twenty-four, for sleep, in order to supply that perfect renovation of body, that extra nutrition which growth of the develop- ing organs of the body so rigorously demands. But it seems never to be conceived, in respect to the human animal, that growth is labor. To put a horse into harness at too early a time of its life, and to make it work hard as it is growing, is con- sidered the most ignorant of processes; while to work a growing child harder probably now than . at advanced periods of life is often considered the most correct and vigilant of processes. This educational training has, according to my experience, only one result—a reduced stand- ard of health and life. Boys and girls subjected to it are rendered pale, thin, irritable, feverish, restless at night, and feeble. A thoroughly good diet, and brisk play, and kind and sympathetic encouragement, may diminish the evil, and I am bound to say often do diminish it; but these aids, at their best, do no more than diminish. The root of the danger remains, and for delicate chil- dren the aids are a poor shield against the dis- eases of lungs, of heart, of nervous system, that are ever threatening and giving cause for alarm. How easily such overworked children take cold during vicissitudes of season, how severely they suffer when they are attacked with the epidemic diseases—the common experience of every prac- tising physician proves. For these diseases are themselves of nervous origin, and find the readiest place in exhausted nervous natures. So the brilliant boy or girl of the school, whose intelligence has preilluminated the world, too frequently dies, and the dull boy or girl, the hulk of the school, escapes back to health from variations of it. And alas! say the admiring mourners of the dead, alas! it is true, “whom the gods love die young.” Alas! it is false, I say. Whom the gods love die old; go through their appointed course, fulfill their appointed duties, and sink into their rest, knowing no more of death than of birth, and leaving no death-stricken mourners at their tombs. The breach between health and education in the period of studentship now under considera- tion is further evidenced by the method that ex- ists—and as a necessity exists in a bad system— of making no practical distinction between one learner and another in relation to physical capaci- ty and power. It is one of the faults in the sys- tem of punishments for those unfortunates who have broken the laws of the land, that the same labor is inflicted constantly on persons of entirely THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. different physical power, so that either half g punishment, or a double punishment, may be im. posed for the same offense. This is most unfair even to criminals. It is not a bit more unfaiy — than the system in school-classes of every one the same. To take the boy who hag an inherited tendency to consumption, or to heart disease, or to insanity, and to place him under the same mental régime as another boy who hag none of these proclivities, but is of healthiest J parentage, is almost a crime in ignorance. And — when it is the fact that the healthiest boy ine school is, in all probability, himself overw it is not difficult to detect that, in respect to work — imposed on pupils passing from the eleventh to the seventeenth or eighteenth year, it is impossible for health and education to progress side by side and develop lustily together. I said there was a second course of error in . education at the period of life now under considé eration. That consists in failing to allow for dife ference of mental capacity and turn of mind im different learners. There are many minds of neutral tendency; minds that can take in a cer tain limited amount of knowledge on almost any and every subject, but which can never mastet much in anything. These minds, if they be not unduly pressed and rubbed out, or flattened down, become in time respectable in learning; — and sometimes imbued with the plainest common- sense. These minds bear at school much work with comparatively small injury, for they are ads | m‘ttedly dull, and great things are not expected of; them, and great things are not attempted by them. These minds do the necessary work of mediot« rity, in this world, an important work enough— the work of the crust of the intellectual sphere. There are two other very different orders of minds. There is the mind analytical, that looks into details in business, into elements in science; — into figures and facts in civil and natural historyy In the school such a mind is good at arithmetic; good at mathematics; good at facts and dates; good at niceties of language. In these direction® ~ its lessons are pleasures, or, at the worst, are scarcely labors. There is, again, the mind com structive or synthetic; the mind that builds} that uses facts and figures, only, in the end, for its own purposes of work; which easily learm® principles of construction; which grasps poetry and the hidden meaning of the poet; which is wonderful often for memory, but remembers the! whole, rarely the parts of a theme; and which! cannot by any pressure inflicted on it, or selfin® flicted, take fast hold of minute distinctions.~

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Fe e EES ERERSEAES BFE SarERSESEIEE te 5 FE ee Wyo 2 . ay e's q + nee ars ie > Mos o 3° Boi LRARNENG AND mhatre: The true intellect of the world, from the first dawn of it until now, bas been made up of these two distinct forms. They seem antagonistic ; they are so; but out of their antagonism has come the light of knowledge and wisdom. They are the representative poles of knowledge and of wisdom. The first is knowing, the second wise two distinct qualities, though commonly con- founded as one. In the small school of the youth, as in the great school of the world, these. representative orders of mind are ever present. The mistake is, that they are so commonly confounded, and that no change is made in the mode of study to fit the taste of the one or the other. The consequence is, that lessons are given to the analytical student which he cannot possibly grasp, and to the synthetical student which he cannot possibly master. Under these conditions both chafe, and worry, and weary, and still do not get on. Then they fall into bad health, grow fretful and feverish, are punished or slighted, ant | otherwise made sad, and, it may be, revengeful. And so, if they be unduly forced, they grow up unhealthy in body and in mind. They grow up feeling as beings who have in some manner missed their way in life. The occupation into which they have drifted, and in which they have become fixed, ig not congenial to them; at last they fall into listlessness, and, seeking in amusements and pleas- ures for the treasure they have lost, are trodden er es CORRS See mediocrity. I said there was a third course of error in | educational training in this period of life, and T noted that as the prize system, the forcing of | young minds to extremes of competition in learn- ing. This system is bad fundamentally. I have | been assured by excellent teachers that it is bad | as a system of teaching, and that nothing but | the demand for it on the part of ambitious parents | and friends could make them permit it as a part of their work. They say it obliges them, as prize- days draw near, to devote excessive time to the most earnest of the competitors. They say that the attention of the whole school is directed toward the competitors, who have their special admirers, and so the masses, who, from fear or from want of ability, do not compete, are doubly neglected, are neglected by their teachers to some extent, and are forgetful of their own prospects in the interest they take as to the success of their idols. In this way, those that are weakest are least, and those that are strongest are most, assisted— snother illustration of the proverb, “To bim that hath shall be given ; but from him that hath not shaJl be taken away even that which he hath.” I cannot undertake to confirm this judgment myself, though it sounds like common-sense, but I __ can affirm that in matter of health, in interference with that blessing, the prize system stands at the bar guilty of the guilty. You have but to go toa prize distribution to see, in the worn, and pale, and languid faces of the successful, the effects of this system. And, when you have seen them, you have not seen a tithe of the evil. You have not seen the anxious young-old boys or girls at the time of the competition ; you have not seen them immediately after it; you have not seen them be- tween the period of competition and the announce- ment of the awards. You have not seen the in- jury inflicted by the news of success to some, and of failure to others who have contested and lost. If you could, as through a transparent body, have seen all the changes incident to these events ; if you could only have seen one set of phenom- ena alone, the violent over-action and the suc- ceeding depressed action of the beating heart, you would have seen enough to tell you how mad a system you have been following to its results, and how much the dul! and neglected scholars are to be envied by the side of the bright and, for the moment, the applauded, and flattered, and tri- umphant. These bad physical results the physician alone sees as a rule, and he not readily, since the evil does not of necessity appear at the moment, nor does he, nor do others, see the remaining evils from the physical side. It requires a look into the mental condition produced by the competi- tion, to the effect of that condition on the pas- sions, and to the influence of the passions on the nutrition and maintenance of the body, to know or surmise the secondary mischiefs to health which these fierce mental struggles in girlhood and boyhood inflict on the woman and the man. While this lecture has been in preparation, I have received from Dr. Holbrook, the editor of the Herald of Health of New York, one of his miniature tracts on health, in which he records the experiences of men who have lived long, la- borious, and successful lives, and the reasons they assign for having enjoyed such prolonged health and mental activity. The tract before me contains letters from two men of great eminence, namely, William Cullen Bryant and William Howitt. A part of William Howitt’s letter so admirably expresses the lesson I am now endeav- oring to teach, that I quote it in full. It refers to his early life, and its perfect freedom of learning:

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“ My boyhood and youth were, for the most part, spent in the country; and all country ob- jects, sports, and labors, horse-racing and hunting ~ excepted, haye had a never-failing charm for me. As a boy, I ranged the country far and wide in curious quest and study of all the wild creatures of the woods and fields, in great delight in birds and their nests, climbing the loftiest trees, rocks, and buildings, in pursuitofthem. In fact, the life described in the‘ Boys’ Country Book’ was my own life. No hours were too early for me, and in the bright sunny fields in the early mornings, amid dews and odors of flowers, I breathed that pure air which gave a life-long tone to my lungs that I still reap the benefit of, All these daily . habits of climbing, running, and working, devel- ‘oped my frame to perfection, and gave a vigor to nerve and muscle that have stood well the wear and téar of existence. My brain was not dwarfed by ‘excessive study in early boyhood, as is too much the case with children of to-day. Nature says, as plainly as she can speak, that the in- * fancy of all creatures is sacred to play, to physical action, and the joyousness of mind that give life to every organ of the system. Lambs, kittens, kids, foals, even young pigs and donkeys, all teach the great lesson of Nature, that to have a body healthy and strong, the prompt and efficient vehicle of the mind, we must not infringe on her ordinations by our study and cramping sedentari- ness in life’s tender years. We must not throw away or misappropriate her forces destined to the corporeal architecture of man, by tasks that be- long properly to an after-time. There is no mis- take so fatal to the proper development of man and woman as to pile on the immature brain, and on the yet unfinished fabric of the human body, ‘ @ weight of premature, and therefore unnatural, ’ study. In most of those cases where Nature has intended to produce a first-class intellect, she has guarded her embryo genius by a stubborn slow- ness of development. Moderate study and plenty of play and exercise in early youth are the true requisites for a noble growth of intellectual powers in man, and for its continuance to old age.” EDUCATION IN ADOLESCENCE. In the education that is bestowed on the young in the period of their adolescence, namely, from the seventeenth or eighteenth to the twenty- second or twenty-third year, there is, I regret to say, no redeeming quality in regard to health as an attendant consideration. Young men and young women, who are now presenting themselves for the higher-class exami- nations at our universities and public boards, are literally crushed by the insanity of the effort. It has happened to me within the past year to have THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. under observation four of these victims to’ minor injuries inflicted on the body, an abseneg of memory has succeeded the cram, so that names” of common places are for the time quite forgot! In one of these examples, where success, 5 called, crowned the effort, in addition to many ten; while the subjects that were got up so-accul _ rately have become a mere confused dream, ii which all that relates to useful ee ; tricably buried. In another of these competitors, the vil of competition was attended with an entire ab) sence of sleep, and thereby with that exhaustio#’ which leads almost to delirious wandering of mind. Here failure led to an extreme depres: sion, to a forgetfulness of the reason of failure; and to a listlessness on all subjects it will take months to cure. Pa In the third example to which I refer, sleep? lessness, labor, and excitement, brought on an hereditary tendency to intermitting action of the heart, to unsteadiness of power, and thereby to unvertainty of effort, which almost of necessity led to failure of attempt. Even cram im an in stance of this nature, backed by all the assiduity _ that will, and patience, and industry, could sup= — port, was obliged to fail, because the physical force was not at hand to keep the working body in aceord with the mental power. Ignorante® — what they were after, the examiners who were putting on the screw were not examining the mental qualities of this youth at all, but wer really trying how long his heart would ‘held ‘out under their manipulation. wwe In the fourth instance, it was my duty tode& cide whether a youth, brought up just to the condition for going into the inquisition, should, worn and wearied with the labor, bloodless and sleepless, run the risk—being quite ready for it or should, at the last moment, take six entire rest, and then be got up to the same pitti of lifelessness and misery again. Is there any occasion to wonder at these phenomena? One of the members of my pro fession has a son who originally was a lad ‘of good parts, and who, after undergoing the ti quisition, had to wander about for months if — travel, helpless in mental and physical state “more like an idiot,” said his father to me, than anything else. Is there any occasion to wonde? at these phenomena, I repeat? None. In some — of these inquisitions each examiner can pluck from his own paper, and there are several aminers. Ask one of those examiners to answet aA

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aA AQRESELceahs -EETERER AS FaS ee se Gees Esse ee bet Reels ie. ag Ne a "the paper of another examiner, and see what he would do, The unhappy student bas to answer them all. The system is doing sufficient evil to men ; bet what is to happen to the world if women, anxious to emulate, are to have their way, and, like moths, follow their sterner mates into the midnight candle of learning? Up to this time the stability of the race in physical and mental qualities has greatly rested on the women. Let the fathers do what they might—in this age dis- sipate and duel and fight; in that age smoke, drink, and luxuriate; in another age run after the vain shadows of competitive exercises, men- tal or physical; still the women remained un- vitiated, so that one-half the authorship of the race was kept intact as reasonable and responsi- . ble beings. In other words, there were mothers a8 well as fathers. But if in these days women, catching the infection of the present system, gueceed in their clamor for admission into the inquisition, and mothers thereupon go out, as they certainly will, just in proportion as they go im, the case will be bad indeed for the succeeding generations. eoBome wise man has given us, if we would read his lesson correctly, the moral of this kind @effort in the wonderful story of Babel. / It is quite true. You cannot build a temple that reaches to heaven, though all the world try. Ibis not, that is to say, by forcing the minds of men to learn, that man ean penetrate the secrets of Nature and know them. If one learned man could seize and hold and supply the knowledge of two learned men, there might be a progression of knowledge in geometrical ratio, and soon, in trath— “Men would be angels, angels would be gods.” Tothis Nature says Vo ; and, when the attempt is made, she corrects it by the interruption she sets up, through the corporeal mechanism, to the mental strife and contagion. To let this struggle against Nature progress up to confusion of tongues, in which one learned man shall not understand another, is a far easier thing than many suppose: for Nature is un- swerving in her course, and the struggle now is far advanced toward its natural consummation. For a time yet it may be necessary to subject men who are to take part in responsible profes- sional labors, in the practice of which life or Property is concerned, to certain efficient tests _ proofs of knowledge and skill. Such examina- tional tests may easily be conducted without be- —_ ne fy Se a - te eee aS: ; = 5 aa i) ing made in any sense competitive, and without in any sense doing an injury to health and life, At. best, such tests are arbitrary, and define no more than the capacity of a man at the period of his entry into manhood. At that period there is presented but one phase of mental life among many varying phases; and to let the brand of superiority stamped at that age, however distin- guished the superiority then may be, stand forth as the all-sufficient distinguishing mark for a life- time, would indeed be, and indeed is, unjust fool- ishness. It is a very bad system that suggests such a mode of obtaining a claim to permanent superi- ority, and the effects of the present system are shown as most mischievous in this very partic- ular. The man who succeeds in gaining these great competitive honors is usually content to rest on them, and rarely wins other distinctions in after. life. It is doubtful whether the training is not fatal to the after-distinction, and whether the great geniuses of the world would ever have ap- peared at all, if, in their early days, they had been oppressed by the labor, strain, and anxiety, of the competition on the one hand, or had been bound by the hard-and-fast lines of dogmatic learning on the other. I believe myself that — great after-distinction is impossible with early competitive superiority gained by the struggles I have indicated, and that the evils now so wide- spread among our better-class communities will find their full correction in the circumstance that the geniuses of the nation and the leaders of the nation will henceforth be derived, unless there be a reformation of system, from those simple pupils of the board-schools who, entering into the con- fliets of life able to read, write, and calculate, are left free of brain for the acquirement of learn- ing of any and every kind in the full powers of developed manhood. Be this as it may, I am sure that the present _ plan, which strands men and women on the world of active life, old in knowledge before their time, and ready to rest from acquirement on mere de- votion of an automatic kind to some one particu- lar pursuit, is directly injurious to health both of body and mind. Continued action of the mind and varied ac- tion of the mind are essentials to length of life and health of life, and those brain-workers who have shown the greatest skill in varied pursuits, even when their works have been laborious, have lived longest and happiest and best. The truth is that, when men do not die of

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| Fae | “THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT. some direct accident of disease, they die, in nine cases out of ten, from nervous failure. And this is the peculiarity of nervous failure—that it may be fatal from one point of the nervous organism, the rest being sound. A man may therefore wear himself out by one mental exercise too exclusively ey followed, while he may live through many exer- cises extended over far greater intervals of time and involving more real labor if they be distrib- uted over many seats of mental faculty. Just as a sheet of ice will bear many weights ‘if they be equally distributed upon it, but will give way and break up at one point from a lesser weight, so the brain will bear an equally distrib- uted strain of work for many years, while pressure not more severe on one point will destroy it ina limited period, and with it the body it animates. CONCLUSION. Let health and education go hand-in-hand, and the progress of the world, physically and mentally, is sound and sure. Let the brain, in the first stage of life, make its own inventory: distress it not with learning, or sadness, or romance of passion. Let it take Nature as a second mother for its teacher. In the second age, instill gently and learn the order of mind that is being rendered a receiving agency: allay rather than encourage ambition: do not push on the strong, but help the feeble. In adolescence, let the studies, taking their natural bent, be more decisive and defined as toward some particular end or object, but never distressing, anxious, or distractingly ambitious. Let this be an age for probation into the garden of knowledge, and of modest claim to admission there; not for a charge by assault and for an _ entry with clarion and standard and claim of so much conquered possession. And for the rest, let the course be a continued learning, so that with the one and chief pursuit of life other pursuits may mingle happily, and life be not—

. + ++ & dissonant thing Amid the universal harmony.” : My task is done. I find no fault with any | particular deep, nether <6 tenchers Son Ga nor masters. I speak only against a error, for which no one is specially at fault, for which all are somewhat at fault, however the object had in view may be. ‘ What we now witness in the way of ; competition is but the old system of competitive prowess in a new form; and when — the evils of it are seen, and when the worse thas ; uselessness of it is detected, it will pass away as — all such errors do when the universal mind which sustains them sees and appreciates the swrong that is being done. I believe sincerely that the errors I have ventured to describe, and which at this present separate health from education, will — in due time be recognized and removed, Pe In a leading article last year in one of our — powerful and widely-read newspapers on a lect ure of mine delivered in this place, there was an expression of regret that I, as a man of scienca, — should deal so earnestly with subjects so trivial — as these. Suppose the subjects to he trivial, and then in answer I might fairly say there are mites aa apr tpg mage results of each are often alike important, ‘ beneficial. But I deny the triviality. I ask,if — these subjects, which refer to the very life-blood of the nation, be trivial, what are the solemm subjects, and who are dealing with them? ” I read in another and scientific paper, that to state facts of a similar order to those I have now related, to a public as distinct from a strictly pro, fessional audience, is a sure means by which to hurt tender susceptibilities, and of a certainty t give to some a cause of offense. To that criticism I reply, as I conclude, in the words of the good — St. Jerome: “If an offense come out of truth better is it the offense come than the truth be concealed.” — Gentleman's Magazine.

is STANLEY’S DISCOVERIES AND THE FUTURE OF AFRICA. where it is organized into large kingdoms, sueb as lie between Ashanti and Wadai, and which are much too powerful to admit of any traveler fore ing his way against the will of their rulers. The older explorers were therefore content to trarél HE exploration of Africa has been conducted of late on a new system. The routes of the earlier travelers passed either through parts of the continent where the population is sparse, as in Caffre land or in the Sahara, or in those

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~ — Bal P, > = & ee aaa: £ cid... eee FES. 6 - os fa gaed agisb ro... wbibectis. BEskE EES "with small retinues, conciliating the natives of the larger kingdoms by patient persistence and feeling their way. But of recent years all this has been changed. The progress of discovery has transferred the outposts of knowledge and the smarting points of exploration to places where the is far more abundant than that which is met with in either the northern or the southern portions of Africa, yet where it is, for the most part, divided into tribes. Hence modern explor- es have found the necessity of traveling with large and strongly-armed retinues. This new meth- 6d has been frequently adopted in the upper basin of the White Nile, which has also been the scene of many military expeditions sent by the Egyptian Government to force a way into the Soudan, including that commanded by Sir Samuel Baker. So, in the south, Livingstone’s compara- tively small band of determined Caffres, placed at his disposal by a chief whose confidence he had gained, enabled him to cross the continent in the latitude of the Zambesi. Subsequently other trav- ders, ike Burton, Speke, Grant, and Cameron, starting from Zanzibar, have adopted a similar plan. Their forces were large enough to enable them to pass as they pleased through regions where the tribes were small, they were sufficiently powerful to make larger tribes fear to attack them, and, as they invariably adopted a concilia- tory policy with the latter, they never came into serious collision with the natives. Mr. Stanley has adopted the plan of traveling with an armed retinue on a much larger scale than any of those whom we have named, and he has certainly car- tied, by these means, a great expedition suc- cessfully through Africa. Thus he states, “I led 2,280 men across hostile Unyoro,” on an expedi- tion intended to cross the Albert Nyanza. Again, when he leaves Nyangwe on his final expedition down the Lualaba, he starts with a body cf 500 fighting-men. Thus, with a larger military force than hitherto employed, and making a deter- mined use of it, Mr. Stanley has conducted a ge- graphical raid across the middle of Africa, which has led him into scenes of bloodshed and slaugh- ter, beginning at the Victoria Nyanza, and not ending until he arrived in the neighborhood of the western coast. This achievement undoubt- edly places Mr. Stanley in the foremost rank of African discoverers, and insures to him a hardly- earned and lasting fame. The question will no doubt be hotly discussed how far a private individual, traveling as a news- Paper correspondent, has a right to assume such * warlike attitude, and to force his way through native tribes regardless of their rights, whatever those may be. A man who does so acts in defi- ance of the laws that are supposed to bind private individuals, He assumes sovereign privileges, and punishes with death the natives who oppose his way. He voluntarily puts himself into a po- sition from which there is no escape, except by battle and bloodshed ; and it is a question which we shall not argue here, whether such conduct does not come under the head of filibustering. Nations are above laws, and may do and decide what expeditions they may care to launch, but the assumption of such a right by private indi- viduals is certainly open to abuse, and seems hard to defend. It is impossible to speak of Mr. Stan- ley’s journey without noticing this exceptional characteristic of it. At the same time it is not our present object to discuss the morality of his proceedings, but to occupy ourselves with his discoveries, which are unquestionably of the highest geographical importance, and may lead to consequences in comparison with which the death of a few hundred barbarians, ever ready to fight and kill, and many of whom are professed canni- bals, will perhaps be regarded as a small matter. The results of Mr. Stanley’s journey at the moment of writing these remarks are very im- perfectly before us; but we already know enough to see that he finds the course of the Congo to form a great arc, as was rudely laid down in the well-known map of Duarte Lopez, published by Pigafetta at Rome in 1591, and that his route brings him into gwasi connection with the two farthest points reached in that part of the conti- nent by explorers from the north, namely, that reached by Schweinfurth, who received the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1874 “for his discovery of the Uelle River, beyond the southwestern limits of the Nile Basin,” and that other point reached by the literary informant of Dr. Barth, who, traveling southward from Dar- fut, came to the great river of Kubanda, flowing to the west. The Uelle was reached by Schweinfurth' in April, the time when its waters were at their lowest level, yet it was then 800 feet across, with a depth of from 12 to 15 feet; its volume of out- flow was estimated by him at 10,000 cubic feet per second. All the Monbuttoo and the Niam- niam people agreed in telling him that the Uelle held on its course, as far as they could follow it, for days and days together, till it widened so vastly that the trees on its banks ceased to be 1 Schweinfarth, “The West of Africa,” vol. 1, p. 558, English translation. /

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“40 ‘THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.~SUPPLEMENT: visible. Schweinfurth speaks with admiration of the peculiar shape and size of the canoes that he - saw on the Uelle, which curiously correspond with those seen by Stanley on the Aruwimi. Schwein- furth says: “They were hewed out of a single trunk of ' @ tree, and, alike in shape and solidity, were su- perior to what we had hitherto seen. Some of them were not less than thirty feet long and four feet broad, and sufficiently spacious to convey both horses and bullocks. So ample are their dimen- sions that there is no risk of their being upset, nor did they lurch in the least degree as we got intothem. They were made with both ends run- ning horizontally out into a beak, and the border- lines were ornamented with carved figures. “*T had seen the teak canoes of the Red Sea, which are called ‘hoory’ in Arabic, and are of @ build imported from India, and many of the canoes which are in use at Saakim and Djidda; but none of these were comparable, either with Tespect to size or elegance, with the canoes of the Monbuttoo.”’ Mr. Stanley speaks of similar canoes at the mouth of the Aruwimi, which he places some 250 miles to the southwest of Schweinfurth’s position, the river itself being obviously either the Uelle or a larger stream to which the latter is an affluent, or at least a river draining the same country and having similar characteristics to those which Schweinfurth has so ably described. Mr. Stan- ley's words are as follows: “Down the natives came, fast and furious, but in magnificent style. Everything about them was superb. Their canoes were enormous things, one especially, a monster of eighty paddlers, forty or a . . side, with paddles eight feet long, spear-headed, and really pointed with iron blades—for close quarters, I presume. ‘The top of each paddle- shaft was adorned with an ivory ball. The chiefs pranced up and down a planking that ran from stem to stern. On a platform near the bow were “ten choice young fellows, swaying their long spears at the ready. In the stern of t'tis great war-canoe . stood eight steersmen, guiding her toward us. There were about twenty—three-fourths of her size—also fine-looking ; but none made qnite such an imposing show. Ata rough guess there must have been from 1,500 to 2,000 savages within these fifty-four canoes.” Another point of resemblance between the characteristics of Schweinfurth’s country and those at the mouth of the Aruwimi are the dwarf inhabitants. We find the words “Region of dwarfs” near that place in Mr. Stanley’s map that is.published by the Daily Telegraph, and we are all familiar with Schweinfurth’s description of the diminutive race that fell under his.own When fuller reports reach us, we shall no doubt . hear much of extreme interest on this subject) — which throws important light on the nature of the _ odanaieaiadmeen those who preceded the negro. The point of contach betes. Ghentepaalll Barth's informant is at the northernmost part — of the great are of the Congo, where muskets — were seen and robes were worn by the chiefs.of:. crimson blanket-cloth, bearing witness te the exe istence of a native trade with the north. Barth: himself was never within 600 miles of this spot, but he was a great collector of itineraries, and there was one in particular upon which he laid the greatest stress. He did so with such good reason, that the river of Kubanda, of which we are about to speak, has ever since been regarded by geographers as a fact to be accounted for im — whatever theory might on other grounds be ade vanced as to the hydrography of Central Africa, This river, as laid down by Barth in his map; coincides very fairly with the part of the Congo above mentioned. Such distrust attaches itself ~ to all native information, that it is well’to explain at some length the qualifications of Barth’s ime formant; and in doing so a double purpose wilh be served, for we shall have further on to lap much stress on the merits of the Arab civilization in Africa, of which the man in question is an exe ceptionally high example. He was! the Faki Sambo, a person of the Fellatah race, and off wide-spread reputation, with whom Barth spent many hours of conversation at Massefia, about 100. miles to the southeast of Lake Tchad. He says: ae | “T could hardly have expected to find in out-of-the-way place a man not only versed the branches of Arabic literature, but who had evéll read (nay, possessed a manuscript of) those por tions cf Aristotle and Plato which had been trans lated into, or rather Mohammedanized in, Arabi, and who possessed the most intimate knowledge of the countries he had visited, . - When he was @ young man, his father, i ee good deal of learning, and who had written s on Hausa, sent him to Egypt, where he had many years in the mosque of El Azhar. It ha? been his intention to go te the town of Zebid if Yemen, which is famous among the Arabs on a0 count of the science of logarithms, or el Aésab ; butp when he had reached Gunfiida, the war which was raging between the Turks and the Wahabiye - had thwarted his projects, and he had Darfur, where he had settled down some time, nd ? Barth's “ Travels in Central Africa,” vol. til., p81. Sn ae, ee, ee ee ee) Tt ~-FR8 ee CO Reeme« eo eo anew ew et eae -

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-#% STANLEY'S DISCOVERIES AND THE FUTURE OF AFRICA. had accompanied a memorable expedition to the southwest, as far as the borders of a large river, of which I shall have another occasion to speak.” A short account of the expedition that he ac- companied is given in the “Journal of the Royal Geographical Society,” They passed through Bimberri, a pagan country, to Kubanda, a large place extending ten or twelve miles along the banks of ariver, so large that they could with difficulty make out people standing on the south- em bank, and which was not fordable. This river ran straight from east to west. In a second expedition a little to the west of this, they reached & pagan country, Andoma, inhabited by a very warlike race, who had oxen and sheep. Their country was covered with a great profusion of trees, of which the native names are given. The king sat on a throne constructed of elephants’ tusks laid one above the other. This latter state- ment corresponds with Stanley’s account of the ivory structure of solid tusks surrounding an idol; and as to the former Schweinfurth remarks that among the trees mentiond by the Faki Sambo is the “Kumba”—the Kumba being the name in the Niam-niam language for the abundant Mala- ghetta pepper (Xylopia dithiopica), which has @ommunicated its name to the “Pepper Coast” of Western Africa. This gives some ground for supposing that the river of Kubanda debouches onthe coast of Western Africa. / Mr. Stanley’s discoveries come, therefore, Most opportunely in the present state of geo- graphical science. They supply central threads im the network of routes by which, through his ‘diorts, Africa is. now finally covered. As it is, perhaps, the greatest of the first-class explora- tory achievements in Africa, so it is the last of those which the world now admits other than in the barren regions.of either pole. It has dis- sected and laid bare the very heart of the great continent of Africa. + It is not proposed in the following remarks to trace the steps or to epitomize the discoveries of Mr. Stanley. The materials are not before us, as We pen these lines, for doing so with any ap- proach to completeness or justice. But the oc- tsion is a good one to make some general temarks on the proximate future of Africa, based @ the experiences of many previous travelers, and confirmed by the geographical facts in their broad outlines as now made known to us. What is the extent and value of the territory that has been discovered in Equatorial Africa by a ee Sipe Seager Sey.” 1008. PB . - rant 2? r * ee Mr. Stanley and his immediate predecessors, and what action should be taken by ourselves or others to turn these discoveries to the best ad- vantage to themselves and to the world at large? In short, what do we find in Central Africa, and what should we do with it ? The first consideration is that of mere size of territory, comparing the area of the regions in question with those situated between the same latitudes in other parts of the world. They are essentially equatorial regions, as distinguished from tropical ones; that is to say, they lie within some twelve and a half degrees north and south of the equator, where the climate tends to be more hot and damp than under the tropics, and where the vegetation is peculiarly luxuriant and rank in regions little elevated above the sea-level. There cannot be a greater contrast between ad- jacent districts than that which, on the whole, sub- © sists between the equatorial and tropical regions, We find im the latter the burning deserts and the arid plains of the Sahara and Arabia, of those near the Indus, of Utah and Colorado, in the Northern Hemisphere, and those of Kalahari, Central Australia, and Atacama. in the Southern. We must, therefore, carefully distinguish between equatorial and tropical lands, in making compari- son between the area with which we are now concerned-in Africa and that of similar districts in other parts of the globe. If we turn to a map of the world, and reckon the amount of equatorial land in Africa as five, we shall find the amount of equatorial land in South and Central America to be as four, and the aggregate of the remainder, elsewhere on the globe, to be as one. The latter is scattered in numerous fragments over all parts — of the huge equatorial zone that encircles the world—the most important of these being the southernmost horn of India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, the northern shoulder of Australia, and a multi- tude of islands in the Pacific, including our new colony of Fiji. But the combined area of all this is only about a fourth part of the area of the corresponding regions of South America, and, adding all together, we obtain a grand total of equatorial land that is just equivalent in size to that in Africa. The discoveries of Livingstone, Burton and Speke, Cameron, and other recent travelers, in addition to those of Stanley, have made us acquainted with a region that is as large as the whole of the equatorial lands that exist elsewhere in the world. | 0 much for mere size; next as regards ele- | vation above the sea-level. The equatorial low. ag 2%

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ae oC THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. lands are, on the whole, little suited to support a | row a channel, and the hypothesis was freely en large population. They are mostly choked with rank vegetation; they are damp, and reeking with miasma, But a large part of Central Africa is much more favorably situated. It consists of elevated basins, one containing the upper waters of the Congo, another those of the Nile, another that of Lake Tchad, a fourth that of the Benué and Niger, and all are flanked by broad ridges near and parallel to either coast. The floors of these basins are more, sometimes much more, than one thousand feet above the sea-level, and; in consequence of this exceptional altitude, they are subjected to a climate far drier and lighter than that which characterizes the larger part of the equatorial land that exists elsewhere in the world. A considerable part of Central Africa maintains a teeming population, contrasting strongly with the sparse inhabitants of South America; and the capabilities of the country gen- erally appear to be such as would enable it, so far as they alone are concerned, to be as populous as any part of the world. The very causes that conduce to the compar- ative salubrity and to the fertility of Central Af- rica militate against its easy commercial inter- course with other countries. Its rivers, in trav- ersing the mountain-ridges that confine its ele- vated interior basins, descend to the lower lands hear the sea-shore through a succession of falls or rapids, and are, therefore, impracticable as continuous water-ways leading from the interior to the ocean. The Congo is undoubtedly the most marked of all these instances, being at the same time the river that gives the principal out- let to the waters that fall in the equatorial lands. The rapids begin within a very few miles of the head of its magnificent estuary, and are totally insurmountable by ship, boat, or canoe. The river passes through gorges, of the lowermost of _ which Tuckey has given us a minute description. Ascending the river etill higher, those falls and rapids are reached down which Stanley’s party drifted in continual danger, and in one of which Francis Pocock was drowned. Such is the nar- rowness and depth of the rift through which the Congo passes, in the neighborhood of the Yellala Falls, that, when looked down upon from above, the mighty river seemed to Tuckey’s party as if it had shrunk to the size of a Scottish burn. It was strangely contracted in width, and even in that reduced water-way its course was further constricted and choked by masses of rock. It was difficult to believe that the mighty volume of the river could find its passage through so nar- tertained by members of the party that the bulk _ of the river must have found a subterranean _ course. They supposed that the greater part of _ ite waters disappeared at the point where the — narrows began, and rose again to the surfaces after their termination. Here a succession of | violent whirlpools and upheavals disturb the cur- rent of the river; they are so turbulent that no vessel can venture to approach them, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the boats of Cap. tain Tuckey’s party were extricated even from their eddies.’ Stanley’s route struck overland at — the point where these narrows began, and, theres — fore, he had not the opportunity of seeing this part of the river; but he gives a graphie deseripe tion of the gorges higher up-stream, through which he and his party struggled for mere @ year: the long series of falls along a distance of more than — 180 miles, which occupied us five months, we lived as though we were in a tunnel, subject at intervals * to the thunderous crash of passing trains. Ah!so | different it was from that soft, glassy flow of the river by the black forests of Uregga and Koruru, where a single tremulous wave was a rarity, when we glided day after day through the eerie wilds, in sweet, delicious musings, when our souls were thrilled at sight of the apparently impenetrable for- ests on either hand, when at misty morn, or humid | eve, or fervid noon, wild Nature breathes over soft stillness. . . . But there is no fear of any other explorer attempting to imitate our work here. Nor would we have ventured upon this terrible task had we the slightest idea that such fearful inpedineany were before us.” 2 None of the other rivers of Equatorial Africa give commercial access to the interior. Thus the Ogowai, though pursued far up-stream by recent explorers, is hardly practicable for small vessels even up to its falls, some 250 miles from the sea. The navigation of the Coanza is interrupted by falls 140 miles from its mouth. On the eastern coast the rivers are small, ex- cepting the Zambesi, whose channel is full of shifting sand-banks, and whose mouth is closed by a dangerous bar. Moreover, its upper course is broken by the cataracts of Kebra-bassa and Mosio-tunya. Its tributary, the Shiré, up which small vessels might otherwis2 pass from the sea to Lake Nyassa, is blocked by 30 miles of rapids. The other rivers on the same coast have their sources on the seaward side of the ridge that con- ? Tuckey’s “ Congo,” p. 840, ete. 2 Daily Telegraph, November 22, 1877. “While we were fighting our tragical way over .

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- . < fines the central basins, and therefore cannot give access to them. Moreover, they are but narrow streams, little fitted even for steamers of the smallest size. The Juba bas a long course, but it does not come from the central equatorial re- Two rivers of equatorial origin remain that _ requirea fuller description, namely, the Niger and the Nile. The course of the former is such as to - give it but little commercial value, as has been proved only too clearly by the slender results of very considerable efforts to utilize it. It does not. “flow from the interior, but rises so near the west coast that its sources are only some 250 miles from Sierra Leone ; it then makes a vast semicir- eular arc, cutting a huge slice out of the Sahara, and returns to the west coast in a not very differ- - ent latitude from that in which it started. The » gea-coast running almost east and west, and form- ing the lower side of the great western protuber- ance of Africa, which is known by the name of the Gold Coast, is the diameter of a circle of which the great arc of the Niger forms the northern semicireumference. On the uppermost convexity of the Niger is situated Timbuctoo, whose name is well known, though it has no commercial im- portance beyond that of being the emporium of the desert Sahara ; consequently, the main stream of the Niger does not pass through productive lands, neither does it drain any considerable por- tion of the central equatorial districts. Moreover, above the confluence of its little-known affluent, the Benué, its water-way is impeded by rapids. The Nile, and that river alone, affords, in some sense, a direct means of access to the interior. By waiting for the season of its flood, and by tugging and hauling up seething waters and amid rocks, a small sea-going ship of strong build could, by a tour de force, be transferred from the Mediter- tanean to the waters of the Albert Nyanza. But this long navigation of upward of two thousand _ miles, interrupted by six rapids between Assouan and Khartum, and by another serious one above Gondokoro, and impeded by the difficulty of fore- _ ing a passage through the rafts of floating papyrus that choke the upper White Nile, cannot be a useful commercial water-way. It requires the assistance of railways, such as that now contem- plated in the Soudan, by which its cataracts may be avoided. So far as physical difficulties are concerned, and without reference to political ones, the easiest line from the Albert Nyanza to the ocean would not be by the Nile, but overland to the coast opposite the island of Zanzibar. The difficulties that beset the approach to the STANLEY'S DISCOVERIES AND THE FUTURE OF AFRICA. 413°

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2 ite Mate aa ; » . ote interior of Equatorial Africa by means of its rivers, contrast most remarkably with the ease with which the almost equally large equatorial regions of South America are reached by the Amazon and the Orinoco. The natural internal navigation of that contizent is magnificent, and such as is to be met with in no other part of the world. South America may be traversed almost to the Andes and in all other directions by a sys- tem of rivers, whose main streams are capable of bearing large sea-going vessels for hundreds of miles from their mouths. The interior of the several equatorial lands that are dispersed in fragments elsewhere over the globe, is necessarily more accessible, so far as physical difficulties of distance are alone con- cerned, on account of their small size. They lie on the ocean highways, and whatever produce they may yield that is worth exporting can be easily made into an article of commerce. But Africa is comparatively self-contained and se- , cluded; a vast population may thrive in its in- terior upon the produce of its soil; the means they have of internal communication by lake and river are excellent, but they are to an unusual degree shut out from foreign trade. The easiest of all forms of communication with the outside world is denied them by the physical structure of their continent ; they are geographically doomed to commercial isolation as regards the more bulky articles of traffic. What does the interior of Africa produce that would make it worth the trader’s while to fetch from so great a distance? A long list of equa- torial products has often been suggested as the subjects of a future commerce ; but the objection against most of them is, that the same products -can be grown with equal ease in other countries much easier of access, or on the seaboard of Africa itself. There is far more equatorial land in the world than suffices for the commercial wants of non-equatorial countries. We have so great a glut of it that an enormously large pro- portion of the long-known parts remains unutil- ized. The new discovery of an additional amount of similar country in Africa is of no importance to us as regards the products of which we have just been speaking. It is, of course, impossible to say but that further exploration may discover articles of commerce that Africa alone can afford, and of which we have as yet no knowledge. We have seen that its elevated basins under an equa- torial sun are a peculiar geographical feature ; therefore we may indulge in such hopes, though we do not venture to build upon them.

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“ The mineral wealth of Africa in iron, copper, and other metals, has been often spoken of, and is no doubt of great importance to its inhabitants. Tt cannot, however, be seriously proposed to ex- port these heavy articles from the far interior to the coast. It so happens that ores of malachite ’ ‘do exist in large quantities in Benguela, at not more than 140 miles from the sea, and that their export has been attempted by English companies. But though the mines were rich the cost of pro- duction and carriage exceeded the value of the ore; they therefore failed to repay the advent- urers. If it did not pay to work these mines, so favorably situated for the purpose in many re- spects, how can it be reasonably hoped that foreigners will be able to work mines situated in the far interior to an advantage? There is certainly one peculiar product of Africa, namely ivory, which has had, and which will long have, a large influence i: promoting its commerce and consequent civilization. It is gratifying to learn from Mr, Stanley that ivory abounds on the Upper Congo. Near the conflu- ence of the Aruwimi, he saw a village where the quantity of ivory lying useless about astonished him. “There was an ivory ‘temple’—a structure of solid tusks surrounding an idol ; ivory logs, which, by the marks of hatchets visible on them, must ‘have been used to chop wood upon; ivory war- horns, some of them three feet long ; ivory mallets, ivory wedges to split wood, ivory pestles to grind their cassava, and before the chief’s house was a _ veranda, or burzah, the posts of which were long tusks of ivory. We picked up 183 pieces of ivory which, according to rough calculation, would real- ize, or ought to realize, about $18,000.” Unfortunately, so soon as an ivory traffic is established, and as a consequence of it, guns are freely purchased, and the export of the ivory thenceforward proceeds far more rapidly than " the ivory can be reproduced. Such stores of it as may exist are soon made away witb, while the elephants are shot down in such large numbers that they become rapidly exterminated. When the ivory-trade shall have died away through exhaus- tion of these animals, one of the agents that are best suited to promote the civilization of Africa will have disappeared. Leaving aside philan- thropic considerations for the moment, and look- ing at Africa from the point of view of our own ancestors, and of the modern Arab, and of a very large portion of the remainder of the human race, there was a singular congruity between the old- fashioned ivory and slave traffic and the physical {14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ~ as well as the social conditions of the "1 Enslavement of a weaker neighbor has ever been the recognized custom of the country; and it was @ charmingly naive device of turning their superfluous slaves and their collections of ivory — to commercial account, to put a tusk on the back — of each slave and march him with his burden to the coast, selling both the porter and the ivoryon their arrival there. But we may, fortunately for Africa, with much commercial advantage, substi. tute the labor of cattle for that of human porters, | The tsetze-fly is not so widely spread as had been feared. The Cape wagon with its yokes of oxen — has already been driven inland from the coast opposite Zanzibar, and one wagon will carry the © loads of sixty men. Looked at merely as beasts of burden, negro porters, even if bought for noth-* ing, and sold at some few pounds a head on reach. ing the coast, are not so cheap and effective on an established route as a wagon and its team of oxen. ‘y There is one mineral product which may pos- sibly be destined to transfigure Africa, and that — is gold. We know that it is found in many parts — of the boundary ridge of the central basin. There is the gold of Abyssinia and Sennaar, and — on the opposite side of the continent, gold isco lected from all parts of the high land parallebto the coast between the mouths of the Senegaland. the Niger. It has given its name to the Gold — Coast, and our name of the guinea is derived from the gulf of Guinea. Moreover, a steady ex- port of gold has existed from apparently the most ancient historical times, by routes leading from | the landward side of the districts in which it is found across the Sahara to the Mediterranean. | But above all in present productiveness are the recently-diseovered gold-fields in Southeastern Africa. Its export from Sofala and the Zambesi district is of ancient date, but within the last few years a vast extent of country to the south — ward of this has been found to be auriferous. — Should further discoveries of gold be made, they. may supply the inducement that at present is needed for men of other races than the negro, such as the Chinese coolie, to emigrate, and; by — occupying parts of the continent, to introduce a civilization superior to that which at present ex- — ists. . Africa affords a motive for settlements of (a few white men in a line down the middle of its interior for the establishment of an overland telegraph between Alexandria and the Cape, in- stead of, or in addition to, the costly and precari- ous alternative of an ocean-cable. At first sight,

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Y pos- nothing can seem more absurd than the serious proposal to carry so modern and refined an appli- _anee of European civilization as the electric tele- graph through the heart of so savage a region as that which intervenes between Gondokoro and the Transvaal. But the subject has been much discussed by African experts, and the more it is considered the more feasible does it appear. ‘Much experience already exists in respect to the establishment of telegraph-wires through savage or lawless countries, and the result is entirely favorable to the possibility of their maintenance - dm Africa. Savages do not appear to take alarm at the first sight of the pole and wires, and they become both accustomed to their presence, and to comprehend and appreciate their object as the line is progressively laid down. The savage * goon learns that any injury to the line is at once ‘found out, and its locality known, in a way that is mysterious to him, so that he acquires a super- stitious respect for the wire. Again, as small subsidies are given to the chiefs through whose territories it passes, to insure its security, its pres- ence is acceptable to them, and felt to be advan- tageous; moreover, it is often of local service be- ‘tween neighboring stations. We can have little doubt that the establishment of a line of tele- graphic depots, with their European residents, ‘ftom north to south in Africa, would have con- ‘siderable effect in maintaining order among the ‘tribes through which it passed. Africa is destitue of capitalized wealth. No ‘zich and luxurious civilization has existed in its equatorial regions, like that of Peru or of India, +> tempt commercial adventurers. Excepting in the Arab kingdoms to the north, it is a land of hovels, or, at the best, of thatched houses, and ‘ofa hand-to-mouth existence. The negro has no instinct to build solidly and for perpetuity; he therefore wants the most important of the ele- ments that conduce to civilization, for without a material nucleus of solid buildings no respectable civilization can exist. All the circumstances we have adduced point to the general conclusion that the existing prod- uce of Equatorial Africa is insufficient to form the basis of a really large commercial traffic. We must not allow ourselves to be over-sanguine, and fall into the often-repeated error of those who have interested themselves philanthropically in Africa, by yielding to an unjustifiable enthusiasm, and placing too much confidence in the speedy development of a great commerce with that con- tinent, How does the negro rank as a laborer ? There AND THE FUTURE OF AFRICA. 415 iy is great diversity witnessed in Africa, partly de- pendent on race and partly on the temporary na- tional mood, which may at one time be inclined to peaceful pursuits and at another time to war, and which also may be inspired by a hopeful sense of success in life, or by that of desponden- ey. It will, however, be of much use to us, in endeavoring to answer the question as fairly as possible, to consider the opinions formed of the negro when he is working side by side with men of other races. Very useful testimony upon this is given in the “ Report on the Treatment of Im- migrants in British Guiana,” where Africans, East Indians, and Chinese, are all to be found as cool- ies, and where their respective national character- istics have been the subject of direct inquiry. They work in gangs; the negro gang has almost always a negro fora driver, though sometimes the driver is a Portuguese; the East Indian coolie has commonly a negro driver, and the Chinaman has always a Chinese. The African can do the best day’s work at field-labor of all, and he despises the East Indian for his want of strength. The East Indian cannot earn half as much as the African in the same number of hours, but he despises him for — his uncivilized ways. The Chinese is the most intelligent of the three, and is more independent than the East Indian, but he is always ready to leave field-work for any other occupation. If there were no compulsion, the negro would have idled. more than the other two, his tale of work would probably have fallen below theirs, and he would have become a sturdy pauper. Such, for the most part, is the condition of the free negro in Africa. The African is much inferior to the European, and especially to the East Indian, in his handi- eraft ; the only manual work in which negroes show fair dexterity in their native land being that of blacksmiths. Their forge and tools are curi- ously rude, but as their iron is pure owing to the use of charcoal-fuel, and as they take much pleas- ure in working it, the results are very creditable. Their spear-heads are frequently shaped with ele- gance, and they are light and strong—indeed they are such as a second-rate country blacksmith in England would find difficulty in rivaling. The negro, taken generally, is idle and clumsy, but we must not allow ourselves to speak of him in terms of universal dispraise. The fact is, that while his average pleasure in work and his aver- ege manual dexterity are low when measured by a European standard, it is by no means so low as to make it impossible for a few exceptional in- dividuals and even communities to rise to an adie 5 > tA} . ¥ bay: ;. “ Bo TE f oe

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. Le = M Wee ke os £ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHL Y.—SUPPLEMENT. ‘equality with average Europeans. By picking and choosing the best individuals out of a multitude of negroes, we could obtain a very decent body of laborers and artisans; but if we took the same number of them just as they came, without any process of selection, their productive power, whether as regards the results of toilsome labor or of manual dexterity, would be very small. The indolence of the African is partly consti- tutional and partly due to the paucity of his wants, which can be satisfied in his own country with so little effort that the stimulus to exertion is wanting. Leaving for the moment out of con- sideration the combative, marauding, cruel, and superstitious parts of bis nature, and all that is connected with the satisfaction of his grosser bodily needs, his supreme happiness consists in idling and in gossip, in palavers and in petty mar- kets. He has no high aspirations. Nothing that the produce of his labor can purchase for him, in addition to the supply of primary necessaries, equals in his estimation those pleasures of idle- ness that he must perforce forego by the very act _ of laboring. His natural instincts are such, that the practice of hard daily labor is really bad po- litical economy on his part. He loses more of that which is of value to him in consequence of his labor than he gains by what his labor pro- duces. He has little care for those objects of luxury or for that esthetic life which men of « more highly-endowed race labor hard to attain. His coarse pleasure, vigorous physique, and indolent moods, as compared with those of Europeans, bear some analogy to the corresponding qualities in the African buffalo, long since acclimatized in Italy, as compared with those of the cattle of Eu- rope. Most of us have observed in the Campa- gna of Rome the ways of that ferocious, powerful, and yet indolent brute. We may have seen him plunged stationary for hours in mud and marsh, im gross contentment under a blazing sun; at other times we may have noticed some outbreak of stupid, stubborn ferocity ; at others we may have seen him firmly yoked to the rudest of carts, doing powerful service under the persistent goad of his driver. The buffalo is of value for coarse, heavy, and occasional work, being of strong con- stitution, and thriving on the rankest herbage; else he would not still be preserved and bred in Italy. But he must be treated in a determined sort of way, by herdsmen who understand his disposition, or no work will be got out of him; and besides that, heis ferocious and sufficiently powerful to do a great deal of mischief. The capacity of the negro to form kingdoms is

+ aa tee <% an important factor in our estimate of the future development of Africa, the numerous tribes by _ which a great part of the continent is at present — occupied being a great hinderance to the mainte. _ nance of safe thoroughfares and to the inexpen- sive transit of produce. As a matter of fact, con- siderable kingdoms do exist in Equatorial Africa, though a notable proportion of them are ruled by sovereigns who are not of pure negro blood. It. is well worth while to collate the accounts written — by various travelers on the social and political life in the more typical of these kingdoms. Thus the following extracts relating to Kano and Uganda will show, the first the effect of Arab culture and a Hausa race, and the second will show the much. lower civilization under the influence of Galla sovereigns, which nevertheless is less coarse than that of Dahomey or Cazembe. The annexed extract is from Dr. Barth. It gives an interesting picture of the every-day life in Kano, the great commercial centre of north- ern Equatorial Africa : ‘It was the most animated picture of a little world in itself, so different in external form from all that is seen in European towns, yet so similar at in its internal principles. Here a row of shops ~ filled with articles of native and foreign produss, with buyers and sellers in every variety of complexion, and dress, yet, all intent upon their’ little gain, endeavoring to cheat each other; there’ a large shed, like a hurdle, full of half-naked) half-starved slaves torn from their native homes, from their wives or husbands, from their children: or parents, arranged in rows like cattle, and star- ing desperately upon the buyers, anxiously watch- ing into whose hands it should be their destiny to fall. In another part were to be seen all the neces- saries of life; the wealthy buying the most pala- ats . table things for their table, the poor stopping and — looking eagerly upon a handful of grain; here @ rich governor dressed in silk and gaudy clothes,’ mounted upon a spirited and richly horse, and followed by a host of idle, insolent slaves; there a poor blind man groping his way through the multitude, and fearing at every step — to be trodden down; here a yard neatly fenced with mats of reed, and provided with all the com- _ forts which the country affords—a clean, snug~ — looking cottage, the clay walls nicely polished, s shutter of reeds placed against the low, weli- rounded door, and forbidding intrusion on the privacy of life, a cool shed for the daily household work, a fine, spreading alléluba-tree affording a pleasant shade during the hottest hours of the day, or a beautiful génda or papaya unfolding its large, feather-like leaves above a slender, smooth, and undivided stem, or the tall date-tree waving over the whole scene ; the matron in a clean black -

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sg 5 a? F * . . FRO Gee is ePFRESCEBAS £ het “a & re > 7 st TORPEGRSSRRES FEx FRRESERE » " SRANLEY's DISCOVERIES AND THE FOTORE OF AYBICA. St cotton gown wound round ee waist, her hair neatly-dressed in ‘chdkoli’ or ‘ bejaji,’ busy pre- paring the meal for her absent husband, or spin- cotton, and at the same time urging the fe- male slaves to pound the corn ; the children naked and merry, playing about in the sand at the ‘ urgi- n-dawaki,’ or the ‘da-n-chacha,’ or chasing a straggling, stubborn goat; earthenware pots and wooden bowls, all cleanly washed, standing in -order. Farther on a dashing Cyprian, homeless, comfortless, and childless, but affecting merriment or forcing a wanton laugh, gaudily ornamented with numerous strings of beads round her neck, her hair fancifully dressed and bound with a dia- dem, her gown of various colors, loosely fastened under her luxuriant breast, and trailing behind in the sand; near her a diseased wretch covered with wWeers or with elephantiasis.”’ 1 Speke has described in a graphic manner the life at the court of Uganda, where he resided for many months. Here the ruling caste are Gallas, or some cognate tribe, totally different in race from the people whom they govern. The moment when he first came into the presence of persons of this caste, he says that he felt and gaw he was in the company of men who were as unlike as they could be to the common order of natives in the surrounding districts. They had » fine oval faces, large eyes, and high noses, and in their deportment and intelligence showed them- selves to be far the superiors of the negro. Un- der the rule of a man, Kiméra by name, of this caste, who established himself in the country, the kingdom of Uganda was formed out of an out- lying portion of a much larger negro state, and it was organized in the following fashion, Kimé- ta formed a strong clan, apparently of his im- migrant countrymen around him, whom he ap- pointed to be his immediate officers ; he rewarded well, punished severely, and soon became mag- nificent. “Nothing short of the grandest palace, a throne to sit upon, the largest harem, the smartest offi- cers, the best-dressed people, even a menagerie for pleasure—in fact only the best of everything— would content him. ... The system of govern- ment, according to barbarous ideas, was perfect. , Highways were cut from one extremity of the country to the other, and all rivers bridged. No house could be built without its necessary append- ages for cleanliness; no person, however poor, could expose his person; and to disobey these laws was death.” * It must, however, be understood that the grand * Barth’s “ Travels in Centra) Africa,” vol. ii., p. * Speke, “ The Source of the Nile,” p. 258. 63 palace is only a structure of palisading and thatch, and that the costume of the best-dressed people is only a piece of bark cloth. The customs of Uganda as established by their founder continued in full force at the time of the visit of Speke. He describes how persons at court are on the watch for men who may com- mit some indiscretion, to confiscate their lands, wives, children, and property. “An officer observed to salute informally is ordered for execution, when everybody near him rises in an instant; the drums beat, drowning his cries, and the victim of carelessness is dragged off, bound by cords, by a dozen men at once. Another man, perhaps, exposes an inch of naked leg while squatting, or has his mbugu (bark cloth) tied contrary to regulations, and is condemned to the same fate.” In short, the discipline in Uganda is much sharper and quite as prompt as that in a kennel of fox-hounds; and such is the character of the negro that he likes the treatment and thrives under it, as is shown by the smartness and strong national feelings of the people, who contrast very favorably with their more barbarous neighbors. We will now consider the influence that has been exerted by white men in Africa. Of the Portuguese there is nothing good to say, and the least said the soonest mended. Their rule in Africa is effete, and we shall not further allude to it. But what of the effect of the English and American philanthropists who have formed sta- tions and settlements to reclaim the negro from his barbarism ? The republic of Liberia was established on African soil, with more than 500 miles of sea- board, to serve as a home in Africa for such of the freed negroes of the United States as might choose to emigrate there, and to constitute an independent negro community whence civilizing influences might spread to the interior. It has been in existence, either as a colony or as a free state, for fifty-seven years, and has received alto- gether upward of 20,000 negro emigrants, whom the Commissioner of the Freedman’s Bureau in the United States describes, in metaphorical terms that are not altogether happv, as “the cream of the colored population of the South.” Since the war the emigrants have generally been quite poor, but they are spoken of as an intelli- gent, active, industrious, and enterprising set of men. There appear to be far more applicants than the philanthropists who keep the undertak- ing going are able with their funds to convey across the Atlantic. Thus in 1872 there were yt — v. s tae wis, Pe a ee eer. F206

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-upward of 3,000 applicants; but, as only about 400 can be dispatched annually, we may believe that there has been much careful selection, whereby the purport of the phrase just quoted may be justified. Notwithstanding this, Liberia cannot be called a success. Its promoters, no doubt, take an enthusiastic view of its affairs, but there seems to be internal evidence in the official publications of the colony to warrant a dispas- sionate by-stander in sharing the opposite opin- ion, which is much the more widely prevalent. Thus the governor, in 1872, says: “The present condition of our national affairs is most unsat- isfactory and perplexing;” and he speaks of “shameful peculations and misapplications.” ‘These strong words seem justified by a recent transaction that shows the corrupt political life of Liberia. In 1871 a shameful loan was nego- tiated in England in the time of the then gov- ernor, Mr. Roye. The sum nominally borrowed was £100,000, at 7 per cent. interest, but issued at 80 per cent. below par, and with an additional deductioh of three years’ interest (or £21). That is to say, he and a few others who acted with him agreed to give £7,000 annually for a sum of only £49,000; in other words, they berrowed at up- ward of 14 per cent., but, owing to their own malversations, they do not seem to have netted much more than half of even that reduced sum. Governor Roye was arrested, tried, and found guilty. He, however, escaped out of prison, found his way to the sea-shore, and, seeing a boat at anchor, plunged into the water and swam to it, to get safe away out of the country. There was no one on board; he ineffectually endeavored to climb into it, and, after swimming round it more than once, was drowned, being hampered in his efforts by the weight of a bag of money he had tied round his waist. This episode in the politi- . tal life of the state is all the more disgraceful, as the emigrants pose themselves in virtuous atti- few hundreds of intelligent Britons are to set an example capable of spreading millions in Africa ; that by these means a widely- spread industry will prevail, and lines of peacefil commerce will open, and a negro Areadia will — easily be made to flourish in that benighted con. — tinent. Past experience does not warrant the © i conclusion that the immediate influence of the white man can so prevail upon the black. What it "4 does show cannot be more clearly and justly stated — than it has been in # remarkable article written in Fraser’s Magazine, November, 1875, by a negro of pure African extraction, Mr. Blyden, who was — then the principal of the Presbyterian High-School — in Liberia, and is at this moment the minister of — Liberia in England. It is entitled‘‘ Mohammedan. _ ism and the Negro Race,” and shows forcibly, on — | the one hand, the civilizing influence of the Arab — | upon the negro, and, on the other, the harmful — influence of the white man, even as a philantiee % pist. Mr. Blyden says: “ West Africa has been in contact with Christie anity for three hundred years, and not one single ie tribe, as a tribe, has become Christian. Nor has — any influential chief yet adopted the relight brought by the European missionary. From Gam- bia to Gaboon, the native rulers, in constant inte — course with Christians and in the vicinity of Chris tian settlements, still conduct their government according to the customs of their fbr then those customs have not been altered or modified — by Mohammedan influence. The Alkali of Port Loko, and the chief of Bullom, under the shadow — i of Sierra Leone, are guast Mohammedan. The” native chiefs of Cape Coast and Lagos are pagans. — So in the territory ruled by Liberia the native chiefs in the four counties—Mesurado, Bassa, — Sinou, and Cape Palmas—are pagans. There is not a single spot along the whole coast, except, perhaps, the little island of Corisco, where Chrie tianity has taken any hold among large numbers of the indigenous tribes.” ‘ Christianity, often of a very emotional and a ‘tudes. Thus upward of a third of the adult emi- grants are described as “ professors of religion.” The experience of Liberia appears strongly a debased kind, has had great hold on the’ black ra population of the Southern States of America; = te show that the negro is little capable of forming a state similarly organized to those of civilized nations. Ifa band of selected negroes fail, what can be expected from a miscellaneous multitude of them ? There exists a belief among us that the su- periority of Western ideas and civilization is so unquestionable and absolute that we have only to educate the negro in our ways, and he will adopt them gladly. We have such confidence in our own social ideas that we are apt to think that a but it has not increased their manliness and self at respect, either there or elsewhere. On the con- — trary, as Mr. Blyden shows, it was conveyed to them by whites who socially and otherwise made it at the same time very clear to them that they were a hopelessly inferior and subordinate race. They therefore accepted Christianity as a religion suitable to men living in a servile condition, since it did not prompt them to assert themselves, but told them to acquiesce in their yoke, and to bear their present abject state with meekness, and in fs

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7 oe put e Y's Ys ee ssa. SS ait ies tuk tx mn Pa fhe bid ig gees a i at — LE WEA, DEE hp those splendid representations. . . a . so 5 Bess ithe eee at neha a OR TN as a ee Pee tn lice a = 4 ee ah Tee Ns gs > pera. Dp A; eae i the most energetic and Pipe, Omer BSSSSPSSSP RL eR GES 4 % aaa ; © Oe oan concen He re- 2g ‘orks: “Wherever the negro is found in Christian lands, his leading trait is not docility, as has been often alleged, but seryility. He is slow and un- progressive. Individuals here and there may be found of extraordinary intelligence, enterprise, and * nergy, but there is no Christian community of negroes anywhere which is self-reliant and inde- _ pendent. Hayti and Liberia, so-called negro re- ' publics, are merely struggling for existence, and hold their own by the tolerance of the civilized powers.” As regards the esthetic side of the influence . of the white races, Mr. Blyden lays much stress * on the incongruity of the recognized forms of Caucasian beauty with those of the negro feat- | ures. He speaks of the masterpieces of Italian "grt, and says that— “To the negro all these exquisite representa- tions exhibited only the physical characteristics of ' # foreign race ; and while they tended to quicken the tastes and refine the sensibilities of that race, ~ they had only a depressing influence upon the negro, who felt that he had neither part nor lot, se. far as his physical character was concerned, in : To him the "painting and sculpture of Europe, as instruments _» ef education, have been worse than failures. They have really raised barriers in the way of his nor- mal development. They have set before him * models for imitation ; and his very effort to con- form to the canons of taste thus practically sug- gested has impaired, if not destroyed, his self-re- _ , spect.” He quotes the prayer of a negro preacher to _ God to extend “his lily-white hands” over the _ Congregation, and the sermon of another, who, "speaking of heaven, said, “Brethren, imagine a ' beautiful white man, with blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and flaxen hair—and we shall be like him.” The " Regro, when Christianized by white men, is edu- ented falsely to his nature, and any such educa- tion must prove an ultimate failure. - On the other hand, the Arab influence in the Ne northern parts of Equatorial Africa, whatever _ evil it may have wrought there, and still more in _ the south, has had remarkable influence in ele- vating the negro. Mr. Blyden says: “Mohammedanism in Africa counts in its ranks tribes. It claims as adherents the only people who have any form of civil polity or bond of social organization. Tt has built and occupies the largest cities in the heart of the continent. Its laws regulate the most | Powerful kingdoms—Futah, Masina, Hausa, Bor- | code is easily intelligible, and is obviously self- cost Wasi Seutat) Wactiehi tidineanstiles It produces and controls the most valuable com- merce between Africa and foreign countries; it is daily gathering converts from the ranks of pagan- ism ; and it commands respect among all Africans wherever it is known, even where the people have — not submitted to the sway of the Koran. “ No one can travel any distance in the interior of West Africa without being struck by the differ- ent aspects of society in different localities, accord- | ing as the population is pagan or Mohammedan. Not only is there a difference in the methods of © government, but in the general regulations of so- ciety, and even in the amusements of the people.” He adds : “Tn traversing the region of country between Sierra Leone and Futah dgllo in 1873, we passed through populous pagan towns, but the transition from these to Mohammedan districts was striking. When we left a pagan and entered a Mohammedan community, we at once noticed that we had en- tered a moral atmosphere widely separated from, and loftier far than, the one we had left. We dis- covered that the character, feelings, and condi- tions of the people were, profoundly altered and improved.” The Arabs coalesce with the wdtven: teal termarry and trade in large numbers, and they do not look upon a converted negro as an inferi- or. They are zealous propagators of their faith, and, as Mr. Pope Hennessy pointed out in a re- markable report, they promote with much suc- cess numerous schools for elementary education. Mr. Blyden says: “In Sierra Leone, the Mohammedans, without any aid from Government—imperial or local—or any contributions from Mecca or Constantinople, erect their mosques, keep up their religious ser- vices, conduct their schools, and contribute to the support of missionaries from Arabia, Morocco, or Futah, when they visit them. The same compli- ment cannot be paid to the negro Christians of that settlement.” Of Mohammedanism and Christianity—we do not speak here or elsewhere as to their essential doctrines, but as they are practically conveyed by example and precept to the negro—the former has the advantage in simplicity. It exacts a de- corous and cleanly ritual that pervades the daily life, frequent prayers, ablutions and abstinence, reverence toward an awful name, and pilgrimage to a holy shrine, while the combative instincts of the negro’s nature are allowed free play in war- ’. ring against the paganism and idolatry he has learned to loathe and hate. The whole of this

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iihebetie' : ome un WP cage Se r = 5 te, das THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. _SUPPLEMENT. consistent. It is not so with Christianity, as practised by white men and taught by example and precept to the negro. The most prominent of its aggressions against his every-day customs are those against polygamy and slavery. The negro, on referring to the sacred book of the Eu- ropean, to which appeal is made for the truth of all doctrine, finds no edict against either the one or the other, but he reads that the wisest of men had a larger harem than any modern African potentate, and that slave-holding was the estab- lished custom in the ancient world. The next most prominent of its doctrines are social equal- ity, submission to injury, disregard of wealth, and the propriety of taking no thought for the mor- row. He, however, finds the practice of the white race from whom his iffstructions come, to be ex- ceedingly different from this. He discovers very soon that they absolutely refuse to consider him as their equal; that they are by no means tame under insult, but very much the reverse of it; that the chief aim of their lives is to acquire wealth ; and that one of the most despised char- acteristics among them is that of heedlessness and want of thrift. Far be it from us to say that the modern practice in these matters may not be justified, but it appears to require more subtlety of reasoning than the negro can comprehend, or perhaps even than the missionary can command, ' to show their conformity with Bible-teaching. The influence of the English in Africa is bare- ly felt beyond the boundaries of their colonies. We have held Sierra Leone, and many points of vantage on the West African coast, for two gen- erations. The philanthropists and the merchants have both been busily engaged there in immediate relations with the negro, but the result is that, at the back of our settlements, paganism begins and our influence ceases. We cannot even keep open the roads of communication with the neigh- boring interior. They are closed by force, by passive obstruction, or by prohibitive dues. The weight of barbarism is far too great for the efforts of our few travelers to remove. We might go into lengthy details in evidence of this; two or three will suffice. First as regards land-travel: it is now only eight years ago that an English- man, Mr. Winwood Reade, succeeded in penetrat- ing 250 miles inland from Sierra Leone, and reaching the sources of the Niger. Another fact is the savagery among the people about the mouths of that same river, notwithstanding the persistent and costly efforts that have been made to turn its stream into a frequented and commer- cial water-way. Fora third fact in evidence of | the flourishing barbarism in the neighborhood our settlements, we may point to the existence of | such a kingdom as Ashanti. Pu The failure of our influence in opening safe lines of commerce to the interior is due to three causes: In the first place, we do not travel in sufficient numbers or with sufficient frequency to - maintain communications ; never do so, because the commercial gains prom- ise to be very slight, the country is unhealthy, — and the number of men who care to risk the fa- tigues and expense of such journeys is small. Ta the second place, our free trade in rum and mus- kets demoralizes the people. In the third place, a large part of the bulky produce shipped for us by negroes from the coast is reared and gathered in the immediate neighborhood by slave-labor, | belonging to the chief who sells it; it is therefore an advantage to him to possess many slaves, so he acquires through our free trade the necessary guns and ammunition to make raids upon his — neighbors to catch as many slaves as he requires, — The consequence is, that adjacent to his frontiers are lands whose inhabitants are in enmity with him, and through traffic becomes impossible. The Arabs, on the other hand, prohibit all forms of alcohol ; they are easily acclimatized, and they settle and travel in multitudes; they have oi been great openers of routes, being urged not only by the commercial stimulus, but also by the religious one of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Routes have been established by them across the broadest parts of the Continent of Africa. In the south, the Arabs had penetrated to Nyangwe, from either coast, earlier than our explorers. We have already shown that in the heart of Africa, in that part of the Congo most removed from Nyangwe in the east, and the Yellala Falls on the west, which had been the previous outposts of exploration by the white man, Mr. Stanley ap- pears to have passed by that very river-bank on which Barth’s literary friend stood some thirty years ago, with, so to speak, his Arabic trans lations from Plato in the one pocket and those from Aristotle in the other. The Arab traders from Zanzibar are unques- tionably the apostles of a lower civilization than their fellows in Northern Africa, being apparently more demoralized by the larger proportions of the horrible slave-trade prevailing there. Never- theless, there are many men among them capable _ of better things, and their race is probably des- tined to play an increasingly important part im the whole of Equatorial Africa. The ideal of the Arab is far lower than that of the white man, but, — Babe we shall probably — \

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(Babga S35 ll FESPSISSEE SF SSF SSSR SHEE SEES E inter’ DISCOVERIES AND. THE FOTURE OF areros. 491 being as he is in more complete sympathy with the negro, he has succeeded where we have failed in materially raising him in personal dignity and in general civilization. Africa is not wholly destitute of means of self- amelioration. There is, perhaps, no part of the world in which greater differences are to be seen among the inhabitants than are to be found there among the negroes, and it has occurred to every traveler to occasionally witness specimens of black humanity that have struck him with some admi- ration. By perpetual war and struggling such as have gone on from time immemorial, the ten- dency of the ablest to prevail will necessarily ad- vance the average of the negro race. Already those who appear to have been the aborigines of the land, namely, the dwarf tribes of whom Schweinfurth writes, and their congeners the Bushmen, have been ousted by the negro. Again, the negro in historical times inhabited the Sahara, to the north, whence he has been driven back by the Tuarek ; he inhabited districts in the south, whence he has been driven back by the Caffre ; and we have seen how a Galla stock has obtained the ruling power in certain of the northeast parts of Equatorial Africa. The negro may himself disappear before alien races, just as his predeces- sors disappeared before him; or the better negro races may prevail and form nations and exclude the rest. It certainly appears thus far that those races who accept the Arab are more likely to succeed in the struggle for supremacy and exist- ence than the others, and it would follow that our wisest course is to give the Arab a judicious and discriminating support. At the present moment three Englishmen are appointed vicegerents of Arab influence in the equatorial dominions of the Khedive of Egypt. First and foremost among men, in his power of quelling disorder, without the use of violent means, stands Gordon Pasha, a real hero in his unswerving and determined pursuit of the path of duty, who is the Governor-General of the Sou- dan, or country inhabited by the black races of Egypt. The second is Burton, the well-known traveler in many lands, and an expert in all that relates to Mohammedanism, who has been re- cently appointed Governor of Darfur; and the third is Sir Frederick Goldsmith, an able Indian Officer, newly appointed Governor of Massowah, on the Red Sea. The influence of the British _ face can hardly be exerted in a more appropriate way than this: that is to say, through men who have the sentiment and practice of statesmanship, knowing what are the traditions, the instincts, and the capabilities, of the races over whom they are called to rule, exacting from them that which they are confident of being able to obtain, and not wrecking their venture by attempting more. An extension of some such method of governing’ as this, in the regions over which the Sultan of Zanzibar has more or less sovereign control, is urgently needed. The foreign export of slaves has to be absolutely stopped to put an end to the desolating raids and horrible cruelties practised in the interior, and a legitimate Arab commerce and influence has to be legalized and furthered. Thus much we may perhaps have strength and influence to effect, but the white man can never himself become the itinerant trader in Africa. The climate is unsuitable, the gains too small, the difference of race and civilization between the negro and himself is too great. The Arabs are . needed as intelligent, numerous, and enterprising intermediaries, and they are the best at present to be obtained ; so we must accept them with all © their faults. The remaining duty of the white man is to explore the land, partly to show what produce worthy of exportation it can yield, and partly to find out the best routes by which it can be con- veyed to the coast. Let the white man originate, let him conduct the larger commerce from the sea-coast, let him crush the external slave-trade, and let him take such part in the higher polities of the continent as he can reasonably hope to ex- ert; but let him, if possible, abandon all thoughts of annexing large districts in Eastern Africa, which, according to the experience of the West, will exercise no influence commensurate to the cost in lives and money of maintaining them, while they would impose upon England the un- congenial duty of miserable wars like that of Ashanti, and of continual petty onslaughts like those we continually hear of, upon the pirates at the mouths of West African rivers. Let the missionaries go where they will and do what good they can, but let them take the risks on their own heads, be respectful to the good points of Mohammedan precept and example, and not entangle us in a system of national interference. Equatorial Africa is never likely to become a home for large numbers of white men, certainly not for men of the Anglo-Saxon race. Let us, then, whether as a nation or as individuals, whether as cosmopolitan philanthropists or as men of com- merce, confine our efforts to the more feasible task of controlling and aiding the one intelligent race, who already permeate it, by our action on the sea-coast, and by our political influence at

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i. at tecalidiadeare of the’ Aoubuilligspr tal am. zibar. The opinion that the interior of Africa has been thrown open to civilization and trade by Mr. Stanley's daring navigation and descent = a es od Bs .7 - =F ia. of the Congo River, leone which requires to be supported by much stronger evidence than we gt present possess before it can be adopted.—lidiny = burgh Review. pe

ON THE NATURE OF THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. By W. KINGDON CLIFFORD. 1.—MEANING OF THE INDIVIDUAL OBJECT. feelings arrange and order themselves in two distinct ways. There is the internal or subjective order, in which sorrow succeeds the hearing of bad news, or the abstraction “dog” symbolizes the perception of many different dogs. And there is the external or objective order, in which the sensation of letting go is followed by the sight of a falling object and the sound of its fall. The objective order, gua order, is treated by physical science, which investigates the uni- form relations of objects in time and space. Here the word object (or phenomenon) is taken merely to mean a group of my feelings, which persists as & group in a certain manner ; for I am at present considering only the objective order of my feel- ings. The object, then, is a set of changes in my consciousness, and not anything out of it. Here is as yet no metaphysical doctrine, but only a fixing of the meaning of a word. We may subsequently find reason to infer that there is something which is not object, but which corre- - sponds in a certain way with the object ; this will ‘. be a metaphysical doctrine, and neither it nor its denial is involved in the present determination of meaning. But the determination must be taken as extending to all those inferences which are made by science in the objective order. If I hold. that there is hydrogen in the sun, I mean that if I could get some of it in a bottle, and explode it with half its volume of oxygen, I should get that group of possible sensations which we call “water.” The inferences of phys- ical science are all inferences of my real or pos- ' sible feelings; inferences of something actually or potentially in my consciousness, not of any- thing outside it. 1.—DISTINCTION OF OBJECT AND EJECT. There are, however, some inferences which are profoundly different from those of physical science. When I come to the conclusion that

you are conscious, and that there are objects in your consciousness siroilar to those in mine, I am _ not inferring any actual or possible feelings of — my own, but your feelings, which are not, and = cannot by any possibility become, objects in — } my consciousness. The complicated processes R of your body and the motions of your brain and ~ nervous system, inferred from evidence of an- = atomical researches, are all inferred as things — possibly visible to me. However remote the ine — ference of physical science, the thing inferred is _ always.e part of s20,;a possible set of changesail é my consciousness bound up in the objective order Pe with other known changes. But the inferred ex- % istence of your feelings, of objective groupings _ among them similar to those among my feelings, and of a subjective order in many respects 2 analogous to my own—these inferred existences 3 are in the very act of inference thrown out ofmy consciousness, recognized as outside of it, as nol a be being a part of me, I propose, accordingly, to ie call these inferred existences <jects, things throm a out of my consciousness, to distinguish them’ ee from objects, things presented in my ccnscious- ~ ness, phenomena. my eon pee is a set of changes of my consciousness symbolic _ of the eject, which may be called my conception of — you; it is (I think) a rough picture of the whole — %: aggregate of my amen circumstances like yours; qua group of my fer ~ ings, this conception is like the object in sub- — stance and constitution, but differs from it in im — plying the existence of something that is not — itself, but corresponds to it, namely, of the eject. z Tho exotense: of ‘the. object, whether, Sera * or inferred, carries with it'a group of beliefs; these are always beliefs in the future oannenal certain of my feelings. The existence of this Fi table, for example, as an object in my conscious- _ ness, carries with it the belief that if Iclimbup on it I shall be able to walk about on it asif it were the ground. But the existence of my con-

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a2 perFGPEGe 2 Serer YT FTeBSResPFesesaRn sg ePgig SC Aan Sh eae Ie GI POEM ST we SF. 2 & 5 Bie ng * “ pm h _ asthe ig ° ee od + ee ss a Ale es tne ‘ mone Rei a3 x _ ee? sat) tee bt Mada ot VEE es Pent = = ‘ . : ob hig _* nhs ER 7 sill af a3 Bir 1s 4 yy y's, sist ’ 7 erm - Seta ie a ae Satan noes a Uae ‘a iaasehijia in my consciousness carries with ’ fa belief im the existence of you outside of my consciousness, a belief which can never be ex- pressed in terms of the future sequence of my ’ feelings: How this inference is justified, how eonsciousness can testify to the existence of any- thing outside of itself, I do not pretend to say ; I need not untie a knot which the world has cut ". for me long ago. It may very well be that I my- self am the only existence, but it is simply ri- diculous to suppose that anybody else is. The position of absolute idealism may, therefore, be left out of count, although each individual may _ be unable to justify his dissent from it. Iil.——-FORMATION OF THE SOCIAL OBJECT. The belief, however, in the existence of other men’s consciousness, in the existence of ejects, dominates every thought and every action of our lives. In the first place, it profoundly modifies the object. This room, the table, the chairs, your bodies, are all objects in my consciousness ; as simple objects they are parts of me. But I, somehow, infer the existence of similar objects _» fm your consciousness, and these are not objects to me, hor can they ever be made so; they are @ects. This being so, I bind up with each object _ gs it exists in my mind the thought of similar ob- jects existing in other men’s minds; and, I thus form the complex conception, “this table, as an : object in the minds of men”—or, as Mr. Shad- worth Hodgson puts it, an object of consciousness in general. This conception symbolizes an indefi- ‘tite number of ejects, together with one object which the conception of each eject more or less “resembles. Its character is therefore mainly ejec- tive in respect of what it symbolizes, but mainly Objective in respect of its nature: I shall call this complex conception the social object ; it is a ‘symbol of one thing (the individual object, it may be called for distinction’s sake) which is in my consciousness, and of an indefinite number of other things which are ejects and out of my con- sciousness. Now, it is probable that the indi- ‘¥idual object, as such, never exists in the mind ‘of man. For there is every reason to believe that we were gregarious animals before we be- ¢ame’ men properly so called. And a belief in _ the eject—some sort of recognition of a kindred consciousness in one’s fellow-beings—is clearly a condition of gregarious action among animals so highly developed as to be called conscious at all. ‘Language, even in its first beginnings, is impos- sible without that belief; and any sound which, becoming a sign to my neighbor, becomes there- Seren ss by a mark to myself, must by the nature of the “_ case be a mark of the social object, and not of | the individual object. But if not only this con- ception of the particular social object, but all _ those that have been built up out of it, have been formed at the same time with, and under = ~ the influence of, language, it seems to follow that. 4 the belief in the existence of other men’s minds «© like our own, but not part of us, must be insep- ah arably associated with every process whereby discrete impressions are built together into an object, I do not, of course, mean that it presents itself in consciousness as distinct; but I mean that as an object is formed in my mind, a fixed habit causes it to be formed as social object, and. insensibly embodies in it a reference to the minds es of other men, And this sub-conscious reference . to supposed ejects is what constitutes the im- pression of externality in the object, whereby it is described as not-me. At any rate, the formation of the social object supplies an account of this impression of outness, without requiring me to, assume any ejects or things outside my conscious- ness except the minds of other men, Conse- quently, it cannot be argued from the impres- sion of outness that there is anything’ outside of my consciousness except the minds of other | men. I shall argue presently that we bave = grounds for believing in non-personal ejects, but these grounds are not in any way dependent on the impression of outness, and they are not in- cluded in the ordinary or common-sense view of things. It seems to me that the prevailing be- lief of uninstructed people is merely a belief in the social object, and not in a non-personal eject, somehow corresponding to it ; and that the ques- tion “ Whether the latter exists or not?” is one which cannot be put to them so as to convey. , any meaning without considerable preliminary © | - training. On this point I agree entirely with Berkeley, and not with Mr. Spencer. IV.—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MIND AND BODY. I do not pause to show how belief in the © eject underlies the whole of natural ethic, whose ae, first great commandment, evolved in the light of day by healthy processes wherever men have lived together, is, “ Put yourself in his place.” * It is more to my present purpose to point out what is the true difference between body and mind. Your body is an object in my conscious- ness; your mind is not, and never can be. Be- ing and object, your body follows the laws of : physical science, which deals with the objective a order of my feelings. That its chemistry is or- c Ga

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dinary chemistry, its physics ordinary physics, ‘its mechanics ordinary mechanics, may or may not be true; the circumstances are exceptional, and it is conceivable (to persons ignorant of the facts) that allowance may have to be made for them, even in the expression of the most general laws of Nature. But in any case, every question about your body is a question about the physical laws of matter, and about nothing else. To say: “Up to this point science can explain ; here the soul steps in,” is not to say what is untrue, but to talk nonsense. If evidence were found that the matter constituting the brain behaved other- wise than ordinary matter, or if it were impos- sible to describe vital actions as particular ex- dimples of general physical rules, this would be a fact in physics, a fact relating to the motion of matter; and it must either be explained by fur- ther elaboration of physical science, or else our conception of the objective order of our feelings would have to be changed. The question, “ Is the mind a force?” is condemned by similar con- siderations. A certain variable quality of mat- ‘ter (the rate of change of its motion) is found to be invariably connected with the position rela- tively to it of other matter; considered as ex- pressed in terms of this position, the quality is called force. Force is thus an abstraction re- lating to objective facts ; it is a mode of grouping of my feelings, and cannot possibly be the same thing as an eject, another man’s consciousness, But the question, “Do the changes in a man’s consciousness run parallel with the changes of motion, and therefore with the forces in his brain?” is a real question, and not prima-facie nonsense. Objections of like character may be raised against the language of some writers, who speak of changes in consciousness as caused by actions on the organism. The word cause, woAAa- xGs Acydéuevoy and misleading as it is, having no legitimate place in science or philosophy, may yet be of some use in conversation or literature, if it is kept to denote a relation between objec- tive facts, to describe certain parts of the phe- nomenal order. But only confusion can arise if it is used to express the relation between certain objective facts in my unconsciousness, and the ejective facts which are inferred as corresponding in some way to them and running parallel with them. For all that we know at present, this re- ‘ lation does not in any way resemble that ex- pressed by the word caure. To sum up, the distinction between eject and object, properly grasped, forbids us to regard . ‘the eject, another man’s mind, as coming into : 494 “THE POPULAR SCIENOR MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT, | the world of objects in any way, or as in the mliton of cxtos or ot 0 eay-dieagall ea in that world. I need hardly add that the facts. do very strongly lead us to regard our bodies ag a merely complicated examples of practically uni. versal physical rules, and their motions as deter. mined in the same way as those of the sun and. the sea. There is no evidence which amounts to. a prima-facie case against the dynamical uni. formity of Nature; and I make no exception in favor of that slykick force which fills existing lunatic asylums and makes private houses into new ones. V.—CORRESPONDENCE OF ELEMENTS OF MIND AND BRAIN-ACTION. I have already spoken of certain ejective facts —the changes in your consciousness—as running parallel with the changes in your brain, which are objective facts. The parallelism here meant. is a parallelism of complexity, an analogy of. structure. A spoken sentence and the samesen- tence written are two utterly unlike things, but. each of them consists of elements; the spoken. sentence of the elementary sounds of the lan-. guage, the written sentence of its alphabet. Now. the relation between the spoken sentence and its. elements is very nearly the same as the relation. between the written sentence and its elements. There is a correspondence of element to element ;. although an elementary sound is quite a different. thing from a letter of the alphabet, yet each ele. mentary sound belongs to a certain letter or let- ters. And the sounds being built up together to form a spoken sentence, the letters are built up together, in nearly the same way, to form the written sentence. The two complex products are as wholly unlike as the elements are, but the manner of their complication is the same, Or, as we should say in the mathematics, a sentence spoken is the same function of the elementary sounds as the same sentence written is of the corresponding letters. Of such a nature is the correspondence or, — parallelism between mind and body. The funda. mental “deliverance” of consciousness affirms — its own complexity. It seems to me impossible, . as I am at present constituted, to have only one absolutely simple feeling at a time, Not only. are my objective perceptions, as of a man’s head or @ candlestick, formed of a great number of parts ordered in a definite manner, but they are invariably accompanied by an endless string of memories, all equally complex. And those mas- sive organic feelings with which, from their ep.

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Ma SS es Se Se SSPESRIERSER PS Pe ORHRehTP hs PSEAPER PRP E BS Ph a ad eo Big Paar ON THE NATURE OF parent want of connection with the objective order, the notion of consciousness has been chiefly associated—those also turn out, when attention is directed to them, to be complex In reading over a former page of my manuscript, for instance, I found suddenly, on reflection, that although I had been conscious of what I was reading, I paid no attention to it; bat had been mainly occupied in debating whether faint red lines would not be better than blue ones to write upon, in picturing the scene in the shop when I should ask for such lines to be ‘ruled, and in reflecting on the lamentable help- lessness of nine men out of ten when you ask them to do anything slightly different from what . aati | they have been accustomed to do. This debate had been started by the observation that my handwriting varied in size according to the na- tare of the argument, being larger when that was diffuse and explanatory, occupied with a supposed audience; and smaller when it was close, occupied only with the sequence of prop- ositions. Along with these trains of thought went the sensation of noises made by poultry, - dogs, children, and organ-grinders; and that vague, diffused feeling in the side of the face and head which means a probable toothache in ‘» an hour or two. Under these circumstances, it seems to me that consciousness must be de- scribed as a succession of groups of changes, as analogous to a rope made of a great number of occasionally interlacing strands. This being so, it will be said that there is a unity in all this complexity, that in all these varied feelings it is I who am conscious, and that this sense of personality, the self-perception of the Ego, is one and indivisible. It seems to me (here agreeing with Hume) that the “unity of apperception ” does not exist in the instantaneous ~ consciousness which it unites, but only in subse- quent reflection upon it; and that it consists in the power of establishing « certain connection between the memories of any two feelings which we had at the same instant. A feeling, at the instant when it exists, exists an wnd fiir sich, and not as my feeling; but when on reflection I re- member it as my feeling, there comes up not merely a faint repetition of the feeling, but inex- tricably connected with it a whole set of connec- tions with the general stream of my conscious- ness, This memory, again, gua memory, is rela- tive to the past feeling which it partially recalls ; but in so far as it is itself a feeling, it is absolute, Ding-an-sich. The feeling of personality, then, is a certain feeling of connection between faint eee My P marbesze. ® . oa? cals ye Se ey = . : - = : ws a te ~ ‘a “~ ¢ ¥ hin 7 a ¢ images of past feelings; and personality itself is the fact that such connections are set up, the property of the stream of feelings that part of it consists of links binding together faint reproduc. tions of previous parts. It is thus a relative . thing, a mode of complication of certain elements, and a property of the complex so produced. This complex is consciousness, When a stream of feelings is so compacted together that at each instant it consists of (1) new feelings, (2).fainter repetitions of previous ones, and (3) links con- ~ necting these repetitions, the stream is called a consciousness. A far more complicated group-. ing than is necessarily implied here is established when discrete impressions are run together into the perception of an object. The conception of a particular object, as object, is a group of feelings, symbolic of many different perceptions, and of links between them and other feelings. The distinction between Subject and Object is two- fold: first, the distinction with which we started between the subjective and objective orders which simultaneously exist in my feelings; and, sec- ondly, the distinction between me and the social object, which involves the distinction between me and you. Either of these distinctions is ex- ceedingly complex and abstract, involving a highly- organized experience. It fs not, I think, possible to separate one from the other; for it is just the objective order which I do suppose to be com- mon to me and to other minds. I need not set down here the evidence which shows that the complexity of consciousness is paralleled by complexity of action in the brain, It is only necessary to point out what appears to me to be a consequence of the discoveries of Miller and Helmholtz in regard to sensation: that at least those distinct feelings which can be remembered and examined by reflection are par- alleled by changes in a portion of the brain only. In the cage of sight, for example, there is a mes sage taken from things outside to the retina, and — therefrom sent in somewhither by the optic nerve; now we can tap this telegraph at any point and produce the sensation of sight, without any im- pression on the retina. It seems to follow that what is known directly is what takes place at the inner end of this nerve, or that the consciousness of sight is simultaneous and parallel in complex- ity with the changes in the gray matter at the internal extremity, and not with the changes in the nerve itself, or in the retina. So also a pain in a particular part of the body may be mimicked by neuralgia due to lesion of another part. We come, finally, to sey then that, as your

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: “me POPULAR SUIEIOB MONTHLY.—SUPPLENEYT. _ grouped together in various ways (ejective facts), "go a part of the action in your brain is made up of more elementary actions in parts of it, grouped together in the same ways (objective facts). The knowledge of this correspondence is a help to the analysis of both sets of facts; but it teaches us in particular that any feeling, however apparently simple, which can be retained and examined by reflection, is already itself a most complex struct- ure. We may, however, conclude that this cor- _ Respondence extends to the elements, and that _ each simple feeling corresponds to a special com- * paratively simple change of nerve-matter. VL—THE ELEMENTARY FEELING IS A THING-IN- ITSELF. ; The conclusion that elementary feeling co- exists with elementary brain-motion in the same way as consciousness cvexists with complex brain- motion, involves more important consequences “than might at first sight appear. We have re- ‘garded consciousness as a complex of feelings, and explained the fact that the complex is con- - scious, as depending on the mode of complication. But does not the elementary feeling itself imply a consciousness in which alone it can exist, and of which it is a modification? Can a feeling exist by itself, without forming part of a consciousness ? I shall say no to the first question, and yes to the second, and it seems to me that these answers are required by the doctrine of evolution. For if that doctrine be true, we shall have along the line of the human pedigree a series of impercep- tiblesteps connecting inorganic matter with our- selves. To the later members of that series we must undoubtedly ascribe consciousness, although it must, of course, have been simpler than our own. But where are we to stop? In the case of organ- isms of a certain complexity, consciousness is in- ferred. As we go back along the line, the com- plexity of the organism and of its nerve-action _ tnsensibly diminishes; and for the first part of our course, we see reason to think that the com- plexity of consciousness insensibly diminishes also. But if we make a jump, say to the tunicate mollusks, we see no reason there to infer the ex- _istence of consciousness at all. Yet not only is it impossible to point out a place where any sud- den break takes place, but it is contrary to all the natural training of our minds to suppose a breach of continuity so great. AJl this imagined line of _ Organisms is a series of objects in my conscious- ness; they form an insensible gradation, and yet hg a’? ‘ Gusois'a cuttin indinoee velnt eh halil ’ at liberty to infer facts out of my consciousness corresponding to them! There is only oneway out of the difficulty, and to that we are driven, Consciousness is a complex of ejective facts—of- elementary feelings, or rather of those remoter — elements which cannct even be felt, but of which _ the simplest feeling is built up. Such elementary ejective facts go along with the action of every © ~ organism, however simple; but it is only when M4 the material organism bas reached a certain com: a plexity of nervous structure (not now to be speck — fied) that the complex of ejective facts reaches’ that mode of complication which is called Coat © sciousness. But as the line of ascent is unbroken; — and must end at last in inorganic matter, we have’ no choice but to admit that every motion of mat. ter is simultaneous with some ejective fact oF event which might be part of a consciousness, From this follow two important corollaries; $ 2 * “ 4 1. A feeling can exist by itself, without form ing part of a consciousness. It does not depend — for its existence on the consciousness of which Ds it may form a part. Hence a feeling (oran eject element) is Ding-an-sich, an absolute, whose exist. ence is not relative to anything else. Senfitur oad that can be said. 2. These eject-elements, which conreepladial { motions of matter, are connected together in rs their sequence and coexistence by counterparts of the physical laws of matter. For otherwise the correspondence could not be kept up. Vil.—MIND-STUFF 18 THE REALITY WHICH WE ~ PERCEIVE AS MATTER. cs That element of which, as we have seen, even z the simplest feeling is a complex, I shall call Mind-stuff. A moving molecule of inorganic mat- - ter does not possess mind, or consciousness ; but it possesses a small piece of mind-stuff. When molecules are so combined together as to form the film on the under-side of a jelly-fish, the ele- ments of mind-stuff which go along with them are so combined as to form the faint beginnings. — of sentience. When the molecules are so com- bined as to form the brain and nervous system of a vertebrate, the corresponding elements of — mind-stuff are so combined as to form some kind = of consciousness; that is to say, changes in the complex which take place at the same time get 60 linked together that the repetition of one implies the repetition of the other. When matter takes * 5 th ahs aeaE CS 4 ; ne i i ne 2 ee Syme " Te pe sere a a tine yD eX) the complex form of a living human brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a

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ee al ? See ie xk 9 ll iceman 3 ¢ ie Laie : ee nays SO EO itd Be Bait 3 Si 233 ees eee ah Se ” ¢ - P Be eee é pei ke Lae / i. + oa Ve Aa, paral ¢ 0 Mes iihja:t- Tak to aie 7 ind Or Pee ss oe aia S aoe & ‘a hp r on plats Re ge ois Mia = a a / Sige 9 Tata Boies pad Pet AA Fe ee oa we SBBSSARBYSERPSSASES. PCH EN ; human consciousness, having intelligence and vo- a Rp stick. Both of these are objects, or phenomena, in my mind, An image of the candlestick, in the optical sense, is formed upon his retina, and nerve- messages go from all parts of this to form what we may call a cerebral image somewhere in the neighborhood of the optic thalami in the inside of his-brain. This cerebral image is a certain ~ complex. of disturbances in the matter of these organs ; it is a material or physical fact, there- fore a group of my possible sensations, just as the candlestick is. The cerebral image is an im- representation of the candlestick, corre- sponding to it point for point in a certain way. Both the candlestick and the cerebral image are matter; but one material complex represenis the other material complex in an imperfect way. Now the candlestick is not the external real- ity whose existence is represented in the man’s ‘mind; for the candlestick is a mere perception in my mind. Nor is the cerebral image the man’s perception of the candlestick ; for the cerebral image is merely an idea of a possible perception inmy mind. But there és a perception in the man’s mind, which we may call the mental image ; and this corresponds to some external reality. - The external reality bears the same relation to the mental image that the (phenomenal) candlestick bears to the cerebral image. Now the candlestick "and the cerebral image are both matter; they are ; made of the same stuff. Therefore the external * reality is made of the same stuff .as the man’s perception or mental image, that is, it is made of mind-stuff. And as the cerebral image repre- _ gents imperfectly the candlestick, in the same way and to the same extent the mental image repre- sents the reality external to his consciousness. - Thus, in order to find the thing in itself which is . represented by any object in my consciousness + such as a candlestick, I have to solve this question _ in proportion, or rule of three : As the physical configuration of my cerebral image of the object is to the physical configuration of the object, oo may poienption of Gin chess (ihe alg regarded as complex of my feelings) to the thing in itself. - Hence we are obliged to identify the thing-in- itself with that complex of elementary mind-stuff which on other grounds we have seen reason to think of as going along with the material object. Or to say the same thing in other words, the real- ity external to our minds which is represented in our minds as matter, is in itself mind-stuff. The universe, then, consists entirely of mind- stuff. Some of this is woven into the complex — form of human minds containing imperfect rep- resentations of the mind-stuff outside them, and of themselves also, as a mirror reflects itsown © image in another mirror, ad infinitum. Such an imperfect representation is called a material uni- verse. It is a picture in a man’s mind of the © real universe of mind-stuff. The two chief points of this doctrine may be thus summed up: Matter is a mental picture in which mind-stuff is the thing represented. Reason, intelligence, and volition, are proper- ties of a complex which is made up of elements themselves not rational, not intelligent, not con- scious. Norz.—The doctrine here expounded appears to have been arrived at independently by many persons ; as was natural, seeing that it is (or seems. to me) a necessary consequence of recent advances in the theory of perception. Kant threw out a sug- gestion that the Ding-an sich might be of the na- ture of mind ; but the first statement of the doctrine — in its true connection that I know of, is by Wundt. Since it dawned on me, some time ago, I have stip- posed myself to find it more or Jess plainly hinted’ in many writings ; but the question is one in which it is peculiarly difficult to make out precisely what another man means, and even what one means one’s self, Some writers (¢. g., Dr. Tyndall) have used the word matter to mean the phenomenon plus the reality represented ; and there are many reasons in favor of such usage in general. . But for the purposes of the present discussion I have thought it clearer to use the word for the phenomenon as distinguished from the thing-in-itself.—_Mind. -

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498 =O POPULAR SOLENCE p MONTHLY. -SUPPLEMBST: THE PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. By Prorzssor GOLDWIN SMITH. HERE appears to be a connection between the proposed substitutes for religion and the special training of their several authors. His- torians tender us the worship of Humanity, pro- fessors of physical science tender us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apo- logue of the spectre of the Brocken. The only organized cultus without a God, at present before us, is that of Comte. This in all its parts—its high-priesthood, its hierarchy, its sacraments, its calendar, its hagiology, its literary canon, its ritualism, and we may add in its fun- damentally intolerant and inquisitorial character —is an obvious reproduction of the Church of Rome, with Humanity in place of God, great men in place of the saints, the Founder of Comtism in place of the Founder of Christianity, and even a sort of substitute for the Virgin in the shape of womanhood typified by Clotilde de Vaux. There is only just the amount of difference which would be necessary to escape from servile imita- tion. We have ourselves witnessed a case of al- ternation between the two systems which testified to the closeness of their affinity. The Catholic Church has acted on the imagination of Comte at least as powerfully as Sparta acted on that of Plato. Nor is Comtism, any more than Plato’s “Republic” and other Utopias, exempt from the infirmity of claiming finality for a flight of the individual imagination. It would shut up man- kind forever in a stereotyped organization which .is the vision of a particular thinker. In this re- spect it seems to us to be at a disadvantage com- pared with Christianity, which, as presented in the Gospels, does not pretend to organize man- kind ecclesiastically or politically, but simply supplies a new type of character, and a new mo- tive power, leaving government, ritual, and or- ganization of every kind to determine themselves from age to age. Comte’s prohibition of inquiry ‘ {nto the composition of the stars, which his priest- hood, had it been installed in power, would per- haps have converted into a compulsory article of faith, is only a specimen of his general tendency (the common tendency, as we have said, of all Utopias) to impose on human progress the limits of his own mind, Let his hierarchy become masters of the world, and the effect would prob- _ ably be like that produced by the ascendency of a hierarchy (enlightened no doubt for its time) in _ Egypt, a brief start forward, followed by conse. crated immobility forever. Lareveillére Lepaux, the member of the Frond a, Directory, invented a new religion of Theophi. — lanthropy, which seems, in fact, to have been a ~ organized Rousseauism. He wished to impose it on France, but finding that, in spite of his pas — sionate endeavors, he made but little progress, he sought the advice of Talleyrand. “I am not sur. prised,” said Talleyrand, “at the difficulty you’ experience. It is no easy matter to introduce q new religion. But I will tell you what I recom mend you todo. I recommend you to be cruci. — We fied, and to rise again on the third day.” cannot say whether Lareveillére made any prose: lytes, but if he did their number cannot have been much smaller than the reputed number of the religious disciples of Comte. As a philos ophy, Comtism has found its place, and exer- cised its share of influence among the philoso phies of the time; but as a religious system it appears to make little way. It is the invention of a man, not the spontaneous expression of the beliefs and feelings of mankind. Any one with a tolerably lively imagination might produce a — rival system with as little practical effect. Ro: t man Catholicism was, at all events, ‘ow not an invention. Costgic Emotion, though it does not affect to be an organized system, is the somewhat sudden creation of individual minds, set at work appar ently by the exigencies of a particular situation, and on that account suggestive prima facie of misgivings similar to those suggested by thé in vention of Comte. Now, is the worship of Humanity or Cosmic Emotion really a substitute for religion ? is the only question which we wish, in these few pages, to ask. We do not pretend here to inquire what is or what is not true in itself. Religion teaches that we have our being in Power whose character and purposes are inde cated to us by our moral nature, in whom we are united, and by the union made sacred to each other; whose voice conscience, however genet ated, is; whose eye is always upon us, sees all our acts, and sees them as they are morally, without reference to worldly success, or to the

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EEE = @385 FSEF ES FS sS EVES PP RREE SE | ‘THE PROPOSED ‘SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. opinion of the world; to whom at death we re- turn; and our relations to whom, together with his own nature, are an assurance that, according as we promote or fail to promote his design by self-improvement, and the improvement of our " ‘kind, it will be well or ill for us in the sum of things. This is an hypothesis evidently separable from belief in a revelation, and from any special theory respecting the next world, as well as from all dogma and ritual, It may be true or false in itself, capable of demonstration or incapable. We are concerned bere solely with its practical efficiency, compared with that of the proposed substitutes. It is only necessary to remark that there is nothing about the religious hypothesis as here stated, miraculous, supernatural, or myste- rious, except so far as those epithets may be ap- plied to anything beyond the range of bodily sense, say the influence of opinion or affection. A universe self-made, and without a God, is at least as great a mystery as a universe with a God; in fact, the very attempt to conceive it in the mind produces a mortal vertigo which is a bad omen for the practical success of Cosmic Emotion. ~ For this religion are the service and worship of Humanity likely to be a real equivalent in any respect, as motive power, as restraint, or as com- fort? Will the idea of life in God be adequate- ly replaced by that of an interest in the condi- tion and progress of Humanity, as they may af- fect us and be influenced by our conduct, to- gether with the hope of human gratitude and fear of human reprobation after death, which the Comtists endeavor to organize into a sort of counterpart of the day of judgment? . It will probably be at once conceded that the ' @swer must be in the negative as regards the immediate future and the mass of mankind. The simple truths of religion are intelligible to all, and strike all minds with equal force, though they may not have the same influence with all moral natures. A child learns them perfectly at its mother’s knee. Honest ignorance in the mine, on the sea, at the forge, striving to do its coarse and perilous duty, performing the lowliest fune- tions of humanity, contributing in the humblest way to human progress, itself scarcely sunned by a ray of what more cultivated natures would deem happiness, takes in as fully as the sublimest phi- losopher the idea of a God who sees and cares for all, who keeps account of the work well done or the kind act, marks the secret fault, and will here- after make up to duty for the hardness of its pres- ent lot. But a vivid interest—such an interest as will act both as a restraint and as a comfort—in the condition and future of humanity, can surely exist only in those who have a knowledge of his- tory, sufficient to enable them to embrace the unity of the past, and an imagination sufficiently cultivated to glow with anticipation of the future. For the bulk of mankind the humanity-worship. ev'o point of view csems, unatiolnahle, of Tile within any calculable time. As to posthumous seputation, goed er ovlisll is, and always must be, the appanage of a few marked men. The plan of giving it substance by instituting separate burial-places for the virtuous and the wicked is perhaps not very seriously pro- posed. Any such plan involves the fallacy of a sharp division where there is no clear moral line, besides postulating, not only an unattainable knowledge of men’s actions, but a knowledge, still more manifestly unattainable, of their hearts, Yet we cannot help thinking that, with the men, of intellect, to whose teaching the world is lis- tenirg, this hope of posthumous reputation, or, to put it more fairly, of living in the gratitude and affection of their kind by means of their scien- tific discoveries and literary works, exerts an in- fluence of which they are hardly conscious; it prevents them from fully feeling the void which the annihilation of the hope of future existence leaves in the hearts of ordinary men. Besides, so far as we are aware, no attempt has yet been made to show us distinctly what “humanity” is, and wherein its “holiness” con- sists. If the theological hypothesis is true, and all men are united in God, humanity is a substan- tial reality ; but otherwise we fail to see that it is anything more than a metaphysical abstraction converted into an actual entity by philosophers who are not generally kind to metaphysics. Even the unity of the species is far from settled ; science still debates whether there is one race of men, or whether there are more than a hundred. Man acts on man, no doubt; but he also acts on other animals, and other animals op him. Wherein does the special unity or the special bond consist? Above all, what constitutes the “holiness?” In- dividual men are not holy; a Jarge proportion of them are very much the reverse. Why is the ag- gregate holy? Let the unit be a “ complex phe- nomenon,” an “organism,” or whatever name science may give it, what multiple of it will be a rational object of worship ? For our own part, we cannot conceive worship being offered by a sane worshiper to any but a conscious being, in other words, to a person. The fetich-worshiper himself probably invests his fe-

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generations of mankind? Even the sum of man- _kind is never complete, much less are the units *" ‘plended into a personal whole, or, as it has beer: , ‘talled, a colossal man. There is a gulf here, as it seems to us, which cannot be bridged, and can barely be thatched over by the retention of religious phraseology. In truth, the anxious use of that phraseology be- _trays weakness, since it shows that you cannot do without the theological associations which cling inseparably to religious terms. You look forward to a closer union, a more complete brotherhood of man, an increased sa- eredness of the human relation. Some things point that way: some things point the other way. Brotherhood has hardly a definite meaning with- out a father ; sacredness can hardly be predicated without anything to consecrate. We can point to an eminent writer who tells you that he detests the idea of brotherly love altogether; that there . are many of his kind whom, so far from loving, he hates, and that be would like to write his ha- tred with a lash upon their backs. Look again at the inhuman Prussianism which betrays itself in " the New Creed of Strauss. Look at the oligarchy of enlightenment and enjoyment which Renan, in his “ Moral Reform of France,” proposes to insti- tute for the benefit of his own circle, with sub- lime indifference to the lot of the vulgar, who, he says, “ must subsist on the glory and happiness of others.” This does not look much like a nearer approach to a brotherhood of man than is made by the Gospel. In an article on “The Ascent of Man,” we re- ferred to doctrines broached by science at the time of the Jamaica massacre. We neither de- nied nor had forgotten, but, on the contrary, most gratefully remembered, that among the foremost ‘Champions of humanity on that occasion stood some men of the highest eminence who are gen- erally classed with the ultra-scientific school ; but they were men in whose philosophy we are per- _ suaded an essentially theological element still lin- - gers, however anti-theological the language of some of them may be.! We are speaking, of course, merely of the com- parative moral efficiency of religion and of the proposed substitutes for it, apart from the influ- ence exercised over individual conduct by the 4 We are not aware that in the writings of Mr. Dar- win there is anything to prove, or even to euggest, that he is not a theist.

material needs and other non-theological forces of society. B. For the immortality of the individual . oy with the influences of that belief, we are asked to ay accept the immortality of the race. But here, fn addition to the difficulty of proving the union and _ intercommunion of all the members, we are met _ by the objection that unless we live in God, the — race, in all probability, is not immortal... That’ our planet and all it contains will come to an end appears to be the decided opinion of science. This — “holy” being, our relation to which is to takethe place of our relation to an eternal Father, by the a adoration of which we are to be sustained and — controlled, if it exists at all, is as ephemeral com. pared with eternity, as a fly. We shall be'told that we ought to be content with an immortality extending through tens of thousands, perhaps — hundreds of thousands, of years. To the orm mentum ad verecundiam there is no reply. But — will this banish the thought of ultimate annihilé ‘ tion? Will it prevent a man, when he is called © upon to make some great sacrifice for the racé, — from saying to himself, that, whether he makes the sacrifice or not, one day all wil! end in nothing?’ Evidently these are points which must be made < quite clear before you can, with any prema ees ee ee with the same feelings with which they have we garded God, or to give up their own interest or ES enjoyment for the future benefit of the race. The oe assurance derived from the fondness felt by pat ents for their offspring, and the self-denying ef é forts made for the good of children, will hardly — carry us very far, even supposing it certain that # parental love would remain unaffected by thegem — . eral change. It is evidently a thing apart from Be the general love of Humanity. Nobody wary v more extravagantly fond of his children, or made — greater efforts for them, than Alexander Borgia” It has been attempted, however, with all the Kt fervor of conviction, and with all the force of & 3 powerful style, to make us see not only that we — have this corporate immortality as members of a the “colossal man,” but that we may look for ward toan actual, though impersonal, existence a 7 in the shape of the prolongation through all fa- — ture time of the consequences of our lives’ Tt might with equal truth be said that we have en — ig joyed an actual, though impersonal, existence through all time past in our antecedents. But _ neither in its consequences nor in its antecedents — Be can anything be said to live except by a figure. $ The characters and actions of men surely will never be iffluenced by such a fanciful use of lam ‘

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saage 0a thiot Our being is consciousness ; with consciousness our being ends, though our physi- eal forces may be conserved, and traces of our conduct—traces utterly undistirguishable—may ' yemain. That with which we are not concerned _ eannot affect us either presently or by anticipa- tion; and, with that of which we shall never be -_ gonscious, we shall never feel that we are con- ' gerned. Perhaps, if the authors of this new im- mortality would tell us what they understand by non-existence, we might be led to value more _. highly by contrast the existence which they pro- pose for a soul when it has ceased to think or feel, and for an organism when it has been scat- tered to the winds. _.' They would persuade us that their impersonal _ and unconscious immortality is a brighter hope than an eternity of personal and conscious exist- _ gnee, the very thought of which they say is tort- _ re. This assumes, what there seems to be no _» ground for assuming, that eternity is a boundless _extension of time; and, in the same way, that in- finity is an endless space. It is more natural to | gonceive of them as emancipation respectively _ from time and space, and from the conditions _ which time and space involve; and among the onditions of time may apparently be reckoned the palling of pleasure or of existence by mere “temporal protraction. Even as we are—sensual _ pleasure palls; so does the merely intellectual: - but can the same be said of the happiness of vir- _ ‘ue and affection? It is urged too that by ex- ehanging the theological immortality for one of _ physical and social consequences, we get rid of the burden of self, which otherwise we should drag forever. But surely in this there is a con- fusion of self with selfishness. Selfishness is an- other name for vice. Self is merely conscious- mess. Without a self, how can there be self- sacrifice ? How can the most unselfish emotion etist if there is nothing to be‘moved? “He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that loseth his life, shall find it,” is not a doctrine of selfish- _ hess, but it implies aself. We have been rebuked ___ in the words of Frederick to his grenadiers, “ Do + you want to liveforever?” The grenadiers might @ have answered : “ Yes ; and therefore we are ready —§ wdie” @ ____ It is not when we think of the loss of anything §f to which a taint of selfishness can adhere—it is . § Rot even when we think of intellectual effort cut " § . short forever by death just as the intellect has * 4 ripened and equipped itself with the necessary _ ff knowledge—that the nothingness of this immor- Fa _ tality of conservated forces is most keenly felt : ws | * Z he 2 o > oa el * - = ee vg oe + te ne ‘ in ty ho AES e* " Ayes) ites ay oy ee a = Bigs nfs HRN Repco SCRE, > Aika testa me +. ry eee Mot -~ ooo Nas eee Con ee rd pats as ee eo ee te he - + ae ee ed ‘ a ea ee e: : be Mantes eee: Poy * 4 ae ‘em 38 Ae Vi or a ite © Ose ees - inital *. Tae PROPOSED anne? FOR gi shan, ts fs when we think of the miserable end of alle. tion. How much comfort would it afford any one bending over the death-bed of his wife to know — that forces set free by her dissolution will con- tinue to mingle impersonally and indistinguish- 4 ably with forces set free by the general mortality ? Affection at all events requires personality. One cannot love a group of consequences, even sup- posing that the filiation could be distinctly pres: © sented to the mind. Pressed by the hand of sorrow craving for comfort, this Dead Sea fruit, crumbles into ashes, paint it with eloquence as you will. Humanity, it seems to us, is a fundamentally Christian idea, connected with the Christian view of the relations of men to their common Father and of their spiritual union in the Church. In the same way the idea of the progress of Human- ity seems to us to have been derived from the Christian belief in the coming of the kingdom of God through the extension of the Church, and to that final triumph of good over evil foretold in the imagery of the Apocalypse. At least the founders of the Religion of Humanity will admit that the Christian Church is the matrix of theirs: so much their very nomenclature proves; and we would fain ask them to review the process of dis- engagement, and see whether the essence has not ~ been left behind. No doubt there are influences at work in mod- ern civilization which tend to the strengthening of the sentiment of humanity by making men more distinctly conscious of their position as. members of a race. On the other hand, the un- reflecting devotion of the tribesman, which held | together primitive societies, dies. Man learns to reason and calculate; and when he is called upon to immolate himself to the common interest of the race he will consider what the common in- © terest of the race, when he is dead and gone, will be to him, and whether he will ever be repaid for his sacrifice. Of Cosmic Emotion it will perhaps be more fair to say that it is proposed as a substitute for religious emotion rather than as a substitute for religion, since nothing has been said about em- bodying it iri a cult. It comes to us commended by glowing quotations from Mr. Swinburne and Walt Whitman, and we cannot help saying that, — for common hearts, it stands in need of the com- mendation. The transfer of affection from an-all- loving Father to an adamantine universe is a process for which we may well seek all the aid that the witchery of poetry can supply. Unluck- ily, we are haunted by the consciousness. that

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‘489 «44° «THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the poetry itself is blindly ground out by the same illimitable mill of evolution which grinds out virtue and affection. We are by no means sure that we understand what Cosmic Emotion is, even after reading an exposition of its nature by no ungifted hand. Its symbola, so to speak, are the feelings produced by the two objects of Kant’s peculiar reverence, the stars of heaven, and the moral faculty of man. But, after all, these are only like anything else, aggregations of molecules in a certain stage of evolution. To the unscien- tific eye they may be awful, because they are mysterious ; but let science analyze them and their awfulness disappears. If the interaction of all parts of the material universe is complete, we fail to see why one object or one feeling is more cosmic than another. However, we will not dwell on that which, as we have already confessed, we do not feel sure that we rightly apprehend, What we do clearly see is that to have cosmic emotion, or cosmic anything, you must have a cosmos. You must be assured that the universe is a cosmos and not a chaos. And what assurance of this can materialism or any non-theological system give ? Law is a theological term: it implies a lawgiver, or a governing intelligence of some kind. Science can tell us nothing but facts, single or accumu- lated as experience, which would not make a law . though they had been observed through myriads of years. Law is a theological term, and cosmos is equally so, if it may not rather be said to be a Greek name for the aggregate of laws. For or- der implies intelligent selection and arrangement. Our idea of order would not be satisfied by a number of objects falling by mere chance into a particular figure, however intricate and regular. ‘All the arguments which have been used against design seem to tell with equal force against order. We have no other universe wherewith to compare this so as by the comparison to assure ourselves that this is not a chaos but a cosmos, Both on the earth and in the heavens we see much that i ad ' find it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one ; not for the purposes of police — (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism), butes — the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of not order but disorder, not cosmos but acosmia. If we divine, nevertheless, that order reigns, and | that there is design beneath the seemingly unde- signed, and good beneath the appearance of evil, it is by virtue of something not dreamed of in the philosophy of materialism. Have we really come to this, that the world has no longer any good reason for believing in a God or a life beyond the grave? If so, it is diffi- cult to deny that with regard to the great mass of mankind up to this time Schopenhauer and the ' have suffered life-long oppression, dicenee, ig want, who have died deaths of torture or perished _ miserably by war, is limited though enormous; but probably there have been few lives in which — the earthly good has not been outweighed by the evil. The future may bring increased means of happiness, though those who are gone will not be the better for them ; but it will bring also inerease of sensibility, and the consciousness of hopeless — imperfection and miserable futility will probably. become a distinct and growing cause of pain, Jt is doubtful even whether, after such a raising of Mokanana’s veil, faith in everything would not ex- the situation : there can be no use in self-delusion, In vain we shall seek to cheat our souls and to — fill a void which cannot be filled by the manufaet _ ure of artificial religions and the affectation of a. spiritual language to which, however persistently and fervently it may be used, no realities corne spond. If one of these cults could get itself. established, in less than a generation it would be- come hollower than the hollowest of ecclesiasti- cisms. Probably not a few of the highest na tures would withdraw themselves from the dreary, round of self-mockery by suicide ; and if a scien-. tific priesthood attempted to close that door by, sociological dogma or posthumous denunciation, - the result would show the difference b@tween the practical efficacy of a religion with a God. enki that of a cult of “ Humanity” or “ id Shadows and figments, as they appear to wail be in themselves, these attempts to provide a sub+. stitute for religion are of the highest importance, as showing that men of great powers of mind, who have thoroughly broken loose not only from Christianity but from natural religion, and in | | ing for satisfaction. There being no God, they our spiritual nature. Science takes cognizance of all phenomena; and this apparently ineradi- cable tendency of the human mind is a phenom- enon like the rest. The thorough-going material- ist, of course, escapes all these philosophical exigencies ; but he does it by denying Humanity as well as God, and reducing the difference be- tween the organism of the human animal and. pessimists are right, and existence has been a | that of any other animal to a mere question of cruel misadventure. The number of those who ' complexity. Still, even in this quarter, there has pire and human effort cease. Still we must face some cases placed themselves in violent antago- — | nism to both, are stil] unable to divest themselves _ of the religious sentiment, or to appease its cray- - y r o's a eo aa t. _, > ee Dee Ee’ Bee Se ee eee eee

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SPGRER AGS 3 &fs 553% Py EFGERP RSRE SESS ae Es, , Fa A s THE heros SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION. of late a disposition to make conces- "gions on the subject of human volition hardly con- sistent with materialism. Nothing can be more likely than that the impetus of great discoveries bas carried the discoverers too far. Perhaps with the promptings of the religious sentiment there is combined a sense of the im- mediate danger with which the failure of the re- ligious sanction threatens social order and mo- rality. As we have said already, the men of whom we specially speak are far above anything like gocial Jesuitiam. We have not a doubt but they would regard with abhorrence any schemes of illuminism for guarding the pleasures of the few by politic deception of the multitude. But they have probably begun to lay to heart the fact that the existing morality, though not de- pendent on any special theology, any special view of the relations between soul and body, or any special theory of future rewards and punish- ments, is largely dependent on a belief in the in- defeasible authority of conscience, and in that without which conscience can have no indefeasible authority—the presence of a just and all-seeing God. It may be true that in primeval society these beliefs are found only in the most rudimen- tary form, and, as social sanctions, are very in- ferior in force to mere gregarious instincts or the pressure of tribal need. But man emerges from the primeval state, and, when he does, he demands ‘a reason for his submission to moral law. That the leaders of the anti-theological movement in _ the present day are immoral, nobody but the most besotted fanatic would insinuate ; no candid antagonist would deny that some of them are ip every respect the very best of men. The fearless love of truth is usually accompanied by other high qualities, and nothing could be more unlike- ly than that natures disposed to virtue, trained under good influences, peculiarly sensitive to opinion and guarded by intellectual tastes, would lapse into vice as soon as the traditional sanction was removed. But what is to prevent the with- drawal of the traditional sanction from producing its natural effect upon the morality of the mass of mankind? The commercial swindler or the po- _ litical sharper, when the divine authority of con- _ Science is gone, will feel that he has only the opinion of society to reckon with, and he knows how to reckon with the opinion of society. If Macbeth is ready, provided he can succeed in this world, to “jump the life to come,” much more ready will villainy be to “jump” the bad conse- quences of its actions to humanity when its own conscious existence shal] have closed. Rate the practical effect of religious beliefs as low and that of social influences as high as you may, there can surely be no doubt that morality has received some support from the authority of an inward | monitor regarded as the voice of God. The worst of men would have wished to die the death of the righteous ; he would have been glad, if he could, when death approached, to cancel his crimes ; and the conviction, or misgiving, which this implied, could not fail to have some influence upon the generality of mankind, though no doubt the influence was weakened rather than strength- ened by the extravagant and incredible form in which the doctrine of future retribution was pre- sented by the dominant theology. The denial of the existence of God and of a ‘future state, in a word, is the dethronement of conscience ; and society will pass, to say the least, through a dangerous interval before social science can fill the vacant throne. Avowed skep- ticism is likely to be disinterested and therefore to be moral; it is among the unavowed skeptics and conformists to political religions that the’ consequences of the change may be expected to appear. But more than this, the doctrines of Natural Selection and the Survival of the Fittest are beginning to generate a morality of their own, with the inevitable corollary that the proof of superior fitness is to survive—to survive either by force or cunning, like the other animals which by dint of force or cunning have come out vic- torious from the universal war and asserted for themselves a place in Nature. The “ irrepressible struggle for empire” is formally put forward by public writers of the highest class as the basis and the rule of the conduct of this country tow- ard other nations; and we may be sure that there is not an entire absence of connection be- tween the private code of a school and its inter- national conceptions. _ The feeling that success covers everything seems to be gaining ground, and to be overcoming, not merely the old conven- tional rules of honor, but moral principle itself. Both in public and private there are symptoms of an approaching failure of the motive power which has hitherto sustained men both in self-sacrificing effort and in courageous protest against wrong, though as yet we are only at the threshold of the great change, and established sentiment long sur- vives, in the masses, that which originally gave it birth. Renan says, probably with truth, that had the Second Empire remained at peace, it might have gone on forever; and in the history

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434 THE. POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMER?. of this country the connection between political effort and religion has been so close that its dissolution, to say the least, can hardly fail to _ produce a critical change in the character of the nation. The time may come, when, as philoso- phers triumphantly predict, men, under the as- cendency of science, will act for the common good, with the same mechanical certainty as bees; though the common good of the human hive would perhaps not be easy todefine. But in the mean time mankind, or some portions of it, may be in danger of an anarchy of self-interest, compressed for the purpose of political order, by a despotism of force. That science and criticism, acting—thanks to the liberty of opinion won by political effort— with a freedom never known before, have deliv- ered us from a mass of dark and degrading su- perstitions, we own with heart-felt thankfulness to the deliverers, and in the firm conviction that ' the removal of false beliefs, and of the authori- ties or institutions founded on them, cannot prove in the end anything but a blessing to mankind. ‘But at the same time the foundations of general morality have inevitably been shaken, and a crisis has been brought on the gravity of which nobody can fail to see, and nobody but a fanatic of ma- \ trae cn oe without the most suo alg ae There has been nothing in the history of may like the present situation. The decadence of the ancient mythologies is very far from parallel. The connection of those mythologies f with morality was comparatively slight, Dull — and half-animal minds would hardly be conscious of the change which was partly veiled from them by the continuance of ritual and state creeds; while in the minds of Plato and Marcus Aureling — it made place for the development of a moral re. — ligion. The Reformation was a tremendous earth. quake; it shook down the fabric of medimval religion, and as a consequence of the disturbance in the religious sphere, filled the world with revo- lutions and wars. But it left the authority of the Bible unshaken, and men might feel that the de structive process had its limit, and that adamant was still beneath their feet. But a world which is intellectual and keenly alive to the significance — of these questions, reading all that is written abdut them with almost passionate avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis, the character of which any one may realize by distinctly presenting to himself the idea of existence without a God.— Maemillan’s Magazine. SPONTANEOUS GENERATION: A REPLY. By H. CHARLTON BASTIAN, M.D., F. B.8. my capacity as teacher of an important sec- tion of the scientific basis of medicine, I felt constrained in 1869 to give an attentive study to the evidence adduced by M. Pasteur in favor of the germ-theory of fermentation. It was neces- sary for me to do this, since his views as to the essential cause of fermentative processes were being widely adopted by many medical men in illustration of the pathology of a most important class of the diseases which afflict the human race ly, those of a communicable nature, knit in their diversity by the common char- acteristic that they are capable of spreading by infection from person to person. I was com- pelled to endeavor to come to some conclusion as to-what should be taught in reference to these new doctrines, which, after the manner of the dis- eases themselves, were beginning to spread some- what rapidly. The restoration of such views, in their modern form, was so new that the occasion had not arisen for my own teachers to impress me with any doe- trines in regard to this subject. I came, there- fore, with a perfectly open mind to the study of the question, having no party bias in either direc- tion. If I had any bias at all on the general question in regard to spontaneous generation— which was, and always must be, that upon which the derivative problem in regard to the pathology of infectious diseases ultimately rests—this was to be found in favor of the view which was ad- verse to the present occurrence of any such pro- cess. It is true I had not specially concerned myself, up to this time, with the evidence bearing upon the question, but neither had I seen any reason for not accepting what was at that time the general undercurrent of scientific teaching. But my scrutiny of the evidence in favor of Se ee err a oe Paes 5 . an == i) LS. UE aie 5 oe —

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_ Dl res 5a * \eERSSEE sedi ses FPG egtie a EERRPRERETE PAS FES - SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. ‘the germ-theory and against spontaneous genera- tion, as embodied in the writings of M. Pasteur, did not by any means convince me as to the irre- nature of this evidence, notwithstand- ing all the skill and care with which the experi- _ ments had evidently been conducted. It was not, indeed, the experiments themselves, so far as they went, with which I was dissatisfied; but rather that I could not assent to the validity of the in- ferences which M. Pasteur had drawn from them. - ‘Am experimentalist may be ever so skilled in the art of manipulation, and even of devising new experiments, and yet his judgment may not be faultless, his reasonings in regard to his experi- jents may not be without flaw. It is only by free discussion that truth can be eliminated from error. Yet my temerity in venturing to question the validity of M. Pasteur’s inductions and infer- ‘ices has many times been commented upon in terms of severe reprobation by Prof. Tyndall. ' Notwithstanding all this, the fact remains that the cardinal inductions and inferences of M. Pasteur '—those on which he based his germ- theory, and which were challenged by me in 1870 and 1871—have now (as I have recently shown in vol. xiv. uf the Zodlogical Section of the Jour- nal of the Linnean Society) been finally over- turned. Yet it was.on such bases that the germ- theory was also proclaimed by Prof. Huxley,’ as President of the British Association, in 1870, to be “ victorious along the whole line.” Whether or not M. Pasteur’s germ-theory may ultimately be established on other grounds, it is now perfectly obvious that it was not tenable on the grounds alleged in 1870, and that my work, together with that of others who have sought éither to confirm or refute me, has proved to demonstration that his original positions were érroneous. This assuredly is worthy of note, as bringing us one long step the nearer t» the ulti- mate truth. My experiments have from the first met with the most sturdy opposition and denial, a fate not unusually crorsing the labors of those who vent- Ure to attack popular and deeply-rooted doc- trines. Yet on several notable occasions it has happened that experimenters, who have at first repudiated the reality of my results, have in the _ €nd been compelled, however reluctantly, to ac- ‘kiowledge their correctness, This was the case, “for instance, in regard to the seemingly simple, ‘though very important, question whether a boiled fluid inclosed in a sealed vessel, from which the 1 Annales de Chimie et de Physique, t. i., 1862. ® Nature, September 15, 1870. air had been expelled during the process of ebul- lition, could or could not subsequently ferment and swarm with living organisms. My statement that this would occur was at first again and again denied, on the ground that the process of boiling to which the fluid was subjected would have killed all the organisms and their germs within the nar- row-necked experimental vessel, and that a gen- ‘ eration de novo of living matter was not to be thought of. My critics did not at that time suggest that the temperature of 212° Fahr. was not adequate to kill all preéxisting organisms and their germs in fluids: this was taken for granted ; and accord- ingly they roundly stated that I had grossly de- ceived myself in supposing that living organisms had appeared under such circumstances. A cou- ple of quotations from important reviews by well- known men of science will afford an index of the extent to which this opinion prevailed among men of science in this country. In an adverse review of my then recently- published work, “The Beginnings of Life,” which appeared in the Academy of November 1, 1872, signed by H. N. Moseley, who has since greatly distinguished himself by his investigations as one of the naturalists of the Challenger Expedition, the reader may find the following passage: “Dr. Bastian seals the flasks with which he is experimenting during ebullition of the contained fluid, and by this means, when the apparatus has become cool, a partial vacuum is formed in the vessel. Experiments were made im this way with hay and turnip infusions, in which every possible precaution appears to have been taken to exclude or destroy germs. In nearly all cases, after the lapse of some time, the solutions became turbid, or exhibited a scum, and microscopic efamination showed the existence of organic bodies in the fluids, and in some cases of bacteria in active motion. “Now the only possible answer to be made to experiments such as these is that the turbidity or scum in the solutions was not caused by a develop- ment of organisms, but by some coagulation or similar alteration in the fluid, and that the bodies seen in the solutions were not living, but dead, and had been there all the time. . . . * Considering, on the one hand, the a priort improbability of the formation of bacteria, etc., de novo, with the great weight and high value of the evidence already adduced against its occurrence, and estimating, on the other, the value of the evi- dence here put forth, it seems very unlikely that Dr. Bastian’s results will be confirmed.” Two months later, on the Ist of January,

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436 +#THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. 1878, there appeared another review of my work in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. This time the article was unsigned; but it has since become known to many persons that it was written by a now distinguished Professor of Comparative Anatomy. After referring to some unsuccessful attempts which had been made by Prof. Burdon-Sanderson to obtain such results as I had indicated, and after dwelling upon other evidence which the reviewer considered adverse to the recognition of the truth of these results, he says: “This evidence is overpowering; but still Dr. Bastian does not yield.” He then con- - tinues as follows : “We set ourselves at the commencement of this notice the task of determining whether Dr. Bastian had made out a prima-facie case. We cannot say that the various considerations adduced above allow us to hold that he has. . . . Biolo- gists would, we hold, be perfectly justified in re- fusing to be troubled by him any further. Time and skill are not to be wasted in confuting state- . ments manifestly uncritical. . . . Nevertheless, im consequence of the interest which Dr. Bastian’s work has excited, we have made the experiment, and that repeatedly. This is not the oceasion on which to give the details of the experiments in question. It will, however, perhaps add some value to the remarks which it has been our duty to make when we state that, carefully following Dr. Bastian’s directions, using at the same time great care as to cleanliness and due boiling, we have obtained results which, in every single in- stance, out of more than forty tubes closed on four separate occasions, simply contradict Dr. Bastian.” But in the intervening month of December my colleague, Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, had ac- cepted my invitation to allow me to show him the nature of, my method and the reality of my re- sults, with the understanding that he should sub- sequently publish an account of them. His de- scription of these experiments bears the date of the Ist of January, 1873, viz., the very day of the publication of the last-mentioned review ; and it isto be found in Natere of January 8th. As a sequel to the previous quotations, it will be useful to reproduce its closing paragraph : “The accuracy of Dr. Bastian’s statements of fact, with reference to the particular experiments now under consideration, has been publicly ques- tioned. I myself doubted it, and expressed my doubts, if not publicly, at least in conversation. I am content to have established—at all events to my own satisfaction—that, by following Dr. Bas- tian’s directions, infusions can be prepared which are not deprived, by an ebullition of from five to ten minutes, of the faculty of undergoing those | eos ee chemical changes which are characterized presence of swarms of bacteria, and that the de- velopment of these organisms can proceed with the greatest activity in hermetically-sealed glass sir” e a ¥ vessels, from which almost the whole of the has been expelled by boiling.” Subsequently these results were also con- firmed by Prof. Huizinga, of Groningen, and by two or three most competent German investiga. tors. The matter of fact, therefore, was at last considered to be definitely established.! The view enunciated by Mr. Moseley in the Academy in regard to my experiments was sub- by the, stantially similar to that which Prof. Huxley had © started at one of the sectional meetings of the _ British Association in 1870; and although in less than three years from that time it had been, as we have seen, abundantly refuted both in this country and on the Continent, Prof. Tyndall three years later—that is, early in 1876—~at tempted to deny that such experimental results — as mine could be legitimately obtained, and sought to convince the Royal Society and a crowded audience at the Royal Institution that I had fallen into error, and that no such results - could be obtained by a skilled experimentalist like himself. In evidence of this he brought for- — ward a “cloud of witnesses,” all of which, if rightly interpreted, gave very different testimony — from that which Prof. Tyndall imagined. But, while he at first strenuously denied my facts, he is now able only to demur to my interpretation, All this opposition, as will readily be seen, is to be taken as the measure of the antecedent certainty that all living matter is killed by brief but real exposure to a temperature of 212° Fahr. The modern opponents and supporters of the doctrine of “spontaneous generation” have al- - ways been principally concerned with two sets of problems: 1. As to the nature of the material in the air, the access of which is so apt to induce fermentation in suitable fluids; 2. As to whether some degree of heat below 212° Fabr. can be proved to be always sufficient to destroy the life of different kinds of living matter in the moist state, but especially that of bacteria and fungus | germs. In regard to the first set of problems, it has _ been generally agreed for some time that the air _ 1 This, of course, was the point originally in die pute, and concerning which it was of most importance that there should be no discrepancy. It was to this matter of fact only that Dr. Bardon-Sanderson testi- fied as above. ae els fee eee ee ae ee eC _ B.¢enwegwvs ere: ous. mab tb der’ wa de Mend ob - eb te ok ten

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oo Bee $i ea iste PefEFbe EGo SERE Le a Bete FREE. che eee s ves ae eal * ~ rie a? | SPONTANEOUS | eantains some germs of living organisms, bat proportion these bear to the much which chanced to fall from the air into suitable fluids would initiate fermentation or putrefac- tion therein. The question really requiring to be solved has always been (though it has not been uniformly recognized) whether mere organic dé- bris from the air, either in the form of particles The legitimacy of this doubt is perfectly ob- ‘vious. The doctrine of fermentation generally adopted anterior to that of M. Pasteur was the be promulgated by Baron Liebig. This latter has been known as the physical or the chemico- physical theory, in contradistinction to that of M. Pasteur, which is commonly spoken of as the germ-theory, or the vital theory of fermentation. Now, according to the original doctrine of Lie- big, a ferment was a portion of organic matter in a state of motor-decay. The molecular move- ments communicated to a suitable liquid by such changing organic matter were supposed by him to be capable of initiating fermentative changes. fh short, Liebig attributed to decaying organic matter just such functions as Pasteur has striven to concede only to living units or organisms. It is Liebig’s doctrine, therefore, which legiti- mately suggests the doubt above mentioned in tegard to the possible potericies of atmospheric particles other than actual germs. It was his view which from the first made it desirable that absolute proof should be looked for from the germ-theorists before their doctrine was ac- cepted, and before effects referable, it is true, to the influence of atmospheric dust are declared not to be in part accounted for by the fermentative agency of some of the dead organic particles and fragments with which the air is known to teem. "This is a view which is not peculiar to myself. PW la: ‘and bas long been, held by others, in proof _ of which I need only quote the following brief passage from the writings of another celebrated _ German chemist. Speaking of experiments which had been made with suitable boiled fiuids, ex- posed first of all to air which had been either calcined or filtered, and then to ordinary air, Prof. Gerhardt (“Chimie Organique,” t. iv., p. 545) says by way of comment upon the conclu- sions drawn from them by the germ-theorists : 5 Athos Le SPRY >> Me Ca tee = oa" : ‘ : o - okt! _ “Si dans les premiéres expériences Pair caleiné ou tamisé s’est montré beaucoup moins actif que Pair non soumis a ce traitement, c’est que la cha- leur rouge ou le tamisage enléve a |’air non-seule- ment les germes des infusoires et des moisissures, mais encore les débris des matiéres en décompo- sition qui y sont suspendues, c’est-a-dire les fer- ments dont l’activité viendrait s’ajouter a celle de Poxygéne de Pair.” All this seems to me perfectly plain, yet Prof. Tyndall is pleased to find fault in the last number of this Review, because, as he says, the name of Baron Liebig has been unwarrantably or need- lessly introduced into these discussions. He fur- ther accuses me of speaking in “vague” terms, because I have not quoted Baron Liebig for more than that to which he has given his testimony. The correlation of organisms with the major- ity of fermentations is now freely admitted on all sides, But it was not a fact so well known to Liebig when he originally published his doctrine as to the causes of fermentation. Baron Liebig lived, however, into the time when the fact of this correlation was generally known and ad- mitted, and he saw nothing therein to make him renounce his previous views. On the contrary, he slightly widened them after the correlation of organisms with fermentations had become estab- lished, and endeavored to show that the admitted actions of living units in initiating fermentations were but other exemplifications of his general doctrine, that fermentations are induced by cer- tain communicated molecular movements, some- times emanating from organic matter in a state of decay, and sometimes resulting from the vital processes of living units. I quite agree with Prof. Tyndall in thinking that Liebig’s was a truly scientific doctrine, founded, as the former tells us, on “ profound conceptions of molecular instability.” If, then, as Liebig contended, organic matter in a state of decay is capable of acting as a fer- ment, and of initiating the common fermentations and putrefactions, there surely can be no error in quoting him in support of such views. And if it has also been shown that the appearance and in- crease of the lowest living particles are always a correlative of these processes, Liebig’s view, if it is true at all, must be true for the whole of the processes which are essentially included under the term fermentation. The heterogenist has, therefore, perfectly good ground for demanding proofs of error from the germ-theorist rather than more or less probable guesses based solely upon the germ-theorist’s

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. rs - “way of thinking, before he abandons Liebig's Pe eee: ogee SNe a ee Tree ee " =. eT ED Ss RLS get eee on Os ten 4 Ard (8 ae. Se ‘ i Pane | ~ : ‘ a ee : + SP we sn A RS > ,* “ 7 whe j : “+ fertile idea, supported by Gerhardt and others, that the mere organic matter of the air can en- gender fermentative changes in suitable fluids, leading, though it may, among other phenomena, to a new birth of living particles. This, too, the ' peader will observe, is a very different notion concerning the mode of origin of such new living particles from that which Prof. Tyndall persists in attributing to me—viz., the absurd idea that _ mere dead particles from the air are themselves “ miraculously kindled into living things.” Now, it is to this first part of the subject that the great bulk of Prof. Tyndall’s experiments belong. He has sought to throw light upon such problems as these: what ordinary air contains in - the way of solid matter, what air subjected to different kinds of treatment contains, how the contents of the atmosphere differ in various places, how in these different conditions and places it affects previously-boiled fluids; and, by way of speculation only, as to the exact nature of the material which, falling into organic fluids from the air, incites fermentation therein. He has renewed the proofs of things which were not before doubted, and he claims in addition to have shown that the air contains invisible or “ultra-microscopical particles,” which by their '' subsidence are, like larger particles or débris, also capable of contaminating organic infusions. But I fail to find in this latter fact, however much it may be confirmed, and however frequently it may be reiterated, any proof that such particles are “ germs ” of bacteria, especially when, on Prof. Tyndall’s own testimony, the behavior of these invisible particles in regard to heat is altogether opposed to that of all known visible germs of which I or anybody else have any cognizance. Burdach exhibited much sagacity some forty years ago when he said in reference to the invis- ible germs which were also postulated in his time : ‘* Les dit-on trop petits pour étre apercus, c’est avouer qu’on ne peut rien savoir de leur existence. . « « Croire que partout ot l’on rencontre des in- fusoires, ils ont été précédés d’ceufs, c’est donc admettre une pure hypothése, qui n’a d’autré fon- dement que V’analogie. . . . Si c’est seulement par Panalogie qu’on suppose des ceufs chez eux, il faut accorder A ces ceufs des propriétés semblables a celles de tous les ceufs connus: car ce serait jouer sur les mots que de supposer qu’ils en ont de par- ticuliéres & eux seuls.’’ ! 1“ Traité de Physiologie.” Translation by Jour- dan, 1897, t. 1., p. 22. ‘THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. —SUPPLEMENT. All thisdiscussion about the nature.of ast atmospheric dust, visible and invisible, together’ with elaborate and ingenious experimentation to _ prove its infective nature, so far as fermentations _ are concerned, has not really advanced the main question one iota. It is, as we have seen, impos- sible for Prof. Tyndall, by all the refinements _ which he has introduced into the study of this part of the subject, to get beyond the simple econ- clusion of Schwann, long anterior to the. Ig- bors of Pasteur, that the air contains a “some. ~ thing” which is infective ; but we are no more able to say now than Schwann was in 1887 what is the precise ‘nature of this something. In this — view I am, as I shall subsequently show, sup. ported by high authority. My more simple experiments with glass ves- sels, from which most of the air had. been.ex- pelled by boiling, and in which heat was relied upon as the scourge of all antecedent life, had, - moreover, thoroughly shown that the essential question does not lie in the direction of Prof, Tyndall’s experiments. The verdict in connec. — tion with spontaneous generation essentially de- pends on the answer which can be given to another problem. As the late Prof. Jeffries Wyman said,’ “The issue between the advo- cates and the opponents of the doctrine in ques- — tion clearly turns on the extent to which it.ean — be proved that living things resist the action of water at a high temperature.” it When any one asks what explanation can be given of the appearance of the lowest forms of living matter in previously-boiled and guarded infusions, only two interpretations are possible. There must have been (1) « survival of organisms — or germs, or else (2) a new and independent birth of living particles. Yet, if we look at them merely in the light of previous experience, each of these interpretations seems alike at variance _ with our actual knowledge. Many considerations and much thought will be required before any one would be likely to entertain the conclusion that the forms of living matter which appear in the previously-boiled fluids are primordial, and had arisen indepen- dently, in a mother liquid, somewhat after the fashion of incipient crystals; and similarly we ought, if our minds are free and unbiased, to hesitate much and long before we conclude that forms of living matter which are so minute as to be beyond the reach of present microscopes not only exist, but have properties totally different, 1 American Journal of Science and Art, September, 1867.

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Lon J Sk ns eae QF baSce GETEEFE Rests at AGE CT eet REEECG FEET rR EEREES Es ¢ Sate ‘ _ influence of heat, from all visible forms of living matter of similar nature. Yet these are the two alternatives which have to be considered by those who seek to interpret the experiments above re- ferred to. It is not safe in such a question to lean too strongly upon analogy, and even if it were, it so happens, as I have elsewhere shown, that the arguments from analogy are very evenly balanced in their bearing upon these opposite views.! Should it be asked what warrant there is for supposing that living particles ever could come into being by an independent birth from fluids, somewhat after the fashion of incipient crystals, Iwould reply that the general kinship between living and not-living matter is freely admitted by men of science at the present day, as the follow- ing quotation may suffice to indicate. Prof. Hux- ley says:* “It is not probable that there is any real difference in the nature of the molecular forces which compel the carbonate of lime to as- sume and retain the crystalline form, and those which cause the albuminoid matter to move and grow, select and form, and maintain its particles in a state of incessant motion. The property of ‘erystallizing is to crystallizable matter what the vital property is to albuminoid matter (proto- _ plasm). The crystalline form corresponds to the organic form, and its internal structure to tissue- structure. Crystalline force being a property of matter, vital force is but a property of matter.” But the same inquirer may ask, Does anybody go so far as to say that living matter ever has come into being independently? To which I can only answer, It is the belief of our profoundest thinkers and foremost men of science that such a _ process did take place in the early history of this planet. This is the declared belief of many, both ‘at home and abroad, of whom I will only men- ‘tion among ourselves the names of Herbert Spencer and G. H. Lewes, together with those of Charlies Darwin and Prof. Huxley. And that it ‘ may be seen that this is a view shared in even by “& man who is notable for great caution and so- _ briety in regard to the acceptance of mere fanci- ful hypotheses, it will only be necessary to quote from an address delivered last autumn before the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians by Prof. Virchow. After demurring to the pro- mulgation of different doctrines which he re- garded as unproved, Virchow says:* “ Never- theless, I admit that if we indeed want to 1 “Evolution and the Origin of Life,” 1874, pp. 50- SM, and 15-29. _ * Fortnightly Review, February, 1869. * See Nature, November 29, 1877, p. 98. in regard to their amenability to the destructive form an idea how the first organic being could have originated by itself, nothing remains but to go back to spontaneous generation. This is clear, If I do not want to suppose a creation- theory, if-I do not want to believe that a special creator existed, who took the clod of clay and blew his living breath into it, if I want to form some conception in my own way, then I must form it in the sense of generatio equivoca.” ! But does any one, other than Dr. Bastian, hold that some such process as is here supposed could have taken place more than once—that it does take place even now? This is a question which an ingenuous reader may well put after reading Prof. Tyndall’s denunciation of my views in the last number of this Review. To this, again, I can only reply that there are such men— | men, too, who accupy an exalted position in the world of science. As a botanist I can name M. Trécul, and as a chemist M. Fremy, both of them members of the Institute of France ; while in Italy I can cite Prof. Cantoni, who holds the chair of Physics at Pavia, as well as Prof. Och! and Prof. Leopoldo Maggi. There are others whom I might mention, but it would be of little use, and instead I will subjoin a quotation from one of our own most eminent thinkers. As this is taken from a work published only last summer,” its author may be presumed to have been fully aware of the major part of the evidence and reasoning of an adverse kind which Prof. Tyndall has of late ad- duced. Mr. G. H. Lewes writes (page 122): “TI cannot see the evidence which would warrant the belief that life originated solely in one micro- scopic lump of protoplasm on one single point of our earth’s surface; on the contrary, it is more probable that from innumerable and separate points of this teeming earth myriads of proto- plasts sprang into existence whenever and wher- ever the conditions of the formation of organized substance were present. It is probable that this has been incessantly going on, and that every day new protoplasts appear, struggle for existence, and serve as food for more highly-organized rivals.” Such processes could not come within the common knowledge of mankind. What can or- dinary persons know on the question whether specks of living matter less than ryo'son Of an inch in diameter are constantly coming within visible limits after an independent birth from fluids? Yet this supposition has been spoken of 1 Virchow distinctly states, however, that in his opinion the occurrence of any such process at the present day has never been proved. *“The Physical Basis of Mind,” by G. H. Lewes, ~ 1877.

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ns THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.~SUPPLEMENT. "by Prof. Tyndall as an interpretation of the ap- pearance of such specks which “ violates all an- tecedent knowledge.” This cannot be true; it ' may be at variance with « favorite argument from analogy, but, as regards the cause of the phenom- enon itself, this is, and ever has been, beyond the reach of “antecedent knowledge.” As I have elsewhere ' pointed out, living matter, like crystal- line matter, can originate or come into being only by a synthesis of its elements ; but because organ- isms (owing to the intrinsic properties of living matter) have well-known powers of self-multipli- cation, the obviousness of these modes of repro- duction has sufficed to cast doubts upon the reality of the independent origin of the lowest living units, by supplying material for the build- ing up of a plausible but one-sided analogical argument against the reality of that which must always remain beyond the sphere of actual ob- servation. After the before-mentioned confirmation of my experiment by others in 1873, and after wit- nessing the ease with which the old beliefs as to the destructive influence of fiuids at 212° Fahr. ‘ wpon ferment organisms and their germs were then thrown aside, I immediately instituted new inquiries concerning the death-point of such or- ganisms in fluids, in order to try and ascertain again whether there was or was not any justifi- cation for this procedure. This new series of experiments, of which a record is to be found in the “ Proceedings of the Royal Society” for 1873, seems to show conclu- sively that the bacteria and all the reproductive particles which they may possess, which were purposely immersed in the organic infusions with which the experiments were made, were killed, as T had previously ascertained, at a temperature of 140° Fahr. Similar experiments were made very shortly afterward, in the same manner, by Prof. Cohn, of Breslau, assisted by Dr. Horvath, and they also arrived at the conclusion that the com- mon bacteria were killed in fluids by a brief exposure of from five to ten minutes to a temper- ature of 140° Fahr. Although these experiments were made after mine, they seem to have been executed without any knowledge of my results, 80 that the independent confirmation which they afford is all the more satisfactory. , The method of procedure employed in these experiments was of such a nature that the con- elusion arrived at was, as I pointed out at the time, applicable to any germs, whether visible or 1 “'The Beginnings of Life,” vol. ii., p. 77 invisible, by which bacteria may multiply in fluids, as much as to the parent organisms themselves, _ When Prof. Tyndall was at last, after his un. succesful “Combat with an Infective Atmos. phere,” ! compelled to turn his attention from — this side of the subject to the heat-resisting powers of living matter, in order to find some hypothesis which would explain the very contre dictory results of his first and of his second series of experiments, the public generally was told through the Times..of the 9th of June last, ag — his audience at the Royal Institution had been on the previous evening, that “the gravest error ever committed by biological writers on this ques- tion consists in the confounding of the germ and its offspring.” Though the parent organisms — were, as he was prepared to admit, killed at 140° Fahr., it was far otherwise with the “ germs,” which, though invisible, were described as “ in- durated and resistent.” Now, it is difficult to conceive any statement more hopelessly incorrect than this of Prof. Tym dall with respect to the supposed “error” of biological writers. As sbove indicated, any dis- tinction existing between germs and finished or- ganisms in regard to their resistance to heat had always been thoroughly borne’ in mind by me, and the same may be said of all the principal workers from the Abbé Spallanzani downward Moreover, in my “Evolution and the Origin of Life” I devoted many pages (pp. 141-168) toa discussion of all the most important facts which were then known in regard to this question. But again our attention has been called to an- other thoroughly familiar fact, as though it were one which had hitherto escaped attention. In order seemingly to explain Prof. Tyndall’s sup- position that the invisible germs whose existence he postulates are really “indurated and resistent;” as he imagines, we have been more than once re minded that the (wholly different) desiccated seeds of many plants which are provided with thick and horny coats can resist the penetration of water for a very long time, and can even retain thele: vitality cccndionaliy oftes they: Rane: Ones boiled in water for four hours. . But Prof. Tyndall tries to make even a more specific use of this fact. In this Review last month, after referring to some statements which I have made in reference to the influence of boil- ing water upon living matter, he adds : “ But to invalidate the foregoing statements it is only necessary to say that eight years before they were made it has been known to the wool- 1 British Medical Journal, January %, 1871.

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Te ite, 7 ROEPREE AEE EW RESFRB SERS EACOR SE ORS s REAPS SC SEV ESF bs the fact in the Comptes Rendus of the Paris Acad- emy of Sciences, that the desiccated seeds of the Brazilian plant medicago survived fully four hours’ boiling. . . . So much for the heterogenist’s mis- take in regard to ordinary seeds.” Now my readers will be surprised to learn that this particular example, which is to invalidate my statements, had been discussed by me, in 1872, in my “ Beginnings of Life ” (vol. i, p. 314), as may be seen from the following quotation : “Seeds of higher plants, provided with a hard coat, may—especially after prolonged periods of desiccation—germinate even after they have been boiled for a long time in water. This was ascer- tained by M. Pouchet to be the case with an American species of medicago. Some of the seeds were completely disorganized by this boiling tem- perature, while a few remained intact, and it was these latter which were afterwatd found to germi- nate. They had been protected from the influence of the hot water by their very dry and hardened coats. On this subject Prof. Jeffries Wyman says: ‘Water penetrates the seeds of many plants, and especially of some of the Leguminose, very slow- ly; in the case of Gleditechia and Laburnum we have found several days and even weeks necessary for the penetration of cold water, though when the ‘water is hot it penetrates much more readily. If, therefore, the seeds are dry when immersed, and are boiled for a few minutes only, they may still germinate. If they are moistened beforehand, the action of boiling water has been found uniformly fatal.’ , . . All the organisms in which we are _. interested at present, however, have no such pro- . tection. These are mere specks or masses of pro- toplasm, which are either naked or provided only with thin coverings.” Thus it will be seen that the facts newly dis- covered by Prof. Tyndall, which were to invali- date my views, were with others nearly five years ago referred to by me—and their value was, I trust, duly estimated. But upon this subject I must notice another instance in which Prof. Tyn- dalj hay misinformed the public in regard to my mode of dealing with these questions. At page 43 of the last number of this Review, he says, “Througheut bis long disquisitions on this sub- ject, Dr. Bastian makes special kinds of living matter do duty for all kinds.” But the real fact is wholly different, since my reference to the ques- ticn of the power of resisting unaccustomed heat which is possessed by living matter had included & reference to all the forms of it with which experiment had been made (so far as I had been able to ascertain) up to the date of my last con- tribation to this subject, in 1874, These inquiries. were thus summarized :' TEMPERATURES AT WHICH DEATH OCCURS. Are killed at Simple aquatic organisms (Spallan- sani, Maz Schultze, and Kihne). 104°-118° F, Tissue-elements of cold-blooded ani - mal—frog (Kiihne) . Tissue claapiate of warns-hioodsdanl- mal—man (Stricker and KXiihne) Tissue-elements of plants—Urtica, and Vallisneria . (Max Schultze and Kithne) . 1164°- 104° ul’ 1188° In respect to such results of independent investigation I made the following comments: “We have only to bear in mind two or three general principles in order to be able to har monize the several experimental results arrived at with the now very generally admitted doctrine as to the oneness or generic resemblance existing . between all forms of living matter. We must bear in mind, first of all, the consideration en- forced by Spallanzani, that there are different grades of vitality, or, in other words, different kinds of living matter, exhibiting more or less of the phenomena known as vital; and that of these kinds those which would exhibit the most active life are those which would be most easily killed by heat. Thus we should expect the latent life of the germ, egg, or seed, to be less easily extinguished than- the more subtile and, at the same time, more ative life of the fully-developed tissue-element or organism; and we should also expect that the vegetal element or organism would, as a rule, be less readily killed than the more highly-vitalized animal organism. These principles, based upon the relative complexity of life, are, however, subject to the influence of a disturbing cause. . . . Custom or habitual con- ditions may tend to render the more active tissue- elements of warm-blooded animals better able to resist the influence of heat than similar elements of less highly-vitalized cold-blooded animals.” These considerations I have thought it best to quote, partly because they throw light upon the independent results above tabulated, and partly because they illustrate the degree of truth contained in another of Prof. Tyndall’s state- ments concerning facts or views which I have adduced, But even if I had, as he says, made 1 “ Evolution and the Origin of Life,” p. 166.

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A ie Py. —e iat Fab & as é * +4 4429 THE POPULAR “special kinds of living matter do duty for all kinds,” I should not have lacked the countenance of high authority for the assumption that the fundamental properties of all living matter are similar. I may perhaps be permitted to call his attention to what Prof. Huxley' has eloquent- ly said on this subject: “ Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polyp, are all com- posed of structural units of the same charac- ter—namely, masses of protoplasm with a nu- cleus. .. . What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants. . . . Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. . . . Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and all living forms are fun- damentally of one character.” On the all-important subject of the death- point of living matter, therefore, and on the de- gree to which a power of resisting prolonged and higher temperatures is conferred upon bacteria or their germs by virtue of their previous desic- cation, I am quite unable to accept Prof. Tyn- dall’s assumptions. I go no further than to say that in the present state of the evidence bear- ing upon the subject I regard the hypothesis of spontaneous generation as the most logical and consistent interpretation of the facts which are at present known. I am far from asserting that further experiments may not shift the balance of evidence in the opposite direction, but in order that this may be brought about something more than assumption must be forthcoming. \ When legitimate evidence is adduced, I hope I shall not be unamenable to its influence. I shall, however, continue quite obdurate in face of the “reasoning” in which Prof. Tyndall in- dulges on this subject. In the early part of his recent communication he referred to the mental bias which had influenced the late M. Pouchet; but.he has himself shown an even more obvious bias in the contrary direction. Thus he has in- formed me through the columns of the Zimes, in one of those replies with which he has favored me from time to time, that only one interpreta- tion of the fermentation of superheated fluids is possible. The notion of the survival of germs alone finds favor with him, and he roundly dis- misses the interpretation that the phenomena may have been caused by a new birth of living particles as no interpretation at all. Thus, in a letter which appeared on the 18th of June, 1877, he said : “Dr. Bastian says that two interpretations of my facts are equally admissible. He is again wrong ; 1 “ Lay Sermons,” pp. 196-129. SCIENCE MONTHL Y¥.—SUPPLEMENT. there is but one interpretation possible, An inter pretation which violates all antecedent is no interpretation at all. . . . The inference that a particle which when sown produces a thistle ig the seed of a thistle is not surer than the inferenee that the particles described in the Times as in clouds from shaken hay are the seeds of bac _ teria.” Having thus set his seal upon Nature’s possi- bilities, a corresponding interpretation of his ex. periments and those of other workers is freed from all difficulty. Whenever fermentation oe. eurs in guarded and previously superheated flu- ids, the interpretation is, to Prof. Tyndall, always plain and simple. He says: “I have had several cases of survival after four and five hours’ boiling, some survivals after six, and one survival after eight hours’ boiling. Thus far has experiment fixing upon even eight hours as the extreme limit of vital resistance.” He holds out the hope that further researches “ might reveal germs more ob- stinate still.” Now, one’s comment upon all this is, that with Prof. Tyndall it is not a question of revelation at all, but rather one of mere assump- tion. What could be clearer than his reasoning? He argues from a one-sided analogy that bacteria must spring from seeds, and then uses this must as the ready interpretation of all his experi- ments, shutting his eyes apparently to all other | considerations, even though this interpretation “violates all antecedent knowledge,” as it cer- tainly does. What present warrant is there for supposing that a naked, or almost naked, speck of protoplasm can withstand four, six, or eight hours’ boiling? To which I can only answer, none. Let Prof. Tyndall’s statements in regard to the existence of invisible bacteria-germs and their properties be contrasted with those which other more sober believers in the same germ-theory, who are similarly indisposed to admit spontaneous generation, feel entitled to make. The medical profession has recently been told, | through the Pathological Society, by Prof. Lis- | ter,! that he thinks it highly improbable that | bacteria have any germis at all, and that, wheth- | er they have or not, he has never met with any whose reproductive elements (in whatsoever stage or condition they may exist) could survive an im- | mersion for half an hour to a temperature 2° be- | low the boiling-point of water (212° Fahr.). He says: | ] am aware that there are two instances, the | 1 See British Medical Journal, December 2, 1877, | pp. 905 and 902. = ee .. actually reached, but there is no valid warrant for — .

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* #88 : ~F 8 FRSHS ES RSS ARPS sgstreEz : FRESPERS ES PSE |” pacilles onthracis and the Bacillus oultilis, in which it is said that the actual germs of bacteria do exist. I have seen nucleated bacteria myself. Tconfess I have never seen things which resisted such treatment as these germs are said to have re- sisted in the hands of others. But even these germs are not ultra-microscopic. They are bright points that are seen, bright granules. There has never been evidence of any ultra-microscopic germ. . . » For my own part I think it extremely improb- able that bacteria in general have germs. They are actual reproductive organs, constantly multi- plied by segmentation ; and, if there be any organ- ism in existence that does not require germs, I should say it is the bacterium, . . . I have never yet found any organism which resisted the temper- ature of 210° continued for half an hour—I mean to sayin the moist state. I have seen no organism in a liquid continue fertile after exposure to 210° Fahr. for half an hour.” On the other hand, in direct reply to Prof, Tyndall, Prof. Burdon-Sanderson' recently made the following statements before the Royal Society : “Dr. Tyndall has demonstrated, by the experi- ments to which I have already alluded, that the or- dinary air also contains germinal particles of ultra- microscopic minuteness. . . . That such particles exist there can be no question ; but of their size, structural attributes, or mode of development, we know nothing. . . . If, for the sake of clearness, we call the particle a, and the organism to which it gives rise A, then what is known about this matter amounts to no more than this, that the existence of A was preceded by the existence of a.’’? While at the meeting of the Pathological So- ciety, shortly afterward, to which I have above referred, Prof. Burdon-Sanderson said concerning the question whether things can be shown to ex- ist which are the seeds of bacteria, “I entirely 1 See Nature, November 29, 1877. *I would here point out that Dr. Sanderson does not state that the invisible particle (a) grows bodily into the visible organism ; he is, of course, quite un- able to make any such affirmation, because such par- ticles may give rise to organisms by inciting chemical changes in the organic fluid of such a nature as to de- termine an independent development of the particles of living matter which subsequently show themselves, and develop into bacteria (A). His use of the epithet “germinal is, therefore, as it appears to me, rather open to misconception. It carries with it an unproved implication. agree with Prof. Lister in the opinion that no. proof has been given of any such seed with ref- erence to common bacteria.” Having had to occupy so much space in at- tempting to correct the very erroneous impres- sions which Prof. Tyndall’s paper in the last number of this Review was calculated to spread abroad, I have no room, even if it were desirable for me, to add anything further as to my present views on this question, or on that of the deriva- tive problems concerning the origin of communi- cable diseases. It has only been with great re- luctance and inconvenience to myself that I have been compelled to come forward now as I have done, to defend my views from the misrepresenta- tions of them which have of late been made by Prof. Tyndall, I felt also that it was incumbent upon me to endeavor to rescue the general ques- tion from the confusion in which it is fast being involved by so many contradictory utterances on all sides, All scientific readers who care to go further in regard to my views, will find that I have pretty fully considered the present bearings of the evidence in relation to these problems in a recent paper in the Zodlogical Section of the Journal of the Linnean Society. What I have said, however, in these pages will, I trust, be sufficient to make it clear how | much the weight of reason is on my side, and to show that the doctrine of “spontaneous genera- tion,” far from being worthy of almost universal repudiation, as it was thought to be when I first wrote on the subject in 1870, is one which is now - well supported by evidence. Even if it cannot be considered to be absolutely proved, I hope I may have made it perfectly clear that those who would show that the balance of evidence is against its being a common process at the present day can only do so by bringing forward proofs that fer- ment organisms are really able to withstand a brief exposure to 212° Fahr. in fluids—proofs that are stronger than the evidence which, up te 1870, had engendered the almost universal belief that nothing of the kind was possible. AsI havesaid, a good measure of the intensity of this previous belief is afforded by the incredulity with which my now admitted experiments were at first re- ceived— Nineteenth Century.

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LE oe a ~*e : he - 444 ’ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. oe $k: gs | Poe eee - BENEDICT DE SPINOZA." Br FREDERICK POLLOCK. ~ is now two hundred years since there died, in an obscure lodging at the Hague, Benedict de Spinoza, a philosopher appreciated in his own time only by a very few. His name was indeed widely known, but it was for the most part known only to be execrated. For some time after his death Spinozist was current among the theo- logians of Holland as a term of opprobium. Spinoza’s thought, however, was of that vital kind which sooner or later cannot fail to make for it- self a way into its due place. Some three-quar- ters of a century after his death came the great awakening of letters and philosophy in Germany, and the leaders of that movement, among whom the name of Lessing must be mentioned first, were not slow to perceive Spinoza’s importance. Ever ‘since that time his influence has been a widening and increasing one: not that I stop to maintain this in the strictest sense which can be put upon the words, for I do not think a philoso- pher’s influence is properly measured by the number of persons who agree with his doctrines. Philosophical doctrines have been, and will doubt- less continue to be, matter of controversy, but it is no matter of controversy that the life of a righteous man who gives up all else that he may seek the truth for its own sake is a sure and priceless possession for all the generations of men who come after him. Barvcn pe Sprxoza was born at Amsterdam on the 24th of November, 1632. His parents were members of the Portuguese synagogue, a community established toward the end of the sixteenth century by Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal, who had turned to the United Provinces as a safe asylum, For at this critical time Holland, it should be remembered to her eternal honor, was the most tolerant ecommon- wealth in Europe. Spinoza was brought up in the course of Hebrew learning then usual, and at the age of fifteen was already distinguished for his knowledge of the Talmud. He was also familiar from his youth up, as his writings bear witness, with the masterpieces of the golden age of modern Jewish literature. From the tenth 1 In the course of this paper I shall have to refer several times to Dr. A. van der Linde's “ Benedictus Spinoza: Bibliografie " (the Hague, 1871), which gives 8 full account of the literature of the subject,

to the twelfth centuries there flourished at the Mohammedan courts of Spain and Africa a se- ries of Arab and Hebrew philosophers who held a position with regard to the societies in which they lived much like that of the Catholic school- men afterward with regard to Western Christen dom. Like the schoolmen, they set themselves to effect a fusion of the Aristotelian philosophy with the accepted theology of their churches; and the schoolmen were in fact acquainted with their work to a considerable extent, and referred to it quite openly, and in general with respect.' The Jewish schoolmen, if we may so call them, cannot be said to have founded any distinct phil- osophical doctrine; in philosophy they were — hardly distinguishable, if at all, from their Mo- hammedan compeers. But they gave a distinct. philosophical cast to Jewish theology, and there- by to Jewish education. Two names stand out foremost among them. Ibn-Ezra (1088-1166 a. p.) was a traveler, astronomer, grammarian, and poet, in addition to the learning in theology and philosophy which made his commentaries on the Scriptures classical. But the chief of all is Moses ben Maimon (1135-1205 a. p.), who became known in Europe as Maimonides, the father of modern Jewish theology. He was regarded with such veneration as to be compared to the great Law- giver himself, so that it passed into a proverb, “From Moses until Moses there arose none like unto Moses.” * The Jewish peripatetic school was also represented in Provence, where, in the four- teenth century, Levi ben Gerson, the most daring of all the Jewish philosophers, and Moses of Nar- 1 The names of Ibn-Roshd (Averroes) and Ibn-Siné (Avicenna) were familiar in Europe,and Dante groups = —— them (‘‘ Inferno,” iv., 143) with the leaders of classical science and philosophy. Ibn-Gebirol (Avicebron), a Jewish member of the school, broke with the Aristo- telian tradition to take up Neo-Platonic ideas. His philosophical work was discredited and fell into ob- livion among his own people ; but it became current in Europe in a Latin form, and was used by Giordano Bruno, through whom it may have thus come round to Spinoza. 2 In later times the proverb received an extended application in honor of Moses Mendelssohn, the grand- father of the musician, himself a philosopher and the restorer of Jewish culture in Germany. Maimonides's reputation was not established without conflict. About 1285 his opinions were formally condemned by the synagogue of Montpellier.

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REZGR SEES SE

8 Se SOS STORSR TRATES PPERS STR RL ESET EES bonne, were its most conspicuous members. This philosophical treatment of theology was on the whole generally accepted, but did not pass without controversy: in particular R. Chasdai Creskas, of Barcelona (flour. 1410.4. p.), whom Spinoza cites by _ pame,’ combated the peripatetics with great zeal and ability from an independent point of view. A mind like Spinoza’s could not well have found anything more apt to stir it to speculation and inquiry than the works of the men I have named. They handled their subjects with extreme inge- nuity, and with a freedom and boldness of thought which were only verbally disguised by a sort of ostentatious reserve. Both Maimonides and Ibn- Ezra delighted to throw out hints of meanings which could not or must not be expressly re- vealed. Maimonides, in the introduction to his principal work, entreats the reader who may per- ceive such meanings not to divulge them. Ibn- Ezra says in his commentaries: “Herein is s mystery ; and whoso understandeth it, let him hold his peace.” * The mysteries were, however, not so carefully concealed but that an open-eyed reader like Spinoza might easily find in them the princi- ples of rational criticism which he afterward de- veloped in the “ Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.” » At the same time Spinoza was far from neg- lecting secular learning and even accomplish- ments. His master in Latin, after he had ac- - quired the rudiments elsewhere, was Francis van den Ende, a physician of Amsterdam who had a high reputation as a teacher, and was also well versed in the natural sciences. It is highly prob- able that he communicated this part of his knowl- edge also to Spinoza, who certainly had very sound instruction of that kind at some time ; for it is remarkable (as Mr. G. H. Lewes has well pointed out) that Spinoza seldom or never makes mistakes in physics. The references and alla- sions in Spinoza’s writings show that he had a fair knowledge of Latin literature ; of Greek he knew something, but not much.* He wrote a Latin which, though not classical, was a very sufficient instrument for his purposes, and which he handled with perfect freedom. He seems to have been also familiar with Italian; and Spanish and Portuguese must have been almost as native to him as Dutch. About this time the philosophy of Descartes was in the first flush of its renown, and, like most new and brilliant things, was ve- 1“ Judeum quendam, Rab Ghaedai vocatum.”"—Ep. XXIX., ad fin. * Ap. Spinoza, “ Troct. Theol. Pol.,” c.8,§ 9. The mystery seems innocent enough to a modern reader. 3 He expressly disclaims anything like critical competence in it (“ Tract. Theol. Pol.,” cap. 10, ad fin.). BENEDICT DE SPINOZA:

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j hemently suspected of heresy. Spinoza made himself thoroughly familiar with it, his com. - panions in this study being Henry Oldenburg and Dr. Lewis Meyer, the most constant of his friends in after-life. It is at least doubtful, however, whether he was at any time a Cartesian. When he published a short exposition of the system in 1663 (the only work he ever set his name to), it was with an express warning that it did not represent his own opinions. At the same time it is beyond question that Descartes exercised a powerful influence upon the form and direction — of Spinoza’s speculations. Until of late years bis part in this matter has been unduly exalted, and that of the Jewish philosophers underrated, or - rather forgotten ; ‘but it would be very possible to carry the reaction to excess. In Spinoza’s own time it is pretty certain that those who knew him only at second hand looked on him asa sort of erratic Cartesian. We know what Locke thought of the Cartesians as a body, and thus Locke’s entire neglect of Spinoza may be explained. Those who followed Locke in England seem to have taken for granted, after his example (though _ in Berkeley we do find specific references to Spi- noza), that Spinoza’s philosophy was not worth serious attention. To these graver studies Spinoza found tine to add no small skill in drawing. He filled a book with sketches of distinguished persons of his av- quaintance, as we are told by his biographer Cole- rus,’ who had the book in his possession. The same writer tells us that Spinoza’s master, Van den Ende, had a learned, witty, and accomplished daughter, who took part in teaching his pupils, and Spinoza among them. From a learner, the tale says, he became a lover, but was supplanted by 8 fellow-pupil named Kerkering, who wooed and won the lady, not unassisted by the material persuasion of a valuable pearl necklace. The story passed current until it was rudely called in question by the facts which Dr. van Vioten dis- covered and published in 1862. True it is thet Van den Ende had a daughter, but she was only eleven years old at the latest time when Spinoza ean have been her father’s pupil. True it is that she married Theodore Kerkering, but not till sev- eral years after, in 1671. He was, like her father, a physician, and earned a considerable scientific reputation by his work in medicine, chemistry, and anatomy. The match appears to have been a very natural and proper one, and the 3 The name is a Latinized form of Kohler. He was the minister of the German Lutheran congregation at the Hague.

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Ss io cbs, 446 THE poPuLak ‘SCIENCE MONTHLY.~SUPPLEMENT. _ #ivalry with Spinoza and the pearl necklace must be dismissed as inventions. It does not necessarily follow, bowever, that the tale of Spi- noza’s love for Clara van den Ende is wholly without foundation. Van den Ende probably continued to see something of his former pupil until, to his misfortune, he left Holland ;' and we know that Spinoza was from time to time at Amsterdam. Besides this, nothing forbids us to suppose that even from an earlier date there may have sprung up a half-romantic, half-childish af- fection between Spinoza and Klaartje. Beatrice was only rine years old, and Dante himself only ten, when the “glorious lady of his soul” first showed herself to his eyes, and the word came to him, Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi, So that if any one is minded to cling to this one piece of romance in Spinoza’s life, I think he may do so by taking the story with some such qualification as here suggested? I must confess, however, that my own inclination is, on reflection, toward entire unbelief. The story as told by Colerus is not credible, and any credible story we may devise in its stead must be e0 different from that given by Colerus as to rest in turth on no evidence at all. Besides, the tes- timony of Colerus is here at its weakest; he does not report this matter, as he does many others, as being within the actual knowledge of himself or his informants, but refers for confirmation to authorities which are all but worthless.* 2 Van den Ende migrated to France, where he in- volved himself in a political conspiracy, hoping that it might turn to the profit of his own country, and was hanged at Paris in 1674. * Most recent writers, including Auerbach, to whom it must have given a pang to cast away the foundation of his charming novel, treat the whole “story as a fable. Dr. van Vioten himeelf(“ Benedic- tus de Spinoza,” second edition, 1871, p. 21), and Dr. Hi. J. Betz, of the Hague (“ Levensechets van Baruch de Spinoza,”’ 1876), take a line not unlike what I have _ given in the text. Dr. Rothschild (“Spinoza: zur Rechtfertigung seiner Philosophie u. Zeit,” Leipeic, I8TT) boldly maintains Colerus's account as historical, and dismisses the objection as to dates with the re- mark, *‘ Es giebt frihreife Naturen." * Kortholt (‘“‘Detribus Impostoribus Magnis,” No. 82 in Van der Linde, cf. No. 987), and the article on Spinoza in Bayle’s Dictionary. Kortholt’s “three impostors”’ are Hobbes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Spinoza. The bock has nothing to do (beyond the studied similarity of title) with the famous, per- haps mythical, “ Detribus Impostoribus,” which is a standing riddle of bibliography. Of this, however, a epurious French version circulated in manuscript in the eighteenth century, under the name of “ L'Esprit” —or, bound up with Lacas’s biography, “La Vie et TEsprit—de M. Benolt de Spinoza.” (See Van der Linde, Nos. 99-102.) So much we know of Spinoza for the fst twenty-three years of his life. We may well be. lieve that he had not long attained man’s estate before the freedom of his thought and discourse, and perhaps also laxity in ceremonial obsery- ances, began to exeite attention among the elders of his people; but, whatever suspicions . may have been conceived, and whatever informal warnings may have been given, no action was taken till 1656. A community which owed its existence to flight from repeated persecutions might be expected by a hasty observer of human nature to practise toleration itself; but experi ence is far from warranting such an inference, Witness the example of the settlers of New Eng- land, whose first use of their freedom from the yoke of Episcopacy was to set up a new ecclesi- astical tyranny after their own patterns, of akind — not less oppressive and infinitely more vexatious, There is too much reason to fear that the Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal had learned some of the evil lessons of the Inquisition." Apart from this, the synagogue of Amsterdam had good reasons of secular policy for being scrupu- lous, even to excess, in its appearance to the outer world. Holland was indeed the land of toleration ; but toleration was not such as we are nowadays accustomed to, and at this very time — theological controversy ran high. The battle of — Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants was yet — fresh in men’s minds; and it behooved a society of men foreign in religion, language, and man- ners, which had been at first received with suspi- — cion, and which existed only on sufferance, to let — nothing pass among them which could lay them — open to a charge of promoting new heresies or being indifferent to the general interests of reli- gion. Hence we can understand the extreme anxiety to avoid an open schism, which marked the first proceedings in Spinoza’s case, The elders would have preferred to retain Spinoza in apparent conformity, and offered him as the ptice of this a pension of a thousand florins. This being declined, it was probably considered that the only safe course remaining, though not a desirable one in itself, was for the congregation to renounce its freethinking member as com- pletely as possible. Meanwhile, some obscure fanatic, thinking himself, no doubt, a messenger — 1 Dr. Grits (“ Geschichte der Jaden,” x., 14) says: “They had brought with them from Spain the fatal passion for maintaining the purity of the faith and ex- terminating heresy. The rabbis of Amsterdam in- troduced the new practice of sitting in judgment on religious opinions and beliefs, setting themselves up as a kind of Inquisition.”

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eFiibisaifelit EE sTERSER Fis FE Sas Sees 36 Savhes 2G SSeR ESR E ‘a a ae og a - aga - of divine justice, outran the zeal of his masters. One evening an unknown assailant set upon Spi- " noza with a dagger;' but he was on his guard in time, and the blow pierced only his coat, which he kept afterward as a memorial. This was a sufficient warning that Amsterdam was no safe place for him, and he left the city without waiting for the final decision of the congregation upon the charge of heresy against him. This was given on the 27th of July, 1656, to the following effect : “The chiefs of the council de you to wit, that having long known the evil opinions and works of Baruch de Espinoza, they have endeavored by divers ways and promises to withdraw him from his evil ways, and they are unable to find a remedy, but on the contrary have had every day more knowledge of the abominable heresies practised and taught by him, and of other enormities* com- mitted by him, and have of this many trustworthy witnesses, who have deposed and borne witness in the presence of the said Espinoza, and by whom he stood convicted; ail which having been examined in the presence of the elders, it has been deter- mined with their assent that the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and cut off from the nation of Israel; and now he is hereby excommu- nicated with the following anathema: “ With the judgment of the angels and of the saints we excommunicate, cut off, curse, and anath- ematize Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of the elders and of all this holy congregation, in the presence of the holy books: by the 618 precepts which are written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse which Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses which are written in the law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night. Cursed be he in sleeping and cursed be he in waking, cursed in going out and cursed in coming in. The Lord shall not pardon him, the wrath and fury of the Lord shall henceforth be kindled against this man, and shall lay upon him all the curses which are written in the book of the law. The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun, and cut him off for his undoing from all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the book of the law. But ye that cleave unto the Lord your God, live all of you this day. “ And we warn you, that none may speak with 1 The exact place and circumstances, which, how- ever, are not material, are variously related. 2“ Ynormes obras que obrava.” This I had sup- posed to be a piece of “ common form” with no defi- nite meaning; but I learn from a friend possessing specia) knowledge that it probably refers to distinct breaches of the ceremonial law; some such overt act, beyond mere speculative opinions, being required to jastify the excommunication.—Cf. Grits, op. cit., 172, 1%. BENEDICT DE him by word of mouth nor by writing, nor show any favor to him, nor be under one roof with him, nor come within four cubits of him, nor read any paper composed or written by him.” Thus was Baruch de Spinoza cut off from his own people and from his father’s house. Not only was he an outcast from Israel and deprived of all fellowship of his nation and kindred—and the ties of kindred are with his people of exceeding strength and sanctity—but he became as it were a masterless man, a member of no recognized com.’ munity, having none to stand up by him or answer forhim. Such a position might well seem a grave one in itself apart from the shock to his personal « feelings. Altogether the blow must have been such as it is at this time hard for us to under- stand. Spinoza, however, received the news of the excommunication with perfect equanimity, “This compels me,” he said, “to nothing which I should not otherwise have done.” Henceforth he disused his Hebrew name Baruch, and adopted the Latin form Benedict, which has the same meaning, and by which he is generally known. He now had to depend on his own work for a livelihood. It was a rabbinical precept that every one should learn a handicraft ; and, in compliance with this, Spinoza had learned the trade of mak- ing lenses for optical instruments, which was, no doubt, chosen as congenial to his philosophical and scientific studies. He became so skillful in this art that the lensesof his make were much sought after, and some which were left undisposed of at his death fetched a high price. By this means he earned an income sufficient for his lim- ited wants, and also a reputation for a thorough knowledge of optics, which appears to have spread more quickly than his famé as a philosopher. In this manner he was brought into correspondence with Huygens and Leibnitz. We find Leibnitz, for instance, writing to him in 1671 to ask his opinion on certain optical questions, and treating him as a person of recognized authority. Leib- nitz’s behavior to Spinoza, some years later, can only be called shabby. He professed great inter- est in Spinoza‘s philosophy, and endeavored to get a sight of the unpublished MS. of the “ Ethics,” which Spinoza’s prudence did not allowhim. On his return from a stay in Paris, Leibnitz visited Spinoza in person. In later years he joined the vulgar cry against him, and borrowed a funda- 1 It is said that the Jewish elders represented to the civil authorities of Amsterdam that Spinoza was a dangerous person, that the Reformed clergy supported their request, and that Spinoza was actually banished from Amsterdam foratime. But Colerus knows noth- ing of this, nor is it in itself probable.

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ea 448 mental idea from his philosophy—which he also marred in the borrowing—without the slightest acknowledgment. The letter now in question begins thus : “Among your other titles to fame,” he says, “I understand that you have excellent skill in optics. To you, therefore, 1 have chosen to send this at- mpt of mine for what it may be worth, as on this subject it would be difficult to find a better critic,” The friends who were best acquainted with his work believe that if he had lived longer he would have made some important addition to the science.' As it was, Spinoza’s “excellent skill in optics” was only indirectly useful for the advance- ment of knowledge by affording him the means of cultivating philosophy. On the death of his father, indeed, he became entitled to share with his two sisters an inheritance of some value. The sisters) imagining, as it is conjectured, that the excom- munication had deprived him of civil rights, en- deavored to exclude him from his share. Spinoza was of opinion, as we know from his writings, that im a country where just laws prevail it is every citizen’s duty to resist injustice to himself for the sake of the common weal, lest, peradventure, evil men find profit in their evil-doing. He now acted on this principle, and asserted his rights before the law with success, Having done this, however, he declined to profit by them, and when the divis- ion came to be effected he gave up everything to his sisters but one bed, which he kept as a visible symbol of the established justice of his claim. We know little of Spinoza’s movements with certainty till the end of 1660 or beginning of 1661, when we find him at Rhijnsburg, a village near * the mouth of the Rhine not far from Leyden. Thence he paid frequent visits to the Hague, where he increased his acquaintance with men of learning and eminence. This society must have had growing attractions for him as time went on, for in 1664 he mcved to Voorburg, which is al- most a suburb of the Hague, and finally about 1670 to the Hague itself. The greater part of _ what we know of his doings in after-years is de- rived from the selection of his letters which was made—with a far too sparing hand, unfortunately by the editors of his posthumous works. The series of letters begins in 1661: the most impor- tant of Spinoza’s correspondents, and also the most interesting to Englishmen, is Henry Olden- 1 The only scientific work left by him was a smal! treatise on the rainbow. It was euppoeed to have been Jost, but it was, in fact, published at the Hague in 1687 (Van der Linde, Bidiiografie, No. 36), and has recently been discovered and republished in Van Vioten's “Bupplement.” THE POPULAR: SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. ~ burg. Oldenburg spent the best part of his t in this country, where he settled in 1653, was acquainted with Milton, and was the friend of Robert Boyle ; he shared Does tifie tastes, and was the first secretary to Royal Society (1662), and editor of its “ Trane, actions.” His friendship with Spinoza was ab ready of long standing at the time now in ques. tion ; he had lately visited Spinoza at and the letters are a sort of continuation of the philosophical conversation they had then held. The first of Spigoza’s answers to him contains characteristic point : It is not my way,” he segue: “ to expose the mistakes of others.” A ly constrectine habit of mind, an. slmegs. inengeaiay able aversion to enter on criticism for critic sake, runs through the whole of Spinoza’s p sophical work. a In 1662 Oldenburg strongly advises Spinom not to hesitate about publishing some work re lating partly to theology, partly to Fe which means presumably the . Tractan The logico-Politicus.” nile’ “I would by all means advise you not to be! grudge to men of letters the ripe fruits of your ind. genuity and learning in philosophy and theology,’ but let them go forth into the world, notwithstands ing any possible grumbling from petty Your commonwealth is most free [Oldenburg was writing from England]; and therein the philoso pher should work most freely. - Come my friend, cast out all fear of stirring up the fee folk of our time against you; we have enough to their ignorance and trifling scruples ; sil us spread our sails to the wind of true knowledge, — and search out the secrets of Nature more thom oughly than has yet been done. In Holland 1 should think it will be quite safe to print your treatise, and there is no reason to fear its gi the least offense, arnong men of learning at rate. If such are your promoters and such, I answer for it, you will find—why you fear the detraction of the ignorant?’ 1 ., In the following year Oldenburg was again — pressing Spinoza to finish and publish a lite. book on “The Amendment of the U; ing,” of which we now have only a fragment, published among the “ Opera Posthuma.” ns “ Surely, my excellent friend, T believe nothing | can be published more pleasant or acceptable to men of true learning and discernment than a trea- tise such ss yours. This is what aman of your — wit and genius should regard, more than what — pleases oa their manter aow ing Sagi care less for truth than for their own advantage.” a 1 Ep. VIL err TreeTTeT eRe TRITeNT vier TinTeyyen PAF

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aback. Now, in spite of answers which were not encouraging, Oldenburg returned again and again ' tothe charge; he would never desist till his re- quest was satisfied; meanwhile it would be the the greatest possible favor if Spinoza would give him some summary of the contents of the treatise. All this while Spinoza and Boyle were holding a scientific correspondence on chemistry and pneu- matics in the form of long messages contained in the letters between Spinoza and Oldenburg, though they seem to have exchanged nothing directly. There is no doubt that Boyle knew a good deal of Spinoza, and took much interest in his work. In°1665 Oldenburg writes, “Mr. Boyle and I often talk of you and of your learning and phi- losophy.” Boyle is also mentioned as joining in Oldenburg’s exhortations to Spinoza to persevere in philosophical research. We find allusions in Oldenburg’s letters of this time to the miseries of the plague and of the war between England and Holland. A certain book about which Spinoza had asked has not yet reached England “‘ because the plague has almost put an end to all communi- cation, besides which this fearful war brings a very Iliad of mischiefs (nonnisi malorum Iliada) in its train, and is like to leave but little civility in the world.” He adds that, though the meetings of the Royal Society are suspended, Boyle and others go on working in private. After 1665 there is an unexplained break of ten years in this correspondence, which is but imperfectly supplied by letters between Spinoza and other persons. F The most interesting of Spinoza’s other cor- 43 respondents is Simon de Vries, He was a man Younger than Spinoza, his pupil in philosophy, and of much promise. He died in his master’s lifetime, having shown his gratitude by material bettefactions, so far as he was allowed. - Once he offered Spinoza a present of 2,000 florins; this was declined. He was unmarried, and it was his intention to make a will leaving the bulk of his 1 Ep. VIII. eB BS Be ee ee ae SS Bere oe ee ae eee CF a ee ee ee ee 65 5 ¥;* « Pes,” re.) r Rowe t ka Vv ee CAE Se oak a Ne ted “ee Aw va property to Spinoza. But Spinoza, knowing that Simon de Vries had a brother living, pressed on him the duty of thinking first of his own kindred, 80 that De Vries finally made the brother his heir, and charged his estate with an annuity of 500 florins to Spinoza. After his death Spinoza would not entirely accept even this; when the annuity came to be paid in due course, he refused to take more than 800 florins, which he said was quite enough for him. The letters between Spi- noza and his young friend belong to the year 1668, and throw light both on Spinoza’s manner of life and on the growth of his philosophical system. They show that the leading definitions and propositions of the first part of the “ Ethics” were already sketched out in MS., and were in the hands of several of Spinoza’s friends, who had formed a kind of philosophical club at Amster- dam, and held regular meetings for the study and discussion of the work. De Vries was commis- sioned, it seems, to write to Spinoza for the expla- nation of such points as remained obscure to the company. He says, in the same letter: “At times I complain of my fate in being so far from you. Happy, most happy is the companion who dwells with you under the same roof, and who can at all times, dining, supping, or walking, hold discourse with you of the most excellent mat+ ters!” 2 Spinoza willingly gave the desired explanations, and replied thus to the complaint : “ You need not envy my fellow-lodger. There is no one I like less, or with whom I have been more cautious ; so that I must warn you and all our friends not to communicate my doctrines to him till he has come to riper years. He is still too childish and inconstant, and cares more for nov- elty than truth. Still I hope he will amend these youthful failings some years hence ; indeed, so far as I can guess from his disposition, I am pretty sure of it; and so his general character moves me to be friendly with him.” * It is worth observing that these and other let- ters of the same time, such as the very impor-; tant one to Dr. Meyer, in which the notions of space, time, and infinity, are discussed, show that as early as 1663 Spinoza’s philosophy was fully formed as to ite main features. This at once fixes the permissible limits of any speculation upon the growth of Spinoza’s ideas, which may be founded on a comparison of his earlier and 1 Ep. XXVL, a. I use Anerbach’s notation for references to the lately-discovered letters and parts of letters. *Ep. XXVII., a. These two letters are for the first time given in full in Van Vioten's “ Supplement.”

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later works. For instance, the avoidance of pure- ly metaphysical discussion in the “ Tractatus The- ologico-Politicus,” published in 1670, must be set down not to uncertainty or immaturity of thought, but to deliberate reserve dictated by reasons of ie At this time (1663) Spinoza published the R.. “Principles of Cartesian Philosophy.” It has es already been mentioned that in this book he was not speaking for himself, and he attached no value to it (as he informed Oldenburg), save as a means of attracting attention and patronage in certain places (alluding, probably, to the De Witts), such as might encourage him to publish something more substantial of his own. The book seems to have done its work in assuring the author’s reputation. In 1664 we find William van Blyenbergh, a worthy merchant of Dort, and a man of good family, introducing himself tu Spi- noza by letter in these terms: ae *Dezar Siz anp Unxvown Frrenp: I have al- ae ready several times carefully read over your trea- tise lately published with its appendix. It will be more proper for me to speak to others than to yourself of the instruction I found in it and the pleasure I derived from it. This much I cannot forbear saying, that the oftener I go over it with - “attention, the more I am pleased with it, and I oh constantly find something which I had not marked Te before.” a He proceeds to ask several metaphysical ques- tions.' Spinoza received his unknown corre- spondent with a warm welcome. “ Unxwown Frrenp : From your letter I under- . stand your exceeding love of truth, and how that & only is the aim of all your desires; and, since I ae direct my mind upon naught else, this constrains . r me to determine, not only fully to grant your re- Ms quest, which is to answer to the best of my skill . Se the questions which you now send or shall send hereafter, but to perform all else on my part which may avail for our better acquaintance and sincere friendship. For myself, there is, among things out of my own control, none I prize more than enter- “ing into the bond of friendship with men who are Sincere lovers of truth. For I believe that nothing aa im the world, not being under our control, can be te 80 securely taken for the object of our love as men Bo of this temper ; since ’tis no more possible to dis- Ree solve that love they have for one another (seeing Ry. it is founded on the love each of them hath for the knowledge of truth) than not to embrace the truth itself when once perceived.” Blyenbergh sent to this a very long reply, from which Spinoza discovered that their notions of philosophical inquiry did not agree so well as he 1 Bp. XXX1. 450 | THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. v had supposed. “So that,” he says, “I fearigs shall get little mutual instruction by our core. spondence. For I perceive that no proof, how. ever firm it may be as a proof, may have weight with you unless it agrees with the construction which you or certain other theologians may pu upon the Scriptures.” For my part, he continues in effect, I confess I find the Scriptures obseure, though I have studied them several years; and on the other hand, when I obtain sufficient proof of anything, I know not how to refuse assentito it. And he goes on to show that Blyenbergh has misunderstood his position. This, however, did not put an end to the correspoiid. ence, and sundry other letters passed. In oneof these, Van Blyenbergh throws in, by way of poit script, the sage question “whether we cannot avoid, by the exercise of prudence, that which otherwise would happen to us ;" to which Spintss could only say, “As to the question added t the end of your letter, since we might puts hundred like it in an hour, and never settle one of them, and you hardly press for an answer your self, I shall not answer it.” Soon after this th met, and had a friendly conversation. © : bergh attempted to renew the correspondents, but this time Spinoza distinctly declined it. We have also letters to various persons chiefly on scientific topics, which approximately cover the next few years. Mr. Lewes has called attention to the interest shown by Spinoza in a experiment in alchemy, to which he was at the time disposed to give credit... And at the time there was nothing surprising or absurd in thie; we have evidence, however, that some years later Spinoza had become more skeptical. For in 16%, when his friend Dr. Schaller had written to him from Paris, describing some similar Spinoza replied almost bluntly that he had no mind to repeat the experiment, and felt quite sure that no gold had been produced which was not there before.* In 1670 was published the “ Tractatus Thee logico-Politicus,” of which I give the title froman early English translation (London, 1689): i ‘A Treatise partly theological and partly politi cal, containing some few discourses to prove thet the Liberty of Philosopbizing (that is, making use of Natural Reason) may be allowed without any prejudice to Piety, or to the Peace of any Commonwealth ; and that the Loss of Public Peace and Religion itself must necessarily follow, when such a Liberty of Reasoning is taken away.”’ 1 Ep. XLV., Lewes,“ Hist. Phil.,”’ il, 180 (@dedition) — * Ep. LXV,, b. (Van Vioten, “ Supp.,” p. 318). PSsk SE BREEREEETEEEssEees = [4 Pe SSgyaipeggece veeseser ger03

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RPrssenarsasrrtesa 4 . as P -= . _ B SM Ba ET ¥. Se Sm eens e SSB ar KF PTS F Re SRP SRSE BENEDICT DE SPINOZA. The final thesis of the book is, that “in a free commonwealth it should be lawful for every man to think what he will, and speak what he thinks.” And little more than two centuries ago, in the freest country in Europe, this opinion was put forth without the name of the author, and with the name of an imaginary printer at Hamburg, and had to be gradually led up to by an investigation of the principles of Scriptural interpretation and the true provinces of theology and philosophy. To modern eyes the introduction looks much bolder than the conclusion. I forbear to say more of ‘the contents and character of the work, as Mr. Matthew Arnold has already given an admirable account of it in his essay on “Spinoza and the Bible.” The opposition which Spinoza, doubtless, ex- pected was not long in showing itself. Early in 1671 Spinoza writes to a friend not named : “When Prof. N. N.‘ lately saw me, he told smhe, among other things, he had heard that my \* Theologico-Political Treatise’ was translated into Dutch, and that a person, whose name he did not know, was on the point of printing the translation. I therefore earnestly entreat you to inquire dili- gently into this matter and stop the printing, if it ‘ean be done. The request is not from me alone, but also from many friends and acquaintances, who ‘Would be sorry to see the book prohibited, as it Certainly will be if it appears in Dutch.” * The book was, in fact, formally condemned ‘Bome time after ; it does not appear exactly when, but it must have been before 1673, in which year “no less than three editions appeared at Amster- ‘dam, with entirely false titles, purporting to be ‘Works on medicine or history. It is hardly need- ful to say that it was also put on the Roman Index, and in that catalogue it may still be seen ‘in a very mixed company. In the same year a Doctor Lambert van Velt- ‘buysen sent to Spinoza, through a common friend, & long letter, which repeated in violent language all the current topics against the “ Tractatus Theo- ‘Wogico-Politicus,” and finally charged the writer ‘with covertly teaching atheism. This fashion of controversy survives to our own day, and has ‘been improved upon. We have invented the term materialist, which makes a fine gradation possible. "When we want to say in a short and decided “form that we disagree with a man’s philosophical Opinions, we call him a materialist. If we wish to add to this that the disagreement rests on theo- logical grounds also, we call him an atheist. _ 1 The name is deliberately suppressed by the edi- ‘tors of the “Opera Postbuma.”’ * Ep. XLVI. Spinoza, having a fancy for the exact use of words, did not like these controversial amenities, . and replied (though it was unwillingly that he re- plied at all) more sharply than was usual with him ; he obviously thought the criticism almost too perverse to have been made in good faith. But here, too, we may note his eveu temper and peaceable disposition. The letter ends thus: “T do not think you will find anything in this which can be considered too harsh in manner tow- ard my critic. But, if anything does so appear to you, pray strike it out, or alter it, if you think fit. Whoever he may be, I have no wish to ex- asperate him and make enemies by my work; in fact, since this is a common result of discussions like the present, I could hardly prevail on myself to write this answer ; nor should I have prevailed on myself, unless I had promised you.” ! Nevertheless, Van Velthuysen and Spinoza were afterward on friendly terms. One of the latest of Spinoza’s letters is addressed to Van Velthuysen, and relates to a project of publishing some notes and explanations to the “ Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” including, it seems, this very correspondence, or something founded on it. The letter is a model of literary courtesy and good feeling, and as such is worth giving : “T am surprised at our friend Neustadt having told you that I thought of replying to the various - writings against my treatise which have been published, and intended to include your MS. in the number. I am sure I never intended to refute any of my opponents, for none of them have seemed to ine worth answering. All I remember to have said to Mr. Neustadt is, that I purposed to publish some notes explaining the more difficult passages of the treatise, and to add to these your MS. and my answer, if I had your leave for so doing. This I desired him to ask of you, and added that in case you should be unwilling to grant it on the score of certain expressions in the answer being rather severe, you should be at full liberty to strike out oralter them. Meanwhile I have no cause of offense against Mr. N.; but I thought it well to show you the real state of the case, so that, if I cannot obtain your leave, I might at any rate make it clear that I had no intention of publishing your MS. against your will. I believe, indeed, it may be done without any risk to your reputation, if your name is not affixed toit; but! will do noth- ing unless you grant me leave and license to pub- lish it. But I am free to confess you would do me a far greater favor if you would set down the ar- guments with which you think you can attack my treatise ; and this I most heartily beseech you to do, There is ao one whose arguments I should be 1 Epp. XLVIIL, XLIX.

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7 ict e Y net “os ee os 452 42° «THE POPULAR SCIENCE -* more glad to consider; for Tam aware that your only motive is affection forthe truth, and I know the candor of your mind; inthe name of which I again entreat you not to decline giving yourself this trouble. ”’ Van Velthuysen afterward expanded his letter into one of the many answers to Spinoza’s treatise that were published in the next few years. In 1674 Spinoza mentions that he had seen an answer to the “ Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” written by a professor at Utrecht, in a bookseller’s win- dow, but on looking into it found it not worth reading, much less answering. “So there I left the book and its author. I smiled inwardly as I considered how the most ignorant of men are everywhere the boldest and the most ready to write books.” In 1672 occurred the one striking incident of Spinoza’s life after his excommunication. The public misfortunes of that year, the French in- vasion of the Netherlands, the outbreak of popu- lar discontent, and the massacre of the brothers De Witt by the infuriated mob of the Hague, be- Jong to general history. Spinoza was a personal friend of John De Witt’s, had accepted a small pension from him, and may through his means have taken some part in politics. He was moved by this event, it is said, so much beyond his wont, that be could hardly be restrained from express- ing his indignation in public at the risk of his life. Shortly afterward the Prince of Condé, being then in command of the French army, in- MONTALY:.—SUPPLEMENT. | go out and make straight for them, though ; | should serve me as they have done the y : De Witts. Tam a good republican, and have ney- | er had any aim but the honor and welfare of the | state.” } ‘ The danger passed off, but Spinoza’s condugt | under it is none the less worthy of and the incident has its value in the light it throws | on the general esteem in which he then stood For the consciousness, not merely of an innocent purpose, but of a character above the ity of rational suspicion, was necessary to make Spi. noza’s visit tothe French headquarters prudent op justifiable ; and the authorities of his own country would assuredly never have consented to it had they not felt absolute confidence that the publi good would in no way suffer by it. ; In 1673 Spinoza received a courteous letter from Prof. Fabritius, of Heidelberg, who was com manded by Charles Lewis, the eleetor t to offer him the chair of Philosophy at that versity. This letter contained the following = tence: “ You will have the largest freedom éf speech in philosophy, which the prince is confi dent you will not misuse to disturb the established religion.” It seems by no means unlikely that this condition was inserted merely as a matter of form. The elector probably knew the “ Theologico-Politicus ;” and if he seriously to impose restrictions, he would have laid something much more definite. Spinoza, how- ever, answered thus : é vited Spinoza to his headquarters at Utrecht. His only motive appears to have been a genuine | desire to make the philosopher’s acquaintance. The invitation was accepted, and Spinoza betook | himself to Utrecht with a safe-conduct. Condé, | however, had in the mean time been calied away, | and Spinoza went home without seeing him, hav- ing turned a deaf ear to the suggestion of the French officers who entertained him that he | might probably insure a pension from their king | if he would dedicate some work tohim. On Spi- | ‘ Had it ever been my desire to occupy achairin- any faculty, I could have wished for no other that which the Most Serene Elector Palatine me by your hands: and especially on account that freedom in philosophy which the prince | pleased to grant, to say nothing of the desire 1 have long entertained to live under the rule of's prince whose wisdom is the admiration of all men. — But since I have never been minded to give publié lectures, I cannot persuade myself to accept even this splendid opportunity, though I have given long consideration to it. For I reflect in the first place — PSCEESESES EEEERE SEER FERES BERReESE noza’s return to the Hague sinister rumors got | that I must give up philosophical research, if I am abroad concerning his journey, and Spinoza’s | to find time for teaching a class. I reflect, landlord was for a time in fear that the mob over, that I cannot tell within whet bounds ong would attack and storm the house for the pur- | a oeiee that ee en php bere pr - of seizing him as a spy. | in order to escape any charge of atteni ie Ques ; ’ | sions arise not so much from the ardor of men's wards: | zeal for religion itself, as from their various dis- “* Fear nothing on my account, I can easily justi- | positions and love of contradiction, which leads fy myself; there are people enough, and of chief | them into a habit of decrying and condemning men in the country too, who well know the motives | everything, however justly it be said. Of this I of my journey. But, whatever come of it, so soon as | have already had experience in my private and — the crowd make the least noise at your door, I will | solitary life; much more then should I have to EE BEESEES PERE r=

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ea Re | ZR- FISD. cee TS PARE ES TR. PRG EO Oe ee ee, ee Se SS ee ear ee ae ee ee ee 7 Md ee nS ee ‘BENEDICT: DB SPINOZA. >, fear it after mounting to this honorable condition. You see, therefore, that I am not holding back in the hope of some better post, but for mere love of which I think I can in some measure se- cure if I abstain from lecturing in public. Where- fore I heartily beseech you to desire the Most Se- rene Elector that I may be allowed to consider farther of this matter.” * In 1674 Spinoza had an amusing discussion with a person whose name is withheld on the ex- istence of ghosts. In his first answer Spinoza gives an exquisite turn of politeness to his in- credulity. He was delighted, he says, to get his friend’s letter and have news of him: “Some people might think it a bad omen that should be the occasion of your writing to me; but I find something much better in it when I consider that not only real things, but even trifles of the imagination, may thus do me good service.” The correspondence continues, on Spinoza’s _ part, in a tome of courteous banter. At last his friend attempts to overpower him with the au- thority of ancient philosophers. The reply to this last argument has a distinct importance, as showing what were Spinoza’s notions about the philosophical systems of Greece : “The authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Socra- tes, has not much weight with me. I should have been surprised, -indeed, if you had brought for- ward Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius, or any of the supporters of the doctrine of atoms. It is no wonder that those who devised occult qualities, intentional species, substantial forms, and a thou- sand other fond things, should have imagined ghosts and apparitions, and given ear to old wives to diminish the authority of Democritus, whose fame they so envied that they burned all his books. If you choose to believe these, how can you deny the miracles of the Virgin and all the saints, re- corded by so many renowned philosophers, his- torians, and theologians, of whom one hundred can be produced for one that has recorded a ghost?” 2 It is obvious that Spinoza’s knowledge of Greek philosophy was slight and at second hand ; but it is significant that his sympathy, so far as his knowledge went,was all with Democ- ritus and the atomic sehool. The sort of meta- physic which in our own time is always elamor- ing against supposed encroachments by physical science would have found no favor in his eyes. In 1674 he wrote an important letter explain- ing the difference between his view and Des- eartes’s on free-will : “TI call a thing free if it exists and acts merely 2 Bp. LIV. 2 Ep. LX. from the necessary laws of its own nature, but con- strained if it is determined by something else to exist and act in a certain determinate way. Thus God exists necessarily, and yet freely, because he exists by the necessity of his own nature alone. So God freely understands himself and everything else, because it follows solely from the necessity of his own nature that he must understand every- thing. Yousee, then, that I make freedom consist not in a. free decision of the will, but in free ne- “ if you can, that a stone, while its motion continues, is conscious, and knows that so far as it can it endeavors to persist in its motion. This stone, since it is conscious only of its own endeavor and deeply interested therein (méinime indifferens), will believe that it is perfectly free and continues in motion for no other reason than that it so wills. Now, such is this freedom of man’s will which every one boasts of possessing, and which consists only in this, that men are aware of their own desires and ignorant of the causes by which those desires are determined. So an infant thinks his appetite for milk is free; so a child in anger thinks his will is for revenge, in fear that it is for flight. Again, a drunkard thinks he speaks of his free-will things which, when sober, he would fain not have spoken,’’* In 1675 the correspondence with Oldenburg is resumed.* By this time the “Ethics” were completely written, and Oldenburg exhorts him to publish the book, though not with such pressing earnestness as he used in former years. He wishes to have some copies sent over to England, and will undertake to dispose of them; yet he wishes their consignment to him not to be talked of. His temper had probably become less val- iant since he read the “ Tractatus Theologico- Politicus.” Spinoza writes, in answer to Oldenbarg,* that he did go to Amsterdam to see about printing the “Ethics.” But the rumor had gone before him that he had in the press an utterly atheistic book ; and certain theologians had actually commenced proceedings against him. The Cartesians, who had by this time a respectable reputation to pre- serve, were only too glad to find a convenient and edifying occasion for disclaiming Spinoza, and joined eagerly in the cry against him. He determined accordingly to put off the publica- tion ; and the result was that the “ Ethies” did not 1 Ep. LXIL, §§ 2-4. The latest editor of the Letters objects to Brader'’s division into paragraphs as pedan- tic: a principle which, if consistently carried out, would make it impossible to give a reference to any passage in most of the classics, to say nothing of the chapters and verses in the Bible. * Ep. XVIL., et seg. * Ep. XIX.

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appear in his lifetime. The work bad a certain private circulation, however, among Spinoza’s friends. In the same year, 1675, we have a series of letters raising sundry questions on the most abstruse points in the system. The objec- tions here stated are by far the most acute of those which Spinoza had to encounter from his various correspondents, and it gave him no small trouble to answer them. He does not, indeed, give a complete answer, and all but admits that he cannot. The chief part in these letters is now assigned to Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhausen, a young German nobleman, who was intimate with both Leibnitz and Spinoza, and afterward became a member of the French Academy of Sci- ences, and was distinguished in mathematics and physics, and most chiefly by advances in optics. In the construction of lenses, in particular, he arrived at brilliant results; and one may guess that this special study was the common ground on which his acquaintance with Spinoza was first formed.' In 1676 Spinoza received an extraordinary letter dated from Florence, and written by one Albert Burgh, identified by Van Vioten’s plausi- ble conjecture with the fellow-lodger whose facil- ities ‘of intercourse with Spinoza Simon de Vries had envied, and of whose temper and capacities Spinoza had expressed the doubtful opinion al- ‘ready quoted. He now informed Spinoza that he had been received into the Church of Rome, and proceeded to denounce with all the zeal of a proselyte the profane philosophy he had aban- doned. He tells Spinoza that all his learning is merely chimerical, and laments that he should suffer himself to be so deceived by the devil. He asks, with delightful simplicity : “ How do you know that your philosophy is the best of all that are, or have been, or will be taught in the world? Have you examined all the ancient and modern systems of philosophy which are taught bere, in India, and all over the face of the earth? And even if you have, how do you know you have chosen the right one?” Spinoza framed the obvious retort in the easiest 1 Tschirnhauser has received, I think, hard measure from Van Vioten and others for the unacknowledged use of Spinoza’s work in his “Medicina Mentis.” Not only was it the habit of the time to be careless in this duty, but Tschirnhausen may not unreasonably have been of opinion that his only way to secure a fair hearing for Spinoza’s ideas was to conceal their true ‘ guthorship. It is certain, however, that he gave of- fense to both Huygens and Leibnitz by a without acknowledgment, unpublished ideas which they had communicated to him (Van Vioten, “ Bene- dictus de Spinoza,” App. IIL). THE POPULAR SCIENOB MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. vert’s own words: “ How do you know that your teachers are best of all those who teach, or have taught, or teach, other systems of religion? Lave yee Gal ined all the ancient and modern systems of reli- gion which are taught here, in India, and all over the face of the earth? And even if you nave, how do you know you have chosen the right one?” _ Burgh’s letter runs to a great length, and is curious specimen of unrefined theological amet. ity. I can give only a ont ree specimen : “ Do not flatter yourself,” he cries, “‘ with the re flection that the Calvinists, or so-called Ref the Lutherans, the Mennonites, the aes cannot refute your doctrine. Al] those poor ; ures, a8 I have already said, are in as wretched state as you, and are sitting along with yun ; shadow of death. « Wortm and ashes and food for worme that yal are, how dare you set up for knowing better than all the Church? What foundation have you for What business have you to judge of my which Catholics themselves declare to be prehensible ?” One of his arguments is, that it is presump this rash, insane, deplorable, accursed za tuous to disbelieve in alchemy and ghosts because — Julius Cesar would probably not have believed a prophecy of gunpowder. Finally, he threatens Spinoza with eternal damnation if he is convinced. The immortal discourse delivered Brother Peter in the “ Tale of a Tub,” which en¢ with invoking similar consequences on those who- offer to believe otherwise, is hardly a “wa of this effusion. Spinoza’s answer,' which I have enticipenal in part,was much the sharpest he ever wrote As far as argument went he had no serious task; the letter contains, however, some striking pam); sages. “As for your argument about the cou mon consent of multitudes, the unbroken y story sion of the Church, etc., that is just the know of old from the Pharisees: for they pro duce their multitudes of witnesses with no les confidence than the adherents of Rome.” They are the most ancient, the most persistent, the most obstinate of all the Churches; and if mar- tyrs are evidence, they have more to show thap any other. Even in ecclesiastical discipline, he says, Rome is surpassed by the Mohammedans, for they have had no schisms. This seems @ rash statement for a writer versed in Jewish 1 Ep. LXXIV. and most effective manner by repeating the com ” £FEE a

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BOE BL Bis Pose 7 aA OMGILI! SET nk at ond ORG NAR ate Bes ton ac ae ie ga aN a se 95, ean een Ali iees-odh tac hgh Ae tathepreade different Mohammedan sects. It is, however, true in the sense that there has been in Islam no great visible rupture like the Reformation in Europe. Of Spivoza’s habits in daily life we know just so much as to make us regret that we do not know more. In outward appearance he was un- pretending, but not careless. His way of living was exceedingly modest and retired; often he did not leave his room for many days together. He was likewise almost incredibly frugal; his ex- penses sometimes amounted only to a few pence a day. But it must not be supposed that he shared the opinion of those who profess to de- spise man and the world. There was nothing ascetic in his frugality, nothing misanthropic in his solitude. He kept down his expenses sim- ply in order to keep them within his means ; and his means remained slender because he did not choose to live at other people’s charges. He weed to say of himself that he was like a snake With its tail in its mouth, just making both ends meet. Doubtless he was indifferent as to money and the world’s goods, but with the genuine in- difference which is utterly removed from the af- fected indifference of the cynic. A man to whom he had lent two hundred florins—which must have been a considerable sum in proportion to Spinoza’s income—became bankrupt. Spinoza’s temark on hearing of it was this: “ Then I must lessen my expenses to make up the loss; that is the price I pay for equanimity.” In like manner he kept himself retired not because he was unso- Giable, but because he found retirement neces- sary for his work. There is ample evidence that he was none of those who hate or disdain the in- tercourse of mankind. He kept up, as we have seen, an extensive correspondence, of which we Must regret that so little has been preserved. He was free and pleasant in familiar conversa- tion with the people of his house. On Sundays he would talk with them of the sermon they had heard, and would praise the sound learning and morality of their worthy Lutheran pastor, a cer- tain Dr. Cordes, who was succeeded in his office by Spinoza’s biographer Colerus. Thus he won the esteem and affection not only of his philo- sophic friends, but of the simple folk among whom he lived; and such affection, as M. Renan has well said, is in truth the most precious of all. Thus he showed in action the ideal of life set forth in those writings which he could not vent- - ure to publish in his lifetime, and which were supposed to strike at the foundations of religion «and morality. And what is the rule proposed | | for the guidance of conduct by this man whose opinions have been ca!led abominable, execrable, - and atheistic? In one word, it. is this: to use the world with cheerfulness and content,. not abusivg it, and remembering that the good of mankind consists in doing good to one another, Here are some of his precepts: ‘* Nothing is more useful to man than man; men can desire nothing more excellent for their welfare than that all should so agree in all things that the minds and bodies of all should make up as it were one mind and one body, and all together strive to” maintain their welfare to the best of their power, and all together seek the common good of all. Therefore reasonable men desire no good for them- selves which they do not also desire for other men, and so they are righteous, faithful, and honorable.”’! Again he says that discontent and melancholy are good for no man: that it is the part of a wise man to use the world and take all reasonable pleasure in it. It is good to refresh one’s self not only with moderate food and drink, but with pleasant prospects, music, the theatre, and other things which every man may enjoy without harm to his neighbor.* In the same way, though his own life was most quiet and sedentary, he strongly points out the advantage of being many-sided (as: we should now say) in both mind and body, and thereby being apt to receive new impressions and put forth new activities.* This is one of the points in which he curiously anticipates modern ideas about development and adaptation to one’s environment. He insists in the strongest terms on the im- portance of society to man’s well-being : “‘ Society is imperfect ” (he says), “ but even as it is men get far more good than harm by it. There- fore let satirists laugh at men’s affairs as much as they please, let theologians decry them, let misan- thropes do their utmost to extol a rudeand brutish . life ; but men will still find that their needs are best satisfied by each other’s help, and that the dangers which surround them can be avoided only by joining their strength.” ¢ Again he says: “ He who chooses to avenge wrong by returning hatred for it is assuredly miserable. But ifa man strives to cast out hatred by love, he fights his fight in all joy and confidence, being able to with- stand many foes as easily as one, and having no need to call on Fortune for aid. As for those he conquers, they yield to him joyfully, and that not from failing strength, but because they are made stronger.”’ 5 1“ Ethics,” iv., 18, schol. °Tb.,38. 4Ib., 35, schol. . 2 Ib., 4, schol. 2. * Th., 4, schol.

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a? Toe waren a oe? + dat ihay Ze “i 4 Again: . “ The spirit of men is overcome, not by force of arms, but by love and high-mindedness.”’ ! The following maxim contains a lofty refine- ment of morality, if one may so speak, to which it would be difficult to find a parallel even in Marcus Aurelius : “If a man wishes to help others by word or deed to the common enjoyment of the highest good, he shall first of all endeavor himself to win their love to him; but not to draw them into ad- miration of him, that a doctrine may be called after his name, nor in any manner to give cause for offense. Also in common talk he will avoid telling of men’s faults, and will speak but sparing- ’ ly of human weakness. But he will speak largely of man’s excellence and power, and the means whereby it may be perfected; that so men may strive to live after the commandment of reason, so far as in them lies, being moved thereto not by fear or disgust, but in pure joyfulness.” * The mention of M. Aurelius suggests a paral- lel which I must note in passing, though I have -n0t room to work it out. There is a singular coincidence between the ethical theory of Spi- noza and that of the Stoics: I say coincidence, for Spinoza’s slender acquaintance with Greek philosophy precludes the supposition of borrow- ing. The effort or impulse of self-preservation, which in bis system is the mainspring of action, is really involved in the Stoic conception of “ fol- lowing Nature.” He holds that right action for "man lies in the preservation—taken in the largest sense—of mankind ; not of the individual merely, because, as a matter of fact shown by experience, man is a social animal, and the welfare of the in- dividual can be found only in society. He like- wise constantly speaks of a moral life as equiva- lent to a life which is reasonable or according to treason. Both these positions are thoroughly Stoic. Nor are these the only resemblances. Spinoza’s health had been failing for some years before his death, and he was attacked by consumption, which possibly was aggravated by his work of glass-polishing. The last illness was short and almost sudden. It came on the 21st of February, 1677. The day was a Sunday, and in the morning Spinoza had been talking to his hosts, Van der Spyck and his wife, as was his custom, His friend and physician, Lewis Meyer, came from Amsterdam at his request, and was alone with him at the last. When the people of the house came home in the afternoon, they found Spinoza dead. 1“ Ethics,” Append., cap. 11. *Ib., Append., cap. 25. 456 «=: THE POPULAR SOLENCR MONTHLY~SUPPLEMENT. 4 Some time before this Spinoza had to Van der Spyck the trust of sending his lished papers to a bookseller at Amsterdam, This was duly fulfilled, and in the course of the same year the philosopher’s posthumous works, including the “ Ethics,” appeared. They were secclved nith-oven mere: viclent eppestion hams the “Theologico-Political Treatise,” and were forbidden by the States-General of Holland, _. Spinoza’s first biographer Colerus,* whose frank and honest admiration of Spinoza’s pes. sonal character went along with a no less frank detestation of his philosophy, calls the “Opera Posthuma” abominable productions, and states that divers champions were providentially raised up to confute them, who had all the suecess they could desire. At this day there is probably no man living who has read these refutations, while the fame of Spinoza stands higher than ever, —- He was an outcast from the synagogue, * stranger to the Church, a solitary thinker who cast his thought in difficult and startling forms Notwithstanding all this, men of divers nations and of widely different opinions have joined: to gether to do honor to the memory of Benedict de Spinoza, the philosopher, whose genius has made him in some sort the founder of modern tion, and the man who in modern times has given Pn ROEM osophic life. It is impossible to attempt in this place a account of Spinoza’s philosophy ; and I may that he is eminently one of those writers w: thought cannot be. learned at second hand... may be worth while, however, to give a very sketch of the manner in which his influence. risen and spread in modern times. aap Spinoza very soon had eccentric followers. well as bitter enemies in his own country ;* in the European world of letters he was misunderstood and neglected for the best part 1 June 20, 1678. The fall text of the ‘ordinancé given in Van der Linde’s Bibliografle, No. 24. * 2 The Dutch original of his book (No. 88 in Bidblie grafie) is extremely scarce. There is one copy in t Royal Library at the Hague; the only other one is, according to Dr. Van der Linde, st Halle. French veralon by While {10 Coeninedly teawea sill which 1s often taken for the original, is also seares, but has been severs) times reprinted. The last re- print is in Dr. Ginsberg's edition of Spinoza’s corre — spondence (Leipsic, 1876). > ® See Van der Linde’s “Spinoza, seine Lehre wid deseen erste Nachwirkungen in Holland" (Gottingem, — 1862), and M. Paul Janet's article in the Rewws 40 Deuz Mondes for Jaly 15, 1867. + hee : — me * te watttee Th

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ARISTOTLE. Arabic and Jewish Schools (10th-12th Centuries). Ibn-Sina (Avicenna). . _Ibn-Gebirol (Avicebron ot ett Ne te Gn a te ot) ee a a ee ore. ae 2 rm. Sere , . s ve bh ae aa a Tbn-Roshd (Averroes),. Ibn-Ezra. ete. Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), etc. Chasdai Creskas Giordano Bruno. (8. 1410). ~ Locxs, b, 1632 ~B Knew little of Spinoza. ad Sky prmex# Cri Wexsst [ Lessing. Jacobi. Moses Mendelssohn. _ seentury. Leibnitz, the man most capable of doing him justice, preferred to take the opposite course, and he was fll-treated even by the people who might have been expected to take him up if only for the reason that he was hateful to the theologians. He fared little better at the bands of Bayle and Voltaire than at the hands of ortho- dox apologists. To Lessing, the founder in some sort of German literature and criticism, belongs the eredit of having seen and announced Spinoza’s teal worth. In a certain memorable conversation | with Jacobi he said, in so many words, “There is no philosophy but the philosophy of Spinoza.” This and much more came out after Lessing’s - @eath in a long correspondence between Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn, which firially degener- ated into a controversy. After the report of that one conversation, the record of all this is now of little interest; from these, however, and from Other letters preserved among Lessing’s works, the fact comes out that Lessing thoroughly un- derstood Spinoza, and had grasped the leading points more firmly than many of Spinoza’s later ~ Meanwhile Goethe too had found out Spinoza for himself, and he has recorded how the stady of the “ Ethics” had a critical effect on the de- velopment of his character.' And bis statement is fully borne out by the witness of his mature work. Goethe’s poems are fall of the spirit of Spinoza ; not that you can often lay your finger on this or that idea and give a reference to this or that proposition in the “ Ethics,” but there is a Spinozistic atmosphere about all his deeper thoughts, There is a set of speculative poems, “ Gott und Welt,” which gives the most striking . instances ; but the same ideas are woven into all parts of Goethe’s work, and may be found alike in romance, tragedy, lyrics, and epigrams, The influence thus started in philosophy and literature spread ‘rapidly. Kant’s great work in philosophy was independent of it; but a strong eurrent of Spinozism set in immediately Kant, end acted powerfully on his sue Fichte, though his system widely departs from Spinoza’s, had obviously mastered his philosophy and felt the intellectual fascination of it; and many of his metaphysical ideas are simply taken from Spinoza. Hegel said,“ You are much of a 1“ Aus meinem Leben,” book xiv. .

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE. MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. _ Spinozist or no philosopher at all.” In like man- ner Schelling said that no one could arrive at . truth who had not once at least plunged into the depths of Spinozism. Novalis, Schleiermacher, Heine, and many others have spoken of Spinoza in words of enthusiastic praise. There is in Germany a whole recent literature of ' exposition and discussion about him, which is fast increasing, and to give an account of which ' would itself need a monograph. In France the prevailing tone of philosophy has not been one that accords well with Spi- noza; but he has met there with keen and intel- ligent criticism, which is the next best thing to admiration ; and the beautiful address lately delivered by M. Renan at the Hague (be- sides the serious attention given to the subject by M. Paul Janet and others) is a sufficient proof that Spinoza has now at least found a response in the highest thought of France. In England Coleridge, in this as in other things the advanced guard of the peaceful inva- sion of German culture and philosophy, spread the name of Spinoza, and much of his ideas, among the friends whom he delighted by his con- versation. He used to say that the three great works since the introduction of Christianity were Bacon's “ Novum Organum,” Spinoza’s “ Ethics,” ‘ and Kant's “Kritik.” Coleridge’s own position as to Spinoza was something like Jacobi’s; he admired and honored him without accepting his teaching. It may well be that some part of the Nature-worship of Wordsworth’s poetry, which has been a most important element in our later English literature, was derived through Coleridge from Spinoza. But we must come down many years later before we find any certain manifesta- tion of this part of Coleridge’s influence. Those who have spoken of Spinoza to English readers as he deserves to be spoken of are still among ug and working for us. We have Mr. G. H. ‘Ss various articles and writings on Spinoza, to which — he has given finished form in his “ History of Philosophy.” We have Mr. Froude’s essay on Spinoza, perhaps the best general account of hig — doctrine which has been given in our language for — those who do not make philoscphy their special study. There is Mr. Matthew Arnold’s admirable — monograph on the “ Tractatus Theologico-Politi. cus,” whose only fault is that he has not com pleted it by a companion-piece on the “ Ethics,” There are Mr. Huxley’s contributions to pure philosophy, which do not treat of Spinoza direc ly, but have done much to put Spinoza’s funda: mental ideas into shapes adapted to the present state of our knowledge. The same may be gaid — of Mr. G. H. Lewes’s most recent work in “ Pro. lems of Life and Mind.” Nor are other wanting of an active and monic Spinoza both at home and abroad. It bas been said of Spinoza by an able and at unfair critic (M. Saisset), that his theory was after all but a system, which has passed away like all other systems, never to come back. It is trug that Spinoza did not found a school, and had few — or no disciples in the proper sense. It would be difficult to name any one who ever formally ag cepted his system asa whole. But the worth of — a philosopher to the world is measured not by the — number of people who accept his system, or by the failure of criticism to detect logical flaws ia it, but by the life and strength of the ideas sets stirring in men’s minds. Systems are the perishable body of philosophy, ideas are the liv, ing soul. Judged by this test, Spinoza stands on A ers have attained. —Nineleenth Century re SOME REMARKS ON THE LIBERTY OF SCIENCE.’ By FRIEDRICH VON HELLWALD. EPEATEDLY, during the last few years, have we made the curious observation that the bitterest and most formidable opponents of the monistic conception of the cosmos, as based on the theory of evolution, are to be found not at all in that camp which is commonly sup- 1 Translated from the German by J. Fitzgerald, AM. posed to be most hostile to progress and free thought, and which in political life we are wont to designate as orthadox and ultramontane; but rather in the camp of those whose boast it is that they uphold the banner of political liberalism, of progress, and of free thought. These “obsew rantists in the liberal camp,” as I am wont, to call them, are far more dangerous foes of the BSFZEFRESL IESE SS EE rR Rrepsr penance.

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development of science than are its professed adversaries, who, almost without an exception, ean oppose to the teachings of modern science only their unproved and indemonstrable church dogmas. The others, on the contrary, wrap themselves in the mantle of strict science, whose most zealous followers they pretend to be, in order under the name of science, and with the aid of ostensibly scientific arguments, to check, as far as they may, the propagation of the new and more matured conception of the universe. For these seientific “reactionists,” for such they are in the strictest sense of the term, Darwinism, together with, or rather on account of, its consequences, is simply an abomination, against which they | itrive with might and main. And often they meet with success. Thus they have contrived to win over to their views the majority of the or- gans of the Liberal party in Germany. Centuries hence, the historian will note it as a singular and hardly credible thing that, nearly two decen- tiums after the appearance of Darwin’s famous work, influential organs of established reputa- tion, as for instance the Scientific Supplement of the Aligemeine Zeitung, could sail in the current of this reaction. The tactics of these reactionists consists in representing the evolution theory, and consequently monism, as an hypothesis the ac- ceptance of which is unscientific, so long as it is not demonstrated—as if an hypothesis could still bean hypothesis after it had been demonstrated. Every argument that can be with justice brought to bear against it from the scientific point of view, all new facts discovered by research that appear to contradict the theory of evolution, are sedu- lously brought to the knowledge of the public— the Bathybius affair is an instance of this; every new publication, in so far as it opposes Darwinian ideas, is fully and favorably reviewed; while, on the other hand, researches and publications which favor Darwinism either are not noticed at all, or but briefly, and even then, as far as pos- sible, in a tone of condemnation. Men who day after day are thundering against Roman Jesuitry seem to be quite unconscious that they them- selves practise scientific Jesuitry in permitting to appear only those doctrines which are pleasing tothemselves. Alongside of these there are other and more honorable men, who, in their no less energetic opposition to Darwinism, are actuated only by scientific considerations; but they are ever in danger of being regarded by the less scrupulous opponents as colleagues and confed- erates, those people being always glad when a man of distinguished name is found fighting on 2 wr Ss, poet. aS aS eee ee lias) a Bas. tata es PRR ie ae at ae La 7 “a - os Ree ee | ; wi ae ‘ Ls ~ SE : 459 their side. An illustration of this we have in what took place at the fiftieth Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians last September at Mu- nich, when Prof. Virchow opposed Ernst Hae- ckel’s teaching in a fashion which calls for some remark in this place. Haeckel, at the first public session of Septem. ber 18th, delivered an address on “The Evolution Theory in its Relation to the Philosophy of Na. ture,”! He there explained the idea of the His. tory of Evolution, by which term we are to under, stand not only embryology or ontogeny, but alse phylogeny or genealogy. This evolution theory is an historical science, of which we can never have exact or even experimental demonstration. Whoever looks for such demonstration, thereby simply betrays his ignorance of what constitutes an historical science. Haeckel very ingeniously compares phylogeny to geology, both having the same method of research. In both of these sciences, by minute comparison of multitudinous individual facts, by critical appreciation of their historical significance, and by speculative and conjectural filling up of the actual gaps, we re- construct the historic course of development, whether of the earth or of its inhabitants. Who- ever regards phylogeny or lineage-history as a mythical science, must hold the same opinion as to geology and paleontology, and this no reason- able man is prepared to do. The influential posi- tion now held by the doctrine of evolution is due entirely to the application to man of the theory of descent. “If the doctrine of evolution is true in general,” says Haeckel. “ if there is, indeed, a natural and historic genealogy of living beings, then man, too, the lord of creation, is deseended from the sub-kingdon Vertebrata, the class Mam- malia, the sub-class Placentalia, and the order Monkeys.” Haeckel then meets the objection so frequently made—that in this theory only the ori- gin of man’s body is explained, and not that of © his mental faculties—by saying that on the theory of evolution all organized matter at least is, in some possessed of psychic properties. “ This rests upon the study of Infusoria, Ameba, and other one-celled organisms. . . . Further, we know that in moneres and other rudimentary or- ganisma, mere detached bits of protoplasm pos- sess sensation and the power of movement, just a3 does the entire cell. From this we should con- clude that the cell-soul, which is the basis of sci- entific psychology, is itself only a compound, i. e., the sum of the psychic properties of the proto- plasmic molecules, called also plastidules, Thus 1 See SUPPLEMENT No. X., p. 289.

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he) - - sn ee Ms y te * 5 Pa er wk oe f - Zi ¢ —_ . " ® - ore € - - ae ts z < =a ae a Te aes ed ; aes, ; : oe, ; : ' the soul of the plastidule would be the ultimate factor to which could be reduced the psychic life of living things.” And inasmuch as the theory of evolution shows itself to be a unifying and _monistic bond between the most diverse sciences, it must also be, in Haeckel’s opinion, the most. powerful instrument in education, and should find a place in the schools. <A reform of our educa- tiona] systems in this sense he declares to be in- evitable, and destined to lead to the happiest re- sults,. True, we have at the same time to meet the requirements of practical philosophy, and to constract a new doctrine of morals; but this may be confidently expected to spring forth from the germ of natural religion that lives in the breast of-every man. As for the sense of duty, it is simply a social instinct. The ethics of the evolu- ' tion theory does not need to go in search of new principles, but has only to trace back to their seientific basis the immemorial precepts of the moral law. Such is the substance of Haevkel’s thoughtful address. For those who are acquainted with his writings, his conclusions contain nothing that is surprising, though we must confess that to us the fulfillment of Haeckel’s hopes appears still to lie in the distant future. Haeckel speaks with all confidence in the correctness of his views, which ate based on the Darwinian theory. That many points connected with that theory are still hypo- thetical is not to be denied; nevertheless we must not, as does Kar! Griin, in the Allgemeine Zeitung, represent the theory itself as pure hypothesis, for the firm ground on which it rests, uamely, pale- ontology, is a vast science of experience admitting only of one or other of just two theories, the theory of' evolution and the theory of supernatural ere- ation. Perhaps Herr Grin can imagine a third. Again, granting that Haeckel’s doctrine of the de- velopment of the plastidule soul into the human mind is, in the eyes of “exact science,” nothing but a “ grand hypothesis,” we must bear in mind that all the other explanations with which hith- ‘erto we fain would have contented ourselves are also, when tried by “exact science,” simply hy- potheses, only less grand, less ingenious, less conformable to demonstrated facts. Again, we may differ with Haeckel about that true “ rational religion” which he contrasts with the dogmatic, mythological religion of the churches, but we do the latter no service by pronouncing monism to be “ religionless.” However, I entirely agree with _, Miurrizumnt No. X., p. 293, where a faulty materially alters the sense of the second _ punctuation ‘ sentence in this passage.

0 bi ak + # eee yoout tia Cre Poe ist aor Gs tite é&e med ioe Fey Se. Haeckel where he represents the natural as resulting from the social instincts of “ and hence as far more ancient than any re ethnologist it appears a perfectly obvious idea to trace ethics up back from man ; in other words,tg trace the natural moral law, which was common to primitive man with svcial animals, from that early period down through the course of history to the present time, and among every race of mankind. Such an investigation would infallibly prove that in the ethics of the most advanced ny tions—aside from the refinements and polish of the more recent periods of civilization—that only can lay claim to legitimacy which is in agreement with the natural law of morals spoken of by — Haeckel, The moral ideas of mankind vary ae cording to latitude, race, and time ; but it were im, possible to name, in any age, a race of people however rude or however civilized, who are em: tirely without the natural moral law of love and sense of duty which appears in the social life of | animals. Hence, inmy judgment, Haeckel’s prop. osition is perfectly correct, that ethics does not have to offer any new laws. Other laws than those just mentioned it never hashad. And if once we come to understand that only those moral rules which are ours in common with all social animalg constitute the sole permanent contents of an ethi- cal code for all men without exception, while all that is outside of this, being variable according to time and place, must be regarded as. non-em sential and accessory—in other words, that only the former class of rules constitute the inalterable “moral law "it ia clear that we have the prix — mordial precepts of duty referred to their scientifig basis. It cannot be denied that this moral code. existed long before the advent of any church ree ligion whatever. Those systems of morals which from time to time have crystallized around the main stem of the natural moral law found em, pression in the divers ehurch religions, and.so ee isted prior to them. Does any one suppose thaty for instance, Christianity, as a popular religions could have won adherents as it did, had not. mighty revolution in the morality of the heathen world preceded it—a revolution which needed for its sanction a new edifice of religion ? Besides, how are we to explain the unquestioned existence of systems of morality—crude though they be-- among savage tribes who never have heard of cburch religion ? As may be seen from the foregoing, Haeckel’s discourse gives occasion to the expression of, | Very diverse opinions. But it was not upon these —

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A eae TT Ag aia RE gs th ra OB EN ol A NS Ah Me gh NT lh ee oR Te ee San ee ee ee ee a, Sn ‘ ; pele St IR oy Pre oa fe ta Rage PON Ay «4 . ease ar ea i iA 2 7 i Se al oil i Naod nie ae ete * Soh ae iis eet ao «* S55 er Ys ~ really debatable topics of the discourse that Ru- dolph Virchow ' thought it incumbent on him to remark in his one hour’s speech on the closing day of the Congress of Naturalists, The distin- guished scholar of Berlin had, from the begin- ning, announced his intention of addressing the apon.” No one acquainted with the method of ” ¥irchow’s speeches would expect to find in his address an orderly discussion of a clearly-defined theme, but rather a sprightly “talk” (causerie) about this, that, and the other thing. There is no preparation, but the orator brusquely attacks whatever subject he chooses, and talks ex tempore. Therefore, no one was very much surprised on learning that Virchow was to speak of ‘‘ The Lib- "erty of Science in the Modern State.” He remind- ed his hearers how large is the measure of liberty now acceded to science, and said that more could hardly be asked, citing the addresses delivered in the Congress as proofs of this. A few years ago, gach discourses, he said, would not have been allowed, whether in Munich or anywhere else. He told of how Oken, the founder of the Naturalists’ Congresses, had been doomed to perish in exile in that same canton in which Hutten had found his last permanent resting-place ; and how the first meeting at Leipsie had, of necessity, to be held in secret. In our joy over the possession of en- tire liberty, it must be our care, he said, to retain it,and to guard scrupulously against all abuse of it, for, in that way, we might cause restrictions to be imposed again. Lest the liberty of science should be again taken away, nothing but demon- étrated facts must be put forward as “ science.” Schoolmasters must not be allowed to decide be- tween the problems they are to teach and those they are not to teach: the man of science himself must tell them what is demonstrated truth and what is still under investigation. Sach doctrines as those of the plastidule soul, the genesis of soul by the combination of carbon, hydrogen, and nitro- gen, are simply statements of problems. To lay them down as propositions, or even to permit the schoolmaster to import them into his instruction, would be to imperil the liberty of science and to compromise science itself. The attentive reader will have noticed that, in this discourse, Virchow mainly opposed the ped- agogical value of the evolution theory on which Haeckel lays much stress. I freely admit that I ama hearty admirer of the learned Berlin pro- fessor (Virchow), and that I fully recognize the im- 1 See this discourse iu No. X. of the SuPPLEMENT. portance of being on our guard against accepting, too readily, hypotheses not yet fully confirmed. But, on the-other hand, I cannot but deeply re- gret that Prof. Virchow should not have spared the shafts of his irony, and the skill of his dialec- tics, for a more fitting oceasion ; for we are com- pelled, in the name of scientific research, to enter our strongest protest against the whole tone and tenor of his speech. The aim of that dis- course is simply a restriction of research—e restriction that never can be of benefit to science. A few years ago, at a meeting of the Naturalists’ Association, we heard, this time also from the lips of a Berlin professor, the sen- tence Jgnorabimeus ;' and now, from Munich, there comes to us a sentence which goes much further than that—Restringamur. True, Vir- chow was right when he declared that an hypoth- esis is, after all, only an hypothesis. But here- in he said nothing new; we all were aware of that long ago; and, what is more, there was at the time no occasion which called for special in- sistence on this old truth. For, when Virchow protests against the introduction into the schools of the “ plastidule soul,” he attributes to Haeckel @ purpose he never has entertained. Haeckel laid special stress upon the introduction into the schools Of the genetic method ; and, among think- ing men, there can be no question that this would be an enormous gain as compared witb the now dominant authoritative method. in the em- ployment of this genetic method, Haeckel has in view the reform of education which he desires to see brought about, and, in the interest of science, it must be the wish of every one that his scheme may not be an empty dream. But I must go further, and say that, in my dpinion, the doctrine of evolution may be introduced into the schools without the slightest hesitation, so long as it is offered, by the teacher, simply as the hy- pothesis which it is, and which can be very well harmonized with current religious ideas, as we see from the example of Wallace and other very devout Darwinists. Or must we say that papils, even in our high-schools, should learn nothing about the problems which occupy the minds of ell mankind? What harm is it, what damage does it do to the liberty of scientific research, if the pupil (who is sufficiently advanced in age and in his studies) is told how men endeavor to ex- plain the relations between phenomena? Then, if we are to be so extremely scrupulous about ex- cluding all hypotheses from the schools, we must 1 See Du Bois-Reymond’s address, in THE PoruLaR Screncs Monruy for May, 1874.

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMEN1. reflect that at the same time we exclude from the school programme a whole series of sciences. Are there not still hypotheses without number in astronomy? Has not the nebular hypoth- esis of Kant and Laplace for a long time been taught everywhere? Do we hesitate to acquaint pupils in the schools with the principles and the conclusions of geology? In fact, is it not usual to give to them as their first history-lesson a lot of fables which in so far are much worse than scientific hypotheses as they cannot stand scientific criticism? Do we not know that the current accounts of Jewish, Greek, and Roman history are false, and that the pupils have in later years laboriously to disencumber. their minds of the lessons learned by them in child- hood? In short, is not the human soul itself— though in the school held to be an undisputed fact —an hypothesis, a simple postulate, incapable of exact demonstration? Of the doctrines of re- ligion, which are so zealously taught in our schools, I say nothing, as they are not matters of scientific instruction; but yet one who makes such resistance to the “dogmatic stream which tumultuously makes its way through the fields of the sciences of observation,” and who strives to protect the schools against the same, should first of all labor to exclude this kind of instruction, the ‘dogmatic character of which is unquestioned. I, an the whole, agree with Virchow when he says that it is incumbent on the Investigator loy- ally to declare—}. What is established fact (though from the Kantian point of view this would not come to much); 2. What is an hypothesis of in- finite probability—for instance, the earth’s revo- fution round the sun, and the greater part of what we call positive science; 3. What is probable hypothesis, though still needing further confir- mation—as, for instance, the hypotheses upon which the Darwinian theory is based; 4. What is simple and entirely undemonstrable hypothe- sis—for instance, the hypothesis of atoms, of light-ether, of universal gravitation, and the like, ' which are taught in schools with impunity, albeit some of them, for instance the hypothesis of universal gravitation, are simply a cloak for our ignorance. But these distinctions can orly be drawn by the individual himself, since we cannot demand of one who is convinced of the entire correctness of the results of his own researches * that he shall represent them as only probable. Hence the line of demarkation postulated by Virchow, and which I myself hold to be desirable, between facts and problems, never will and never can be drawn by the man of research, but will and must in the future, as in the past, continue to 4 matter to be settled by the schoolmaster. Only } who stands outside of the domain of research can, by impartial comparison and unprejudiced criticism of the different opinions, form for him. self an approximately objective judgment as t whether a proposition is to pass for a doctrine of science or not; the investigator himself cannot do this. Nor will Virchow's address make any change. Every investigator must be absolutely free to teach what he in his inmost scientific convictions holds to be true ; and to require him to formulate the positive and the problematic is simply to restrict his scientific liberty. Now, we cannot make any such concession as that to the illustrious Berlin professor. With great truth does Karl Griin observe: “Science either enjoya perfect liberty, or she is not free at all. Setting © up hypotheses, and tracing their ultimate conse quences, are part and parcel of science, and of the liberty of science.” * I do not class Virchow’s strictures with those which I characterized at the opening of these few observations. While the latter, systemati. cally practised, are the utterances of certain par - ties, and designed to serve certain partisan ends, and hence, as being of a political nature, are ut terly void of scientific weight, on the other band, Virchow’s motives were, at bottom, purely scien — tific. Unfortunately, he let slip a momentous ex- pression, on the strength of which many political partisans have accounted him as one of them — selves; and, indeed, they have not failed, out of © the professor's utterances at Munich, to straight way make political capital—a thing deeply to be ~ regretted in the interest of science as well as of the orator himself. Inasmuch as Virchow called attention to the fact that socialism already sym pathizes with the evolution theory, it is high time for us, in the most solemn and impressive way, to declare that scientific speculation cannot haw anything whatever in common with political move ments of any kind, and that they must not be gow erned by any considerations of their effects upon political questions. Where is the doctrine that is exempt from misuse? Is it that of the Bible the very text-book of socialism ; or is it the Chris tian religion, in whose name hecatombs have been sacrificed ? Is it medicine or philosophy? Nay, even cellular pathology, as Virchow himself ad mits, is not safe from misuse and misapplication: Scientific research aims at the discovery of | truth, never inquiring who is to be benefited thezeby. The question Cwi prodest #' is fortunate 1 Who is benefited ? ne FF EEC) — = Ps gr SS Peer eee &

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av aL ae fw b> «ney J lee a Midd *. ae a i ack = vas oes ly of as little account in science as the other ques- tion, Cui nocet?#! Hence whether the evolution ’ @octrine favors the Socialists or the Ultramon- tanes, the high and dry Conservatives, the Mod- erates, the Liberals, the Radicals, or any other party, must be a matter of entire indifference to the earnest investigator, and must not be per- ‘mitted for a moment to lead him astray in bis re- gearches. The truth must be established for its own sake, and for no other purpose. Any other ¢onsideration, even though it were urged by a Virchow, must be absolutely rejected. Ever since science first began there have been heard authoritative voices calling “ Halt!” to the restless spirit of speculation, and it were a grave injustice not to recognize the value of such ad- ‘monitions. They who warn against danger, and they who engage in scientific speculation, are both indispensable for the development of science ; but we must ever bear in mind that scientific progress always, almost without an exception, + % ‘ +e =" ' a = | OARPENTER, WALLACE, AND SPIRITUALISM. has come from the labors of those who dared to give expression to thoughts which were asa leaven to the minds of their contemporaries, and who were persecuted for heresy and laid under a ban by the authorities. The most splendid tri- umphs of science are the fruit of the empiric demonstration of ingenious hypotheses. Even in cases where these hypotheses have proved un- tenable, they have caused men to think, and that in itself constitutes a new advance of science. We — could as little dispense with them as with the leaven in bread. All honor, then, first of all to the men to whom we are indebted for hypotheses which have given a stimulus to research; which, so to speak, constitute a landmark in the history of science; finally, in the mastering of which, in the one sense or in the other, a full generation or more has been employed! Honor, again, to those intellectual princes of whom the German proverb is true that, “ when kings build, there is work for cartmen | "—Xosmos. CARPENTER, WALLACE, AND SPIRITUALISM. LETTER FROM MR. WALLACE. WING to absence from home I have only jast seen Dr. Carpenter’s letter in the Atheneum of December 22d, to which I now beg leave very briefly to reply. - T must first remark on the extreme inconven- fence of Dr. Carpenter’s erratic mode of carrying On a discussion, As soon as his lectures on “Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc.,” were published, T wrote a review of them in the Quarterly Jour- nal of Science of July last. To this Dr. Carpenter Teplied in Fraser's Magazine of November, prom- ising a fuller reply to certain points in the new @dition of his “ Lectures,” then in the press. As the article in Fraser was of a very personal char- ‘tcter, I issued a rejoinder in the same periodical the following month. A discussion has also been carried on in Nature, and the scene of the con- test is now removed to the Atheneum, many of whose readers are probably ignorant of its pre- Vious phases. _ Dr. Carpenter comes before a fresh audience in order to reply to a specific charge of misstate- ment which I, made against him in the Quarterly 4 Who is hurt? Journal of Science (July, 1877, p. 398), which: charge, as I will proceed to show, he endeavors to evade by a wordy defense, which really amounts to an admission of it. In his “Lectures” (p. 71) is the following passage : “It was in France that the pretensions of mesmeric clairvoyance were first advanced ; and it was by the French Academy of Medicine, in which the mesmeric state had been previously discussed with reference to the performance of surgical operations, that this new and more ex- traordinary claim was first carefully sifted, in con- sequence of the offer made in 1837 by M. Burdin (himself a member of that Academy) of a prize. of 8,000 francs to any one who should be found capable of reading through opaque substances. The money was deposited in the hands of a notary for a period of two years, afterward ex- tended to three; the announcement was exten- sively published ; numerous cases were offered for examination ; every imaginable concession was made to the competitors that was compatible with a thorough testing of the asserted power; and not one was found to stand the trial.”’ My readers will observe that this is deliber- ately stated to be the first time that clairvoyance . KE . . ; al - ee.

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ae aes * por * ? _ 44 «THE. POPULAR SOLENCE MONTHLY.~SUPPLEMENT. | ‘was carefully sifted in France ; yet it now appears that Dr. Carpenter perfectly well knew of the commission of the same Academy about ten years earlier, which, after five years of most careful and elaborate experiments, gave a unanimous re- port positively in favor of the reality of clair- voyance. But Dr. Carpenter would have us believe that he studiously avoided all mention of this report because it had been proved to be wholly founded on imposture or error; and he endeavors to es- tablish this by giving a single hearsay case of a confession of imposture on another person not even a member of the commission! I feel sure that the impression conveyed to the readers of Dr. Carpenter's letters would be that the case of alleged imposture by one of the mesmeric patients of MM. Georget and Rostan occurred to members of the commission, and that the case had been _ examined by them and reported on as genuine. But this impression would be entirely erroneous. The members of the commission, whose names are appended to the report, are as follows: 1. Bourdeois de la Motte (president); 2. Fouquier ; “8. Gueneau de Mussy; 4. Guersent; 5. Itard; 6. Leroux; 7. Marc; 8. Thillaye; 9. Husson (re- porter). Against the voluminous and interesting details of this report, its carefully-repeated ex- periments, its cautious deductions, its amazing facts, not one particle of rebutting evidence is adduced. Yet Dr. Carpenter thought himself justified not only in ignoring its existence, but in giving his readers to understand, by an express form of words, that no such inquiry was ever made! This was the accusation I made against him, and the readers of the Atheneum can now jadge as to the candor and sufficiency of the reply. I must add a few words on the way in which Dr. Carpenter treats M. Rostan, “ one of the ablest medical psychologists of his day.” Dr. Carpen- ter states, as a fact, that, “ when a second edition of the ‘ Dictionnaire de Médecine’ came out in 1838, he (M. Rostan) withdrew the article he had contributed to the first;’’ and then, further on, it i stated that “M. Rostan, by his own confes- sion,” had been led away by cunning cheats in the matter of clairvoyance. Now I have always understood that M. Rostan was much annoyed at his article being superseded in the second edition of the Dictionnaire ; and, as this is a priori prob- able, I require some direct evidence of Dr. Car- penter’s assertion that he voluntarily withdrew it. This is the more necessary because the still more . important and damaging statement—that M. Ros- tan made a “ confession” that he had been led” away by cunning cheats—is also given as a e say report without any reference or authority; — and it looks very mach as if Dr. Carpenter's — logic had deduced the “confession” as an in ference from the “withdrawal,” no evidence — whatever being offered for either of them. If this should really be the case, then the severest’ things I have said as to Dr. Carpenter’s mode of carrying on this discussion will be more than justified. Throughout my discussion of this. subject with Dr. Carpenter I have strictly confined my- self to questions of fact and of evidence, and have maintained that these are of more value than opinions, however numerous or weighty, My criticisms have, for the most part, been db) rected to misrepresentations of facts and sup pressions of evidence on the part of my oppo» nent. The readers of the Atheneum will now be able to judge, as regards one case, whether that criticism is sound; and for numerous other cases I refer them to my articles in the Quarterly Journal of Science and in Fraser's Magazine. ft they read these, they will, I think, agree with me that the cause of truth will not be advanced by the further continuance of a discussion in which — one of the parties perpetually evades or obscures the most important points at issue, and at every) — step introduces fresh misstatements to be com — rected and fresh insinuations to be rebutted, as — I have shown that Dr. Carpenter has done im hit® numerous writings on this subjeet. = Aurzep R. WatLace, ~~ DR. CARPENTER’S REJOINDER. - As Mr. Wallace, without invalidating any oné! of my facts, has now reaffirmed yet more strong: artes dey pve cs Crookes's journal, I beg to be allowed very to restate my defense. The evidence in favor of clairvoyance (com! tained in the Academic report of 1880), in) which Mr. Wallace not only has himself full’ faith, but requires me and every one else to have’ the same, was condemned as untrustworthy by” the two contemporary tribunals to which it was” submitted—the French Academy of Medicine,’ « and the rédacteurs of the “ Dictionnaire de Méde-" — cine. The former, after full investigation by a” second and a third commission (1887-40), de liberately reversed the judgment of its first, as having been obtained by fraud and chicanerys’ and formally pronounced the evidence for the’ — “higher phenomena” of mesmerism to be “null ke a & &, | SEES GSSess ERE

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+ - Se i ee a3 - “a - +; a ae ee eee ee eS y — Sw of Pre We regret, therefore, that M. Jamin, at: the sit- stituted for the article written by one of their most distinguished contributors for the first edi- tion of their Dictionary another in the precisely sense. My crime, in Mr. Wallace’s eyes, is that I stated that the subject of clairvoyance was “ first thoroughly sifted” by those later investigations on which the Academy itself relied; and that I

passed by (1) the earlier report, which was never adopted by the Academy, and was finally rejected by it as worthless; and (2) the article of M Rostan, which was for the same reason ejected from the Dictionary for which it had been writ- ten. IT appeal from his judgment to that of the readers of the Atheneum. Wu. B, Canrewren. —Atheneum.

THE LAST OF THE GASES. year 1877 will ever be memorable in the history of scientific progress, its close hav- ing been marked by a brilliant series of researches which have ended in an absolute demonstration of the fact that molecular cohesion is a property of all bodies without any exception whatever. This magnificent work divides itself into two stages, which we shall refer to separately: first, the liquefaction of oxygen; and then, following close upon this, the liquefaction of hydrogen, nitrogen, and atmospheric air. In the liquefaction of oxygen, which we an- nounced last week as having been accomplished by M. Pictet, of Geneva, we have not only an in- stance of the long time we may have to wait, and of the great difficulties which have to be overcome, before a theoretical conclusion is changed into a concrete fact—something definite acquired to sci- ence; but also another instance of a double dis- covery, showing that, along all the great lines of thought opened up by modern investigation and modern methods, students of science are march- ing at least two abreast. ‘It appears that as early as December 2d M. Cailletet had succeeded in liquefying oxygen and carbonic oxide at a pressure of 300 atmos- pheres and at a temperature of —29° 0. This result was not communicated to the Academy at once, but was consigned to a sealed packet on account of M. Cailletet being then a candi- date for a seat in the Section of Mineralogy. Hence, then, the question of priority has been raised, but it is certain that in the future the work will be credited to both, on the ground that the researches of each were absolutely indepen- dent, both pursuing the same object, creating methods and instruments of great complexity.

ting of the Academy to which we have referred, 66 seemed to strain the claims of M. Cailletet by stating that to obtain the gas non-transparent was the same as to obtain it liquefied. We are beginning to know enough of the various states of vapor now not to hazard such an assertion as this. This remark, however, rather anticipates matters; and indeed, as we shall show afterward, M, Cailletet need not himself be very careful of the question of priority—even if it were ever worth caring for except to keep other people honest. Owing to the double discovery and the cu- rious incident to which we have referred, the meeting of the Academy on the 24th ult. was a very lively one, as not only was the sealed packet and a subsequent communication from M. Cail- letet read, but M. Pictet had sent a long letter to M. Dumas giving full details of his arrange- ments. MM. Dumas, H. 8t.-Claire-Deville, Jamin, Regnault, and Berthelot, all took part in the dis- cussion, the former admirably putting the work in its proper place by the following quotation from Lavoisier : “. . . Considérons un moment ce qui arriverait aux différentes substances qui composent le globe, si la température en était brusquement changée. Supposons, par exemple, que la terre se trouvit transportée tout. coup dans une région beaucoup plus cheude du systéme solaire, dans une région, par exemple, ot le chaleur habituelle serait fort supérieure A celle de l’eau bouillante: bientdt Peau, tous les liquides susceptibles de se vaporiser & des degrés voisins de l’eau bouillante, et plusieurs sub- stances metalliques méme, entreraient en expan- sion et se transformeraient en fluides aériformes, qui deviendraient parties de l’atmosphére. “Par un effet contraire, si la terre se trouvait tout & coup placée dans des régions trés-froides, par exemple de Jupiter et de Saturne, l’eau qui forme aujourd’hui nos fleuves et nos mers, et pro-

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nous connaissons, se transformeraient en montagnes solides. “ Lair dans cette supposition, ou du moins une partie des substances aériformes qui le composent, cesserait, sans doute, d’exister dans l'état de fluide invisible, faute d’un degré de chaleur suffisant ; il reviendrait done a l’état de liquidité, et ce change- ment produirait de nouveaux liquides dont nous n’avons aucune idée.” When Faraday in the year 1823 (at the age of thirty-one) began the researches indicated in the last paragraph quoted by M. Dumas, and first liquefied chlorine and then several other: gases, he had no idea that he had been anticipated, as he had been, by Monge and Clouet, who condensed sulphurous acid before the year 1800, and by Northmore, who liquefied chlorine in 1805. If the great experimenter were among us now, how delighted he would be to see one of the greatest iron-masters of France employing the enormous resources at his disposal at ChAtillon-sur-Seine, and a descendant of the Pictet, the firm friend of his great friend De la Rive (who was the first to whom he communicated his liquefaction of chlorine), thus engaged in carrying on the work which he made his own! The methods employed by MM. Pictet and Cailletet are quite distinct, and are the result of many years’ preparatory study, as testified by M. H. St.-Claire-Deville and M. Regnault. It is difficult to know which to admire most, the sci- entific perfection of Pictet’s method or the won- derful simplicity of Cailletet’s. It is quite certain that the one employed by the latter will find fre- quent use in future experiments. We may briefly refer to both these methods. M. Cailletet’s apparatus has already been briefly alluded to in these columns. It consists essentially of a massive steel cylinder with two openings ; through one hydraulic pressure is com- municated. A small tube passes through the other, the sides of which are strong enough to withstand a pressure of several hundred atmos- pheres, and which can be inclosed in a freezing mixture. It opens within the cylinder into a second smaller cylinder serving as a reservoir for the gas to be compressed. The remainder of the space in the large cylinder is occupied by mercury. M. Cailletet’s process consists in com- pressing a gas into the small tube, and then, by suddenly placing it in communication with the outer air, producing such a degree of cold by the sudden distention of the confined gas that a large portion of it is condensed, a process perfectly analogous to that used to prepare solid carbonic THE POPULAR (SCIENCE MONTHL ¥--SUPPLEMENT. ‘‘bablement le plus grand nombre de liquides que acid by the rapid evaporation of the gas. In M. Cailletet’s experiment with oxygen was brought to a temperature of —29° 0. by the employment of sulphurous acid, and a pressure of 300 atmospheres ; the gas was stilla gas. But when allowed to expand suddenly, which, acéord. ing to Poisson’s formula, brings it down to 209" below its starting-point, a cloud was at once formed. The same result has since been obtained without the employment of sulphurous acid, by giving the gas time to cool after compression, M. Cailletet has not yet obtained, at all events, so far as we yet know, oxygen in a liquid form, as M, Pictet has done ; on being separated from its enormous pressure it has ments Pe appearance of a cloud. M. Pictet’s arrangements are more He uses four vacuum and force pumps, those which were recently exhibited in the Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus for making ies, driven by an engine of 15-horse power. Two of these are employed in procuring a reduction of temperature in a tube about. four feet long con taining sulphurous acid. This is done in the fob lowing way: The vacuum-pump withdraws the vapor from above the surface of the liquid sub phurous acid in the tube, which, like all the other subsequently to be mentioned, is slightly inclined mt to give the maximum of evaporating sup The force-pump then compresses this ve por, and sends it into a separate reservoir, whereit is again cooled and liquefied ; the freshly-forméd liquid is allowed to return under control to the © tube first referred to, so that a complete circule tion is maintained. With the pumps at full work there is a nearly perfect vacuum over the liquid, and the temperature falls to — 65° or — 70° M. Pictet uses this sulpburous acid as a cold water jacket, as we shall see. It is used to cool the carbonic acid after compression, as water is used to cool the sulphurous acid after compression. |” This is managed as follows: In the tube thus filled with liquid sulphurous acid at a temper ture of — 60° C. there is another central oneof the same length but naturally of smaller diame ter. This central tube M. Pictet fills with liquid carbonic acid at a pressure of four or six atmoe pheres. This is then let into another tube fout metres long and four centimetres in diameter: When thus filled the liquid is next reduced to the solid form and a temperature of —140° C., the extraction of heat being effected as before by the pump, which extracts three litres of gas pet stroke, and makes 100 strokes a minute. Now it is the turn of the oxygen. Seas sucrv n BEEP ERT ESFest ers geser a8 =

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Be 8 PS Oe ee Se Oe eS eRe eee eV RRA ESS CLF SP OS RR RPS Ee eee Just as the tube containing carbonic acid was "placed in the tube containing sulphurous acid, so isa tube containing oxygen inserted in the long tube containing the now solidified carbonic acid. This tube is five metres long, fourteen millime- tres in exterior diameter, and only four in in- terior diameter —the glass is very thick. The whole surface of this tube, except the ends which project beyond the ends of the carbonic-acid tube, is surrounded by the frozen carbonic acid. One end of this tube is connected with a strong shell containing chlorate of potash, the . other end is furnished with a stopcock. When the tube was as cold as its surroundings, heat was applied to the chlorate, and a pressure of 500 atmospheres was registered ; this descended to 820, The stopcock was then opened, and a liquid shot out with such violence that none could be secured, though we shall hear of this soon. Pieces of lighted wood held in this stream spontaneously inflamed with tremendous violence. In this way, then, has oxygen been liquefied at last, But this result has no sooner filled us with sur- _ prise than it has been completely eclipsed. On the last day of December, a week after the meet- ing of the Academy to which we have referred, “i. Cailletet performed a series of experiments in the laboratory of the Ecole Normale at Paris, in the presence of Berthelot, Boussingault, St.-Claire- Deville, Mascart, and other leading French chem- ists and physicists, using the same method as that formerly employed for oxygen, and he then and there liquefied hydrogen, nitrogen, and air! M. Cailletet first introduced pure nitrogen gas into the apparatus. Under a pressure of 200 at- mospheres the tabe was opened, and a number of drops of liquid nitrogen were formed. Hydro- was next experimented with, and this, the test and most difficult of all gases, was re- “duced to the form of a mist at 280 atmospheres. _The degree of cold attained by the sudden release of these compressed gases is scarcely conceivable. The physicists present at the experiment estimated ‘it at —300° ©. liquefied, it was deemed of interest to carry out the process with air, and the apparatus was filled with the latter, carefully dried and freed from carbonic acid. The experiment yielded the same result. On opening the tube a stream of air issued from it resembling the fine jets forced from our modern perfume-bottles. These more recent results are all the more surprising as, at an earlier stage, hydrogen, at a pressure of 300 atmospheres, has shown no signe of giving way. These brilliant and important results, though, — as we have said, they give us no new idea on the constitution of matter, open out a magnificent vista for future experiment. First, we shall doubtless be able to study solid oxygen, hydro- gen, and air, and if MM. Pietet and Cailletet suc- ceed in this there will then be the history to write of the changes of molecular state, probably accompanied by changes of color, through which these elemental substances pass in their new transformations. There is a distinct lesson to be learned from the sources whence these startling fours de force have originated. The means at the command of both MM. Cailletet and Pictet arise from the in- dustrial requirements of these gentlemen, one for making iron, the other for making ice. Why, then, in England, the land of practical science, have we not more men like MM. Cailletet and Pictet to utilize for purposes of research the vast means at their disposal, or at all events to allow others to use them ? It is also clear that to cope with modern re- quirements our laboratories must no longer con- tain merely an antiquated air-pump, a Leyden jar, and a few bottles, as many of them do. The professor should be in charge of a work instead of an old curiosity shop, and the scale of his op- erations must be large if he is to mareh with the times—times which, with the liquefaction of the ~ most refractory gases, mark an epoch in the his- tory of science.— Nature.

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{ HREE hundred years ago, when what was called the Copernican Paradox was strug- gling for existence against the then orthodox Ptolemaic astronomy, the solar system was sup- posed to consist of eight bodies. The followers of Copernicus believed in a central sun, round which six orbs revolved, while around one of these—our earth—traveled one other orb—mak- ing (with the central sun) eight bodies in all. The followers of the old astronomy, including at that time nine-tenths of the astronomers of repute, believed in a central earth, round which traveled '. seven planets, the sun and moon being two of these, only distinguished from the rest (as plan- ets) by the comparative simplicity of their move- ments. During last year the number of bodies forming the solar system, without including com- ets or meteorites, or the multitudinous satellites ’ which compose the ring of Saturn, has been raised to 200—so that for every orb known in the days of Copernicus and his first followers, twenty-five are now recognized by astronomers. Year after year more are becoming known to us. In fact, planets are being discovered so fast, that, after an effort (by dividing the wateh upon them among the leading observatories) to keep them well under survey, the task has become regarded as almost hopeless. One or two of the flock are already missing; and it seems not improbable that, before many years have passed, twenty or thirty planets will have to be described as miss- ~ ing, while endless controversies may possibly _ arise, respecting those newly discovered each year, on the delicate question whether a dis- covery or a rediscovery has been effected. It is hardly necessary to say, perhaps, that we refer to that strange ring of small planets which travels between the paths of Mars, the miniature of our earth, and Jupiter, the giant of the solar system, as far surpassing our earth in size as it is surpassed by the sun. In the wide space between these two planets wander thou- sands of tiny planets. They form a zone of di- vision not only between Mars and Jupiter, thus unlike each other, but between the family of small planets of which our earth is the principal member, and the family of large planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. It is a strange thought that for ages these bodies have been circling round the sun unknown to men, though THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. A RING OF WORLDS. , so near to us, compared with the fixed stars, that from the nearest of these the whole ring, far within which, be it remembered, the earth tray- els, would appear as the merest point in space, Still stranger is the thought that, among the members of this system or ring of worlds utterly invisible to ordinary eyesight, there must be pre- sented at times, if living creatures are there to see, some of the most remarkable celestial scenery visible from any part of the solar system. For — the orbits of these bodies interlace in a strangely complex manner. At times, from one or other of — the set, several of the rest must be seen at so — short a distance as to appear larger and. more conspicuous than Jupiter or Venus appears to ourselves, while occasionally an even nearer ap. proach must be made. In fact, in this part of the solar system, and in this part alone, colli — sions between planets are possible ca though, fortunately, the motions of these bodies being always in the same direction, they cannot encounter each other full tilt, but ean only come into collision by the swifter overtaking the slower, Even of this there is little risk, so small are those planets, and so enormous the ring of space in which they travel. For many years the idea had been gaining — ground that those astronomers who were using their telescopes in the search for small planets, — were wasting time which might be better em — ployed. “Of what use,” many asked, “ can it be, now that we know these bodies may be counted _ Se ae heat ee hours on the chance of discovering a few year?” But recently it has been seen that the small planets may give us very useful infor mation. They have, in fact, already told us how much their giant neighbor, Jupiter, would weigh if he could be put in a scale against the earth— or, rather (for that was already known), they have shown us that Jupiter had been rightly weighed in another way. And now it seems — likely that we shall learn from t@is despised family the true measure of the sun’s distance, and with that the scale of the solar system, the © quantity of matter contained by the sun, and many other matters of great importance in as- tronomy. As one of the longest known among the minor — planets has already given a very fair answer to [i ne ZASeerTeespeeceoecvwve pact ews « BSSSBISSSIT SSR ASE PEs eee eger

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ea ee SS Oa Oe eae eee OO eee eee = * Ge 8 ee OS Ree ee eee: ee ee ee ’ Sere en Le eig pee Yn ee ae ped so * A RING the questions of astronomers on such points, while two others have recently been put under examination, the occasion seems a suitable one for giving a brief account of this ring of worlds, of the manner of their discovery, and of the ideas which have been suggested as to their If the solar system could be seen at a single view, its appearance at any moment would give no idea of regularity in its construction. The pictures of the solar system in our books present a certain symmetry even when the paths of the planets are shown with their true eccentricity of position (which is, unfortunately, but seldom done). The symmetry is like that of a leaf or flower, not perfect, not geometrical or rigid, but still it is sufficiently striking. But if from a picture of the orbits, presenting this symmetry of appearance, we prick off the positions of the central sun and of the planets in various parts of their paths around him, we can see no sym- metry at all in the resulting set of points. The solar system thus shows how there may be real symmetry of arrangement among bodies apparent- ly scattered without law or order. And it shows us also the part which time plays in educing sym- metry from apparent disorder. Conceive a being so constituted that the circuit even of the planet Neptune around the sun, though lasting more than a hundred and sixty of our years, would seem to last but a single instant, so that to his vision the planet would be visible during its entire circuit even as a spark swiftly whirled round appears asa circle of light. To such a being the solar system would present a symmetrical and doubt- less a most beautiful appearance. At its centre would be the glowing orb of the sun, round which would appear four rings of light, representing the paths of Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars; far outside these again four other rings of light, much brighter and with much wider spaces be- tween them, showing where Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, traverse their wide courses ; and between these families will be seen the multi- tudinous intertwining paths of the small planets, scarcely discernible separately, but forming, as a whole, a faintly-luminous ring between the well- defined sets of bright rings marking the paths of the eight planets. We need not here consider how the beauty of this scene would be enhanced by the rings of light which the moons of the giant planets and of our earth would produce. Let it suffice to note that the symmetry of the solar system, as thus seen, would be altogether | marred if the rings of asteroids were removed. | 2 >

glae Rott oie Plea wf ~F é “| > e. OF WORLDS. | It is not given to man, whose span of life is less ‘ than half the orbital period of the outermost planet, to witness, scarcely even to conceive rightly, the scene we have described. But the mathematician can perceive what is necessary to its completeness. Accordingly, the astronomer Kepler, inquiring into the harmonies of the solar system, perceived that one note was wanting; or, returning to our ideal description of the system as it would be seen if centuries were fractions only of seconds, he perceived that the absence of a certain feature impaired the symmetry of the picture. He saw that though the distance sepa- rating the path of Mars from that of Jupiter isin reality much less than that which separates the . path of Jupiter from that of Saturn, the next planet beyond him, yet there is a certain regulur- ity in the progression of the distances which re- quires that the space between Mars and Jupiter should not be untenanted, as, according to the astronomy of his day, it was supposed to be. In his youth Kepler had noted the want, and had suggested certain fanciful relations which might be fulfilled by a planet occupying the gap. He , had written to Galileo on the subject, who had advised him to base his theories on observed facts only. Later, when unwearying researches for nineteen years had revealed to him the lawsof - the solar system, Kepler suggested as the relation which connects the distances of the planets that which is now commonly called Bode’s law. It . may be thus simply expressed : Calling Mercury’s distance from the sun 4, the distances of the other planets’ orbits from Mercury's orbit are in order as the numbers 8, 6, 12, and so on, doubling as we proceed. According to this law, the distance of Mars from Mercury’s orbit should be 12, and the distance of the next planet 24. But there was no known planet at that distance. Jupiter, the planet next beyond Mars, travels at a distance from Mercury’s orbit represented on this scale by 48, and Saturn—the most distant known planet— at a distance of 91, the former corresponding ex- actly, the latter fairly enough, with the law we have indicated. But the planet which, according | to the law, should have traveled between Mars and Jupiter at a distance of 24 from Mercury’s orbit, or 28 from the sun, either did not exist, or was invisible, In Kepler’s day it was thought by many a suf- ficient solution of the difficulty to conclude that a planet formerly traveling along this seemingly va- cant track had been destroyed on account of the wickedness of its inhabitants. And we are told that there were not wanting preachers who used

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ie pe tage 0s, Gate the destruction of this hypothetical planet as a warning to evil-doers. If they continued in their sins, they might not only bring destruction on themselves, but on the world, which might burst, as bad that other world, and reduce the sun’s family by yet another planet.’ It was not until the discovery of Uranus by Sir W. Herschel, in 1781, that the speculations of Kepler attracted scientific attention. Astrono- mers had seen the three laws of Kepler inter- preted physically by Newton, and had come to regard those relations which admitted of no such interpretation as mere coincidences. But when the empirical law of distances, for which, as it appeared, no reason in Nature could be assigned, was found to be fulfilled by the new planet, as- tronomers could not but regard the circumstance as somewhat more than a mere coincidence. It " ig strange to consider that had Neptune instead of Uranus been discovered by Sir W. Herschel, the very reverse would have been inferred. Mer- cury’s orbit, by Bode’s law, should be 96, but is really 91; that of Saturn's distance from Ura- nus should be 192, but is really 188, so that Bode’s law is satisfactorily fulfilled by Uranus ; but Neptune’s distance from Mercury’s orbit - should be 384, and is really but 296, which can- not in any way be reconciled with the law. Sup- posing Uranus unknown when Neptune was dis- covered, the distance of Neptune would have seemed too great by 104 for Saturn’s next neigh- bor (being 296 instead of 192), and too little by 88 for Saturn’s next neighbor but one, according to Bode’s law of distances. Thus astronomers ' would have inferred that Bode’s law was errone- ous (as indeed it is), and would not have thought of looking for a planet between Mars and Jupiter. As, however, by good fortune, Uranus was found first, they inferred (mistakenly) that Bode’s law represents a real relation existing, no one could say why, among the planetary orbits, and thence concluded (rightly) that the space between Mars and Jupiter is not vacant. A society was therefore formed — chiefly through the active exertions of De Zach, of Gotha 1 We do not learn whether the warning was effec- tive or not; but probably the evil-doers were not more troubled by a danger affecting the whole of the human race than by that which had long been described as over themselves in particular. The logical ef- fect of the warning, one would suppose, must have been to encourage that particular form of godliness which is shown by anxiety about the sins of others. For it was clearly very much to the interest of those who did well to see that the evil-doers did not bring about a catastrophe from which good and bad alike could not fail to suffer. 470° "9H POPULAR SOIBNOE ‘MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. —to search for the missing planet. It. of Schroeter. The zodiac, the highway of the — planets, was divided into twenty-four zones, ong. — of which was assigned to each member of this. Society for the Detection of a Missing. World, The twenty-four commenced their labors. with, great zeal. When we consider that over, the — region of the heavens which they were to ex- amine at least a hundred planets, well within the range of their telescopes, were traveling, we may, fairly wonder that they discovered nothing. Such, however, was the result of their labors. After. they had been at work a considerable time, acei,, dent revealed to an astronomer outside their go. ciety a body which was regarded for s long timg | as the missing planet. Prof. Piazzi, while observing stars for hig, catalogue, was led to examine very carefully a. part of the constellation Taurus, where Wollaston. — had marked in a star which Piazzi could not find, On the first day of the present century. he served in this part of the heavens a small stan, which he suspected of variability, seeing that ig — appeared where before no star of equal brightness, had been mapped. On January 3d he found that. the star had disappeared from that place, but any . other, much like it, lay at a short distance to.the, west of the place which it had oceupied, The, actual distance between the two positions wag, nearly a third of the moon’s apparent diameter, On January 24th (our observer was not, too patient, it will be seen) he transmitted to and Bode, members of prprepindncnme tion Society, an account of the movements of star, which had traveled toward the west, January 11th or 12th, and had then begun to ad» vance. He continued his labors till F llth, when he was seized with serious Unfortunately, his letters to Oriani and Bode not reach those astronomers until nearly the end: — of March, by which time the planet (for such it, was) had become invisible, owing to the approach. of the sun to the part of the heavens along which, the planet was traveling. oe But the planet was not lost. The sun, on his way through the region oceupied by the, planet, and in September that region was again visible at night. In the mean time the great mathematician Gauss had calculated from zi’s observations the real path of the planet. Throughout September, October, November, and. December, search was made for the missing star At length, on the last day of the year 1801, De Zach detected the planet, Others independently, | of twenty-four astronomers under the al 25 @B6BS&42a ~-PWesgaas EPESESE2.-SPEFSP ASE EFAYSERE EEE ERSEE ERE BER

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Be te a a ee ee 2 eee ee ® . ” . a” - A RING. dlecting the rediscovery on January 1, 1802. Thus, the first night of the present century was distinguished by the discovery of a new planet, and, before the first year of the centary had passed, the planet was fairly secured. Piazzi, the diseoverer of the planet, assigned to it the name of the titular goddess of Sicily, where the discovery was made—Ceres. Ceres was found to be traveling in an orbit corresponding in the most satisfactory manner with Bode’s law. According to that law the missing planet’s distance from the orbit of Mer- eury should have been 24; calling Mercury's dis- tance from the sun 4, the actual distance of Ceres / ip 23}. » Yet astronomers were not satisfied with the new planet.. It traveled at the right mean dis- tanee from the sun; but, passing over its infe- riority to its neighbors, Mars and Jupiter, in size and splendor, it moved in most unplanetary fashion. Instead of traveling nearly in the same plane as the earth, like its neighbors Mars and Jupiter, its path was inclined to that plane in an angle of more than 10°—a thing as yet unheard of among planets. As to its size, Sir W. Her- sthel, from measurements made with his power- ful telescopes, estimated the new planet’s diame- ter at about 160 miles, so that, supposing it of the same density as our earth, its mass is less than rresve part of hers. Thus, it would take more than 1,560 such planets to make a globe as massive as our moon. And even this probably falls far short of the truth. For our earth owes u0 small part of her density to the compression produced by the attractive energy of her own gabstance. The moon, which is less compressed, has much smaller density; in fact, little more than half the earth's. Mars, again, being smaller, and having less attractive energy, has less densi- ty'than the earth (his density is about 4; of hers).' The tiny Ceres would be very much less com- pressed, and, if made of the same substances, «We may well believe, would probably have a density less than half the moon's, or not very much exceeding that of water. Thus, it would probably take some half-million of worlds like Ceres to make such a globe as our earth, while 1 Of comree, the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Ura- nus, and Neptune, seem to present exceptions to the Tule we have here indicated. But there can be no doubt that in thetr case intense heat expands the planets’ substance, while in reality we have no means Of forming an opinion respecting their real density, since the surfaces we measure are not the real sur- faces, but layers of clouds enwrapping these planets, and lying who shall say how far from the solid surface? a > ar ‘ ie Nadi ces ea sgh mB Ba. 5 Seas VS from our moon six thousand such worlds as Ceres wight be made. It was natural that astronomers should regard with some suspicion a planet falling so far short of every known planet, and even of @ mere moon, in size and mass. But presently a discovery was made which still more markedly separated Ceres from the rest of the planetary family. Olbers, during his search for Ceres, had had occasion to study very closely the arrangement of the groups of small stars scattered along the track which Ceres might be expected to follow. What reason he had for continuing his examination of these groups after Ceres was found does not appear. Possibly he may have had some hope of what actually oc- curred, Certain it is that in March, 1802, or nearly three months after Ceres had been redis- covered, he was examining a part of the constel- lation Virgo, close by the spot where he had found Ceres on January Ist, in the same year, While thus at work, he noticed a small star forming with two others, known by him, an equi- lateral triangle. He felt sure this star had not been there three months before, and bis first idea was that it was a variable star. At the end of two hours, however, he perceived that it had moved slightly toward the northwest, On the next evening it had moved still farther toward the northwest. It was, in fact, a planet, and, to the amazement of astronomers, the study of this planet’s motion showed that its mean distance from the sun differed very little from that of Ce- res. We speak of the amazement of astrono- mers, because the fact thus discovered was, in reality, the most surprising of any which had been made known to them since the nature of Saturn's ring was discovered by Huygens in 1656. We have become so accustomed of late to the dis- covery of planets traveling along the region of space between the paths of Mars and Jupiter, that we are apt to forget how strange the circum. stance must have appeared to astronomers at the beginning of the present century, that the old views respecting the solar system were errone- ous, and that, in addition to the planets traveling singly around the sun, the existence of a ring of planets must be admitted. It is true that the discovery of this second planet (to which the name Pallas was given) did not fully demonstrate this. Still it showed that Ceres was not traveling alone in the region which had so long been sup- posed untenanted. And as it seemed in some de- gree to explain the smallness of Ceres, suggesting the idea that possibly the combined mass of bodies traveling in this space might not be great-

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ly inferior to the mass of a primary planet, the notion of a ring of worlds traveling between Mars and Jupiter was presently entertained as according fairly with the facts already discovered. Olbers himself was fully satisfied that other planets travel in the region between Mars and Jupiter. He was struck by the remarkable feat- ures of the orbit of the planet he had discovered. It was inclined more than three times as much as that of Ceres to the plane in which the earth travels, or to that media! plane near which lie the tracks of all the single planets. So greatly is the path of Pallas inclined to this track that, even as seen from the sun, its range on either side gave to the planetary highway a width of 69°, or nearly four times the width of the zodiac (the conventional highway assigned by the ancients to the planets) as determined by the range of Venus, viewed from the earth, on either side of the me- dial track. The range of Pallas, as seen from the earth, is still greater; so great, indeed, that this planet may actually be seen at times among the polar constellations. Moreover, the path of Pallas is markedly eccentric, insomuch that her greatest distance from the sun exceeds her least in the proportion of about 5 to 8. Olbers was led by these peculiarities to the belief that ' Ceres and Pallas are the fragments of a planet which formerly traveled between the paths of Mars and Jupiter, but had been shattered to > pieces by a tremendous explosion. If our earth, as she travels along her present path, could by some violent internal action be shattered into fragments, the greater number of these would no longer travel in the plane in which lies the earth’s present path. Those which chanced to be driven outward in that plane would continue to travel in it, though on a changed path ; for their original motion and their imparted motion both lying in that plane, so also of necessity would that motion which would result from the combination of these. But fragments which were driven away at an angle to that plane would no longer travel in it. Hence the great inclination of the path of Ceres and the monstrous inclination of the path of Pal- las might be explained by supposing that the former was a fragment which had been driven ’ away at a considerable angle to the ecliptic, while Pallas was a fragment driven away on a path nearly square to that plane. To show more clearly how Olbers accounted for the peculiar motions of the new planets, sup- pose our earth to explode on or about March 20th, at noon, Greenwich time. Then the greater 413 +«©—-THE POPULAR SOIRNOE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. it would therefore travel on a course not far f 4 part of South America would be driven forward ; | repnenent ae our Indian Empire would be driven and though the advancing motion previously pos, sessed by this part of the earth, in common with the rest, would still carry it forward, this motion would be greatly reduced. The central parts of Africa and the Atleatie around Ascension Island and St. Helena would be driven sunward—en im, - pulse which, combined with the previous advam cing motion of this region, would cause this par of their new track to eross their former nearly circular track ata sharp angle, passing athwart that track inward. The part opposite to the lash named, that is, in the ntiddle of the Pacific, would be driven directly from the sun ; and this impulse, - combined with advance, would cause this part of the new track of the scattered fragments from the Pacific to cross the original track at a sharp — angle, passing outward. All these regions, and all lying on the zone passing through them, would continue to move in or near the former planeof the earth’s motion; some more quickly than be fore, some more slowly, some passing outward at that portion of their course to return eventually inward till they came to it again, and some pase ing inward for a while, to return, however, afters complete circuit, to the scene of the catastropha But England and other European countries would — be impelled partly sunward, partly upward and northward, from the plane of their former mo tion, and would therefore travel on a track largey ly inclined to their former course ; that is, to the earth’s present track. The same would happen; so far as upward motion was concerned, to the United States, and to all the northern parts of Asia, The fragments from all these regions would — thenceforward travel on inclined paths crossing — their original track ascendingly at the place wher _ tralia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America, would be drives somewhat downward a pouthennat ania ments of this zone of the earth would ly travel on paths crossing the original track. sar cnths dasuatenyeaede Raa plosion. The north-polar regions, especially the parts north of the American Continent, would be driven more directly upward by the explosion; while the south-polar regions, especially the parts south of the Indian Ocean, would be driven db rectly downward ; the fragments from these re pices then would travel'on paths most hugely clined to the original track of the earth. . $ Regarding the two planets hitherto discovered _ errrriiiitititiniero

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&-- F ORES SERRA SA SA SARASD SSL SEARO ESS PASSE SAS SEAL OTS ORAS Se Ome. e i “f -* ag habs amt iA Ne * A RING OF WORLDS. ‘a8 fragments of one which had burst, Olbers per- esived thet there was a certain region of the heavens where he would have a better chance of discovering other fragments than anywhere else. Every fragment after the explosion would have a path passing through the place where the explo- sion occurred. For the place of explosion, being the spot from which each fragment started, would - of necessity be a point along each fragment’s future track. The*fragments, be it understood, @Would not return simultaneously to that ‘spot. Those which had been driven forward (more or less) would have their period of circulation length- ened, those which had been driven backward would have their period shortened; these last then would return to the scene of the outburst goone? than the former, and in point of fact no two would return simultaneously to that place thless, by some utterly improbable chance, they had been hastened or retarded in exactly the same degree. But all would pass through that spot for many centuries after the terrible catastrophe which had scattered them on taeir various paths. If the region of the heavens toward which that spot lay could be determined, then, the careful observation of that region probably would soon be rewarded by the discovery of other fragments. Moreover, the region exactly opposite to it would te similarly suitable for the search after these small bodies ; for though their paths would not all pass through a point exactly opposite the scene of the explosion, these paths would all pass through the prolongation of a line drawn through the gan from that place. This is easily seen. Every planet has its own plane of motion, in which plane the sun necessarily lies ; if, then, we know any one point of a planet’s path, we know that the line joining the sun and that point lies in the plane of the planet’s motion, and if extended beyond the sun must cross the planet’s track. * Olbers then set himself the task of carefully observing two parts of the heavens, one being the Place where the tracks of Ceres and Pallas ap- proached each other nearest, the other being the place directly opposite to this. One point is to be noticed as essential to Olbers’s faith in the Bdécess of his method of search. In his day it was generally believed that many centuries had not passed since the planets had been set moving on their respective paths. According to this view the catastrophe by which Ceres and Pallas and the fragments yet to be discovered had been sent on their new courses, could not have occurred so long ago that the paths of the fragments had been ‘materially displaced from their original position. t ¥ The se ot Sy aay ap eet | i a : ‘ ‘Tf, on the other hand, millions of years: might have elapsed since the catastrophe happened, there would have been little room for hoping that the actual paths of the fragments would have re- tained any trace of the peculiarity we have de- scribed. It was somewhat fortunate for science that Olbers had full faith in the doctrine that the date of the catastrophe could not be more than four or five thousand years before his time, and tbat therefore he observed the two regions of the heavens indicated by the explosion theory with unwearying assiduity for many months. He also persuaded Harding, of Lilienthal, to pay spe- cial attention to these two regions ; one near the northern wing of the Virgin, the other in the constellation of the Whale. At length, on September 4, 1804, the search was rewarded with success; the planet: called Juno being discovered by Harding in that part of the Whale which Olbers had indicated. Olbers did not cease from the search, however, but con- tinued it for thirty months after Harding’s success, and five years after his own discovery of Pallas. At length, on March 28th, the fifth anniversary of this discovery, Olbers detected Vesta, the only member of the family of asteroids which has ever (we believe) been seen with the naked eye. For some reason astronomers seem to have been satisfied with this fourth fragment of Ol- bers’s hypothetical planet. The search was not resumed for twenty-three years. Then Hencke, an amateur astronomer of Driessen, in Germany, commenced a search destined to meet with no success until more than fifteen years had elapsed. We shall return presently to the discovery of the fifth asterdid by Hencke. We must first, how- ever, consider the interesting questions raised by astronomers, after the discovery of Vesta, upon the theory of Olbers that the asteroids are frag- ments of an exploded planet. Lagrange, in 1814, examined the theory mathe- matically, inquiring what degree of explosive force would be necessary to detach a fragment of a planet in such sort that it would not return, but travel thereafter on an orbit of its own around the sun. We have not by us the result of his researches except as they are given in Grant's “ Physical Astronomy,” as follows : “ Applying his results to the earth, Lagrange found that if the velocity exceeded that of a can- non-ball in the proportion of 121 to 1,the fragment would become a comet with a direct motion ; but if the velocity rose in the proportion of 156 to 1, the motion of the comet would be retrograde. If the velocity were Jess than in either of these cases,

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“eet Sul ra oi TAeaye ‘ we a > org ae a nf > . . . x the fragment would revolve as a planet in an ellip- tie orbit.” _ This statement is not very satisfactory, because - the velocity of a cannon-ball, depending consider- ably on circumstances, is not a definite unit of measurement. The assertion, too, that the frag- ment would become a comet is open to exception, and nothing is said about the least velocity neces- sary to free the expelled body from the earth. Probably the velocity of a cannon-ball was taken by Lagrange at about 500 yards per second, that being a fair velocity for a 68-pounder at the date of his paper. A velocity, then, exceeding a can- non-ball in the proportion of 156 to 1, would be about 44 miles a second. Now, for a body ex- pelled from the earth te travel as a retrograde comet, it must be sent backward with a velocity equal to the earth’s in her orbit (about 18} miles per second), increase! by the proper velocity for a retrograde comet, about 25} miles per second, or 44 miles per second in all, This agrees, then, * with Lagrange’s result. But he seems to have been led from the real subject of inquiry to prob- lems which are only matters of curiosity. The fragmentary planets of Olbers’s theory move nei- ther as advancing nor as retrograde comets. Leaving, then, Lagrange’s paper, as not very much to the point, if rightly represented by Grant, we note simply that the velocity necessary to expel from the earth a fragment of her mass, in such sort that it would not be drawn back, would amount to about 7 miles per second, or, say, about twenty-five times the velocity of a cannon-ball. But again, the expulsion of a fragment, and the explosion of an entire planet, are processes very different in their nature. If a. fragment were expelled, the entire mass of the earth would recoil with a motion bearing the same kind of relation to that of the fragment which the recoil of a very heavy cannon bears to the motion of the ball, If a cannon were not heavier than the ball, the cannon would be driven back as rapidly as the ball would be expelled, though frictional ~ . resistance would bring it sooner to rest. Again, when a shell at rest bursts, the fragments are driven outward on all sides, with much smaller velocities than any one of them would have if the entire charge of powder acted upon it, the rest of the shell being in some way restrained from mov- ing. We see, then, that for a planet to explode into fragments which thereafter should be free to travel independently around the sun, the ex- plosive force must enormously exceed what would be necessary in the case of a single fragment ex- pelled as a projectile is expelled from a gun. ‘THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. When we consider, further, that the frame 7 the earth is demonstrably not the hollow formerly imagined, but even denen, 06: en anil than near its surface; that, moreover, it ia not, formed of rigid materials, but of materials which under the forces to which they are subjecting, perfectly plastic and ductile, it seems incredible, that under any conditions which appear possible, our earth could be shattered by an explosion, Prof. Neweomb, of Washington, im an able paper, on this subject, remarks on this objection that, “since the limits of our knowledge are not ne cessarily the limit of possibility, the objection. is — not fatal, and it is difficult to say what weight. ought to be attached to it;” and, as many.of our readers will remember, Sir W. Thomson, ong, of the greatest mathematicians living, has nog; Sa probable shattering of a planet sufficiently to prevent the theory from being that one world may be peopled from the seeds life brought to it by the fragments of another which had exploded. Yet it may fairly be said that if the destructive explosion of a planet is pam: sible, it is utterly improbable ; and that absolute, _ ly nothing is at present known to us which sug, gests even the bare possibility of such a catag; trophe. traveling between Mars and Jupiter had burst; into fragments, had a much more probable ,ag., pearance in Olbers’s time than it has at presemt;, for the four asteroids first discovered traveled.om, orbits not differing greatly as to their mean dig) tances, which are as the numbers 236 (Vesta}, 267 (Juno), 277 (Ceres and Pallas). .Whenat, teroids began to be discovered which traveled, nearer to the sun than Vesta, and much farthe, away than Ceres and Pallas, the explosion theorg, was shown to be improbable. When, further: the actual paths of these multitudinous came to be examined, the theory was found to.be utterly untenable, More recently still a circum», stance noted by the ingenious American astropd,, NT TELCO extremely probable. anabinny ahthecteautendiaa various members of the asteroidal family, though: not without interest, would be little suited) to, these pages. A few detaila, however, may bej mentioned here es illustrating the general. chat acter of the search. aad We have seen that Hencke engaged in 1830, in the search for a fifth asteroid. On the evem-; ing of December 8th he observed a star of the Yet the theory that a planet which had beem; aaaevirrederrerre ttt , Se WATT

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aw Su ninth magnitude in the constellation Taurus, in a place where he felt sure, from his recollection of the region, that there had previously been no _“gtar of that degree of brightness. He communi- cated the observation to Encke, of Berlin; and on December 14th they rediscovered it in the place to which by that time it had removed. It was found to be an asteroid traveling at a dis- tance almost midway between that of Vesta and - thatof Ceres. Heneke requested Encke to name the new planet, and that astronomer selected for it the name of Astrea. _ © On July 1st, Hencke discovered a sixth aste- reid, which Gauss named at his request, calling iéHebe. In the same year, and only six weeks later, our English aztronomer Hind discovered the asteroid Iris; and on October 18th he dis- | covered another, to which Sir J. Herschel, at his request, assigned a name, selecting (somewhat unsuitably, perhaps, for an October discovery) _ the name Flora. eBince that date, not a year has passed with- out the discovery of at least one asteroid, as in 1848, 1849, and 1859. Two were discovered in 1851, 1868, and 1869; three in 1850, 1864, 1865, and 1870; four in 1853, 1855, and 1867; five im 1886;-1860, 1862, and 1871; six in 1854, 1858, 1866, 1873, and 1874; eight in 1852 and 1857; tet in 1861; eleven in 1872; twelve in 1868 and 1876; and seventeen in 1875. During last year ‘sim-were discovered. The astronomer who has hitherto been most successful in the search for asteroids is Peters, of Clinton, United States (Prof. Peters is a German by birth, however), with twenty-seven ; next Luther, of Bilk, with twenty ; and third, Watson, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with twenty. Goldsehmidt, a French painter, discov- eted fourteen ; Boreily and our Hind, ten. These six have thus discovered 101 of the 175 asteroids at/present known. After them come De Gasparis afid Palisa, with nine each; Pogson, of Madras, with seven’; Chacornac and Paul Henry, with six each; Prosper Henry and Tempel, with five; and Perrotin, with four, bringing up the total to 149. Of the remaining twenty-three, three were discov- eted by Ferguson ; two by Olbers, Hencke, and but for the great number of asteroids already known, have naturally occurred during the prog- tess of discovery. Thus the asteroid Irene was discovered by De Gasparis, independently, a few A RING OF WORLDS... Ps epi yo Se rs i¢ i. ** cy Fe t days after Hind had marked it for his own (May 19, 1851). Hn revanche, De Gasparis discovered Payche on March 19, 1852, while Hind, who had seen the planet on January 18th, but had been pre- vented by bad weather from reobserving it, satis- fied himself on March 18th of its planetary charac- ter. While Hind was planning a vigorous search after the planet, news reached him that De Gas- paris had discovered it. Goldschmidt, on Sep- tember 19, 1857, discovered two asteroids, which chanced that night to be within a distance from each other equal to about one-third of the ap- parent diameter of the moon. No other astron- omer has ever had the good fortune to capture two of these wandering bodies on the same night and within the same telescopic field of view. But the planet Alexandra was discovered by Goldschmidt, at Paris, on September 10, 1858, and the planet Pandora by Mr. Searle, of Albany, New York, on the same night, only a few hours later. The asteroid Melete, really discovered, on September 9, 1857, was not recognized as a new planet till 1858, having been for a long time mis- taken for the asteroid Daphne. The latter had been lost since May, 1856, and Goldschmidt, its discoverer, was looking for it in September, 1857, when he found Melete. When Melete was proved by Schubert’s calculations to be a different body, . fresh search had to be made for Daphne; but she was not found till August 31, 1862, having been thus lost more than six years. One feature of M. Goldschmidt’s labors in this field of researeh is worthy of mention, Most of the astronomers who have added to the list of known asteroids were professional observers, employed in well-provided observatories. Gold- schmidt was a painter by profession, and the telescopes with which he observed were succes- sively, as he could afford to extend his observa- tional resources, of two inches’, 2} inches’, and four inches’ aperture only. “ None of M. Gold. schmidt’s telescopes,” says Mr. Main, of the Rad- cliffe Observatory, ‘‘ were mounted equatorially” (that is, so as to follow any star to which they might be directed by a single motion), “ but in the greater number of instances were pointed out of a window which did not command the whole of the sky.” : Having now nearly two hundred of these bodies to deal with, we can form a safer opinion, than in Olbers’s time, of the theory whether they are fragments of an exploded planet. The an- swer to this question comes in no doubtful terms. One fact alone suffices to show clearly that they cannot have had a common origin, The least

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sun; Doris, 262,000,000; Hygeia, 259,000,000, and soon. So that Cybele, at her nearest to the sun, is farther from him by nearly 80,000,000 two planets were originally parts of a single one, their orbits after the explosion would have inter- sected. It is utterly impossible that, if this had been so, subsequent perturbations could have separated the paths by so enormous a distance as 90,000,000 miles at the place even of nearest approach. But while the discovery of multitudinous members of this ring of worlds has rendered Ol- bers’s theory of the explosion of a single planet between Mars and Jupiter utterly untenable, it has brought to our knowledge a remarkable rela- tion which points very clearly to the real origin of the ring system of planets. When as yet only half as many asteroids had been discovered as are now known, Prof. Kirk- wood, of Bloomington, Indiana, arranging these bodies in the order of their mean distances from the sun, noticed that certain gaps exist, in such sort that no asteroids travel at or nearly at cer- tain mean distances from the sun. And looking more closely into these missing distances, he ob- served that they correspond to the distance of the giant planet Jupiter in this way, that a planet traveling at any one of these missing distances would have motions with those of Jupiter, in the same sense in which the vibrations of one note synchronize with the vibrations of another in harmony with it. For instance, there is a well-marked gap at a distance from the sun exceeding our earth’s in the proportion of 5 to 2; now a planet traveling at this distance would make three circuits while Jupiter makes one. There is another gap at a distance somewhat ex- ceeding three and a quarter times the earth’s ; and a planet at this distance would travel twice round the sun while Jupiter travels once round in the very heart of the ring, is the gap « sponding to the distance of a planet which travel five times round the sun while travels twice round him. There are two also, where a planet would travel seven round—1]. During two circuits; and, 2, three cireuits, of Jupiter. e: Before inquiring into the meaning of this culiarity, we note that now, when twice as ma asteroids have been discovered, the peculiarity i better marked even than when Kirkwood firs noticed it. He was justified in saying, as he di in 1868, that the coincidences are not : for the odds were enormously against the o e arrangement, and its accidental occurrence so up likely as to be practically impossible. But had the arrangement been accidental with the . cova arias known to Kicwest & sahil but have happened that some of the since discovered would have had mean corresponding to those gaps or lacuna, however, has not only not happened, but the gregation of asteroids at distances where wood had already noticed that they were numerous, has become still more decided. We are led back, in our inquiry into the nificance of this singular relation, to the ti when our solar system was gradually from its former nebulous condition. ring of nebulous fragments, not as yet into a single mass, The process of would depend in considerable degree on the die turba..ces to which the fragments were If they were all moving in concentric orbits, were not disturbed at all, there would be no lisions, and they would remain as a ring of ments. It might seem, then, at a first view, th the zone of asteroids was most favorably: for aggregation into planet form, being under t special perturbing influence of Jupiter, the tiest of all the planets. But excessive would be by no means favorable to the of a single planet. The nebulous matter churned by perturbations, but it must not seattered by them; and this is what Jup action on the planetoidal ring has done. a tity of matter, again, would be a very point in the process of aggregation. A crowded with nebulous fragments would teem with aggregations, which would before gather into a few large masses, which in would aggregate into one. But ina region nebulous matter was very sparsely strewed, ag gregations would not readily form, however migh-

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vu ste tres wy Bhatia rt Lae Pies DS os A RING OF WORLDS. tily the region might be disturbed. The very ac- tivity of the disturbing forces might, in this case, check the process of aggregation. The two bod- jes which had once come into collision would travel on intersecting orbits, and would therefore before long come into collision, if not perturbed ; but if perturbed, their orbits would cease to eoalesce ; 80 that the action of a great disturb- ing planet might prevent a process of aggrega- tion which had already commenced. Now, we know that the quantity of matter in the region where the asteroids travel is less than in any other zone of the solar system. We do not know how many asteroids there are, but we do know how much they all weigh; at least, we know that altogether their weight is not more than a fourth of our earth's, and is probably a great deal less. And the zone over which they fange is very much larger than the zone over which our earth may be regarded as bearing sway. Their zone being thus poverty-stricken, and Jupiter’s mighty mass in their neighborhood perturbing them too actively to allow of their aggregation, they remain as a ring of fragments. ~ And now let the signs of Jupiter’s influence in this respect be noticed. He would perturb all these fragments pretty equally in a single revo- lation of his. But those whose periods syn- chronized with his own would be more seriously perturbed. For the disturbance produced in one set of revolutions which brought any asteroid and Jupiter back to the position they had before those revolutions began, would be renewed in the hext similar set, and in the next, and so on, un- til one of two things happened. Either the as- teroid would be thrown entirely out of that peri- édie motion which had brought it thus under Japiter’s effectively disturbing influence, or, being Set traveling on a markedly eccentric path, it would be brought into collision with some of the Beighboring asteroids, and would cease to have Separate existence, or at least move thencefor- ward on a changed orbit. Thus those asteroids having a period synchronizing with that of Jupi- ter would be gradually eliminated, and we should find gaps in the ring of worlds precisely where gps actually exist. ST ishis cin’ bien sasounebte Seuhe Sandon marked gaps were produced in the manner here described. Their existence can indeed be ex- plained in no other way, and can be so satisfac- torily explained in this way that assurance is made doubly sure. But now consider the significance of this re- sult. Imagine the asteroidal ring as it now ex- ists to be redistributed, the gaps being filled up. The process we have described would immedi- ately come into operation, But many millions of years would be required before it could elimi- nate even a few among the asteroids having those synchrovous periods which expose them to accumulating perturbations. Only one of the two processes above described would really be effec- tive. Mere change of period would be oscilla- tory. We have an instance of the kind in the motions of Jupiter and Saturn, which very nearly synchronize, Saturn going almost exactly twice round the sun while Jupiter goes five times round. But, though for a long period of time accumulating perturbations lengthen Saturn's period (and shorten Jupiter’s), after a while the time comes when these changes are reversed ; then Saturn’s period begins to shorten (and Ju- piter’s to lengthen). The changes carry these periods on either side of their mean value, just as the swinging of a pendulum carries it on either side of its mean position. 8So it would be with an asteroid mightily perturbed by Jupiter: its period would oscillate more widely, but still _ it would oscillate; and during the middle of the oscillation (just as a pendulum at the middle of its swing is in its mean position) the asteroid would have that synchronous period which, as we have seen, none of the asteroids in point of fact possess.. We must look, then, to collisions to cause the gaps in the ring of worlds. But how rare must such collisions be among minute bodies like the asteroids, even though they be hundreds of thousands in number, occupying a domain in space so vast as that which belongs to this system! The width of the ring greatly ex- ceeds the earth’s distance from the sun, amount- ing in fact to more than 120,000,000 miles. Its innermost edge is more than 200,000,000 miles from the sun. It is not a flat ring, but shaped like an anchor-ring (or a wedding-ring), and is as thick as it is wide—insomuch that a cross- section of the ring would be a mighty cirele, more than 120,000,000 miles in diameter. Amid this enormous space 1,000,000 asteroids, each five hundred miles in diameter (and none of the asteroids are so large, while the number even of those exceeding ene hundred miles in diam- eter scarcely amounts to a hundred), would be as widely scattered as 1,000,000 grains of sand would be in such a space as the interior of St. Peter’s, at Rome. Take a cubical block of sand- stone, one inch in length, breadth, and thick- ness, crumble it into finest sand-dust, and imagine this dust scattered in the interior of that great

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ad er 478 bailding. How small would be the chance that “any two particles from that tiny heap would ‘come into collision during months of their aérial wanderings! Very much smaller would be the risk of a single collision between asteroids dur. ing millions of years as they travel (all the same Way round, be it noticed) on their wide orbits, even though their number were a hundred-fold greater than it is, and their volumes increased a million-fold. Either, then, we must imagine innumerable millions of years to have elapsed since the ring Of asteroids first existed, and that very gradually the synchronous asteroids have been eliminated by collisions, or else we are forced to the con- clusion that the formation of this ring of worlds, or rather this series of rings, belongs to an ear- lier era of our solar system's history, when the matter whence the rings were one day to be formed was in the nebulous condition. It ap- pears to us that the latter conclusion is alto- gether the more probable. We escape none of the difficulties of the problem by adopting the former conclusion, while many other difficulties are introduced. By the latter, we simply have the same difficulties to encounter which apper- tain to all forms of the nebular hypothesis re- specting the origin of the solar system. These difficulties are great, because the distance over which we endeavor to look back is great; but they are not insuperable. The positive evidence for the general theory becomes stronger and stronger as astronomical research advances; and the mere circumstance that it is surrounded by difficulties can in no sense lead us to abandon _ it, although compelling us to admit that as yet we have not thoroughly mastered its details. The asteroids themselves supply an argument in favor of the nebular theory, rendering its proba- bility so strong as practically to amount to cer- tainty ; for the antecedent probability against the observed uniformity of direction of the 175 aste- toids by chance, or in any conceivable way ex- cept as the result of some process of evolution, is equal to that of tossing either “head” or “tail” 175 times running, or about 23,945,290,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,- 000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. Adopting the nebular theory, we must of course adopt with it the conclusion respecting the origin of the asteroids, to which, as we have seen above, we are led by the examination of the relations presented by this system—viz., that “while still existing as a great ring of nebulous masses, they were to such degree perturbed by THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Jupiter’s mighty attraction upon them, as on 7 one hand to be prevented from forming into single planet, and on the other to be sorted oui if one may so speak, into several rings with marked gaps between them, these gaps corn. sponding exactly with the distances at whith planets would be most effectively disturbed by Jupiter. The close accordance between ther sults to which we are led by a posteriori andiw Priori considerations affords strong evidence ig favor of both lines of reasoning. But it is very noteworthy, also, that when seeing the probe bility of the conclusions toward which we hate been led, we inquire whether any similar cage exists within our solar system, and, if so, whether the evidence in that case corresponds with that which ‘we have obtained in the case we have been considering, we find the most striking ev oy tte eager on entceg of ental long been regarded as consisting of minute satellites, Thus it resembles the zoneef asteroids, only it is relatively much more crowded. Now, in the ring system of Saturn there are gaps or relatively vacant divisions separating rings of closely-clustering satellites. Distinguished among all these gaps by superior breadth and darknem is the great division separating what were fob merly called the two rings from each othe Here, for a breadth of nearly 2,000 miles, so few satellites travel, that to ordinary observation the great division looks black, though, closely seru nized, it is found to be simply very dark. Now when we inquire whether satellites moving round this open space would have periods synchronizing with that of the innermost (and therefore mom effectively disturbing) of his moons, we discovg these remarkable facts—that a satellite | travel in the very middle of the dark divisiond® open space if its period were one-half that of the innermost of Saturn’s moons, and almost on same track, if its period were one-fourth that of the innermost moon but two, while it would be | well within the open space, but nearer its inne edge, if its period were one-third that of the im nermost moon but one, or one-sixth that of the innermost moon but three. It follows unmistale ably from these relations, first noted by Prof Kirkwood, that the great division in Saturn's rings has been swept and garnished by the action of the four mnermost of Saturn’s moons, bat especially by the innermost of all. ‘This fatt corresponds so well with the nebular hypothesis, and is so utterly inexplicable on any other, a8 strongly to corroborate an opinion, expressed by the present writer twelve years ago, that the Pa -BBBREPe33 sm ¢ “ ® “SER EES PGerREse gre ey FSSERALSE SERIE Fees

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= f BS ve wi Bd hag a “& severe discipline, can’ be taught to carry a parish, having been taken when about three eek RCSL RE Se R eee SARA ESE STE TAR eT Rae R SEER Fale es ek, TAME BEARS IN ‘SWEDEN. — of the Saturnian ring system would one day be found to afford “a key to the law of ; under which the solar system has feached its present development.” The same - gnay now confidently be said respecting the ring of worlds traveling between the orbits of Mars and Japiter. It has already enabled us to weigh the giant Jupiter afresh; it has given excellent measures, and promises to give yet better meas- ures, of the dimensions of the solar TAME BEARS IN SWEDEN. ¢ Br JOHN WAGER. is well known tliat the bear, by a course of long pole'in his paws or a pert monkey upon his back, to dance to the music of pipe and drum, and to perform tricks which the solemn gravity of his demeanor, his clumsy motions, and shaggy Hide, render the more amusingly grotesque, He may also ‘be seen, in the den of a menagerie, to Jeap through a comparatively small ring encir- led with flame, associated, during the perform- dice only, with leopards and a hyena; though the uncouthness and reluctance with which he decomplishes the feat, contrasted with the grace- ful and ready spring of the leopards, is enough to make the hyena laugh; while, of all the perform- ers, he has evidently the most intractable temper, gentleman at Siknias, in Venjan, an adjoining weeks old, from the adjacent forest, in February, 3865. Being fed with warm milk, young Bruin throve satisfactorily, and, when large enough to enjoy liberty, he usually sojourned in the yard with the hear-dog “ Jeppe,” playing and spring- ing about his companion like a cat. He was" tion. Strangers who visited Siknis always re- ceived his attentions; but as these were some- what brusque, and expressed in‘a surly tone, they tended rather to repel than attract. To Swedish punch (a luscious compound of arrack and sugar) he was extremely partial, and partook of it, whenever invited, out of a glass, like a well-bred gentleman, but afterward show- ing his loutish and lumpish nature in a drunken fit, conclading with heavy sleep and loud snores. — One day, while Bruin was yet of tender years, a kitten carve into the yard and immediately drew his surprised attention upon herself; but young Puss, not admiring his looks, first cast upon him an angry glance, and then sprang up and fixed her claws in his head, exciting such alarm that he trotted off in a nervous perspiration, and en- sconced himself in an out-house. Subsequently he always fied at the sight of this cat, though she was the only one of which he showed fear. Bruin took a daily bath in the river, which flows within a stone’s-throw of the house; swim- ming across and back again. He then trotted to an ice-cellar, the roof of which was easily acces- projected considerably beyond the rest; toward the end of this he used to creep warily, to enjoy the swinging motion that resulted. It was a mode of recreation of which he frequently availed him- self. Whenever he could intrude into the kitchen he bemeanied himself like an officious and med- dlesome husband, disordering affairs, greatly to the vexration of the domestics, to whose castiga- tions with a stout knob-stick he payed little re- gard. One day he laid hold of a coffee-pan that stood on the hearth, and was conveying it in his sible and covered with deal boards, one of whieh © ~

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480 THE POPULAR SCIENOK MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. paws to the yard, when the hot contents, over- flowing on his bosom, provoked him to cast it on the ground and flatten it with a stroke of his paw. , He would also, when opportunity occurred, smug- ‘gle himself into the larder (a detached building), looking round first to see that he was not ob- served, then bring out some article, especially a cheese, which he found convenient to carry ; but on.one occasion he made free with a tub of clouted milk and cream, handling it, however, so awk- wardly that the ropy tenacious contents streamed down the front of his erected corpus, and, as in ‘ the case of the coffee-pan, brought vengeance on the tub. After fruitless endeavors, with tongue and claws, to clear the viscous mass from his best fer coat, he betook himself to the river, and then solaced himself with a swing. This partiality for swinging or rocking ren- dered him an undesirable companion in a boat ; yet he constantly followed his owner to the river- side, and, if not admitted as a passenger, would swim after the boat, grunting like a hog. During one river-excursion which he had been allowed to share he enjoyed as usual his rocking, till the boat, gliding down the river, entered a stormy rapid, when he became quite agitated with fear, trembling in every limb, and Holding on each side ,of the boat so long as it remained in the welter- ing foree. When indulged with a ride by land, he would sometimes leap on the shafts of the vehicle, and, placing a hind-leg on each, rest his fore-paws on the horse’s back. As he grew older it was found necessary to impose some check upon his movements, and for this purpose a chain, with a log at the end of it, was attached to a collar round his neck. Such badge of servitude and interference with the lib- erty of a free-born bear was not to be borne. At first he tried to strike off the log with his paws ; then he dragged it to the river, but was vastly irritated to find that, after every attempt to sink it, the audacious log came to the surface again. Finally he dug a hole, put the log into it, and re- placed the earth, stamping or pressing it down; then, apparently satisfied with his work, he at tempted to move off, but found himself in a worse _ fix than before; however, after sundry curvets — and angry jerks, the chain broke, and he re gained his freedom, leaving his incumbrance in the grave. In concluding siaeuten anusieaaenal ish friend remarked: “These are but a fewof Bruin’s traits and droll tricks, which must be seen to be fully enjoyed. At present he lich quietly in his winter lair, but imagine his hamer when he leaves it in spring; he is then no agree! able companion, especially for the kitchen-maiday toward whom, and the fair sex in general, be shows the greatest disregard.” mo Poor Bruin! he must indeed have got up on the wrong side of the bed, for he became so um bearably troublesome and subject to such moods, that, as I afterward learned, at the a tie. ee and executed accordingly. Another young, bear, captured in the of 1869, was kept for about two years at Ekshie» rad, in Wermland ; ip Yc dangerously ferocious, and consequently was shot.. A tame bear, kept at Sné-an, had tally one Saturday evening got locked up in smithy, and, not liking to remain ina on @ Sunday, attempted to escape through s opening in the roof. But to reach this Bru had to clamber upon a lever, which, under pressure of his weight, opened the te, and, turning the water upon the wheel, set 1 great hammer to work. Evidently annoyed its persistent motion and noise, he appears have grasped the hammer in his paws with tent to stop it; but the contest proved his strength, for the neighbors, hearing loud hastened to the smithy and found him lying the anvil, having received a death-blow ST CPTTTTTTTT TeYEREEES. rrrviterttrtereete ee a Se @ 4 x —— = =

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EQUALITY." Br MATTHEW ARNOLD. HERE is a maxim which we all know, which oceurs in our copy-books, which eccurs in that solemn and beautiful formulary against which the Nonconformist genius is just now so angrily ebafing—the burial-service. The maxim is this: “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” Ivis taken from one of the chapters of the Epis- tles to the Corinthians ; but originally it is a line @f poetry, of Greek poetry. Quid Athenis et Fieresolymis ! aske a Father; what have Athens and Jerusalem te do with one another? Well, atany rate, the Jerusalemite Paul, exhorting his converts, enforces what he is saying by a verse of Athenian comedy, a verse, probably, from the great master of that comedy, a man unsurpassed for fine and just observation of human life, Menan- der. O0hpevew 0q xpheE durian xaxal—“ Evil communications corrupt good manners.” , ~~ in that collection of single, sententious lines, printed at the end of Menander’s fragments, where we now find the maxim quoted by St. Paul, there is another striking maxim, not alien certainly to the language of the Christian reli- gion, but which has not passed into our copy- books: “Choose equality and flee greed.” The same profound observer, who laid down the max- im so universally accepted by us that it has be- ome commonplace, the maxim that evil com- munications corrupt good manners, laid down too, as a no less sure result of the accurate study ‘of buman life, this other maxim also: “ Choose "—"lebryta Valped aa oWPleenexia, or greed, the wishing and trying for the bigger share, we know under the name of covetousness. We understand by covetousness something different from what pleoneria really Means: we understand by it the longing for other People’s goods; and covetousness, so understood, it is a commonplace of morals and of religion with us that we should shun. As to the duty of pursuing equality, there is no such consent ‘mongus. Indeed, the consent is the other way, the consent is against equality. Equality before the law we all take as a matter of course; that is not the equality which we mean when we talk of equality, When we talk of equality we un- derstand social equality ; and for equality in this 2 Address delivered at the Royal Institution. 67 Frenchified sense of the term almost everybody in England has a hard word. About four years ago Lord Beaconsfield held it up to reprobation in a speech to the students at Glasgow—a speech so interesting, that being asked soon afterward to hold a discourse at Glasgow, I said that if one spoke there at all at that time, it would be impos- sible to speak on any other subject than equal- ity. However, it is a great way to Glasgow, and I never yet have been able to go and speak there. But the testimonies against equality have been steadily accumulating from the date of Lord Beaconsfield’s Glasgow speech down to the present hour, when Sir Erskine May winds up his new and important “ History of Democracy” by saying: “France has aimed at social equal- ity. The fearful troubles through which she has passed have checked her prosperity, demoralized her society, and arrested the intellectual growth of her people.” Mr. Froude is more his own master than I am, and he has been able to go to Edinburgh and to speak there upon equality. Mr. Froude told his bearers that equality splits a nation into “a multitude of disconnected units,” that “the masses require leaders whom they can trust,” and that “ the natural leaders in a healthy country are the gentry.” And only just before “The History of Democracy ” came out, we had that exciting passage of arms between Mr. Lowe and Mr. Gladstone, where equality, poor thing, received blows from them both. Mr. Lowe de- clared that “no concession should be made to the cry for equality, unless it appears that the state is menaced with more danger by its refusal than by its admission. No such case exists now or ever has existed in this country.” And Mr, Gladstone replied that equality was so utterly unattractive to the people of this country, ine- quality was so dear to their hearts, that to talk of concessions being made to the cry for equality was absurd. “There is no broad political idea,” says Mr. Gladstone, quite truly, “which has en- tered less into the formation of the political sys- tem of this country than the love of equality.” And he adds: “It is not the love of equality which has carried into every corner of the coun- try the distinct, undeniable popular preference, wherever other things are equal, for a man who is a lord over a man who is not. The love of

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488° «THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. - - freedom itself is hardly stronger in England than the love of aristocracy.” Mr. Gladstone goes on to quote a saying of Sir William Molesworth, that with our people the love of aristocracy “is a religion.” And he concludes in his copious and eloquent way: “Call this love of inequality by what name you please—the complement of the love of freedom, or its negative pole, or the shad- _ @w which the love of freedom casts, or the re- verberation of its voice in the halls of the con- stitution—it is an active, living, and life-giving power, which forms an inseparable essential ele- ment in our political habits of mind, and asserts itself at every step in the processes of our sys- tem.” And yet, on the other side, we have a consum- mate critic of life like Menander, delivering, as if there were no doubt at all about the matter, the maxim, “ Choose equality!” An Englishman with any curiosity must surely be inclined to ask himself how such a maxim can ever have got es- tablished, and taken rank along with “ Evil coi- munications corrupt good manners.” Moreover, we see that among the French, who have suffered 80 grievously, as we hear, from choosing equal- ity, the most gifted spirits continue to believe passionately in it nevertheless. “The human ideal, as well as the social ideal, is,” says George Sand, “to achieve equality.” She calls equality “the goal of man and the law of the future.” She asserts that France is the most civilized of nations, and that its preéminence in civilization it owes to equality. But Menander lived a long while ago, and George Sand was an enthusiast. Perhaps their differing from us about equality need not trouble us much. France, too, counts for but one nation, as England counts for one, also, Equality may be. a religion with the people of France, as in- equality, we are told, is a religion with the people of England. But what do other nations seem to think about the matter? Now this is most cer. tainly not a lecture on law and the rules of be- quest, But it is evident that in the societies of Europe, with a constitution of property euch as that which the feudal middle age left them with —a constitution of property full of inequality— the state of the law of bequest shows us how far each society wishes the inequality to continue. The families in poseession of great estates will not break them up if they can help it. The own- ers will do all they can, by entail and settlement, to prevent their successors from breaking them up. They will preserve inequality. Freedom of bequest, then, the power of making entails and settlements, is sure, in an old European like ours, to maintain inequality. And with ; who have the religion of inequality, the y entailing and settling, and of willing one likes, exists, as is well known, in singularfull nese—greater fullness than in any country of the Continent. The proposal of a measure as the Real Estates Intestacy Bill is, in a - like ours, perfectly puerile. A European country like ours, wishing not to preserve inequality to abate it, can only do so by interfering freedom of bequest. This is what Turgoty the wisest of French statesmen, pronounced befote the Revolution to be necessary, and what was done in France at the great Revolution. ; The Code Napoléon, the actual law of France, forbids entails altogether, and leaves a man free to di pose of but one-fourth of his property, of what ever kind, if he have three children or morejef one-third if he have two children, of one-half # he have but one child. Only in the rare cage. therefore, of a man’s having but one child, ay ao uhhh tshetha whaloof Seadeanaan If there are two children, two-thirds of the erty must be equally divided between them there are more than two, three-fourths, Inthis ene ee equality about. : scenataatenassaanasial know how far other European communities, let in the same situation with us and France, having immense inequalities of class and property created for them by the middle age, have dealt with thee inequalities by means of the law of bequest. De they leave bequest free, as we do? then, likeus, they.are for inequality. Do they interfere wih the freedom of bequest, as France does? the, like France, they are for equality. And we sha be most interested, surely, by what the most eivit ized European communities do in this - communities such as those of Germany, j Belgium, Holland, Switzerland. And among thew communities we are most concerned, I think, with such as, in the conditions of freedom and of edt government which they demand for their life, a most like ourselves. Germany, for instance, #® shall less regard, because the conditions whi the Germans seem to accept for their life are @ unlike what we demand for ours; there is so much personal government there, so much junkeriam, militarism, officialism ; the community is so much more trained te submission than we could best, 80 much more used to be, as the popular phrase is, sat upon. Countries where the community b@ more a will of its own, or can more show it, af FE SEES TEST vert oon FEE ——— 7 rear

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BEGRESGeeaS RSS TEES Se SHEETS RESSSES SREP ERTSERT SI e Foe sss the most important for our present purpose—such gountries as Belgium, Holland, Italy, Switzerland. Well, Belgium adopts purely and simply, as to bequest and inheritance, the provisions of the simply. Italy has adopted them substantially. Switzerland is a republic, where the general feel- ing against inequality is strong, and where it might seem less necessary, therefore, to guard against inequality by interfering with the power of bequest. Each canton has its own law of be- quest. In Geneva, Vaud, and Zurich—perbaps the three most distinguished cantons—it is iden- tical with that of France. In Berne, one-third is thé fixed proportion which a man is free to dis- pose of by will; the rest of his property must go aniong his children equally. In all the other can- tous there are regulations of a like kind. Ger- iany, I was saying, will interest us less than these freer countries. In Germany—though there isnot the English freedom of bequest, but the tile of the Roman law prevails, the rule obliging the parent to assign a certain portion to each ¢hild—in Germany entails and settlements in fa- tor of an eldest son are generally permitted. But there is a remarkable exception. The Rhine coun- trits, which in the early part of this century were . tnder French rule, and which then received the @ode Napoléon, these countries refused to part with it when they were restored to Germany ; and w this day Rhenish Prussia, Rhenish Hesse, and Baden, have the French law of bequest, forbid- ding entails, and dividing property in the way we lave seen. »% The United States of America bave the Eng- lah liberty of bequest. But the United States ate, like Switzerland, a republic, with the repub- lican sentiment for equality. Theirs is, besides, #ttew society; it did not inherit the system of classes and of property which feudalism formed it Europe. The class by which they were set- led was not a class with feudal habits and ideas. ft is notorious that to hold great landed estates dnd to entail them upon an eldest son, is neither the practice nor the desire of any class in Amer ‘i, I remember hearing it said to an American fn England, “ But, after all, you have the same freedom of bequest and inheritance as we have, 4nd if a man to-morrow chose in your country to @utail a great landed estate rigorously, what could Youdo?” The American answered, “Set aside the will on the ground of insanity.” You see we are in a manner taking the votes ‘for and against equality: We ought not to leave eat our own colonies. In general they are, of 4688.‘ = ° course, like the Pnited States of America, new societies. They have the English liberty of be- quest, But they have no feudal past, and were not settled by a class with feudal habits and ideas. Nevertheless it happens that there have arisen, in Australia, exceedingly large estates, and that the proprietors seek to keep them together. And what have we seen happen lately? An act has been passed which im effect inflicts a fine upon every proprietor who holds a landed estate of more than a certain value. The measure has been severely blamed in England; to Mr. Lowe such a “concession to the cry for equality ” ap- pears, as we might expect, pregnant with warn- ings. At present I neither praise it nor blame it; I simply take it as one of the votes for equality. And is it not a singular thing, I ask you, that while we have the religion of inequality, and can hard- ly bear to hear equality spoken of, there should be, among the nations of Europe which have po- litically most in common with us, and in the United States of America, and in our own colo- nies, this diseased appetite, as we must think it, for equality? Perhaps Lord Beaconsfield may not have turned your minds to this subject as he turned mine, and what Menander or George Sand happen to have said may not interest you much ; yet surely, when you think of it, when you see what 8 practical revolt against inequality there is among 80 many people not so very unlike to our- selves, you must feel some curiosity to sift the matter a little further, and may be not ill-disposed to follow me while I try to do se. I have received a letter from Clerkenwell, in which the writer reproaches me for lecturing about equality at this which he calls “the most aristocratic and exclusive place out.” I am here because your secretary invited me. But I am glad to treat the subject of equality before such an audience as this. Some of you may remember that I have roughly divided our English society iuto Barbarians, Philistines, Populace, each of them with their prepossessions, and loving to hear what gratifies them. But I remarked, at the same time, that scattered throughout all these three classes were a certain number of generous and humane souls, lovers of man’s perfection, detached from the prepossessions of the class to which they might naturally belong, and desirous that he who speiks to them should, as Plate says, not try to please his fellow-servants, but his true and legitimate masters, the heavenly gods. I feel sure that, among the members and frequenters of an institution like this, euch hu- mane souls are apt to congregate in numbers.

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: rh," Spe hee » a gt es er Pd asd er Ae - is fe Pe See ee “4 _— - ai aie wy ne sp a 4 oa” aha 4 +4 SS - bsp tot ae id aoe ere yt ee ’ + 7 Severe is ae - ¢ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. —SUPPLEMENT. Even from the reproach which my Clerkenwell friend brings against you of being too aristocratic, I derive some comfort. Only I give to the term aristocratic a rather wide extension. An accom- plished American, much known and much es- teemed in this country, the late Mr. Charles Sum- ner, says that what particularly struck him in England was the large class of gentlemen as dis- tinct from the nobility, and the abundance among them of serious knowledge, high accomplishment, and refined taste—taste fastidious perhaps, says Mr. Sumner, to excess, but erring on virtue’s side. And he goes on: “I do not know that there is much difference between the manners and social observances of the highest classes of England and those of the corresponding classes of France and Germany ; but in the rank immediately below the highest—as among the professions, or military men, or literary men—there you will find that the Englishmen have the advantage. They are better educated and better bred, more careful in their personal habits and in social conventions, more refined.” Mr. Sumner’s remark is just and important ; this large class of gentlemen in the professions, the services, literature, politics—and a good contingent is now added from business also—this large class, not of the nobility but with the accomplishments and tastes of an upper class, is something peculiar to England. Of this class I may probably assume that my present audience is in large measure composed. It is aristocratic in this sense, that it has the tastes of a cultivated class, a certain high standard of civilization. Well, it is in its effects upon civili- zation that equality interests me. And I speak to an audience with a high standard of civilization. If I say, certain things in certain classes do not come up to a high standard of civilization, I need not prove how and why they do not; you will feel whether they do or not. If they do not, I need not prove that this is a bad thing, that a high standard of civilization is desirable; you will instinctively feel that it is. Instead of calling this “ the most aristocratic and exclusive place out,” I conceive of it as a civilized place ; and in speaking about civilization half one’s labor is saved when one speaks about it among those “ who are civilized. Politics are forbidden here; but equality is not a question of English politics. The abstract right to equality may, indeed, be a question of speculative politics. French equality appeals to this abstract natural ‘right as its support. It goes back to a state of Nature where all were equal; and supposes that “the poor consented,”

as Rousseau says, “to the existence of rich : ple,” reserving always natural right to We to the state of Nature. It supposes that a has a natural right to his equal share in hig — father’s goods. The principle of abstract right, says Mr. Lowe, has never been admitted in land, and is false. I so entirely agree with him, that I run no risk of offending by discussing equality upon the basis of this principle. So far as I can sound human consciousness, I cannot, as I have often said, perceive that man is really conscious of any abstract natural rights at all; — The natural right to have work found for one do, the natural right to have food found for one to eat, rights sometimes so confidently and so in dignantly asserted, seem to me quite baselesg — It cannot be too often repeated—peasants and workmen have no natural rights, not one. Only we ought instantly to add, that kings and nobles have none either. If it is the sound Englisls doc trine that all rights are created by law and are based on expediency, and are alterable as the public advantage may require, certainly that on thodox doctrine is mine. Property is crested and maintained by law. It would disappearin that state of private war and scramble which | for the common good, the right of property,and — for the common good that right is by legal soci ty limitable. That property should exist, and is that it should be held with a sense of security — and with a power of disposal, may be taken; by us here at any rate, as a settled matter of expe _ diency. With these conditions a good deal of — inequality is inevitable. But that the power of disposal should be practically wnlimited, that the — inequality should be enormous, or that the degree _ of inequality admitted at one time should bead mitted alwaye—this is by no means so certéim — The right of bequest was in early times, as Sit Henry Maine and Mr. Mill have pointed out, sek dom recognized. In later times it has been list ~ ited in many countries in the way that we hate seen; even in England itself it is not formally quite unlimited. The question is one of expe diency. It is assumed, 1 grant, with great um nimity among us, that our signal inequality of classes and property is expedient for our civiliza-— tion and welfare. But this assumption, of which the distinguished personages who adopt it seem so sure that they think it needless to produce grounds for it, is just what we have to examine. Now, there is a sentence of Sir Erskine May; whom I have already quoted, which will bring-u® straight to the very point that I wish to raise:

ee ae F FS ~< mate PET TTTTr ere : % z | ve

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soe =. ES oe) a *’ so Py nn é 7S Bo BY. a BGs 8 om . « >: i $ 3 ae pial Bak Se . ' ‘ “eae Se, 0 ee Re ae Pe eS ee en Lr CSV ERs esere |] Sir Erskine May, after saying, as you have heard, that France has pursued social equality, and has lines to Gietted: troubles, dometaiiantion, end tn: tellectual stoppage, by doing so, continues thus: _ “¥et is she high, if not the first, in the scale of civilized nations.” Why, here is a curious thing, purely! A nation pursues social equality, sup- posed to be an utterly false and baneful ideal; it arrives, as might have been expected, at fearful misery and deterioration by doing so; and yet, . at the same time, it is high, if not the first, in the scale of civilized nations. What do we mean by ¢wvilized? Sir Erskine May does not seem to have asked himself the question. So we will try to answer it for ourselves. Civilization is the bumanization of man in seciety. To be human- ‘ized is to comply with the true law of our human nature: servare modum, finemque tenere, Natu- gamique sequi, says Lucan; “to keep our meas- ure, and to hold fast our end, and to follow Na- - ture.” To be humanized is to make progress toward this, our true and full humanity. And to be civilized is to make progress toward this in tivil society; in that civil society “ without ' which,” says Burke, “man could not by any pos- “sibility arrive at the perfection of which his na- ture is capable, nor even make a remote and faint approach to it.” To be the most civilized of nations, therefore, is to be the nation which ¢omes nearest to human perfection, in the state which that perfection essentially demands. And anation which has been brought by the pursuit of social equality to moral deterioration, intel- leetual stoppage, and fearful troubles, is perhaps the nation which has come nearest to human per- feetion in that state which such perfection essen- ‘tially demands! M. Michelet himself, who would deny the demoralization and the stoppage, and all the fearfal troubles a sublime expiation for - the sins of the whole world, could hardly say More for France than this. Certainly Sir Erskine May never intended to say so much. But into what a difficulty has he somehow run himeelf, aad what a good action would it be to extricate him from it! Let us see whether the perform- _tnee of that good action may not also be a way _ @f clearing our minds as to the uses of equality. ~ When we talk of man’s advance toward his full humanity, we think of an advance, not along @e line only, but several. Certain races and na- tions, as we know, are on certain lines preémi- Rent and representative. The Hebrew nation Was preéminent on one great line. “What na- ‘ton,” it was justly eaid by their lawgiver, “hath ‘Matutes and judgments so righteous as the law which I set before you this day? Keep there. fore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations which shall hear all these statutes and say, Sure- ly this great nation is a wise and understanding people!” The Hellenic race was preéminent on Otuer lines. Isocrates could say of Athens: “Our city has left the rest of the world so far behind in philosophy and eloquence, that those educated by Athens have become the teachers of the rest of mankind ; and so well has she done her part, that the name of Greeks seems no longer to stand for a race, but to stand for intelligence itself, and they who share in our culture are called Greeks even before those who are merely of our own blood.” The power of intellect and science, the power of beauty, the power of social life and manners—these are what Greece so felt, and fixed, and- may stand for. They are great ele- ments in our humanization. The power of con- duct is another great element; and this was so felt and fixed by Israel that we can never with justice refuse to allow Israel, in spite of all his shortcomings, to stand for it. So you see that in being humanized we have to move along several lines, and that on certain lines certain nations find their strength, and take a lead. We may elucidate the thing yet further. Nations now existing may be said to feel, or to have felt, the power of this or that element in our humanization so signally that they are character- ized by it. Noone who knows this country would deny that it is characterized, in a remarkable de- gree, by a sense of the power of conduct. Our feeling for religion is one part of this; our indus- try is another. What foreigners 80 much remark in us—our public spirit, our love, amid all our liberty, for public order and for stability—are parts of it, too. The power of beauty was so felt by the Italians that their art revived, as we know, the almost lost idea of beauty, and the serious and successful pursuit of it. Cardinal Antonelli, speak- ing to me about the education of the common peo- ple in Rome, said that they were illiterate, indeed, but whoever mingled with them at any public show, and heard them pass judgment on the beauty or ugliness of what came before them—“ é bruéio,” “ @ bello” —would find that their judgment agreed admirably, in general, with just what the most cultivated people would say. Even at the present time, then, the Italians are preéminent in feeling the power of beauty. The power of knowledge, in the same way, is eminently an influence with the Germans. This by no means implies, as is some- times supposed, a high and fine general culture.

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHL Y.—SUPPLEMENT. t What it implies is a strong sense of the necessi- Rimadieent oe the expression is, the things which bave to be known by us—of knowing them systematically, by the regular and right process, and in the only real way. And this sense the Germans especially have. Finally, there is the power of social life and manners. And even the Athenians themselves, perhaps, have hardly felt this power so much as the French. Voltaire, in a famous passage, where he extols the age of Louis XIV., and ranks it with the chief epochs in the civilization of our race, has to spe- cify the gift bestowed on us by the age of Louis ~ XIV., as the age of Pericles, for instance, bestowed _ On us its art and literature, and the Italian Re- mascence its revival of art and literature. And Voltaire shows all his acuteness in fixing on the gift to name. It is not the sort of gift which we expect to see named. The great gift of the age | was of Louis XIV. to the world, says Voltaire, was this: Pesprit de société—the spirit of society, the social spirit, And another French writer, looking for the good points in the old French nobility, says that this, at any rate, is to be said in their favor: they established a high and charming ideal of social intercourse and manners, for a nation formed to profit by such an ideal, and which has profited by it ever since. And in America, per. haps, we see the disadvantages of having social equality before there has been any such high standard of social life and manners formed. We are not disposed in England, most of us, to attach all this importance to social intercourse and man- ners. Yet Burke says, “There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well- formed mind would be disposed to relish.” And the power of social life and manners is truly, as we have seen, one of the great elements in our humanization. Unless we have cultivated it we are incomplete. The impulse for cultivating it is not, indeed, a moral impulse. It is by no means identical with the moral impulse to help our neigh- bor and to do him good. Yet, in many ways, it works to a like end. It brings men together, makes them feel the need of one another, be con- siderate of one another, understand one another. But, above all things, it is a promoter of equality. It is by the humanity of their manners that men are made equal. “A man thinks to show himself my equal,” says Goethe, “by being grob—that is to say, coarse and rude; he does not show him- self my equal, he shows hiroself grob.” But a community having humane manners is a commu- nity of equals, and, in such a community, great social inequalities have really no meaning, while they are, at the same time, a menace and anem. barrassment to perfect ease of social intercourse. A community with the spirit of society is . nently, therefore, a community with the spirit ¢ equality. A nation with a genius for society, like - the French or the Athenians, is irresistibly drawn toward equality. From the first moment when the French people, with its congenital sense for the power of social intercourse and manners, came into existence, it was on its road to When it had onee got « high standard of sosidl manners abundantly established, and, at the eatte time, the natural, material necessity for the feudal inequality of classes and property pressed uponit no longer, the French people introduced apd made the French Revolution. It was not the — spirit of philanthropy which mainly caused thet Revolution, neither was it the spirit of envy; it was the spirit of society. gs The well-being of the many comes out more and more distinctly, as time goes on, as the ob- ject we must pursue. An individual ora class, being exclusively, do but beget troubles both for others and for themselves also. No individual — life can be truly prosperous, passed, as Obermann says, in the midst of men who suffer—pasie au milieu des générations qui souffrent. To the noble soul, it cannot be bappy ; to the ignoble, it cannot be secure. and communistic schemes have generally, however, a fatal defect; . they are content with too low and material's. standard of well-being. That instinet of perfec- tion, which is the master-power in humanity, al- ways rebels at this, and frustrates the work. Many are to be made partakers of well-being, - true; but the ideal of well-being is not to be, on that account, lowered and coarsened. M. de La- veleye, the political economist, whe is a Belgian and a Protestant, and whose testimony, therefore, we may the more readily take about France, says that France, being the country of Europe where the soil is more divided than anywhere except in Switzerland and Norway, is at the same time the country where material well-being is most widely spread, where wealth has of late years increased most, and where population is Jeast outrunning the limits which, for the comfort and progress of — the working-classes themselves, seem necessary. This may go for a good deal. It supplies an an- swer to what Sir Erskine May says about the bad effects of equality upon French prosperity. But I will quote to you, from Mr. Hamerton, what goes, I think, for yet more. Mr. Hamerton isan excellent observer and reporter, and has lived for > Perr CiTiTe tecernet Bleee 23

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I I EA A a a a ae ee ae ” quany years in France. He says of the French | peasantry that they are exceedingly ignorant. So they are. But he adds: “They are at the same time full of intelligence ; their manners are excellent, they have delicate perceptions, they * ave tact, they have a certain refinement which @ brutalized peasantry could not possibly have. If you talk to one of them at his own home, or in his field, he will enter into conversation with you quite easily, and sustain his part in a perfectly becoming way, with a pleasant combination of dignity and quiet humor. The interval between him and a Kentish laborer is enormous.” This lis indeed worth your attention. Of course, all mankind are, as Mr. Gladstone says, of our own '\ flesh and blood. But you know how often it hap- pens in England that a cultivated person, a per- ‘son of the sort that Mr. Charles Sumner describes, talking to one of the lower class, or even of the middle class, feels, and cannot but feel, that there is somehow a wall of partition between himself and the other, that they seem to belong to two “ant, the most cultivated man may find himself in ‘sympathy, feel that he is talking to an equal. ‘This is an experience which has been made a _ (thousand times, and which may be made again sany day. And it may be carried beyond the range of mere conversation, it may be extended to things like pleasures, recreations, eating and drinking, and so on. In general the pleasures, recreations, eating and drinking of English peo- ple, when once you get below that class which Mr. Charles Sumner calls the class of gentlemen, are ‘to one of that class unpalatable and impossible. In France there is not this incompatibility. The ogentieman feels himself in a world, not alien er repulsive, but a world where people make the _ Same sort of demands upon life, in things of this “sort, which he himself does. In all these respects © Franee is the country where the people, as dis- tinguished from a wealthy, refined class, most ( lives what we call a humane life, the life of civil- ‘ized man. Of course, fastidious persons can and \ do pick holes in it. There is just now, in France, ) anoblesse newly revived, full of pretension, full of (airs and graces and disdains; but its sphere is “narrow, and out of its own sphere no one cares "‘¥ery much for it. There is a general equality in a humane kind of life. This is the secret of the - passionate attachment with which France inspires wall Frenchmen, in spite of her fearful troubles, _ her checked prosperity, her disconnected units, and the rest of it. There is so much of the goodness and agreeableness of life there, and for so many. It is the secret of her having been able to attach so ardently to her the German and Prot- estant people of Alsace, while we have been so little able to attach the Celtic and Catholic peo- ple of Ireland. France brings the Alsatians into a social system so full of the goodness and agree- ableness of life; we offer to the Irish no such at- traction. It is the secret, finally, of the preva- lence which we have remarked in other Conti- nental countries of a legislation tending, like that of France, to social equality. The social system which equality creates in France is, in the eyes of others, such a giver of the goodness and agree- ableness of life, that they seek to get the good- neas by getting the equality. Yet France has had her fearful troubles, as Sir Erskine May justly says. She suffers, too, he adds, from demoralization and intellectual stop- page. Let us admit, if he likes, this to be true also. His error is, that he attributes all this to equality. Equality, as we have seen, has brought France to a really admirable and enviable pitch of humanization in one important line. And this, the work of equality, is so much a good in Sir Erskine May’s eyes, that he has mistaken it for the whole of which it is a part, frankly identifies it with civilization, and is inclined to pronounce France the most civilized of nations. But wé have seen how much goes to full humanization, to true civilization, besides the power of social life and manners. There is the power of con- duct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the ' power of beauty. The power of conduct is the greatest of all. And without in the least wishing to preach, I must observe, as a mere matter of natural fact and experience, that for the power of conduct France has never had anything like the same sense which she has had for the power of social life and manners. Michelet, himéelf a Frenchman, gives us the reason why the Refor. mation did not succeed in France. It did not succeed, he says, because /a France ne voulait pas de réforme morale—moral reform France would not have, and the Reformation was above all a moral movement. The sense in France for the power of conduct has not greatly deepened, I think, since. The sense for the power of in- tellect and knowledge has net been adequate either. The sense for beauty has not been ad. equate. Intelligence and beauty have been, in general, but so far reached as they can be and are reached by men who, of the elements of per. fect humanization, lay thorough hold upon one

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yd tis, e ie ; a 488 «= THE POPULAR SOLENOE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Bid ey only—the power of social intercourse and man- ners. I speak of France in general; she has had, and she has, individuals who stand out and who form exceptions. Well, then, if a nation laying no true hold upon the powers of beauty and knowledge, and a most failing and feeble hold upon the power of conduct, comes to demoral- ization and intellectual stoppage and fearful troubles, we need not be inordinately surprised. What we should rather marvel at is the healing and bountiful operation of Nature, whereby the laying firm hold on one real element in our humanization has had for France results so be- neficent. And thus, when Sir Erskine May gets bewil- dered between France’s equality and fearful trou- bles on the one hand, and the civilization of France on the other, let us suggest to him that perhaps he is bewildered by his data because he combines them ill. France has not exemplary disaster and ruin as the fruits of equality, and at the same time, and independently of this, an ex- emplary civilization. She has a large measure of happiness and success as the fruits of equality, and she has a very large measure of dangers and troubles as the fruits of something else. We have more to do, however, than to help Sir Erskine May out of his scrape about France. We have to see whether the considerations which we have been employing may not be of use to us about Englard. We shall not have much difficulty in admit- ting whatever good is to be said of ourselves, and we will try not to be unfair by excluding all that is not so favorable. Indeed, our less favorable side is the one which we should be the most anxious to note, in order that we may mend it But we will begin with the good. Our people has energy and honesty as its good characteris- tics. We have a strong sense for the chief power im the life and progress of man—the power of conduct. So far we speak of the English people as a whole. Then we have a rich, refined, and splendid aristocracy. And we have, according to Mr. Charles Sumner’s acute and true remark, @ class of gentlemen, not of the nobility, but well-bred, cultivated, and refined, larger than is to be found in any other country. For these last we have Mr, Summer’s testimony. As to the splendor of our aristorcacy, all the world is agreed. Then we have a middle class and a low- er class; and they, after all, are the immense bulk of the nation. Let us see how the civilization of these classes appears to a Frenchman, who has witnessed, his own country, the considerable ue of these classes by equality. To such an . our middle class divides itself into a serious ei tion, and a gay or rowdy portion; both area marvel to him. With the gay or rowdy portion — we need nut much concern ourselves; we shall figure it to our minds sufficiently if we conceive — it as the source of that war-song produced. ig — these recent days of excitement : nag ‘s “+ We don't want to fight, but, by jingo, if wedo, »{{ We've got the ships, we've got the nent got the money too.” We may also partly judge its standard of fe nd the needs of its nature, by the modern theatre, perhaps the most contemptible in Rae rope. But the real strength of the English mid- die class is in its serious portion. And of thisg Fopocinan, whe wep bene some Hite Sennen the correspondent, I think, of the Sidele per, and whose letters were afterward in a volume, writes as follows. He hed been ae tending some of the Moody and Sankey meetings, — and he says: “ To understand the success of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, one must be familisr — with English manners, one must known the mind. deadening influenee of a narrow Biblism, one — maust have experienced the sense of acute enané whieh the aspect and the frequentatien of this — great division of English society produce im othe ers, the want of elasticity, and the chronic ennui whieh characterize this class itself, petrified ine narrow Protestantism and in a perpetual reading of the Bible.” You know the French—s little more Biblism, one may take leave to say, would — do them no harm. Bat an audience like this and here, as I said, is the advantage.ef. snail dience like this—will have no difficulty in admit ting the amount of truth which there is in the Frenchman’s picture. It is the picture of a class — which, driven by its sense for the power of com duct, in the beginning of the seventeenth cen-. tury, entered—as I have more than once said, and as I may more than ence have oceasion ip — future to say—entered the prison of Puritaniam, and had the. key turned upon its spirit there for two hundred years. They did not know, good and earnest people as they were, that to the beilding — up of human life there belong all these other — powers also—the power of intellect and know | edge, the power of beauty, the power of social — life and manners. And something, by what they - beeame, they gained, and the whole nation with them ; they deepened and fixed for this nation the coun of-eanden’. But they created a type — SESESETS PIRSSORP EERE STEER SFE FES ESSA ORURA EE ESE EHE BESO Serre

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ey — )| a. Mo) te ee eet AR ean ante Ae ae a eon ee ew ee PR 2 Rew il BE Ee bats, - of life and manners, of which they themselves indeed are slow to recognize the faults, but which is fatally condemned by its hideousness, its im- mense ennui, and against which the instinct of self-preservation in humanity rebels. Partisans fight against facts in vain. Mr. Goldwin Smith, a writer of eloquence and power, although too prone to acerbity, is a partisan of - the Puritans, and of the Nonconformists, who are the special inheritors of the Puritan tradition. He angrily resents the imputation upon that Puri- tan type of life, on which the life of our serious middle class has been formed, that it was doomed to hideousness, to immense ennui. He protests that it had beauty, amenity, accomplishment. Let ts go to facts. Charles I, who, with all his fault, had the just idea that art and letters are great civilizers, made, as you know, a famous collection of pictares—our first National Gallery. It was, T suppose, the best collection at that time north of the Alps. It contained nine Kaphaels, eleven Correggios, twenty-eight Titians. What became of that collection? The journals of the House of Commons will tell you. There you may see the Puritan Parliament disposing of this White- hall, or York House, collection, as follows: “ Or- dered, that all such pictures and statues there as are without any superstition, shall be forthwith sold... . . Ordered, that all such pictures there as have the representation of the Second Person in Trinity upon them, shall be forthwith burned. Ordered, that all such pictures there as have the representation of the Virgin Mary upon them, shall be forthwith burned.” There we have the weak side of our parliamentary government, and Our serious middle class. We are incapable of sending Mr: Gladstone to be tried at the Old Bailey because he proclaims his antipathy to Lord Beaconsfield; a majority in our House of Com- mons is incapable of hailing, with frantic laughter and applause, a string of indecent jests against Christianity and its founder; but we are not, or _ Were not, incapable of producing a Parliament which burns or sells the masterpieces of Italian _ art And one may surely say of such a Puritan Parliament, and of those who determine its line for it, that they had not the spirit of beauty. What shall we say of amenity? Milton was born a humanist, but the Puritan temper, as we know, mastered him. There is nothing more un- lovely and unamiable than Milton, the Puritan dis- putant. Some one answers his “Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.” “I mean not,” rejoins Milton, “to dispute philosophy with this pork, who never read any.” . However, he does reply to him, and throughout the reply Milton’s great joke is, that his adversary, who was anonymous, is a serving-man. “Finally, he winds up his text with interest. “Lacy Hutchinson,” says Mr. Goldwin Smith, “is painting what she thought a perfect Puritan would be ; and her picture presents to us not @ coarse, crop-eared, and snuffting fanatic, but a highly-accomplished, refined, gallant, and most amiable, though religious and seriously- minded gentleman.” Let us, I say, in this exam- ple of Mr. Goldwin Smith’s own choosing, lay our finger upon the points where this type deflects from the truly humane ideal. Mrs. Hutchinson relates a story which gives us 2 good notion of what the amiable and accomplished social inter- course, even of a picked Puritan family, was, Her husband was Governor of Nottingham. He had occasion, she says, “to go and break up private meeting in the cannoneer’s chamber ;” and in the cannoneer’s chamber “were found . some notes concerning pedobaptism, which, be- ing brought into the governor's lodgings, his wife having perused them and compared them with the Scriptures, found not what to say against the truths they asserted concerning the misapplica- tion of that ordinance to infants.” Soon after- ward she expects her confinement, and communi- cates the cannoneer’s doubts about pedobaptism to her husband. The fatal canvoneer makes a breach in him too. “Then he bought and read all the eminent treatises on both sides, which, at . that time, came thick from the presses, and still was cleared in the error of the pedobaptists.” Finally, Mrs. Hutchinson is confined. Then the

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490 ‘THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. to them. None of them could defend their prac- | _ tice with any satisfactory reason, but the tradition of the Church from the primitive times, and their main buckler of federal holiness, which Tombs and Denne had excellently overthrown. He and his wife then, professing themselves unsatisfied,- @esired their opinions.” With the opinions I will not trouble you, but hasten to the result— “ Whereupon that infant was not baptized.” No doubt, to a large division of English soci- ety at this very day, that sort of dinner and dis- cussion, and, indeed, the whole manner of life and ~ gonversation here suggested by Mrs. Hutchinson's narrative, will seem both natural and amiable, and such as to meet the needs of man both as a religious and as a social creature. You know the conversation rater enn tine memes rwacatied middle-class families at this hour about nunne- ries, teetotalism, the confessional, eternal punish- ment, ritualism, disestablishment. It goes wher- ever the class goes which is moulded on the Puri- tan type of life. In the long winter evenings of Toronto, Mr. Goldwin Smith has had, probably, abundant experience of it. What is its enemy ? The instinct of self-preservation in humanity. Men make crude types and try to impose them, but to mo purpose. “ L’homme s#agite, Dieu le méne,” says Bossuet. “ There are many devices im a man’s heart ; nevertheless, the counsel of the Eternal, that shall stand.” Those who offer us the Puritan type of life, offer us a religion not true, the claims of intellect and knowledge not satisfied, the claim of beauty not satisfied, the | tho anidile class andsharing ite faalts-aosnaydsi “I consider this multitude to be absolutely de void, not only of political principles, but even of | the most simple notions of good and evil. Cer. — tainly, it does not appeal, this mob, to the prin. ciples of ’89, which you English make game of; it does not insist on the rights of man; what it wants is beer, gin, and fun,” } That is a description of what Mr: Bright | would call the residuum, only our author seems to think the residuum a very large body. And — its condition strikes him with amazement and horror. And surely well it may. they have, notwithstanding! And this is always to be understood, in hearing or reading a Freneh- man’s praise of England. He envies our liberty, our public spirit, our trade, our stability. Bat there is always reserve in his mind. He never — means for a moment that he would like to change — with us. Life seems to him so much better a thing in France for so many more people, that, — in spite of the fearful troubles of France, it is far best to be a Frenchman. A Frenchman might — agree with Mr. Cobden, that life is good in Eng. land for those people who have at least £5,000 year. But the civilization of that immense ma- — jority who have not £5,000 a year, or £500, or even £100, of our middle and lower class, seems to him too deplorable. And now, what has this condition of our mid- dle and lower class to tell us about equality? — Let us recall Mr. Hamerton’s account of the most illiterate class in France; what an amount of civilization — claim of manners not satisfied. In its strong How is it, must we not ask, how is it that, being sense for conduct that life touches truth; but its | without fearful troubles, having, as a nation,a other imperfections hinder it from employing | deep sense for conduct, having signal energy and even this sense aright. The type mastered our | honesty, having a splendid aristocracy, having an nation fora time. Then came the reaction. we are not going to be all like that.” The type and lower class, in spite of the individuals among: retired into our middle class, and fortified itself them who are raised by happy gifts of Nature to there. It seeks to endure, to emerge, to deny its | a more humane life, in spite of the seriousness of own imperfections, to impose itself again; im- | the middle class, in spite of the general honesty possible! If we continue to live we most out-| and power of tree work, verus labor, which ‘pe grow it. The very class in which it is rooted, | vail throughout the lower, do yet present, ass our middle class, will have to acknowledge the _ whole, the characters which we have seen ? type’s inadequacy ; will have to acknowledge the And, really, it seems as if the current of our hideousness, the immense ennui of the life which discourse carried us of itself to but one conclu- this type has created ; will have to transform it- sion. It seems as if we could not avoid conclud- self thoroughly. It will have to admit the large ing that, just as France owes her fearful troubles part of truth which there is in the criticisms of to other things and her civilizedness to equality, our Frenchman, whom we have too long forgotten. 80 we owe our immunity from fearful troubles to After our middle class, he turns his attention wa reenaiemenaieens aaa to our lower class, And of the lower and larger | i “ Knowledge is easy,” says the wise man, ates teinab-ciangetinantebetaieg en |. 1 So in the original. The | exceptionally large class of gentlemen, we are — ~ mation said: “‘ This type, at any rate, is amiss; yet so little civilized? How is it that our middle — mae le hl lULrre luce eR ae lure HK CA CUD} ee aneaepfnwFwemeaenha. sa js #_~sitththieanh a= ok ofA fA cee AhOUwStlCUCcOllC eeetlCUhelC lO FlUCU rl rel lCUrlUlUc ke tlCUetlUrlCO

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a SF = pail > 5 FOF ewe. 2D me = ey ae fee | oe ee MLR Re ST eek. Sse PRS /*to him that understandeth ;” easy, he means, to him who will use his mind simply and ration- ally, and mot to make him think he can know what he cannot, cr to maintain, per fas et nefas, a false thesis with which he fancies his interests to be bound up. And to him who will use his mind as the wise man recommends, surely it is easy to see that our shortcomings in civilization are due to our inequality—or, in other words, that the inequality of classes and property, which came to us from the middle age, and which we maintain because we have the religion of inequal- ity, that this constitution of things, I- say, has the natural and necessary effect, under present circumstances, of materializing our upper cjass, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class. And this is to fail in civilization. For, only just look how the facts combine themselves. I have said little as yet about our aristocratic class, except that it is splendid. Yet these, “our often very unhappy brethren,” as Burke calls them, are by no means matter for nothing but ecstasy. Our charity ought certain- ly, as he says, to extend “a due and anxious sen- sation of pity to the distresses of the miserable great.” Burke’s extremely strong language about their miseries and defects I will not quote. For my part, I am always disposed to marvel that human beings, in a position so false, should be so good as these are. Their reason for existing was to serve as a number of centres in a world disintegrated after the ruin of the Roman Em- pire, and slowly reconstituting itself. Numerous centres of material foree were needed, and these a feudal aristocracy supplied. Their large and hereditary estates served this public end. The owners had a positive function, for which their estates were essential. In our modern world the function is gone; and the great estates, with an infinitely multiplied power of ministering to mere pleasure and indulgence, remain. The energy and honesty of our race does not leave itself without Witness, and in no class are there more conspicu- ous examples of individuals raised by happy gifts of Nature far above their fellows and their cir- cumstances. But on the whole, with no necessary function to fulfill, never conversant with life as it really is, tempted, flattered, and spoiled from childhood to old age, our aristocratic class is inevitably materialized, and the more so the more the development of industry and ingenuity aug- ments the means of luxury. Every one can see how bad is the action of such an aristocracy upon the class of newly-enriched people, whose great danger is a materialistic ideal, just because it is the ideal they can easiest comprehend. Theeffect on society at large, and on national progress, is “ what we must regard. Turn even to that ephere which aristocracies think specially their own, and where they have under other circumstances been- really effective—the sphere of politics. When there is need for any Jarge forecast of the course of human affairs, for an acquaintance with the ideas which in the end sway mankind, and for an estimate of their power, aristocracies are.out of their element, and materialist aristocracies most of all. In the immense spiritual movement of oir day, the English aristocracy, as I have said, al- ways reminds me of Pilate confronting the phe- nomenon of Christianity. Nor can a materialized class have a serious and fruitful sense for the power of beauty. They may imagine themselves in pursuit of beauty; but how often, alas, does the pursuit come to little more than dabbling a little in what they are pleased to call art, and making a great deal of what they are pleased to call love! For the power of manners, on the other hand, an aristocratic class, whether mate- Tialized or not, will always from its circumstances have a strong sense. And although for this power of social life and manners, so important to civilization, our race has no special natural turn, in our aristocracy this power emerges, and marks them. When the day of general humanization comes, they will have fixed the standard of man- ners. The English simplicity, too, makes the best of the English aristocracy more frank and natural« — than the best of the like class anywhere else, and even the worst of them it makes free from the incredible fatuities and absurdities of the worst. Then the sense of conduct they share with their countrymen at lerge. In no class has it such trials to undergo; in none is it more often and more grievously overborne. But really the right comment on this is the comment of Pepys upon the evil courses of Charles II. and the Duke of York, and the court of that day: “ At all which I am sorry; but it is the effect of idleness, and having nothing else to employ their great spirits upon.” Heaven forbid that I should speak in dispraise of that unique and most English class which Mr. Charles Sumner extols—the large class of gentle- men, not of the landed class or the nobility, but cultivated and refined. They are a seemly prod- uct of the energy and of the power to rise in our race. Without, in general, rank and splendor, and wealth and luxury to polish them, they have made their own the high standard of lifeand man- | ners of an aristocratic and refined class, Not

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having all the dissipations and distractions of this class, they are much more seriously alive to the power of intellect and knowledge, to the power of beauty. The sense of conduct, too, meets with fewer temptations. To some extent, how- ever, their contiguousness to the aristocratic class materializes them, as it does the class of newly- < enriched people. The most palpable action is on the young, and on their standard of life and en- joyment. But in general, for this whole class, established facts, the materialism they see reg- nant, too much block their mental horizon, and limit the possibilities of things to them. They are deficient in openness and flexibility of mind, in free play of ideas, in faith and ardor. Civilized they are, but they are not much of a civilizing force; they are somehow bounded and ineffective. S80 on the middle class they produce singularly _ little effect. What the middle class sees is that splendid piece of materialism, the aristocratic clase, with a wealth and luxury utterly out of ‘their reach, with a standard of sccial life and manners, the offspring of that wealth and luxury seeming utterly out of their reach also; and thus they are thrown back upon themselves—upon a defective type of religion, a narrow range of in- tellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners, And the lower class see before them the aristocratic class, and its civilization, such as it is, even infinitely more out “. of their reach than out of that of the middle class ; while the life of the middle class, with its un- - Tovely types of religion, thought, beauty, and _ manners, has naturally, in general, no great at- tractions for them either; and so they too are thrown back upon themselves; upon their beer, their gin, and their fun. Now, then, you will understand what I meant by saying that our ine- quality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes . our middle, brutalizes our lower. And the greater the inequality the more marked is its bad action upon the middle and lower classes. In Scotland the landed aristocracy fills the scene, as is well known, still more than in England; the other classes are more squeezed back and effaced, and the social civilization of the lower middle class, and of the poorest class, in Scotland, is an exam- ple of the consequences. Compared with the game class even in England, the Scottish lower -middle class is most visibly, to vary Mr. Charles Sumner’s phrase, less well-bred, less careful in personal habits and in social conventions, less refined. Let any one who doubts it go, after is- suing from the aristocratic solitudes which pos- sess Loch Lomond, let him go and observe the

4990S THE POPULAR SOIRNOR MONTHLY--SUPPLEMENT” -. : shopkeepers and the middle class in Dumbarton, :

and Greenock, and Gourock, and the places along the mouth of the Clyde. And for the poorest — class, who that has seen it can ever forget the hardly human horror, the abjection and uncivil- izedness of Glasgow ? What a strange religion, then, is our religion — of inequality! Romance is good in its way, but. ours is not even a romantic religion. No doubt our aristocracy is an object of strong public in. terest. The Times itself bestows a leading arti-, — cle, by way of epithalamium, on the Duke of Nora _ folk’s marriage. And those journals of a new) type, full of talent, and which interest me particu. _ larly,because they seem as if they were written: — by the young lion of our youth—the young lion _ grown mellow and, as the French say, vivewr, ar- rived at his full and ripe knowledge of the world, — and minded to enjoy the smooth evening of his days—those journals, in the main a sort of social gazette of the aristocracy, are And the common people, too, have undoubtedly, as Mr. Gladstone says, a wonderful preference for, — a lord. Yet our aristocracy, from the action upon: it of the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors, and the — political necessities of George IIL, is for the im. — agination a singularly modern and uninterest-. ing one, Its splendor of station, wealth, show, — and luxury, is then what the other classes really admire in it ; and this is not an elevating admira- tion. So that when Mr. Gladstone invites us to, call our love of inequality “the complement of the love of freedom or its negative pole, or the shadow which the love of freedom casts, or the reverberation of its voice in the halls of the con- stitution,” we must surely answer that all this mystical eloquence is not in the least necessary to explain so simple a matter; that our love of in- © equality is really the vulgarity in us, and the brutality, admiring and worshiping the splendid ‘ Qur present sociel coguniantion, bomener; sil and must endure until our middle class is pro- vided with some better ideal of life than it has now. That organization has been an appointed. stage in our growth ; it has been of good use, and has enabled us to do great things. But the use is at an end, and the stage is over. Ask yourselves if you do not often feel in yourselves a sense that, in spite of the strenuous efforts for good of so many excellent persons among us, we begin somehow to flounder and to beat the air; that we

apparently not — read by that class only which they most concern, — but are read with avidity by other classes also. seem to be finding ourselves stopped on this line ae Oa 6h hlcrRULreelUre.lUMelC RlCUlCU,DlC lC Cc .wmlCCté‘CiCkK -~ za2onreeearmogeern

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os 2? Fe Orr? 28 eO@ereesereeaonmeo i Ss = eoeor™mose oOo hme it = i > ee Pe oily cages ee ae ee a en ae nm oe of advance and on that, and to be threatened with a standstill. It is that we are trying to live on with a social organization of which the day is over. Certainly equality will never of itself alone give us a perfect civilization. But, with such inequality as ours, a perfect civilization is impossible. To that conclusion, facts, and the stream itself of this dis- law of bequest, fixing the maximum, whether of land or money, which any one individual may take =, by bequest or inheritance, but in other respects leaving the testator quite free, has none of the in- conveniences of the French law, and is inevery) = way preferable. But evidently these are not ques- tions of practical politics, Imagine Lord Hart- course, do seem, I think, to carry us irresistibly. | ington going down to Glasgow, and meeting his’ We arrive at it because they so choose, not be- | Scotch Liberals there, and saying to them : “ You cause we so choose. Our tendencies are all the | are ill at-ease, and you are calling for change, and other way. We are most of us politicians, and in | very justly. But the cause of your being ill at one of two camps, the Liberal or the Conserva- | ease is not what you suppose. The cause of your tive; and Liberals tend to accept the middle class | as it is and to praise the nonconformista, while | the Conservatives tend to accept the upper class | as it is, and to praise the aristocracy. And yet here we are at the conclasion, that one of the great obstacles to our civilization is British non- | conformity, and the other, British aristocracy |— and this while we are yet forced to recognize ex- cellent special qualities, as well as the general English energy and honesty, and a number of emergent humane individuals, in both of them. Clearly such a conclusion can be none of our own seeking. Then, again, to remedy our inequality, there must be a change in the law of bequest, as in France; and the faults and inconveniences of the French law of bequest are obvious. It tends to over-divide property; it is unequal {n opera- tion, and can be eluded by people limiting their families ; it makes the children, however ill they choose to behave, independent of the parent. To be sure, Mr. Mill and others have shown that a | being ill at ease is the profound imperfectness of your social civilization. Your social civilization | is indeed such as I forbear to characterize. But the remedy is not disestablishment. The remedy is social equality. Let me direct your attention to a reform in the law of bequest and entail.” One can hardly speak of such a thing without laughing. No, the matter is one for the thoughts _ of those who think. It is a thing to be turned’ over in the minds of those who, on the one hand, BS have the spirit of scientific inquirers, bent on see- ing things as they really are; and, on the other © hand, the spirit of friends of the humane life, lovers of perfection. To your thoughts I commit it. And, perhaps, the more you think of it, the more you will be persuaded that Menander showed his wisdom quite as much when he said, “Choose equality,” as when he assured us that “evil com- munications corrupt good manners.” —Fortnightly Review, HELL AND THE DIVINE VERACITY. Ou ph "ors Bpdvr: tdpBos, bv3' Eros pofei.—Sophocles, 0. T. 296. By LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. 66 Ci UPPOSE,” says Mr. Mill, “that certain un- known attributes are ascribed to the Deity in a religion the external evidences of which are so conelusive to my mind as effectually to convince me tha‘ it comes from God. Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God’s veraci- ty?” In other words, if God’s justice and mercy are not as our justice and merey, what guarantee have we that his trath is as our truth? And, conversely, are not orthodox reasoners, who start truth, likewise bound to assume that his justice and mercy are as our justice and merey? We propose to discuss this question at some length ; for it seems to suggest the most easily stated and, 8o to say, handiest reply to the familiar platitude that the only legitimate exercise of reason in these matters is to convince us of the reality of the Christian miracles, and that, being once convinced, __ we ought straightway to accept any doctrines, however seemingly immoral, which the recorders of those miracles have preached. ¥ This subject has lately been brought under with the assumption that God’s truth is as our | my notice by Father Oxenham’s work on “ Catho-

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. . lie Eschatology and Universalism.” In that work the doctrine of eterna) punishment is upheld; and it is not thought blasphemous to represent God as the author of hell. Yet the same work, referring to some one who has suggested that the accounts of eternal punishment in the Gos- ~ pels may have been exaggerated for a moral end, pronounces that suggestion to be “ little short of blasphemous.” In short, God is too good to de- edive, but not too good to condemn. Now, if Mr. Oxenham were alone in maintaining this paradox, I should not be at the paius to contro- vert it; for, differing from him toto calo (totaque, let me add, gehenna), I feel that between him and me, except on some minor topics, there is no common ground for argument. But, unfortunately, there are many Protes- tants und even nibblers at liberalism who hold vaguely, and perhaps unwittingly, what this able writer has stated clearly and forcibly. It is mainly with these, and wholly for their sake, that my present discussion is set on foot. In fact, my article is a plea for that generally valuable, yet generally unvalued, body, the Neochristians— those transformed and regenerate Ishmaels whose hand is against no man, though every man’s . hand is against them. And the motive of this _ plea is an earnest desire that the religious reform which is inevitable should be kept as far as pos- sible within the Christian lines. Still, a measure of reform which is to avail against revolution, has often to be somewhat drastic; and the first advice which should be offered to our Neochris- tian friends is, that they should at once give up the old foundation, for which their modest struct- ure is unfitted, and on which pandemonium may 80 easily be built. But, before entering on their ' defense, a word of personal explanation is re- '. quired. Mr. Mill certainly held that a Being who could create hell would be, strictly speaking, not a God, but the very reverse. Yet, in the chapter by him from which I have quoted, the popular language is repeatedly adopted for the sake of clearness; and to the supposed author of hell, the name “God” is applied. In the present ar- ticle that example will be followed. It will also be found convenient to assume, unless when the contrary is specified, that the Church is right in pronouncing certain writings to be genuine and certain marvels to be historical. But it must be understood that I am not bound by these assump- tions. It should, moreover, be explained that, zealous though I am on behalf of the Neochris- tians, I in no wise commit myself to either of the recognized forms of Neochristianity, either to Mr. Tennyson's Christianity without hell, or to Mr. a Arnold’s Christianity without God. My position — will be rendered yet clearer by my adding thatI expect the various orthodox sects, with their chronic civil war, to continue in a state of heed. lessness not wholly unlike that which the gos pel attributes to the antediluvian world: they will preach, they will write, they will cavil, they will give in to cavils, till science comes and destroys them all. Wherefore, of the Catholie and the orthodox Protestant it may be said, as of Lausus and Pallas, that neither is destined to overwhelm the other, pe ee jore sub hoste. Doubtless, to satisfy Mr. Oxenham personally; the foregoing explanation was not needed ; for he clearly thinks me an honest (if somewhat ravens ous) wolf in wolf’s clothing, and has even singled me out as the representative of the common ene- my into whose hand timid or treacherous friends (seemingly Broad Churchmen) are playing. Itis — possible that the simplest way of opening our in- quiry will be to quote and expand from a former article a passage from which he has made an ex- tract. ing to drop hell out of the Bible as quietly, and about as logically, as we already contrive to disre: gard the plain texts forbidding Christians to go te law, and Christian women to plait their hair,” ! or, “The wiser among us,” I said, “ are seek~ it might have been added, to be unveiled in church; — bidding all Christians work miracles on pain of damnation ;* bidding them choose psalms and spiritual songs as a vent for their mirth ; forbid- ding them to jest;* to take judicial oaths; to hope for exemption from “ persecution ” ¢ (in the plain sense which the early Christians attached to that world); to receive interest for loans, or even to receive back the principal; to be rich, or to ask rich people to dinner ;* to receive an unorthodox person into their house, or even to wish him “God speed.” That this last prohibi- tion was meant literally is proved by the tradition about St. John and Cerinthus; and I have heard . an Evangelical divine, only too plausibly, adduce the passage to prove the sinfulness of entertain — ing Catholics. That some of the other texts I have referred to were not meant literally, is com monly and conveniently assumed. Personally, I 1 Fortnighily Review, January, 1876, p. 125. 3 Mark xvi. 16-18. * Ephesians v. 4. Cf. Matthew xii. 36. 42 Timothy iii. 12. * Luke vi. 34, 35. These and the other texts against usury were taken literally, until the needs of civiliza- tion refuted them. * Lake xiv. 12, 18. ¢ SO@? °mepase = a ae eee Oe es er a a ee ee ee ee ee a ee ee a a a ae ee me ka a nas kt ee Se

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a oe a Se nial in BEEN re , se. could never take this view—not even in my or- thodox boyhood, when such texts made life a burden to me; so that my judgment was then vehemently biased not against, but in favor of, the traditional interpretation of them. That the literal meaning of each of those passages is the true one, still seems to me probable. At any rate, it is certain that, taken collectively, they breathe an ascetic spirit which is in glaring con- trast to the smooth and polished Christianity of our day. A popular preacher, complaining of rationalists that they had no moral standard, once said. to me, “ When I am in doubt, I refer to my Bible: ” almost as if his Bible was unlike other Bibles ; certainly as if the Bible was a lucid encyclopedia of doctrine and morals. Nor did my friend herein go far beyond what is held by most orthodox Protestants. They have forged a vast shield of texts, which they use to their own satisfaction against Romanists (Jngentem clipeum informant, unum omnia contra Tela Latinorum) ; and therewith they hope to quench the fiery darts of the combined wicked—of Romanists and ra- tionalists together. Our object, on the other hand, has been to show that the Bible is not such a handbook as they suppose ; and that, in fact, if the way of doctrinal transgressors is hard, that of Bibliolaters is not easy. And if, con- sciously or unconsciously, orthodox Christians ex- ercise the right of dropping inconvenient texts out of the Bible, they should not be wroth with their liberal brethren who do likewise; for the game, in very truth, is one at which two can play. Here, then, is our point. If the Bible contains plain commands which we have a right to dis- obey, may it not contain plain assertions which we have a right to disbelieve?’ Thus the Neo- christian would be in no lack of orthodox prece- dents, if he contended that the statements about hell were Oriental hyperboles ; or that they were an extra deterrent mercifully given to the Jews in their low state of piety, or rather of culture and civilization—an adaptation to the hardness of their hearts, or perhaps to the softness of their brains ; or that they were a needful conces- sion to a prevailing superstition: for the Bible was written a Judais, ad Judeos, apud Judaos ; 1 Sir J, Fitzjames Stephen says (“ Liberty, Equal- itr, and Fraternity,” p. 315) that some Scriptural com- mands are “ understood by those who believe in the supernatural authority of Christ as a pathetic overstate- ment of duties, . . . peculiarly liable to be neglected.” Brery argument that can be used to Justify euch “ pathetic overstatement” of duties will serve to jasti- fy a pathetic overstatement of the penalties whereby those duties were enforced. and superstition, like nature, non nisi parendo vin- citer. Perhaps, indeed, it will be objected that our enalogy between disobeying Divine commands and disbelieving Divine assertions does not hold. Let us, then, give an example of each kind. It is plainly declared that the observance of the Sab- bath—an observance binding in regard to the day, the obligations, and the penalties—was to be perpetual, and forever.' And this perpetual ordinance, originally imposed on Israel, extends to all who have adopted ‘Israel’s law.’ It is also affirmed that the house, kingdom, and throne of David should be established forever. Compare these two statements with the statement that hell is to be perpetual. If, by a prophetic license, perpetual means transitory in regard to the Sab- bath and the house of David, why not in regard to hell? Or (what is much the same thing), if we may give a non-natural interpretation to two of these propositions,® why not to the third ? Impartial readers will probably think that I have already made out my case ; but, as the sub- ject is very important, and as the prejudice about it is inveterate, I will carry the inquiry somewhat deeper. To reasonings like the above it is com- monly objected that (according to the Bible) God can neither lie nor repent. Now, it is ob- vious that this objection is at once refuted by the fact that ft proves the biblical veracity from the Bible, making the Bible arbiter in its own cause. But I will let this pass, as I wish as far as possible to meet orthodoxy on its own ground: dx rod ordyeros cov xpwa ce. The Bible, then, asserts that God neither lies nor repents. But, in the very same chapter,‘ God is described as * Exodus xxrzi. 16, 17. * Matthew v. 18. Of Matthew rxiv. 20. 3 Thus, it is commonly maintained that the throne of David spiritually survives in Christianity. To test this interpretation, let us put a parallel case, which we can consider impartially. One was told at school that Virgil's Dnperium sine fine dedi is a signal in- stance of an uninspired prophecy failing. Yet it might be at least as plausibly urged that the Roman domin- fon survives in the papacy, ae that the Davidic throne survives in Christianity. But to any such pitiful mis- fnterpretation of Virgil's words a sufficient answer would be that, before the Roman Empire ceased, no one dreamed of so explaining the poet's meaning. Even so we may ask, Did the Jews, before the time of Nebuchadnezzar, dream of spiritually evaporating the plain prediction about David? 41 Samael xv. 11, 29. In this singular chapter still more startling contrast occurs: Samuel (verse 22) expresses the noble sentiment that “to obey is better than sacrifice ;"’ yet, at that very moment, he was meditating the most bideous of all sacrifices—a human sacrifice (verse 83).

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” ~ OFF RE os om ww t . - |. THE POPULAR SCIENCE biblical statement on this head, so far from prov- _ ing that there are no biblical misstatements, adds ‘to their list one misstatement the more. But this . difficulty also I will not press. An orthodox per- . son would probably meet it by saying that the Divine word, like Nature, half reveals and half conceals the soul within; we can see God only through « glass darkly, or rather through a pseudoscope — immortalia mortali sermone no- tamus ; hence there is no inconsistency in suppos- ing that God does not really repent, but that to our finite reason he can only be revealed as re- penting. Well, let this explanation stand, only let us observe that in the Hebrew verse—that rime de pensées, as M. Renan calls it—lying and . Tepenting are coupled together. The Divine in- capacity of misrepresentation is announced in the same breath, and placed in the same category, with the Divine incapacity of repentance. And yet, humanly speaking, God does repent. Is it, then, impious to inquire whether, humanly speak- ing, God may not misrepresent? Nay, further, according to the only notion that we can form of repentance, a repentant man must either err when he repenta, or have erred in doing that for which he repents. Surely this reasoning mutatis mutan- die applies to a repentant Deity. Perhaps an il- lustration will best set forth our meaning. We are told that God repented of the good work of creating man. Therefore, his beneficent decrees do not resemble the laws of the Medes and Per- sians. Why, then, must we assume that his ” maleficent decrees resemble those laws? If it repented God of creation, may it not repent him . of thé intention of damnation ? But it is not only out of the Bible that eternal punishment is defended. The burden of proof is attempted to be thrown on the assailants of that doctrine. The doctrine, it is said, is rendered antecedently probable by the analogy of Nature. In Nature the wages of sin accumulate till death ; a sinful act never ceases injuriously to affect the sinner; but whatever occurs in Nature must be permitted, if not ordained, by God ; and the pre- sumption is that his supernatural government bears some analogy to his natural; and, there- fore, that the punishment of sin, which has no end in this world, will likewise have no end in the next. Now, this reasoning, which is sub- stantially that of Butler, could not be fully ex- amined without discussing the argument of the - first chapter of the analogy, and even the funda- mental assumption on which the analogy rests. This is not the place for such a discussion; so I Sid beet Wt ~ B. ta. 1 BERS abe ‘ MONTHL Y.—SUPPLEMENT. will merely remark that natural forces arein them. _ selves neither moral nor immoral, but outside by « moral standard, they are found to be reck-! lessly immoral. Hence, if we start with the eg) sumption that the course of Nature is in harmony oF, rality ; but, when they are personified and judged — f * with God's direct and deliberate action, we may! go on to defend the foulest superstition that ever cursed mankind. If whatever exists : Nero’s government ') is “ ordained of God,” theft’ and adultery must be so ordained. If, then, God’s!. natural procedure is a sample of his supernatural, what right have Christians to condemn the actions attributed to Jupiter, which were, humanly speaks! ing, immoral? Nor is it only civilized Jupiters;! ancient or modern, that may claim the benefit of such a plea. The plea is equally applicable to those “ puny godlings of inferior race” * whom’ savages worship, nay, even to Bhowanee, the god- _ dess of murder. Hence, when Shelley indignantly — denied that ra “ The God of Nature and benevolence nad given A special sanction to the trade of blood,” ay” his indignation was partly reasonable, partly mot, That the god of benevolence should have sane- tioned such a trade is, of course, impossible; but that the god of Nature, the ordainer of all the abominatiuns that occur in Nature, should me done s0, is in no wise impossible, but just what we ‘ might have expected. Nor, again, are we left to conjecture as to the employment of the 5 aid to faith in support of religious systems which — + we now justly condemn. On the contrary, We know that, when pagan orthodoxy was iy way, such pagans as Plutarch and some of sl an’s interlocutors propped it up with arguments. not unlike those wherewith the disciples of But ler now prop up Christian orthodoxy. So that, after all, Butler’s and Mansel’s sanctuary is a too catholic Pantheon —a veritable “shrine of all see hegre a commen ae iy destructive theologies seek a common refuge. It- is, however, with such attributes as those e Hermes Dolios, that we are specially 4, If it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart, we — may assume that it is often, if not always, God who” hardens the liar's heart; in every such case Deus » a » {fallit per alium ; analogy, therefore, points to thé! presumption that sometimes Deus fallit per s¢,. But this is not all. That the sun. travels from, fiat surface, that the ‘blue sky is « solid vad” 2 Romane xiii. 1. a4 ~ 9 Dryden's “ Persius.” east to west, that the earth is approximatelys' — oS. Prorrereereeneuc SSP RCER TE BRSSEPKFessreeceeeeereeeers

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eS 4 toe ae ey EB hehehe wee 12 Cm BS en eae a Ske ens Ora Same Bem eae ae ee” - a 7 “ a oo = ee Ps Pees Nite ene ea ge eT : bat ie ed +e sen Lad ‘i wv a ~ “HELL AND’ THE DIVINE VERACITY. — ~ (orepépa)—these are delusions which the plan of \ universe has done its very best to foster, whieh are common to primitive races, and which primi- tive writers, inspired as well as uninspired, have y shared. In the face of these delu- sions, will the paradox that the course of Nature Deity, @ not inglorious “mirror where the Al mighty’s form glasses itself in” moral tempests, be seriously maintained? If so, we are driven to the monstrous conclusion that there are qualities in the First Cause little akin to those of Nathanael, And hence would arise the analogical presumption that,,in revelation, God, aecording to St Paul's happy euphemism, “calleth those things that be not.as though they were.” Xenophanes blames Homer for attributing to the gods— | Seva wag’ dvOpawovew dveibea nal peyos teriy . . . madera porxeieur re xai dAAjAovS dmarevew. In this strikingly modern passage two things may be noted. First, divine deceit is not put in a class by itself; it is merely ranked with other forms of divine guilt. Secondly, the various forms of divine guilt are pronounced to be such, only on the assumption that the gods are bound by homan morality ; the acts are condemned because they would be deemed wrong and disgraceful among men. Now, it must be owned that to cre- ate millions of sentient beings, foreknowing that most of them were doomed to eternal tortures, compared with which the perpetual extraction of a sensitive tooth would be hailed as a relief'— such an act is unlike those which are thought praiseworthy among men. Are we not, then, bound to blame this act when imputed to God ? For, in truth, there are two standards, and only two, whereby acts so imputed can be judged : there is the standard of human morality, and there is the immoral standard of natural analogy. l- most always, in weighing Christian and non-Chris- tian theologies, we play fast and loose with these _ two standards. Will it be said that Christianity is in itself superior to the best non-Christian the- logy? It is; but we vastly exaggerate the su- periority by applying to the different theologies 1 I give this realistic comparison in order to bring home to my readers what the popular doctrine is. People who talk glibly about glad tidings should read Gn Wall's “ History of Infant Baptism’) Augustine's and Fulgentins’s expressions about the fate of unbap- tized (including stili-born) infants. It is, however, satisfactory to know that, although Augustine (once at _ least) explicitly declared that all unbaptized children would be damned, yet he trusted that “ this fire would * be to them the most moderate of all" (Wall). different tables of weights and measures. The between these tables far exceeds what is commonly supposed. Weighed in the balance of natural analogy, no historic gods are found wanting ; weighed in the balance of human moral- ity, all, The like may be said of the comparison between damning and deceiving. If God is wholly beyond the pale of human morality, we cannot guess whether he ought to damn or not to damn —to deceive or not. to deceive. If, however, he is within that pale, we may conclude that {if om- nipotent) he ought neither to damn nor to deceive ; but that the guilt of deceiving is as dust in the balance when compared with the guilt of damn. ing.: I say “if omnipotent,” for the following reason: That a good spirit of limited powers might, in extreme cases, have to deceive his creat ures, is just conceivable. In those extreme cases we might agree with Zechylus, that ardrys ducalas ova dwoorarc: Geds. But that such a spirit should be one “ Wha, as it pleases best hissel, Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell, A’ for his glory,” is utterly inconceivable and revolting. The or- thodox, however, take a view the opposite of ours; they virtually assume that the text, “Let God be true, but every man a liar,” is itself true in a more literal sense than the text, “God is \ love.” Indeed, to their apotheosis of veracity may be due some of the exaggerated commonplaces that are current as to the absolute universality of the duty of trath-telling. I remember, when & boy, being told that it was sinful in Napoleon to encourage the Guard at Waterloo with the mis- statement that their comrades, having crushed Bliicher, were in sight coming to help them. Yet it certainly seemed that to tell the Guard s lie for which, if it had succeeded, they would have been grateful, was, at worst, what Sophocles would have called 8e1a wevoupyeiv, and Shakespeare would have called “a virtuous sin;” and that, at all events—in judging of that long crime, Napoleon's career—to single out this peccadillo for reproba- tion showed want of moral perspective. Bat what should I have answered if my teacher had gone on to ask whether it was not uncharitable to suspect a man like Napoleon of telling such a lie? My answer would, or should, have been in words of (dipus. When (Edipus. had adjured the unknown murderer of Laius to give himself up, the chorus was so sanguine as to suggest that further efforts at detection would be needless; : without doubt, the criminal, on hearing the fm- — precation, would make haste to confess his guilt.

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a 5 oe ies , bss ott wv, tw s, i * ’ "he / a THE. POPULAR SOIENCE seclihaebd: selcoeainitaare Whereunto the king rejoined, “Not he who dared the deed will shrink at words.” We have prefixed this reply as motto to our article ; for it happily exposes the delusion which prevails about the Divine morality. Whoever, in conceiving of that morality, strains at the gnat of even benefi- cent misrepresentation, while he swallows the camel of eternal punishment, should bind the motto about his neck, and write it on the table ~ of his heart. But our popular teachers are deaf to such advice. They scorn to depict God as an . idealized Edward [IL., pardoning those whom he had doomed to destruction; but they scruple not to depict him as a Torquemada in excelsis. But, after all, it is superfluous to show that, assuming orthodoxy, Divine deceptions may oc- eur: orthodoxy herself practically admits that they Aave occurred. How does she account for the scientific statements in the Bible, which are, to say the least, calculated to mislead? She af- firms that those statements were needful accom- modations : which being interpreted is, that God, to teach a great truth, had to teach a little error. But there are graver forms of Divine deception . to which the Bible directly bears witness. Lu- cian justly complains that Zeus, in the “ Tiad,” “deceived Agamemnon by sending him a lying dream, 80 as to cause the death of many Greeks.” In exactly the same way, Jehovah, in the book of Kings, deceived Ahab by sending him a lying spirit, s0 as to cause the death of many Hebrews (Deus fallit per alium). At another time, he “ gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;” and “if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet ” (Deus fallit per se).! Nor is it only in the Old Testament that such deceptions are mentioned : they are attested also in the New.* I am careful to notice this latter testimony, inasmuch as it is on the earliest Chris- tian traditions and sentiments—those recorded in the Synoptical writings and the Apocalypse— that the case for eternal torture chiefly rests. St. Paul, on the other hand, inclined toward Uni- --versalism :* and it does not lie with the Church to neglect his authority ; for ecclesiastical Chris- tianity is based far more on the Pauline Epistles and the Fourth Gospel than on the genuine say- ings of Jesus. But St. Paul himself would have been the first to disclaim any such preéminence, and to admit that the servant is less than his 1 Compare Deuteronomy xiii, 3; Jeremiah xx. 7. 3 2 Thessalonians ii. 11, * Romans xi. 32. Lord. Numguid Paulus crucifizus ext pro vobist Aut in nomine Pauli baptizati estis? It is, there. fore, with especial interest that we inquire whet er a strong case for eternal torture can be made out of the language of the Synoptical record, To me their expressions seem very strong: inso: much that, when Mr. Oxenham holds up their damnatory phraseology and virtually ‘ncke (la Hubert de Burgh: “Can you not read it? Ig not fair writ?” I most reluctantly echo Arthur’s answer: “Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect.” Not only is thia concession in itself painfuly it also involves & painful inquiry. For it be hooves us to prove, not merely that there are em rors in the Bible—thus much all rational Chris tians now admit—but that there are errors even! - in the words ascribed to the Master. Yet, ia this thankless demonstration, it is a comfort to feel that we are only affirming a principle which — all Neoechristians practically assume, and which is indeed the corner-stone of their system; for it is certain that what may be termed the nom populousness and the non-eternity of hell am staked on the fallibility of Christ, From this point of view, then, all Christians, even who believe our conclusions to be false, ought t wish them to be true. If a great physician told us that we were going to die of a lingering and loathsome disease, we should wish—he would em pect us to wish, and would himself wish—thay he might be mistaken; and so, when the Object of our deepest reverence has proclaimed sad tid: ings of great sorrow which are unto all people, common humanity bids us hope that even be was liable to error. a 7 Before proceeding further, I must guand — against a misconception. Some readers may be estranged from this inquiry, through supposing — that I am about to assail the doctrine of the In carnation. Such, however, is not my intention; — for, having a clear case before me, I mean avoid all disputable matter. I will, therefore, remark that those who deny the infallibility of Christ do not necessarily deny his Divinity; they_. need only subject that Divinity to limitations which, in theory, are hardly greater than those to which it is subjected already. 1 ae meaning clear, I will first observe that in ent ages the word God has been held to com note very different sets of attributes. . Mr. Oxenham assumes that Géd is and, as we have seen, he thinks it to suggest that the Incarnate God could deceive. » eS Xenophanes, on the other hand, deemed it blas- SPrPereose see omens ea ew Peaerecarterertitece cet rr

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VESASSSALEM aah edad, BEERS ESSA SALES E s CE EREE RPS FEES Bin to suppose that God could be incarnate at all;' whereas Hesiod saw nothing amiss in saying that the heavenly Muses are skilled to tell many lies.* But it is not only in pagan authors that such representations as this last are to be found. The Bible, we have shown, speaks of God as deceiving. In another place God de- clares himself to be fallible, and even provides _ against the contingency of his having been mis- informed.* Either this divine statement is true, or it is not. If it is, cadit questio: if it is not, the speaker is convicted of misrepresentation in this case, and capable of it in others. Of course ~ it-may be contended that God is infallible in himself, but that, when speaking down to our faculties, he has to depict himself as fallible. Ido not mean to contest this explanation ; for, in conceding that God as revealed to us is fallible, it. concedes all that my argument requires. A different class of objectors may urge that God did not declare himself to be fallible, but was misrepresented by the author of Genesis. This solution, however, only throws the difficulty farther back ; for the founders of Christianity asserted, or rather assumed, the divine authority of-the Pentateuch ;* so that, if the author of Genesis was mistaken, they were mistaken also. And this brings us to a remark about verbal in- spiration. St. Paul believed in the verbal inspi- ration of the Old Testament.’ Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that Jesus held the same view. Also, he promised his disciples that his teaching should be supernaturally brought to their remembrance; and that, when taken before judges, they should be verbally inspired. These and similar passages serve to explain the desper- ate efforts that were made to defend verbal in- spiration. In a work whose perfect accuracy is divinely guaranteed, even a minute error in fact involves a grave error in doctrine ; for it proves that inspiration did not know its own limita. Extremes in theology sometimes meet ; and I am glad to find that the views here enunciated may | buoies dweBodew oi yeréobas Gécxorres rods Sends ois droSaverv Aéyovow. 2 Buev Wevdea woada Adyewv. -* Genesis xvili, 21. In 1 Kings xxii 20-22, God is Tepresented as at a loes for an expedient and as seek- ing counsel—in the art of deception. * See Mark xii. 26. It is clear that the general state of opinion—the suppressed major premise, as we may tall it—which is involved in the assumption that the divine words spoken in the burning bash were genu- ine, will cover the assumption that the Divine words ' HELL ‘AND THE D ‘VERACITY. be confirmed by a quotation from Dr. Words. worth. After rightly premising that the promise of verbal inspiration must be regarded as extend- ing to St. Stephen, he goes on to comment on allegations that the proto-martyr’s speech con- tains errors: “ The allegations in question, when reduced to their plain meaning, involve the as- sumption that the Holy Ghost speaking by St. Stephen (who was ‘ full of the Holy Spirit ') forgot what he himself had written in the book of Gen- esis, and that his memory is to be refreshed by biblical commentators of the nineteenth century.” This trenchaht logic may be fitly coupled with Cowper’s sneer at geologists, who “. ... Grill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there Extract a register, by which we learn That He who made it, and revealed its date To Moses, was mistaken in its age!" One has only to confront Dr, Wordsworth’s logic with Alford’s correct statment that St. Stephen’s speech contains “at least two demonstrable his- torical inaccuracies ;” and to confront Cowper's sneer with the first principles of modern geology ; and one perceives what an edged tool every such reductio ad anti-Christianum is. But what con- cerns us is, to note that, as we have said, rational Christians nowadays admit that the Scriptures contain mistakes. Whence it follows that the founders, who believed that the Scriptures (or large portions of them) were free from mistakes, were in that very belief themselves mistaken. Moreover, the fallibility of Christ may be dis- tinetly inferred from the Gospels. He is repre- sented “as growing” (and therefore as at one time deficient) “in wisdom.” He sought theo- logical instruction from the Jewish doctors. Un- Jess this instruction was a mere farce, he was, then, if not fallible, at least inferior in knowledge to his fallible teachers. Also, in mature man- hood, he knew not the day or the hour of his coming.' Hence his knowledge on some subjects 1 Mark xiti. 82. This and similar passages are explained away by some Catholics. Thus the pope (quoted by Mr. Gladstone) has pronounced that Christ’s increase in wisdom was “ only apparent ;" whereunto a Neochristian might respond that future punishment will be “only apparent.” So, again, the Dublin Review (September, 1865) says that ‘‘ the Church imperatively requires her children to understand Mark xiii. 82 in some very unobvious sense.” If the Church may take this liberty with plain texts in the New Testament, the Scribes and Pharisees (who sat in Moses'’s seat) must bave had a like authority over plain texts in the Old Testament. Why, then, were the Jews blamed for giving a “ very unobvious sense” to the fifth commandment (Mark vii. 9-13) ? :

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Ye % Ws 3 was imperfect. And from imperfect knowledge to fallibility the step is a slight one ; for, when a Being has imperfect knowledge, how can we be eure that his knowledge is perfect as to the limits of its own imperfection? But, as regards the fallibility of Christ, we are not left to mere con- jecture. He “marveled at the centurion’s faith.” Now, it is obvious that an infallible being could not marvel. When we say that a man marvels, we imply that his expectation fell short of the reality, and was therefore erroneous. And thus, when we are told that Jesus marveled at the cen- turion’s faith, we infer that his previous estimate of that faith had been unduly low. Again, a be- ing conscious of infallibility would be free from doubt and misgiving. Yet, Jesus was uncertain respecting his death ; and, when dying, he feared ‘that God had forsaken him.’ In case this dem- onstration (for such it is) should be painful to any reader, I would fain offer a word of comfort. The great Catholic Commentary of Cornelius & Lapide states that “esto Christus non creverit sapientia et gratia habituali, crevit tamen actuali et practica.” This reasoning is just as applicable to Christ’s infallibiltiy as to his youthful defi- ciency in knowledge ; and hence a liberal Chris- tian who clings to the belief in his Lord’s Divin- ity may plausibly urge that the Saviour (as was inevitable) held some errors of his time, but that in respect of those errors it was only his “actual -and. practical wisdom,” not his “habitual wis- dom,” that failed him. Having thus sought to disarm prejudice, we can more freely comment on a few out of the many erroneous statements reported in the Gos- pel—statements that may, as it were, keep in countenance the reported statements about hell ; and, in. making the selection, we will mainly confine our view to errors that have been prac- tically acknowledged by Christians of note. We will begin with an example that perplexed Mr, Maurice. The Master is said to have prophe- sied that he would “be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Now, the in- terval from Friday evening to Sunday morning is only one day and two nights, Hence, in the prophecy as reported by St. Matthew, there is as open’ a breach with arithmetic as in the three fourteens in the same Evangelist’s genealogy ; and, we may add, as in his strange narrative (evolved out of a misunderstood prophecy) con- cerning the ass and’ the colt, on both of which (abrér) Jesus rode to Jerusalem? Again, Jesus 3 Matthew xxvi. 89; xxvii. 46. 3 By the other three Evangelists the supernumerary THE pete SCIEKCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. said that David ate the shewbread “in the hi priesthood of Abiathar : °T the event real i curred in the high-priesthood of Ahir Once more: an excellent religious journal by courageously proposed “to explain, once for 4 that the theological and historical library p larly called the ‘ Bible’ contains some errors,” Now, the “error” that is chiefly referred to o¢ curs in the Fourth Commandment. Did G give the Ten Commandments or did he not? | he did, the “error” was a Divine one, and th thunders on Sinai were so many seals to thy error. If he did not, the Master, who clearly lieved the Deealogue to be from God, was h in error on a fundamental point. The gravity such an error may be best shown by an ill tion. In the parable of Dives and Lazarus— > tremendous parable, as Charles Austin call which implies that all who receive their goo things on earth, all whom a Jew of the era would have counted rich, will be tormented? —greater value is attached to the testimony§ Moses and the prophets than to that of one ri from the dead.‘ Now, if one of the b had suggested that one risen from the dead appeal directly to the senses, whereas the’ sages in Moses and the prophets (even those passages to be genuine and rightly in preted) might figure among the errors in the “— logical and historical library popularly called & ‘ Bible—if one of the by-standers, say the vii . and enlightened St. Thomas, had suggested th would not the remonstrance, “ Be not fait! but believing,” have been the very mildest “fh aus is suppressed. St. Matthew and the fourth Evia gelist quote Zechariah ix. 9 differently, so as to ki b it support their differing accounts, The Fourth G elsewhere furnishes a striking example of a myth . posited from a misunderstood text (xix. 28, 24). Beh 1 Mark ii. 26. I adopt Alford’s translation, at difficulty is slurred over in the authorized Alford comments on the instructive fact that a goed and learned divine has persuaded himself that this tet “rather suggests that he (Abiathar) was not the high — priest then: ” nanum Atlanta vocavit, 4 thiopem ay num. As for me, I forbear to waste words on the fa- genious disingenuousness of harmonists ; for I cantol even understand the notion that it is honest to apply to the Bible a mode of interpretation which dishénést if applied to any other hook; and that or doxy, like Sigismund, is supra grammaticam. * Spectator, August 2%, 1875, p. 1091. * Luke xvi. %. 4 In like manner, the writer calling himself St. P ter attributes greater probative force to the D cal prophecies of the Old Testament than to the | dence of St. Peter’s own oo ay cance a , 19). This tendency of the early Christian suggestive. @ereewpvenauecmeasurrwes ee eka tere 6 es Ch teen eoeeeturcecar geese

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: ¥> “yt rae ee oS See ee | pS. a i te Saad ra 4 oe "Tat "HELL AND would have been addressed to him ? "Again, not only did Jesus accept the entire narrative of the Pentateuch, but on the details of that narrative he founded important rules of conduct. In treat- \ ing of the right of divorce, he appealed to the in- stitation that was “from the beginning; ” primi- tive institutions he assumed to be ideally the best. His reasoning suggests two reflections: 1. What- ever the primitive form of marriage was, strict. monogamy it was not. 2 The question as to primitive marriage, though indirectly full of in- * struction, has no direct bearing on conduct. As soon as science shall have determined whether primitive societies were endogamous or exoga- mous, modern communities will not be constrained to adapt their marriage laws to the primitive mod- el: any more than those of us who believe slavery and cannibalism to have been primitive institu- tions are therewithal bound to become slavehold- ers and cannibals. These illustrations are given in no captious spirit, but in order to show how hollow is the _ truce that has been patched up between ortho- doxy and modern research. Especially hollow is the truce between orthodoxy and biblical criti- cism. For example: Jesus ascribed the 110th ‘Psalm to David ;' and the context shows that, in ‘so ascribing it, he was not adapting himself to conventional phraseology, but that he thought that it was verily and indeed spoken by David. - On the other hand, the “Four Friends” deny that it was by David ; indeed, it was manifestly spoken not by, but toa Hebrew ruler.? The “Four Friends,” who write in a thoroughly Christian spirit, forbear to point the moral of their state- ment; but they can hardly have been ignorant _ that, in making the statement at all, they were _ eharging their Master with error. It is yet more ' obvious that their interpretation of the contempt- uous apostrophe, “Ye are gods,” is at variance _ with the amazing interpretation reported in the ‘Fourth Gospel. Indeed, according to modern Criticism, hardly one of the texts quoted from the Old Testament is rightly interpreted im the New. “Of prophecies in the sense of prognos ‘tication,” says Coleridge, “I utterly deny that , there is any instance delivered by one of the illustrious Diadoche whom the Jewish Church comprised in the name Prophete—and I shall re- _ gard Oyrus as an exception, when I believe the 1 Matthew xxii. 48, 44; compare Acts fi. 84, 85. 2 TI say “ruler” (not “ king”), since there isa great @iference of opinion as to when this psalm was writ- ten. The “ Four Friends” place it during the mon- _atehy; while our best biblical critic, Dr. Davidson, is ' inclined to relegate it to the time of the Maccabees. ye 4 vagitieemerviaaies 7 told that a prophecy of Daniel was about to be fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem, which was to be “immediately” followed by the end of the world.’ Yet, not only has a certain interval al- ready elapsed between the destruction of Jeru- salem and that of the world, but we learn, even from Christian authorities, that the passage at- tributed to Daniel bad no reference to the sack of Jerusalem by Titus—that it was not by Dan- iel—that it was not a prophecy, but a forgery. Hence, the book of Daniel furnishes a crucial test of rationalism. Laodicean liberals some- times boast that they have given up their ortho- doxy concerning the Old Testament, but that their orthodoxy concerning the New remains un- impaired. Now, if there is a point whereon ra- tional critics from Porphyry to Zeller are agreed, it is that the prophecy in Daniel is unauthentic. If there is a point which lukewarm liberals are loath to give up, it is that every word of Christ came from God: To what, then, does their theory amount? Even to this shocking result: . that God professed to have inspired the pseudo- Daniel, and thus became accessory after the fact. A similar mode of reasoning applies yet more directly to the theory of “inspired personation,” a theory which seems to find favor with the ac- complished divine who has written the article Bible in the “ Encyclopedia Britannica,” and who - has justly been described in a religious journal as the most orthodox of biblical critics. That theory practically is, that the author of Deuteronomy, who was not Moses, was inspired to say that he was Moses (Deo per mendacium gratificari). Yet, peradventure, for this theory something may be — said, _We have seen that, on the orthodox hy- pothesis, St. Stephen’s speech was verbally in- - epired, Yet, when professing to give the very words of Amos, be quietly substituted Babylon for Damascus ; in fact, he manipulated the proph- ecy, 80 as to make it seem to have been fulfilled 3 Matthew xxiv. 15, 2.

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“602° ‘THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. by the captivity.’ It follows, then, that he was verbally inspired to misquote. If St. Stephen was inspired to misquote, why may not the Deu- teronomist have been inspired to misreport ? But this is not all. A distinguished living clergyman told me that he considered the strong- est passage in the Bible to be one where God, by the mouth of Jeremiah, disowned the entire cere- monial.law.* The explanation of this passage probably is, that Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, felt that the Mosaic law contained statutes which, accord- ing to the moral standard of his own age, “ were not good;” but that, whereas Ezekiel concluded that those unworthy statutes were given by God penally, Jeremiah more rationally concluded that they were not given by God at all At any rate, Jeremiah’s statement is incompatible with the divine authorship of the Pentateuch. How, then, is it to be reconciled with Christ’s observance of the Passover, and his injunction to “offer the gift that Moses commanded?” I refrain from pressing this difficulty. Enough has been said to explain why it is that, on the approach of sound criticism, the orthodox landmarks, which but late- ly seemed so steadfast, are one by one being re- moved. A Greek sage once laid down three rather Sweeping propositions: 1. Nothing exists. 2. If anything exists, it may not be known. 3. If anything exists and may be known, the knowl- edge may not be communicated. Now, if in these propositions for “thing” be substituted “ good argument against orthodoxy,” they will be found to correspond with three objections com- monly urged against inquiries like the present. With the first class of objectors—those who de- ny the existence of plausible arguments for ra- tionalism—we have already dealt. There remain the other two sets of objectors. There are those who maintain that such plausible arguments ex- ist indeed, but exist only to try our faith; the fruit of this tree of knowledge should be es- chewed on pain of death. And there are those who complain that, in imparting to them this fruit, we have made them unhappy, and have driven them, as it were, out of paradise: we have taken away their Lord, and they know not ‘where we have laid him. This last objection ? Acts vii. 48. This practice was after the manner of the age. In Isaiah ix. 12, the LXX. did not scraple to render “ Philistines " by “EAAnpes, their object being, according to a high authority, to make the prophecy refer to the Ptolemies and Seleucide. (See Mackay's “ Progress of the Intellect.”) 2 Jeremiah vii, 22. shall be discussed first, and very briefly, - cise ehtonsdndeiy Goo ages have shown. Indeed, the application of name “Gospel” to a system containing Gouttiann ‘ep: the danpustion. ef Agana “th’ enormous faith of many” damned “for one ”"—may be called the xparoy ped8es of or thodoxy: insomuch that it is the Christian Uni - versalists who are on the side of the angels ; andithis time it is the popular theology which, in repre senting itself as having received from the angels — the glaring misnomer of good tidings of great joy, suggests what is little short of blasphemots, Still, although that theology is in itself a Kakangel, there is no doubt that by many waxdyyeAros &xn is unfelt. Our “sister while she prays” is generally able to enjoy “her eatly heaven, her happy views,” and blissfully to ignore — her early hell and most depressing views. And this is a reason against heedlessly airing modem opinions in general conversation, when one’s _ hearer is almost at one’s mercy. But it isnot a reason against putting forth those opinionsin — writings, which no one is compelled to read Moreover, the orthodox, who practise self-decep- tion as to the unsound portions of their creed, — will find their task daily more difficult, and there. — fore more demoralizing. As was said in a former article, ‘‘the bracing intellectual air that we now breathe will bring the latent diseases of ourte — ligion out ;” and perchance, if we limit overmuch the action of that bracing air, it will work am mixed harm—it will have time to bring the eases out, but not time to cure them. It ison account that too mild a treatment of those dis — eases may be perilous to the entire body of Chris- tian sentiment and practice—not merely to the — letter that killeth, but to the spirit that giveth — life: if thine hand or thy foot offend thee, says — the Scripture, cut it off. And thus, when wee@x- — horted Christians manfully to renounce the devil — and all his angels, and to drop hell out of the — Bible, we acted under a conservative impalty4 for we doubted whether to Christianity itself the presence of those nother Hammon, they soo ca fered to go on smouldering, will be wholly from risk, Behold, how great a matter a little kindleth ! --tntiobigtistaintepen ir ; is not made to question, but adore:” it is safer to accept undoubtingly whatever our Bible or — Church tells us of God, even if the evidence for” those statements be inconclusive; nay, had the | room for our faith ?

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ee eR es REPRE SENSES EKER PEPER PAV RECS RSSEEI ELE EE U ay Bae ie, wage, te ; aE a ee ee ue _. HELL AND THE DIVINE VERACITY. possessors are liable to Coleridge’s censure— they prefer Christianity to truth. But it will serve our purpose to meet these objections on their own ground, and to fight them with their own weapons, Is it, then, quite certain that a good Being, who on one or more occasions af- firmed himself to have ordained Tophet, would wish his affirmation to be always believed? The answer to this question may be sought in human analogies. Malcolm, in order to test the fidelity of Macduff, charged himself with grievous faulta. It was with hearty satisfaction that Macduff at length discovered that Malcolm had been deceiv- ing him. Nor can we doubt that, when the dis- covery was made, his satisfaction was shared by Malcolm himself; for the latter would prefer that thology. Mr. Symonds has well observed that an enlightened pagan would feel about the can- nibal repasts attributed to his gods much as an. enlightened Christian feels about eternal punish- ment. This parallel (Mr. Symonds’s critics not- withstanding) holds perfectly ; for the analogical device which is used to defend, and the allegori- ¢al device which is used to explain away, the be- lief in a divine torture-house, may just as readily be applied to the belief in divine cannibalism. | It is, therefore, worth while to consider the sort of language which devout but enlightened pa gans—pagan Broad Churchmen, in fact—held eoneerning this unsavory dogma of pagan ortho- doxy. In a passage translated and justly praised by Bacon, Plutarch observes: “Surely, I had rather a great deal men should say there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should _ gay that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as they were born; as the poets speak of Saturn;” the gods, he infers, have a similar preference, and hate superstition worse than atheism. This principle is fruitful of _’ Consequences. Let us suppose that Plutarch ? Perhaps a similar leseon may be gathered from the Gospels. We may be sure that the father whose son refused to go into the vineyard, but afterward repented and went, was better pleased than if the son had kept his word ard not gone—had been more trathfal, but less obedient. The moral of Jephthah’s Story is less satisfactory ; and the frantic efforts that are nowadays made to explain away this simple nar- rative—to make believe that Jephthah broke bis vow and did not commit murder—are among the many proofs that the religious instinct of modern times is in some respects healthier than that of the Old, and seemingly of the New, Testament (He>rews xi. 32). would have accepted them: in that case, if Kro- nos or Zeus could have been shown to have pleaded guilty to revolting cruelty, Plutarch would have judged it right to disbelieve the divine confession, And he might fairly have hoped that such a judgment would find an echo amid the peaks of Olympus; for would not the Olympian father more bitterly resent the charge of murdering his own children than that of, bu- manly speaking, either deceiving or being de- ceived (xpetrroy 3 cAévOau Yevdos, h dAnOes xaxdy) ? Nay, further, Zeus was the father “of men” as well as “of gods,” the father whose “ offspring we are ;” * and the foregoing argument would as clearly apply to his treatment of his human, as to his treatment of his divine, children. Where- fore Plutarch might have thought it not merely unscientific, but irreligious, to doubt that— “ As for the dog, the furies, and their snakes, The gloomy caverns, and the burning lakes, And all the vain infernal trumpery, They neither are. nor were, nor e’er can be,”’ * In other words, he might have clung to his belief in the divine mercy, even though the divine mer- cy had to be upheld at the cost of lesser divine attributes; even though, with the voracity of Tartarus, he gave up the veracity of Zeus. Another Neopagan has dealt with divine can- nibalism in a manner whereon Neochristians would do well to meditate. To Pindar it seemed hardly credible that the gods should have eaten up Pelops. He granted, indeed, that very strange things sometimes happened ; and he thought that, in this particular case, the final decision might be reserved for posterity ; but, provisionally, he deemed it safer to reject the story. It is remark, able that here the poet uses the same sort of pru" dential weapons that orthodox Christians use ; but he uses it on the opposite side—he employs it in defense, not of faith, but of skepticism. And this should show us what a two-edged weapon it is, Pindar, indeed, probably regarded the gods as having been misrepresented, not as mirepresent- ing themselves. But we have shown that, for prac- tical purposes, these two forms of misreprésen- tation differ less than at first sight appears; and, indeed, that the distinction between gods who mis- report themselves, and gods who are misreported by verbally inspired reporters, is a distinction without a difference. But Pindar haply did not re- |. gard the misreporters as verbally inspired. If so, his view exactly foreshadowed that of the Neo- christians ; and the state of mind common to both bears so closely on our inquiry that we propose to 1Menander. * Lucretius translated by Dryden.

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_ consider it fartner, and for that purpose to resort yet once again to to a classical illustration. The _ Kymeans being commanded by an oracle to de- “liver up « suppliant, one of their citizens, Aristo- dikus, suspected that the divine words had been tampered with,’ and consulted the oracle himself. The god, however, gave the same answer as be- fore. Thereupon Aristodikus bethought him of a device: he robbed the nests of the sacred birds _ that were in the precincts of the temple. Pres- _ ently he heard a voice from the sanctuary, saying, “Wretch, how dare you strip the temple of my suppliants?” “O king!” replied he, nothing abashed, “ you, indeed, protect your suppliants ; and do you bid the Kymzans deliver up theirs ? ” * “ Yea, verily,” said the god, “that for such im- piety ye may perish speedily; and may never again ask the oracle ahout giving up suppliants.” Thus, then, was Aristodikus rewarded for disre- . garding an injunction strikingly analogous to Je- hovah’s “ statutes that were not good.” His bear- ing in face of such an injunction differed from _ that of Abraham and Hosea,’ just as Hellenism differed from Hebraism. It is, therefore, impor- tant that his precise moral attitude should be _ noted. He first cherished the hope that the wick- ed command was not from God; and, afterward, when convinced that it was from God, he still held that God was less dishonored by its breach than _ by ita observance; for it seemed less incredible that, for some inscrutable reason, God should have deceived his worshipers, than that he should have sanctioned what was unjust and cruel. Aristodikus, in so judging, was a model of plows discrimination. He deserves our respect, both for regarding the divine untruthfulness as one of the solutions of the problem that lay be- fore him, and also for regarding it as an unsatis- ra eo ee ee Herod- , 158. words are closely parallel to passages in the Gospel: Matthew vi. 14,15 ; xviii. 88. Observe that in all such passages the identity of the divine and the human morality is assumed. * Genesis xxii.; Hosea i. 2. a happier one had failed. And, in thus express. ing our concurrence with his estimate of divine — deceptions, we have shown what we think of Mr, Oxenham’s estimate. It is in a certain sense true — eS ee of blasphemous.” But this is a one-sided unless supplemented by the more obvious momentous érth dt th belle hat hall words of the first of living bishops, “blasphemous and revolting.” Orthodoxy, therefore, is ina strait between two blasphemies; and of those blasphemies she should choose the less, oe Briefly, then, we concede to Suarez and Prof, Husley that “ incredibile est, Deum illis verbis of _ populum fuisse locutum quibus deciperetur.” Bat — we guard this concession by adding, “ Incrediitt lius est, Deum illis penis in populum esse usurum quibus crucietur.” We should hate, not the bes RD Ge Gite RRR tan Cer divine cruelty more. Only, in holding our for Neochristlanity, we assumed that it wes be” tween these two beliefs that the alternative lay, — that those who hang the belief in hell on the ss veracity represent the chain of evidence for hell as stronger than its weakest link; or, to a yet bolder metaphor, they make the lake rise above its own level. To prove this hag, been the design of our article. We have been em deavoring to show the universal application fe plain rule of human jurisprudence, by establishing, — a proposition which may be called a if not # corollary, of Hume's famous proposition, | about miracles. Our proposition is: That no per, son (whether in heaven or on earth) should st ye convicted, on his own testimony, of an A or unlikely act, unless it be less antecedently um-_ likely that he should do the act than that his tes. timony should be false; “and” (to apply H very words) “oven in that case there iso mata destruction of arguments, and the superior ¢ gives us an assurance suitable to that degree ty force wiidsttaninn efter dotacting Gotanera —Fortnightly Review. Bagge eseé Bsase i wWettenbaatraa« pay Re ere#8 = eae pce fe.

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St ia x a Ni Ay ~ MPR ROD AD MS OD eae sia + “eb REE EELS A ORR T. LR ee a, ~o Su GS. Rete aee Ah Se aS. a ale he , Lo a ; _ Phy PPS Oe a «J tee, - eeesiebo vm emniias tiga os ae % pas Om A - 7 = ai f Lily iad es tt 7 i .. Fee ¥ ‘ ~ . . Se r 7, "4 . y. ee al ' SPONTANEOUS GENERATION: A LAST WORD. Br Prorzsson TYNDALL. edacineman torneo dot part, in connection with the subject of spon- taneous generation are set forth in the two me- moirs published in the “ Philosophical Transac- tions of the Royal Society ” for 1876 and 1877. But by conversation and correspondence with various physicians and surgeons of eminence I was made aware that the further exposition and dacidation of two or three leading points was desirable, and to this task I addressed myself in the January number Of this review. This has drawn forth inthe February number a “reply,” in which it is intimated that my article deals in “Geninciation:” Of that the reader will judge for himself, my desire being that demonstration, rather than denunciation, should form the staple of the article. I am also spoken of as comment- ing in terms of severe reprobation on the writer's temerity in differing from M. Pasteur. On this point I take the opportunity of remarking that had the “temerity” referred to been the outcome of true courage, and fidelity to scientific convic- \ tion, I should have been the first to applaud the writer’s dissent from Pasteur, Huxley, and the other able men with whom he has come into col- lision; but I could not applaud the turning of ~® momentous discussion into a mere dialectic wrangle, nor could I approve of the systematic abandonment of that courtesy of language which * befits the neophyte in the presence of the master. _ Solence, as-a morgl agent, is affected by the ‘spirit in which it is pursued, and the man who, at the entrance of his career, discharges from his mind all reverence for those whose reputations have been established by the successful disci- _ plines of ‘laborious lives, is not likely to win ap- plause from me. To justice, however, my respondent is entitled, and I begin these remarks by an act of justice toward him. He complains that I speak of the vital resistance of the seeds of Medicago as if he had not been aware of the fact, and points out, to tse his own words, that “the facts newly dis- covered by Prof. Tyndall, which were to invali- date my views, were, with others, nearly five years ago, referred to by me.” I turn to vol. i, page _ $14, of his “ Beginnings of Life,” and there, it must be admitted, is a reference te Pouchet’s experiment, The observation referred to aston- ished Pouchet himself. At first he would not believe the statements of those who informed him that the seeds of Medicago could resist four hours’ boiling. “Ce fait extraordinaire était telle- ment en opposition avec ce que professent les physiologistes les plus éminents de notre époque, que je n’y pouvais croire.” Spallanzani had dis- tinctly declared that vegetable seeds were de- stroyed by boiling water, those with the hardest integuments not excepted. But Pouchet made the experiment for himself, and in twenty different repetitions of it found that some of the seeds ger- minated after four hours’ boiling. “Les semen- ces,” he says, “de ce medicago du Brésil ré sistaient & une ébullition de quatre heures de « durée. Oj cela s’arréte-t-il? Je n’en sais rien, n’ayant pas expérimenté au dela.” This observation, which excited great atten- tion at the time, which afterward formed the subject of discussions in the Academy, and which certainly is the most important observation of the kind ever made, is briefly spoken of in ‘a foot- note on the page above referred to. I had read the note and forgotten it, my lapse of memory being confirmed by the fact that in my respon- dent’s later volume, “ Evolution, or the Origin of Life,” where he treats very fully of “the destrue- tive influence of heat upon living matter,” the observation of Pouchet is not, to my knowledge, once mentioned. My respondent refers to Mr. Moseley in the Academy, and to Prof. Huxley at Liverpool, as enunciating views which were afterward “abun- dantly refuted” both in this country and on the Continent. Notwithstanding such refatation, “ Prof. Tyndall,” continues my respondent— “three years later—that is, early in 1876—at- tempted to deny that such experimental results as mine could be legitimately obtained, and sought to convince the Royal Society and a crowded andi- ence at the Royal Institution that I had fallen into error, and that no such results could be obtained by a skilled experimentalist like himself. In evi- dence of this he brought forward a ‘cloud of wit- nesses,’ all of which, if rightly interpreted, gave very different testimony from that which Prof. Tyndall imagined. But while he at first strenu- ously denied my facts, he is now only able to de- mur to my interpretation.”

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8 , THE POPULAR SOIENCR ‘permit aedesmemry: _ What the “ different testimony” here spoken of is I do not know, but I do know that the “ cloud of witnesses ” confront this writer now, as they did in 1876. Save by such intimations as the . above, which seem to point to a reserve of wis- dom in the writer’s private mind, he has never, to my knowledge, attempted to shake their evi- dence. The birth of the “ witnesses” was on this wise: At a meeting of the Pathological Society, especially convened for the discussion of the “ germ-theory” of contagious disease, my re- spondent thus addressed his medical colleagues : “With the view of settling these questions, therefore, we may carefully prepare an infusion from some animal tissue, be it muscle, kidney, or liver; we may place it in a flask, whose neck is drawn out and narrowed in the blowpipe-flame ; we may boil the fluid, seal the vessel during ebul- lition, and await the result, as I have often done. _After a variable time, the previously-heated fluid within the hermetically-sealed flask swarms more or less plentifully with bacteria and allied organ- isms.” The speaker had already informed his au- dience that he was discussing “a question lying at the root of the most fatal class of diseases to which the human race is liable.” Special care, I thought, was needed in the performance of ex- periments which lay at the basis of a subject of this importance. I was not sure that the speaker had observed this care. I therefore took him at his word, prepared infusions of animal tissues, comprising mutton, beef, fowl, wild-duck, par- tridge, plover, pheasant, snipe, rabbit, hare, had- dock, mullet, codfish, sole, and other substances. I placed them in flasks, “with necks narrowed and drawn out in the blowpipe-flame.” I boiled the fluids, sealed the vessels during ebullition, and awaited the result. These are the “ wit- _ Resses” of whose evidence my respondent pos- Sesses an “interpretation” known, as far as I am aware, only to himself. The fact, as known to me and others, is that the witnesses contradicted his assertion. He had affirmed that they would swarm with bacteria and allied organisms. They distinctly refused to do so. This thing was not done in a corner. One hundred and thirty such flasks were submitted to the scrutiny of the Royal Society in January, 1876, while thirty of them were critically examined by the biological secre- tary of the Society, Prof. Huxley. In one flask, and in one only, a small mycelium was discovered, and it, as Prof. Huxley remarked at the time, afforded a “dramatic confirmation” of the over- whelming evidence otherwise adduced. In this flask, and in it only, a small oridce wes. duis ered, through which the infusion could be pro. Ne a ee eee air had had access to the flask. My respondent next deals with Liebig’s doc. % trine of fermentation, regarding which, after some preliminary remarks, he says: “ If, then, as Lie big contended, organic matter in a state-of decay is capable of acting as a ferment, and of initiat- ; ing the common fermentations and putrefactions, _ there surely can be no error in quoting bim in — support of such views.” Certainly not, Whether organic matter in a state of decay possess the — power ascribed to it or not, the writer was pen fectly justified in quoting Liebig; but his justifi. cation ceases when by a twist of logic he seeks to make Liebig’s views answerable for his own. He — goes on to say: “ And if it has also been shown that the appearance and increase of the lowest — living particles are always correlative of these pr — cesses, Liebig’s view, if it is true at all, must be true for the whole of the processes which are es. sentially included under the term fermentation.” Such logic is best met by the direct and sim- * ple statement of the truth. Matter in decay was, — in Liebig’s view, matter in a state of molecular disturbance. His vision was concentrated + groups of atoms, or molecules—not on organisnis, He pictured, in perfect consistency with his theo retic sight, the propagation of the disturbance of — these groups to other groups-of unstable constk tution. These he figured as shaken asunder by — the motion of their agitated neighbors ; the visible concomitant of this molecular breaking up being — what we call fermentation. Liebig’s idea of ferment had nothing whatever to do with the doctrine of spontaneous generation. He gave that doctrine no countenance ; he derived from it no aid; and the attempt of the heterogenist to strengthen his position by amalgamation with Liebig is an attempt to mix together wholly im miscible things. My respondent quotes not only one, but two celebrated German chemists in his — favor. I ventured, a few days ago, to place the foregoing extract from the “reply ” before a third — distinguished German chemist, who is intimately acquainted with Liebig’s views. He had two ak — ternative hypotheses to account for it. The first need not be mentioned ; the second ascribed the reasoning of the extract to “mere confusion of mind.” My respondent continues : : a “The therefore, has good ground for demanding proofs of error the germ-theorist, rather than more or Jess po Y Zpeeterreweorre cs ie Sk iy te ee tee i te @ ‘bee ie ie te “He Sh ce. te. sie * Patina . Se ae ad alae 2 ee Ue eee Seeteestse ee

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oy SPONTANEOUS GENERATION: A LAST WORD. sible guesses based solely on the germ-theorists’ way of thinking, before he abandons Liebig’s fer- tile idea, supported by Gerhardt and others, that the mere organic matter of the air can fermentative changes in suitable fluids, leading though it may, among other phenomena, to a new birth of living particles. This, too, the reader will observe, is a very different notion concerning the origin of such new living particles from that which Prof. Tyndall persists in attributing to me, viz., the absurd idea that mere dead particles from the air are themselves ‘ miraculously kindled into living things.’ ”’ It is to be hoped that the reader will be able to observe the difference to which his attention is here directed. For my own part I am grateful for the explanation, such as it is, which, in view of the writer’s previous utterances, was by no means unnecessary. It does not, it is true, quite abolish the “miracle,” but it changes the form thereof, It is not, we now learn, the dead at- mospheric particles themselves that are kindled into life; it is, on the contrary, the dead particles of the liquid that are kindled into life by the dead particles of the air. The former, we are told, is an “absurd idea,” while the latter, I suppose, is thought a sweetly reasonable one. Thus, the dis- cord persistently raised by me is finally resolved. The “reader,” if I might claim his attention for a, moment, will observe the frictionless way in which this “new birth of living particles” in the liquid, begotten, be it remembered, by the dead particles of the air, glides in as a small corollary to Liebig’s “fertile idea.” There are people among us who, it is alleged, can produce effects, before which the discoveries of Newton pale. There are men of science who would sell all that they have, and give the proceeds to the poor, for ,& glimpse of phenomena which are mere trifles to the “spiritualist.” In like manner, while no discovery of the age would bear comparison with this “new birth of living particles,” it is a mere commonplace occurrence to our fortunate rogevist. My respondent scatters through his article words and phrases which he intends to have an effect, if not a meaning. He labels proofs as “assumptions,” ocular demonstrations as “ pos- sible guesses,” and propositions backed by all the knowledge of Nature which.we possess as the outcome of arbitrary prejudice. He speaks of my “setting the seal upon Nature’s possibili- ties” when I am merely setting it upon his own ’ licit wanderings. Indeed, he plainly shows him- self to be unacquainted with the real basis of scientific inference. Let us consider a special case, over which he has loudly sounded the angu- mentative timbrel. In my January article I refer ~ to Pouchet, fairly, I trust, appreciating his learn- ing and his strength, but quoting his own words to indicate the leaning of his mind when he be- gan his researches on heterogeny. My respon- dent retorts that I show “an even more obvious bias in the contrary direction ;” and, to make his point good, he publishes a mutilated para- graph from one of my letters. The full text of the paragraph I here restore: “Dr, Bastian says that two interpretations of my facts are equally admissible. He is again wrong; there is but one interpretation possible. An inter~ pretation which violates all antecedent knowledge is undeserving of the name. Al] our experience of the method of Nature goes to show that, ifa sown particle sprout into a plant, the particle is . proved thereby to be the seed of that plant, The - inference that a particle which, when sown, pro- duces a thistle is the seed of the thistle, is not, surer than the inference that the particles described in the 7Zimes as rising in clouds from shaken hay embrace the seeds of bacteria; while, to infer that the thistle is the offspring, not of a living seed, but of dead, unrelated organic matter, is not more re- pugnant to right reason than the so-called second interpretation of Dr. Bastian, which ascribes such definite organisms as hay-bacillus to dead dust.” This, I submit, is reasoning of a perfectly sound and wholesome kind. My respondent, how- ever, italicizes one obnoxious line of the para- graph, omits some others, and deduces from the whole that I have set my presumptuous seal upon the “possibilities of Nature,” and done other foolish things. I think it will not be difficult to make this matter plain to the readers of the Nineteenth Century. The smallest organisms which the microscope has hitherto revealed are grouped together under the common name of bacteria. They differ from each other both in size and shape, some being globular, some staff- like (whence the name), some having the form of © fine filaments, some mobile, and some still, In the staff-like bacteria, the usual mode of prop- agation and multiplication is bisection. The “ staff” is nipped at its centre, the nip deepens, and finally the bacterium is divided into two halves, which lengthen and are bisected in their turn. According to a calculation of Dr. Bur- don-Sanderson, this process enables 17,000,000 individuals to proceed in twenty-four hours from a single ancestor. In the case, however, of certain ‘large bacteria, which, because they are large, have been more thoroughly examined than the others, the rods or filaments are observed to

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ot. pepebve themectves into spores. This resolution, _ ‘as proved by Cobn and Koch, is conspicuously 508. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY~SUPPLEMENT. illustrated by the Bacil/us subtilis of hay, and the Bacillus anthracis of splenic fever. Both these organisms propagate themselves by spores which _ may be rendered as plain to the eye of the micro. scopist as peas in a pod.' This premised, let the reader place before his mind one of the sealed chambers deseribed in the January number of this review; let him figure ite series of test-tubes, charged with infusions which, exposed to optically pure air, have re- mained sweet and clear for six months in a warm room. Let the reader now suppose the door of the sealed chamber to be opened, and a bunch of dry hay to be shaken in the moteless air of the chamber. A beam sent through that air now shows it to be laden with dust. Forty-eight hours after this dust has been let loose, the infusions are found to have a fatty, corrugated scum upon their. surfaces, it may be with a clear or it may be with a turbid liquid underneath. When this scum is examined, it is found to consist of count- less multitudes of the hay-bacillus matted to- gether. What are we to conclude? Whence have these organisms come? I say there is but one interpretation possible, and this is the par- ~ticularly obnoxious phrase that my respondent has italicized as marking my scientific bigotry and narrowness of view. The interpretation is that the organisms have come from the germs of Ba- cillus subtilis, which have been shaken from the hay. In giving this interpretation, and in assert- ing it to be the only one, I am not, I submit, arbitrarily setting my seal upon the possibilities . of Nature, but loyally and dutifully following her teachings as an obedient son. But, my respon- dent might urge, you forget the other interpreta- tion, that I made so clear to the reader at page 267 of my “ reply ”—the interpretation, namely, that the dust of the hay is dead organic matter in _ @ state of motor decay. This dead dust falls into the infusions, and, although it does not commit the “absurdity” of becoming “itself” alive, it does go through the perfectly reasonable process of making the dead infusions alive. The value of _ logic leading to this issue has been duly appraised by our highest scientific authorities; its survival among the general public cannot, I think, be long. “ What present warrant,” asks my respondent, 1A few days ago I had an opportunity of seeing "matted together and dotted with spores some magnifi- cent examples of Bactllus anthracis, which had been -Gultivated by Mr. Ewart, of University College. —e Gey tr eeune Gn eee naked, speck of protoplasm can withstand four, six, or eight hours’ boiling?” Te whlch te@ adds, “I can only answer none.” Be naked specks of protoplasm I make no asser- y tion. I know nothing about them save as the’ creatures of my respondent’s fancy put into words, But I do affirm, not as a “supposition,” nor an “assumption,” nor a “probable guess,” nor, to use a more strenuous stigma of my respond Ne “a wild hypothesis,” but as a matter of the most — undoubted fact, that the spores of the hay-bacil- lus, when thoroughly desiceated by age, have, in Bs special cases, withstood the ordeal mentioned, — And I further affirm that these obdurate germs, under the guidance of the knowledge that they are germs, can be destroyed by five minutes’ 4 ing, or even less, This needs explanation. The finished bacterium, as the reader of my January — article knows, perishes at a temperature far below that of boiling water, and it is fair to assume that — the nearer the germ is to its final sensitive com dition the more readily will it succumb to/heat, Seeds soften before and during germination) — This premised, the simple description of the fok lowing process will ain ous understood : An infusion infected with the most powerfully resistent germs, but otherwise protected against — the floating matters of the air, is gradually raised to its boiling-point. Such germs as have reached the soft and plastic state immediately R: their development into bacteria are thus be’ seo tanatonthe dan a-chts tax for ten or twelve hours. If for twenty-four, we might have the liquid charged with well-developed bacteria. To anticipate this, at the end of tenor _ twelve hours we raise the infusion a second time _ to the boiling temperature, which, as before, de stroys all germs then approaching their point of — final development. The infusion is again put aside — for ten or twelve hours, and the process of heat- — ing is repeated. We thus kill the germs én the order of their resistance, and finally kill the last of © them. No infusion can withstand this process if it be repeated a sufficient number of times. Artix — choke, cucumber, and turnip infusions, which had proved specially obstinate when infected with the — germs of desiecated hay, were completely broken down by this method of discontinuous heating, — three minutes being found sufficient to accomplish failed to accomplish. I applied the method moreover, to infusions of various kinds of hay, — including those most tenacious of life. Not one — > =. a . * i eee (UL Oe CLs

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a pee ~ te + Se A NE OE San OE DF PRL et Pugh Pe» Ts ae na a! Beek 4 eeutiay at nee a ey a a a ee my i es by : = eee ae bee " i 4 a ee - of them slain aiteil These results were clearly foreseen before they were realized, so that the germ-theory fulfills the test of every true theory, that test being the power of prevision. When my respondent speaks of “naked or almost naked specks of protoplasm,” he draws, as I have intimated, upon his own imagination, not upon the objective truth of Nature. His words seem the words of knowledge, but his knowledge is really nil. He concedes the possibility of a “thin covering.” Such a covering may, how- ever, exercise a powerful protective influence. A thin pellicle of India-rubber, for example, sur- rounding a pea, keeps it hard in boiling water for a time sufficient to reduce an uncovered pea to a pulp. The pellicle prevents imbibition, diffasion, and the consequent disintegration. A greasy or oily surface, or even the layer of air which clings +o certain bodies, would act to some extent in a similar way. “The singular resistance of green vegetables to sterilization,” says Dr. William Roberts, “ appears to be due to some peculiarity of the surface, perhaps their smooth, glistening epidermis which prevented complete wetting of their surfaces.” 1 pointed out in 1876 that the process by which an atmospheric germ is wetted would be an interesting subject of investigation. A dry microscope covering-glass may be caused to float on water for a year. A sewing-needle may be similarly kept floating, though its specific gravity is nearly eight times that of water. Were it not for some specific relation between the mat- ter of the germ and that of the liquid into which it falls, wetting would be simply impossible. An- tecedent to all development there must de an in- terchange of matter between the germ and its . environment ; and this interchange must obvious- ly depend upon the relation of the germ to its en- compassing liquid. Anything that hinders this interchange retards the destruction of the germ in boiling water. In 1877 I add the following remark : “Tt is not difficult to see that the surface of a seed or germ may be so affected by desiccation and other causes as practically to prevent contact be- tween it and the surrounding liquid. The body of a germ, moreover, may be so indurated by time and dryness as to resist powerfully the insinuation of water between its constituent molecules, It would be difficult to cause.such a germ to imbibe the moisture necessary to produce the swelling and softening which precede its destruction in a liquid of high temperature.” However this may be—whatever be the state of the surface, or of the body, of the spores of SPONTANEOUS deualaaian A LAS? worn: . ¥ ak Be = bis bi ne clue -~ Soe fess . Sy Basilien subéilin, they do ase matter.of certainty resist, under some circumstances, exposure for hours to the heat of boiling water. No theoretic this fact, established as it has been by hundreds, if rot thousands, of rigidly-conducted experi- ments, My respondent calls his article a “reply.” It is the reply which antecedent knowledge would have led me to expect; but it is not, I submit, the reply which the English public, including the medical profession of England, had a right to not touch the core of the question at all. Let me point out something which demanded a reply; but to which none has been given. Reference has been already made to my “cloud of witnesses,” for the interpretation of whose testimony my re- spondent seemed to intimate that he possessed a private key. The true inference from that tes timony is that it refutes my respondent, But were it not that I wished to follow his instrue- tions formally and scrupulously, and thus deprive him of all opportunity of cavil or complaint, the ready recorded against him in the industrial arts nor by thousands, but by millions, the witnesses might be counted which contradict him. For, what are most of our preserved meats and vege- tables but the results of experiments in which his instructions have been carried out and his state- ments disproved? Animal and vegetable tissnes are placed in tin vessels, each with a small hole in its lid. The tins are boiled, steam issues ing, the tin is hermetically sealed. This is to all intents and purposes the process described by my respondent before the Pathological Society. what he is pleased to call Mr. Huxley’s “ empty generalities ” by stating that the tins of a certain establishment which he visited were boiled for an hour and a half, and, after sealing, were sub- jeeted to a temperature of 258° for half an hour. But this is not the universal practice, and mill- ions of tins have been prepared without this sub- sequent superheating. It is idle, moreover, to lay any stress upon this point; for the substances after having been superheated remain putrescible, though they do not putrefy, or show the slightest tendency or power to generate life. To meet this crushing demonstration, my re skepticism can successfully stand in the way of, © expect. It is a reply upon side issues which do refutation was unnecessary. The evidence al- was simply overwhelming. Not by hundreds, through the hole, and, after some minutes’ boil- Every sound tin thus prepared is therefore a wit- © .| mess against him. I am aware that he has met ‘ -

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spondent invented the theory referred to in my January article, according to which sound tins do, in the first’ instance, ferment, the associated organisms committing suicide by the pressure of the gases developed by their own vital actions. This is the very first point to which his “reply,” if he meant it to be a real one, ought to have been directed, Why did he, when dealing with a question described by himself as “lying at the root of the most fatal class of diseases to which the human race is liable,” commit the levity of enunciating so easily tested a theory without hav- ing carefully verified it experimentally? Why, after its character has been exposed, does he still leave his medical brethren in the dark regarding his views by neglecting to confess his error, and to retract it? The reply that we have a right to demand of him ought to direct itself to such points as this. In my January article I also refer to sixty flasks prepared in the Royal Institution, and transported in warm July weather to the Alps. On their arrival fifty-four of these flasks were found transparent and void of life. Six of them were charged with organisms, and these particular six were found on examination to have had their fragile sealed ends broken off. Here is a question for my respondent which he does not attempt to answer. I described accu- rately the way in which the flasks were charged and sealed, and gave him, moreover, a represent- ative drawing of one of them. He does not of- fer a word of explanation of the sterility of the fifty-four flasks, prepared according to his own prescription, and which ought, according to his prediction, to have “swarmed with bacteria and allied organisms.” With reference to his press- ure-theory, which he has also applied to explain Gruithuisen’s experiments, he was, moreover, in- formed that animal and vegetable infusions had been subjected by me to mechanical pressures far more than sufficient to produce the bactericidal effects which his theory ascribes to pressure, and ‘ that bacteria nevertheless grew and multiplied to countless swarms under such pressure, but he has . not a word of answer to the fact, or of acknowl- edgment of what it involves. He had claimed a power for the “actinic rays” as aiding in the de- velopment of organisms. By observations con- ducted in the powerful sunlight of the Alps, and at the temperatures which my respondent declared to be most efficient, the alleged power was proved to be a delusion. I pointed out the fundamental mistake contained in his communication to the Royal Society, where an observation made with a THE POPULAR. SCIENCE MONTHLY. —SUPPLEMENT. mineral solution is unwarrantably extended to an _ 2 organic infusion, a demonstration of the de novo — generation of living organisms being founded on this illegitimate process; but the “reply” does not contain an allusion, much less an answer, to’ my counter-demonstration. He passes without notice my remarks about positive and negative results, his “ misunderstanding ” of which, to use the words of Dr. William Roberts, “makes him) blind to the overwhelming cogency of the case against him.” In reply to one of his argumenta)” I ask: “Why, when your sterilized organic in. fusion is exposed to optically pure air, should » this generation of life de novo utterly cease?! Why should I be able to preserve my turnip-juice side by side with your saline solution for three’ hundred and sixty-five days of the year in free connection with the general atmosphere, on the — sole condition that the portion of that atmosphere _ in contact with the juice shall be visibly free from floating dust, while three days’ exposure to that — dust fills it with bacteria?” There is no answer, These are but a fraction, and by no means the weightiest fraction, of the points urged upon his attention, but which he systematically avoids, He expands, with a “ wonderful effluence of words,” on Medicago and such like things. He deflects the discussion from the question of spon- taneous generation to the totally different ques. tion whether the bacterial matter of the air exiels! there as germs or as finished organisms. But he leaves absolutely untouched the main facts and 5 the most conclusive arguments of my article. As to any bias, or prejudice, or foregone com clusion, that may beset me in this matter, I have, — only to remind the reader that few persons at the present day have more distinctly avowed belief _ in the “potency of matter,” and that few have) paid more dearly for the avowal, than myself, ~ The criticism of high-minded scholars and cub tivated gentlemen, as well as the vituperation of. _ - individuals who have not yet reached that “ place: in Nature” where gentlemanly feeling comes into play, have been liberally bestowed upon me. In) a letter recently received from my excellent friend) _ Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, he justly remarks that I should probably have been well satisfied. had my inquiries in relation to the present ques’ tion justified Pouchet instead of Pasteur. With the views, indeed, which I entertain upon this subject, it specially behooves me to take care that no theoretic leaning shall taint my judgment of — experimental evidence. Ihave always kept apart the speculative and the proved. Before Virchow laid down his canons I had reduced them to prac- — nae Uc eflUc.lUC hlOUlUlCOF SE SZESaYPEereseerertouerus =e e

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4 + ie phates —— , - . te the 4° wereanrnh earn ktaaesd re tye , a er * : THE DEFINITION OF LIFE. . tice. My sole care has been that the potency of truth should be vindicated ; and no denier of the of matter could labor more strenuously than I have done to demonstrate its impotence as regards spontaneous generation. While express- ing, therefore, unshaken “ belief” in that form of “ materialism " to which I have already given ut- terance, I here affirm that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to prove that life, in our day, has ever appeared independently of antecedent life. The present condition of this question is such that no medical man, seeking clearly to realize and effectually to -emove the causes of epidemic disease, need have his mind troubled by a doubt as to the derivation of those organisms to which modern physiology, with ever-increasing empha-

sis, assigns such momentous functions. Clearly assured that they are not spontaneously gener- ated, his efforts will be directed to the discovery and the destruction of the germinal matter from which they spring. Here, as I have stated in an- other place, the intelligent codperation of the public with the physician is absolutely essential to success. For their sakes I have spared no pains to render my demonstrations so clear that no amount of verbal “ effluence” will be able to obscure them. This accomplished, the contro- versy comes to a naturalend. Neither honor to the individual nor usefulness to the public is like- ly to accrue from its continuance, and life is tdo serious to be spent in hunting down in detail the Protean errors of Dr. Bastian. — Nineteenth Century.

THE DEFINITION OF LIFE.* Br CLAUDE BERNARD, L INCE the earliest days of antiquity, famous philosophers or physicians have viewed those . phenomena which pass through their phases in living beings as resulting from the action of some higher and immaterial principle upon passive and yielding matter. This is the conception of Py- thagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Hippocrates, the received belief, at a later time, among the philos- ophers and learned mystics of the middle ages, held by Paracelsus and Van Helmont, and by the scholastic doctors. In the course of the eighteenth century this idea reached its highest point of ac- ‘ ceptance and control in that eminent physician, " Stahl, who added to its distinctness of form by the conception of animism. The spirituality of life found its extravagant expression in animism. Stahl was the resolute and most positive sup- porter of those conceptions which had prevailed since Aristotle’s time. It may be said, too, that he was their last representative ; the modern mind refused to welcome a doctrine that had grown into too glaring an opposition to science. On the other hand, in contradiction to the ideas just noted, even before physics and chem- istry had gained an organized form, before the 1 Translated from the Reoue des Deua Mondes, by

phenomena of dead matter were understood, we perceive that, in anticipation of the facts, the movement of philosophy tended toward the at- tempt at proving the identity of phenomena in inorganic substance with those of living bodies. This notion is the basis of atomism, as held by Democritus and Epicurus. The atomists admit no governing intelligence; for them the world from everlasting moves of its own force. They conceive of one kind of matter only, the elements - of which possess, by means of their forms, the property of entering into combinations in endless diversity, through their mutual connections, and of composing inorganic and lifeless bodies, as well as organized living and feeling beings like animals, or rational and volitional ones such as man. The latter hypothesis thus assumed, at its ori- gin, an exclusively materialistic shape; but it must be noted as singular that those philosophers most profoundly convinced of the spirituality of the soul, as Descartes and Leibnitz, for instance, did not hesitate to adopt a view of a very similar kind which accounted for all those manifestations of life in action which are presented to the senses by the operation of unintelligent forces. The ground of this seeming contradiction is to be found in the almost absolute severance between the body and the soul which they insisted on. —

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si ‘ea . ‘THE POPULAR ScrRNoE ieaialarecreLamiche © Descartes gives a metaphysical definition of the soul and a physical definition of life. The soul is that higher principle which makes itself known __ by thought; life is merely a higher result from mechanical Jaws. The human body is a machine, made up of springs, levers, pipes, filters, sieves, and squeezers. This machine is made only for » itself; the soul unites with it. only for the con- templation of whatever takes place in the body as a mere spectator, but it takes no part what- , ever in the discharge of vital functions, The ideas.entertained by Leibnitz, as regards their physiological character, are closely analogous te those of Descartes. He, too, like Descartes, sev- ers the soul from the body, and, though he admits a harmony preéstablished between them by divine power, he denies that they have any sort of re- ciprocal influence. “The body ”—these are his words—“ goes on in its development mechanical- ly, and the laws of mechanics are never trans- gressed in its natural motions; everything takes place in souls as though there were no body, and in the body everything takes place as though there were no soul.” Stahl’s conceptions of the nature of vital phe- nomena and the relations between soul and body were totally unlike these. In considering the ac- ' tion of life, he throws aside all explanations which would. apply alike to such action and to the me- chanical, physical, and chemical phenomena of inert matter. An eminent chemist himself, he assails with great power and peculiar authority the extravagances of the chemist-doctors, or iatro- chemists, men like Sylvius de Le Boé, Willis, and others, who resolved all the phenomena of life into chemical action, fermentations, alkalinities, . acidities, and effervescences. He goes further than to maintain that chemical forces are different from the forces that rule the manifestations of life, and even asserts that the former are hostile | to the latter, and that they tend to the destruc- | tion instead of the preservation of the living body. We must have, as Stahl teaches, a vital force that protects the body against the action of external chemical forces which press incessantly toward its attack and destruction ; life is the triumph of such vital forces over the others. Stahl was led by these ideas to his theory of vitalism ; but he didnot stop at that stage: it was but a first step in the path that led him at last toanimism, This. vital force, he says, struggling without rest against physical forces, acts intelligently, upon a definite plan, for the preservation of the organism. But if vital force is intelligent, why make any distinc- tion between it and the rational soul? Basil Va- lentin and Paracelsus, his disciple, had the existence in infinite number of telligent principles, the archea, which gc the phenomena in the living body. Van E the most famous representative of these teachings, who joined a genius for experi: an imagination wholly ungoverned in its and sallies, dreamed out a whole hierarchy of, these immaterial principles. Highest of placed the rational and immortal soul, w tinguished from God; next the sentient and. tal soul, using as its agent another chief of ¢ eres, high. n,n Soom. contra se of subordinate archaea, styled the bias, following Van Helmont a century later, pr cay rying on his ideas, reduces all these intelligent principles, governing or archaic g to some simplicity. He acknowledges but soul, the soul immortal, charged also with . control of the body. very principle of life. Life is one of the He regards the soul as t modes of action, it is the soul’s vivifie act, The immortal soul, an intelligent and rational force, rules directly the matter of the body, sets it work, guides it to its end. It is this soul not merely commands our voluntary acts, bub. « which, moreover, sets the heart beating, sends blood on its course, lifts the lungs in bi makes the glands secrete. If the unison of t phenomena is disturbed, if disease occurs, ity because the soul has failed to discharge its f tions, or has not succeeded in effectual ; to external causes of destruction. A de like this contained singular contradictions, the influence of @ rational soul upon vital a cesses seems to imply conscious direction, w. the simplest observation teaches us that all t functions of nutrition, circulation, digestion, cretions, etc., are unconscious and involunt if, to borrow the phrase of a physiological ph losopher, Nature had chosen, out of caution, withdraw these important processes from the trol of a capricious and ignorant will, So that the animism of Stahl was stamped by an extrar agance that induced his successors, if not to it up, at least to subject it to very grave m tions. deep impression on science, and set two ¢ in motion, which have continued flowing an our own day. Descartes iaid down first 5 ples, and applied mechanical laws to the of that machine, the human body.. His 7 gave breadth and precision to mechanical ex nations of the various vital phenomena, Descartes’s ideas, and those of Stahh Jef a "3, * a do 2 F 4 ‘ air atts «Sie i? 2, 4 oe STeBRP EEO Swe ewtHweezecnae es eocekanosc rs - 4 2 FES : vere BR eT EY etTeritie

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= wieasttg ha’: Gap, ae ae ieee =x i ie er f Uh Rae ’ be named, in the first rank, Borelli; and, next, -- Piteairn, Hales, Keil, and Boerhaave particularly, whose influence prevailed s On its side, jstro-chemistry, which is but another face of the ~ doetrine of Descartes, pursued its course, and had - become definitely established, when modern chem- istry appeared. Descartes and Leibnitz had laid it down as a principle that the laws of mechanics _ gre everywhere the same; that there is no such ‘thing as two mechanics, one for inert bodies, an- "other for living bodies. At the close of the last ' eentury, Lavoisier and Laplace added the demon- *- stration that there are not two chemistries either, one for inert bodies and another for living bodies. They proved, by course of experiment, that res- _ piration and the production of heat take place in _ the bodies of men and of animals, through phe * pomena of combustion precisely similar to those that occur in the calcination of metals. Nearly at the same time, Borden, Barthez, and Grimaud, were famous in the school of Montpel- lier. They were Stahl’s successors, yet they re- ‘tained only the first part of their master’s teach- _ ing, vitalism, and rejected its second portion, ani- —- In contradiction to Stahl, they conceive that the principle of life is distinct from the soul, _ bat they agree with him in acknowledging a vital ~ force, a raling vital principle, a unity such that it __ explains the harmony in the manifestations of life, _ ‘and one that acts apart from the laws of mechan- _ ies, physics, and chemistry. Btill, vitalism underwent gradual modifications of its form ; the doctrine of vital properties marked _ mi important epoch in the history of physiology. ~ In place of the metapbysical notions which had prevailed.up to that time, we have here a physio- logical idea which endeavors to explain manifes- - tations of life by the properties themselves of the _ gubstance of the tissues or organs. As long ago as at the end of the seventeenth century, Glisson had pointed out irritability as the immediate cause of movement in living fibre. Borden, Gri- - mand, and Barthez, caught a more or less uncer- tain glimpse of the same idea. Haller connected _ his name with ihe discovery of that mode of mo- __ tion, by bringing to our knowledge his memorable » €xperiments on the irritability and sensibility of _the different parts of the body. It is, however, Rot before the beginning of this century that Xa- Nier Bichat, by a sudden flash of genius, perceived that the solution of vital phenomena must be - Sought for not in an immaterial principle of a higher order, but, on the contrary, in the proper- ties of matter, in the depths of which these phe- “a 69

— Te ? : : < 4, s oP of Ha Mt ~ _ : nomena bave-tislr tise ‘ahd! course. Doubtless Bichat did not define the vital properties, but . gave them uncertain and obscure characteristics. His genius, as is often the case, consists not in having discovered the facts, but in having under. stood their meaning, by being the first to announce _ that general, luminous, and fertile idea, that in physiology, as in physics, phenomena must be connected with properties as with their cause. © “The relations of properties, as causes, to phe- nomena as effects,” he says, in the preface to his “General Anatomy,” “form an axiom almost too familiar to need repetition at this day, in physics and chemistry; if my book establishes a similar axiom in the physiological sciences, it will have gained its end.” Then he adds, in continuation: “There are in Nature two classes of beings, two classes of properties, two classes of sciences. Be- ings are organic or inorganic, properties are vital or non-vital, sciences are physical or physiologi- cal.” Here, and at the outset, it is of consequence to understand Bichat's idea thoroughly. It might be supposed that he means to side with the phys- icists and chemists, because he agrees with them in placing the causes of phenomena in the proper- ties of matter; but the result is the opposite one, and Bichat abandons and separates himself from them in as thorough a way as possible. In truth, the object pursued at all times by the iatro-mech- anicians, physicists, or chemists, has been to prove a similarity—an identity—between the phe- nomena of living bodies and those of inorganic bodies. Bichat, in direct opposition to them, lays down as a principle that vital properties are ab- solutely opposed to physical properties, eo that, instead of going over into the camp of the physi- cists and chemists, he remains a vitalist, with Stahl and the school of Montpellier. With them, he conceives that life is a conflict between con- tending activities ; he admits that the vital prop- erties preserve the living body, by counteracting the physical properties that tend to destroy it, When death occurs, it is nothing but the triumph of physical properties over their opponents, Moreover, Bichat summarizes his ideas complete ly in the definition he gives of life: “ Life is the group of functions that resist death ;” which means, in other words, life is the group of vital properties which resist physical properties. This view, which consists in regarding vital properties as a sort of metaphysical entities, not capable of clear definition, except as opposed to common physical properties, no doubt led inves- tigators into the same mistakes that the other

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sia a THE POPULAR SOIBNOE pil ng baa Fa _ | ‘witalist theories induced. és Bideails, venbep ~~”. tion, freed from those errors which at his time were hardly to be avoided, remains, nevertheless, a conception of genius, on which modern physidl- ogy is founded. Before his day, the doctrines of _ philosophers, animist or vitalist, soared to a point too lofty and too remote from reality to permit their entering with force and growth into the science of life; they could have no other action “upon it than that paralyzing effect shared with * the inert sophisms then prevalent in that school. Bichat, on the other hand, by diffusing life away from a centre, by showing it dwelling in the tis- sues, and connecting its manifestations with the properties of these very tissues, still makes them dependent, it is true, on a metaphysical principle, but that principle is one of a less lofty philosophic dignity, one that may be used with far greater convenience as a scientific basis by the spirit of research and progress, In a word, Bichat, like his predecessors, the vitalists, fell into errors upon the theory of life, but he made no mistakes as to the methods of physiology. It is his glory to have founded that science, by placing in the properties '. _ of tissues and of organs the immediate causes of _ the phenomena of life. The ideas of Bichat effected a deep and gen- eral revolution in physiology and medicine. The anatomical school issued from them, seeking ea- gerly in the vital properties of healthy and un- sound tissues the explanation of the appearances of health and disease. In another direction the advance of physical methods, the splendid dis- coveries of modern chemistry, with the broad light they threw upon the vital functions, added ' every day a new protest against the view main- tained by Bichat, as well as by the vitalists, of a necessary separation and opposition between the organic and the inorganic phenomena of Nature. We thus find Bichat and Lavoisier, very near our own day, standing as representing those two great distinct tendencies of philosophy, antago- nistic as we have discerned them from the earli- est times, in the very beginning of knowledge, one attempting to reduce the phenomena of life to the laws of chemistry, physics, and mechan- ies ; the other, on the contrary, seeking to set them apart and place them under the government of a special principle, a peculiar power, what name soever be given it, whether soul, or arche- on, or psyche, or plastic intermediary, or guiding spirit, vital force, or vital properties. This con- test, so ancient already, is still, as we show, not ended ; but how must it end? Will one of these doctrines at the last win the day over the other, and have undivided sway? I do not.so ’ Advances in sciences result in weakening by degrees, and in equal measure, those earlier clusive ideas sprung from our little k As it is the unknown that gives all their streng in proportion as it vanishes disputes must conflicting theories disappear, and the se truth that takes their place must rule withouts — rival ue II. oe We may say of Bichat, as of most of 7 great promoters of science, that he had the men — it of inventing a formula for the indefinite ceptions of his day. ll the notions as tolifegf his contemporaries, all their efforts to shape them / in a phrase, are in « manner little else than ay” echo or paraphrase of his teaching. A surgeon of the Paris school, Pelletan, cays that life E the resistance opposed by organized ; » the causes which incessantly tend to dest: hott Cuvier himself unfolds the same thought, that life is a force which resists the laws that . inert matter ; death can be only the return of liv ing matter to the control of those laws. bese tinguishes the corpse from the living body is principle of resistance which upholds or organized matter ; and to clothe his thought more striking and attractive form, Cuvier p for us the figure of a woman in the sp youth and health, suddenly-seized on by “See,” he says, “those voluptuously forms, that pliant grace of motion, that 1 warmth, the rose-hued cheeks, the ¢ brightened by the fiash of wit, or kindled the fire of passion ; nothing is wanting to com plete the enchantment of her presence. A mi ment is enough to destroy that charm; off without a visible cause, motion and feeling suddenly, the body loses its warmth, the m relax and reveal the angular, bony projec the eyes grow dim, the lips and cheeks This is but the beginning of more f changes; the flesh discolors into blue, 4 and black; it draws in moisture, and while part of it goes into evaporation and exhales part drips away in putrid matter, which turn dissolves in air; in brief, at the end of a fe days, nothing is left but a few earthy and principles ; the other elements are 2 air and water, to unite in new combinations. @ is plain,” Cuvier adds, “that this sepa the natural result from the action of air, and moisture, in short, of all outward upon the dead body, and it is occasioned elective attraction of these various agents @

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* é >. cj yee OS Veioe 4 2 > rae Wee % " fs >-9 > = ca Th oo ok ec Fre ABRREPSESOE Zak is Pine tleinents Chik inaiteittn einisianii Yet that x ee nee aera - ~ ding its life ; their affinities for its particles were the same, and the latter would have yielded to the power in the same way, had they not been . kept combined by a force stronger than those affinities, which ceased to act on them only at the moment of death.’’ ; ‘These ideas of contrariety and conflict be- tween the vital forces and the outward physico- _ ghemical forces, which we find repeated in the doctrine of vital properties, had been before ex- pressed by Stahl, though in obscure and almost barbarous terms; when set forth by Bichat with _ Incid clearness and great charm of style, the - game ideas won and carried away all minds. Bi- ' hat does not think it enough to assert oppo- gition between the two orders of properties that _ hare Nature; but, in the very description of either order, he brings them strikingly into con- "east. “The physical properties of bodies,” he _ gays, “are eternal. At creation, these proper- ties seized upon matter, which must continue for the endless course of ages possessed by them. Vital properties, on the other hand, are tempo- _ wary in their very nature ; inert matter, coming into combination through living bodies, imbibes _ those vital properties, which thus become united * with physical properties; but the connection _ @annot be lasting, because it is part of the na- ture of vital properties to waste away; time “ fears them out in any one body. Vigorously active in early age, they remain stationary, as it _ Were, in adult life ; they grow feeble and waste to Mothing in the later years. Prometheus is said _te-have stolen fire from heaven to give life to Statues of men made by his art. That fire is * mm emblem of vital properties; so long as it - ‘Durns, life is kept up; whenever it goes out, life drops into nothing.” * It is from this single point of the contrast in ‘kind and in duration between physical proper- - ties and vital properties that Bichat draws by ' inference all the distinctive characters of living ‘beings and lifeless substances, all the differences ‘between the sciences devoted to their respective ‘study. Physical properties being eternal, he _ ‘ays, lifeless bodies have no necessary begin- _ @ing nor end, no age nor evolution ; they have ‘Ro other limits than such as chance assigns. _ Vital properties, on the contrary, being change- _ able and of fixed term of duration, living bodies _ ‘tive fluctuating and perishable; they have a be- - Sgimning, a birth, » death, ages—in brief, a course “ef qvolution which they must go through. Vital properties being in:a state of constant conflict > with physical properties, the living body, the = = arena of that strife, must suffer its alternations. Health and disease are simply the vicissitudes of that strife; if physical properties gain a pos- itive triumph, death is its consequence ; if, on the other hand, the vital properties regain their control, the living being recovers from its mal- ady, its wounds scar over, its organism heals, and it resumes the harmony of its functions. In lifeless bodies nothing like this is remarked ; those bodies remain as unchanging as the death of which they are theimage. Thence arises a marked distinction between the sciences which he calls vital and those he styles non-vital. The physico- chemical properties being steady and uniform, - the laws of those sciences that treat of them are not less constant and unchanging; they may be foreseen and counted on with certainty. As the vital properties have instability for their distin. guishing note, as all the vital functions may be impressed with a multitude of variations, noth ing in their phenomena can be calculated or foreseen. Therefore, Bichat holds, it must be concluded that “absolutely diverse laws con- trol each one of these classes of phenomena.” Such, in its main features and with its infer. ences, is the doctrine of vital properties, which long prevailed in the schools, spite of the just objections to which it is open. We will briefly inquire whether that separation of phenomena into two great groups, demanded by the doctrine of which Bichat stood forth as the eloquent champion, is sound in its foundation, or whether it should not be thought rather a theoretical sys- tem than the expression of the truth. Is it true, to begin with, that substances in inorganic Na- ture are eternal, and that living bodies are the only perishable ones? May not the differences between them in this respect be merely one of degree, which deceive us by the greatness of their disproportion? For instance, it fs plain — that the life of an elephant may seem an eter- nity, compared with the life of an ephemeron; and, if we regard the life of man in relation to — the continuance of the cosmical medium he dwells in, it must seem to us but an instant in the infinity of Time. The ancients thought in the same way: they viewed the living world, in which everything is subject to change and death, in contrast with the sidereal world, changeless and incorruptible. This notion of the incorrup- — tibility of the heavens prevailed down to the sev- enteenth century. The earliest telescopes then made it possible to observe the appearance of a

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oe - THE porvis® somos fbi Cl i ia, new star in the constellation Serpentarius ; this ~ ghange in the heavens, taking place, we may say, under the observer’s very eyes, began to shake the belief of the ancients that “ the substance of the heavens is unalterable.” At the present day the minds of astronomers have grown famil- jar with the idea of constant mobility and evolu- tion in the starry world. “The stars have not existed forever,” says Faye; “they have had a period of formation ; they will similarly have a - period of decline, followed by final extinction.” Therefore, that eternity of the heavenly bodies * to which Bichat appeals is not real; they go through an evolution, as living bodies do—an evolution which is slow when compared with our hasty life, and which ranges over an extent of time out of all proportion to that we are wont to think of in our own surroundings. In another view, before astronomers understood the laws of movement of the heavenly bodies, they had formed the notion of sidereal powers and forces, as physiologists recognize vital powers and forces. Even Kepler admitted a “ governing sidereal spirit,” under whose influence “the planets fol- low calculated curves in space, without disturb- ing the stars that roll in other orbits, or derang- ing the harmony established by the divine geom- eter,” If living bodies are not the only ones subject to the law of evolution, neither is the power of self-restoration, of scarring over their wounds, ex- clusively theirs, although its more active mani- festations take place in them. We all know that when a living organism has been mutilated, it tends to its own restoration in accordance with _- the laws of its special morphology; the hurt heals over in the plant and animal, the lost sub- stance is renewed, and the being repairs itself in its form and unity. This phenomenon of re- construction, of redintegration, has made a deep impression on philosophic naturalists, and they dwell earnestly on that striving of life for indi- viduality which moulds the living creature to an harmonious whole, a kind of little world within the great one. Whenever the concord of the organic structure is disturbed, it strives for re- establishment, but these facts do not require for their explanation any appeal to a force, a vital property in opposition to physical ones. Indeed, mineral substances show the possession of a like morphological unity, and of the same tendency to self-repair. Crystals, as well as living beings, have their shapes and special plan, and are capa- \ ble of influence from perturbing actions by the surrounding medium. That physical force which cite teiteigethiiine states ts ailas + the laws of reasoned geometry, works sults with that which arranges organized in the form of an animal or a plant. has noted certain facts of crystalline ‘ci tion and restoration well worthy of-our He examined several crystals, and subjected to mutilations, which he observed to be with great regularity and rapidity. The result of his researches is that, “ when a crystal is t on any one of its faces, and replaced in the fluid of crystallization, we remark that while the ery — tal increases in all directions by the deposit: crystalline particles, a very decided action takes place at the broken or injured g and this action suffices in a few hours, not ly for the general, regular formation of ine over all parts of the crystal, but also for the toration of regularity in the injured part.” T) singular facts of crystalline reparation are e: ly comparable with those that living beings sent to view when a wound, more or Jess inflicted on them. In the crystal, as in the mal, the injured part scars over, regains by = | grees its original shape, and in either case the work of reformation of the tissues at that is much more energetic than it is under the Z conditions of development. The considerations thus briefly set forth, might be enlarged on without end, seem to prove convincingly that the deep line of tion which the vitalists. propose to draw b living bodies and lifeless substances in regar their continuance, their development, and faculty of formative restoration, is not aut ized by facts. As regards the conflict they gine between physical forces or properties ail vital forces or properties, it is the expression off serious mistake. This theory of vital properties maintains in inert substances there is to be found single order of properties, and that in bodies two kinds are to be found—physical and vital—which are in a state of constant and opposition, each striving to prevail over other. “ While life lasts,”. Bichat says, “ , physical properties, fettered. by the vital p ties, are perpetually checked in the phene they would tend to produce.” _ The logical influence and control the vital properties gain it a living organism, the more feeble and nate,. the. physioo-chewlen]...prepertion Sa come ; and that reciprocally the vital pro will droop and fail in proportion to theg tne: oe eee . + ee ay se oe rae 0: pes € ee , ft} - a Sa Fn ies wait AY . Coie Ae ESS: os oy * ee gan: ot

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> - “pore reality, the over and over again by the labors of La- _ oisier and his successors. Life does in the last - gesult represent a combustion, and combustion -- jtself is nothing more than a series of chemical with which there are directly con- pected certain calorific, luminous, and vital mani- ~ festations. Exclude oxygen, the agent in com- - pustion, from the atmosphere, and instantly the flame dies, instantly life stops. If we proceed to “Jessen or increase the quantity of burning gas, _ vital phenomena, as well as the chemical phe- _ pomena of combustion, will be heightened or "weakened in like proportion. Therefore, we can- "not view the relation between chemical phenome- gs and vital manifestations as an antagonistic _ @ne; on the contrary, there exists perfect par- " gllelism, harmonious and essential connection. _ Throughout the series of organized beings, their "” Gntensity of vital manifestations is in direct ac- cord with the activity of their organic chemical manifestations. Proofs of this press forward in _ @very quarter. When a man or animal is seized _ sab col the cheieal phnomens of orga * gombustion at first decline ; then motion grows slower, sensibility and intelligence droop and be- # “¢ome dull, a complete benumbing comes on. On | feviving from that lethargy, the vital functions C resume their play, but always parallel with the _ feappearance of chemical phenomena. When “life is suspended in a dried specimen of infusoria, _ and is restored by the action of a few drops of water, it is not because desiccation assailed life ” or the vital properties, but because the fluid in- _ dispensable for the production of the physical ' and chemical phenomena was withdrawn from _ the organism. When Spallanzani revived roti- fers, that had been dried for thirty years, by moistening them, he merely produced in their " bodies a reappearance of the physical and chemi- eal phenomena which had been checked in them _ for thirty years. Water contributed nothing else a noe neither a force nor a principle. __» How could we possibly understand an oppo- _ tition or antagonism between the properties of - living bodies and those of inert substances, since the elements that make up these two orders of " Bodies are the same? Buffon, seeking a reason - for the difference between organized and inorganie ” beings, was logical in imagining the former pos- ee oe a een ORNS Sopely SNES, __ With which the latter were unprovided. Chemis- BS By catty pect that hypothesis by the proof ae ; ‘ Aad ~: at Sere 4 i eet a4 oat e that all 1 ving bode re: wholy-forni fhain “ae dium. The human body, the most complex of -— living bodies, is made of material yielded by four = _ teen of these elements. We can easily under stand that these fourteen simple bodies might, by ~ uniting and coalescing in all ways, produce infi- nite combinations, and form compounds endowed with the most various properties; but what we cannot possibly conceive is that such properties could be of a different order or a different essence from the combinations themselves. To state conclusions, the opposition, antago- nism, or conflict, between vital phenomena and physico-chemical phenomena, allowed by the vi- talist school, is an error which the discoveries of modern physics and chemistry have thoroughly exploded. t More than this, the vitalist theory does not merely rest on false suppositions and mistaken - facts ; it contradicts the scientific spirit by its very nature. By insisting on the creation of two orders of sciences, one for lifeless substances, the other for living bodies, that theory ends in a pure — and simple denial of all science whatever. Bichat, we have seen, lays it down as a principle that the laws of the physical sciences are in absolute op- position to the laws of the vital sciences. In the former, everything must be steady and unchang- ing; in the latter, everything must be unsettled and variable. The divergence between these two orders of sciences must leave them strangers to each other, and disable them from furnishing any mutual aid, This is the conclusion whith Bichat inevitably reaches. “ As the physical and chemi- eal sciences,” he says, “ were highly cultivated before the physiological ones, it was supposed that the latter would gain clearness by connection with the former, but the result was confusion. It could not be otherwise, since applying physical sciences to physiology is explaining the phenom- ena of living bodies by the laws of lifeless stib- stances. Now, this is a false principle; there fore, all its consequences must be marked with the same stamp.” Were we to ask what the special notes are of this science of living beings, Bichat answers, “It is a science which is like — the vital functions themselves, in being capable of infinite variations, one which eludes every sort of calculation, in which nothing can be foreseen or foretold, and mere approximations, oftenest vague ones, are presented to us.” These are her | esies in science so enormous that it would be difficult to understand them did we not see how logically such a system must needs lead to them.

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Ee ee, PRE a mit that vital phenomena cannot be brought _ “under any exact law, any constant and settled condition, and to allow that such phenomena so defined compose a vital science that has the pe- culiarity of being vague and uncertain. There seems to be no reply to be made to such reason- ings, for their very meaning is the want and de- nial of all scientific sense. And yet how often has not the same kind of argument been brought forward; how many doc- tors have maintained that physiology and medi- cine could never be more than half-sciences, sci- ences of conjecture, because we shall never grasp . the principle of life, or the hidden character of disease! These assertions, still echoing in our ears, like the far-off voices of obsolete teachings, have no power to make us pause. Descartes, _Leibnitz, and Lavoisier, have taught us that mat- ter and its laws are alike in living bodies and in lifeless substances ; they have shown us that in the world there is but one mechanism, one phys- ies, one chemistry, common to all natural beings. There are not, then, two orders of sciences, . Any science worthy to be called so is one which, ~ mnderstanding the exact laws of phenomena, fore- ‘tells them with certainty, and controls them when within its reach. Anything that is wanting in this character is merely quackery or ignorance, for there can be no such thing as half-sciences or conjectural sciences. It is a grave mistake to suppose that in living bodies we have to concern ourselves with the very essence and principle of life. Wecannot attain to the principle of any- ~ thing, and the physiologist has nothing more to do with the principle of life than the chemist has with the principle of the affinity of bodies. First causes elude us everywhere, and every- where alike we can reach only the immediate causes of phenomena. Now, these immediate which are nothing else than the very conditions of phenomena, are capable of as rig- orous ascertainment in the sciences of living bodies as in those of lifeless ones. There is no scientific difference among all natural phenome- na other than that in the complexity or delicacy of the conditions under which they appear, mak- ing it more or less difficult to distinguish and define them. Such are the principles that should guide us. Thus, we must unhesitatingly conclude that the duality set up by the vitalist school in the sciences of living and of lifeless bodies is totally opposed to science itself. Unity reigns throughout its domain. The sciences of living Ill. If vitalist doctrines have come to not through the capital error of their principle dualism or opposition between living Nature ani inorganic Nature, the problem always exists, We have to make answer to this eternal question, — “ What is life?” or else to the other one, “ Wha is death?” for the two questions are cle bound together, and cannot be parted. . The living being has for its essential charac. teristic nutrition, The organic structure is seat of an unceasing nutritive movement, a inward action which leaves no rest for any each, without pause or cessation, feeding itself i the medium that surrounds it, and throwing¢ . into that medium its products and its This molecular renewal is invisible to direct sight: — but, as we see the beginning and the end, the em trance and the exit of substances, we i 3 their intermediate changes, and we represent ry ourselves a flow of matter that perpetually tray. _ els through the organism, and renews its stance while preserving its form. This ment, which has been called the vital torrent, the - material circulation between the organic and the inorganic world, exists in the plant as well as in” the animal, is never interrupted, and becomes the condition and the immediate cause at o all other vital manifestations. The unive of such a phenomenon, the constancy it its necessity, make it the fundamental ch: istic of the living being, the most general sign of life. There will be no reason for surprise, that some physiologists have bean tempat take it as a definition of life itself, ‘ This phenomenon, however, is not a ‘3 one ; it is of consequence to analyze it, and pew — etrate more deeply into its mechanism, so as to give exactness to the idea of life we may from its superficial observation. The mo of nutrition involves two operations, which are tinct, though inseparably connected : one, that which inorganic matter is fixed or ine into living tissues as an integral part of the the other, that by which it releases itself fi and quits them. This unceasing twofold ment is actually only a perpetual alternation life and death ; that is, of waste and repair ¢ component parts of the organism. The vit misundegtood nutrition, Some of them, fi with the idea that the essence of life is r ~ rs ~ ae sf oO hens oe 2 Sl Oe he oe a ae ae eee a Se eeeénes © 4 ho @ A e@ae Bb eee eS bodies and those of inert substance rest upon ance to death—in other words, to physical ee Pent nS aes ta rahe Se Miahieg to a

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eel bile sot SA PAAA-SELARS » s . i Pee ee & a se weasleie being, having reached its full de- sa ate ety thenvatecths Go busy Senta _ the most stable possible equilibrium, by counter- . geting the destructive effect of outward agents. Others among them, better informed as to the and seeing the meaning of the in- cessant change in the organism, would not admit that this movement of molecular repair could be produced by general natural forces, but re- ferred it to a vital force. None of them per- _ geived that this destruction of the organism, effected under the influence of general physical ' and chemical forces, is exactly that which pro- duces the constant movement of exchange, and thus becomes the cause of reorganization. Acts of organic destruction or disorganization Jace dleectly visible to ud, their signs are obvious, they are renewed and clearly displayed upon each vital manifestation. On the contrary, acts of as- _ similation or organization remain wholly inward, and give hardly any apparent expression; they _ eontrol an organic synthesis which groups to- gether in a mute and hidden way the materials that are afterward to be consumed in the striking manifestations of life. Itis a very singular truth, and one most important to be understood, that ' these two phases of the circuit of nutrition take “expression in ways so contrasted, organization ‘remaining latent, and disorganization impressing itself on the senses by all the phenomena of life. In this case, as in most others, appearances mis- lead: that which we call phenomenon of life is at bottom a phenomenon of organic death. Thus the two factors of nutrition are assimi- lation and disassimilation, otherwise valled or- ganization and disorganization. Disassimilation always attends on vital manifestation, When mo- tion occurs in man or an animal, a part of the active substance of the muscle is wasted and _ ‘burned up; when will and sensibility are dis- ‘played, the nerves are consumed ; when thought is exerted, the brain is used up, etc. Thus we may say that the self-same matter is never used twice for the purposes of life. When an act is _ through with, the little portion of living matter that served to produce itis gone. If the phe- nomenon appears a second time, it is by borrow- ' ing the aid of new matter. Molecular waste is .. always proportioned to the intensity of vital man- ifestations. The more actively life is displayed, the deeper and more considerable is the material change. The substances thrown off in the depths of the organism by disassimilation are oxidized by vital combustion in proportion to the energy with | and renewing itself, like the vital torch. Physi- ee and the different products carried off by the oth-. er emunctories of the system. The body wastes, and suffers a consumption and loss of weight that express and measure the intensity of its func. tions, In brief, in all cases, physico-chemical destruction is joined with functional activity, and we may hold the following proposition as an axiom in physiology: Every manifestation of a phenomenon in the living being is of necessity con- nected with organic destruction. A law like this, that links the phenomenon — produced with the matter wasted, or, more cor- rectly, with the substance transformed, is in no respect special to the living world ; physical Na- ture obeys the same rule. So, then, a living being in the fullness of its functional activity does not show us the increased power of some mysterious vital force; it simply exhibits the intense activity in its organism of the chemical phenomena of combustion and or- ganic destruction. When Cuvier paints life in its bloom and beauty in the person of a young woman, he errs in supposing with the vitalists that physical and chemical forces or properties are then subdued or sustained by vital force. On the contrary, all the physical forces‘are set — free, the organism burns and consumes itself more vividly, and for that very reason life glows _ with its full splendor. t Stahl] was right in saying that physical and chemical phenomena destroy the living body, and lead it to death ; but the truth escaped him be- cause he failed to see that the phenomena of vital destruction are of themselves the stimulants and forerunners of that repair of substance hidden from our sight, that lurks in the depths of the tissues. All the time that the phenomena of com- bustion are strikingly displayed by external vital manifestations, the formative process is going on in the stillness of the vegetative life. It has no other expression than itself, meaning that it is be-. trayed in no other way than by the organization and renovation of the living structure. The com- parison of life to a torch is very old. That meta- phor is in our time changed to a truth by Lavoi- sier’s means. A living being is like a burning torch : the body wastes, the substance of the torch burns ; the first shines with a physical flame, the other with a vital flame, Yet to make thecom+ _ parison absolutely exact, we must imagine a phys- ical torch, with the power of lasting, maintaining _

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"> flation of The movement of renovation or organic syn- | thesis presents two chief modes. Sometimes syn- - thesis composes nutritive principles by the assim- substance, and sometimes _ it forms the elements of the tissues from it imme- - diately. Thus we observe, alongside the forms- tion of direct products of chemical synthesis, the appearance of the phenomena of moultings, or his- tologic reparations, sometimes continuous, some- times periodic, The phenomena of renewal, res- toration, reparation, displayed in the adult indi- ' vidaal, are of the same kind as the phenomena of generation and evolution, by which the embryo in the beginning, composes its organs and anatom- ical elements. The living being, then, is distin- guished by generation and nutrition at the same time; we must combine and mingle these two or- ders of phenomena, and, instead of dividing them into distinct categories, we treat them as a single act, completely similar in essence and mechanism. With this conception, it is entirely correct to say that nutrition is only continuous generation. Or- ganic synthesis, generation, regeneration, renova- .' . ‘tion, and even cicatrization, are aspects of one and the same phenomenon—various manifestations of . One and the same agent, the germ. The germ is chiefly and specially the agent of organization and nutrition ; it attracts cosmic ~ Matter about it, and organizes it to form the new being. But the germ can only manifest its organ- ~ izing power by itself performing combustions— organic destructions. For this reason it is, at the _~ , beginning, inclosed in a cell—the cell of the egg nutritive materials which take the name of the witeliua, . The egg-cell, thus composed of the germ and the vitellus, unfolds the new organism by segmen- » . tation, by an infinite self-division into a number- | | ‘Tess quantity of cells, each provided with a germ of nutrition. This cellular germ, called the nu- - cleus of the cell, attracts around it and elaborates those special nutritive materials designed for com- bustion in action by each of the elements of our tissues or organs. When natural or accidental ‘phenomena of renovation occur; when, for in- ~ stance, a nerve that is cut repairs itself, and re- ' $umes its functions, in such a case, too, it is the ber, to recompose new tissues in the adult, iz act repetition of the processes followed by embryo in its growth. All these very various phenomena ‘of tion and organic synthesis have the mark, as we have said, of being in a manner visible to outward view. From the stillness reigns in an egg in course of hatching, we. have no suspicion of the activity which is at in it, and the importance of the phenomena are there taking place; at its exit only the. being will display to us, by its vital i tiona, the wonders of that slow and secret It is the same with all our functions; each on has, we may say, its period of organizing tion. When a vital act shows itself outwar the conditions of it had been for a long time ering in that deep and quiet elaboration that ready the causes of all phenomena. It is tant not to leave these two phases of ph operation out of view. If it is desired to vital actions, they must be attacked in their den unfolding; when the phenomenon comes, light, it is too late. In this, as in everything nothing comes by sudden chance; events ingly most abrupt have hed their secret The object of science is exactly to discover t elementary causes, and gain the power of a ng ab Gas eae es Ot rae ra In find, wo:ghall: perceive; with Mtetiestionll pratt in two great groups of inverse ph is kept up by two orders of acts wholly in their nature : the combustion of d which uses up living matter in the acting the synthesis of assimilation, which repairs | tissues in the organs at rest. The agents ployed in these two kinds of phenomena are less diverse. Vital combustion borrows - without that common agent of co gen; or; when that is not to be hed, the whose disassimilating action may interpose in ee inner parts of the organism not reached by the aim. Organizing synthesis, on the contrary, has 8 spe; cial agent—the germ, properly so called, or kernels of cells, the secondary germs that e from it,and are found scattered throughout al} ~ the conditions of functional disassimilation ané) those of organic assimilation are widely d The same agents of combustion that waste -

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% *: oe é Sn thee ie | Aine GF ~ Poe: ig Sak: : , oak fn eee ee eee 8. A we ee .* KR - z, " ‘ ae 5 , . be 7 re ry t F eageslh ‘ieructene: Gering’ fe onthe thet te. "structive work after death, when the phenomena ‘in the organism have ceased. It follows e from this that all functional phenomena, attended 4 by combustion, fermentation, or organic dissocia- tion, can take place as well outside as inside of living bodies. This fact puts into the power of the physiologist to analyze vital mechanism by |. the aid of experiment. In a mutilated organism, | \ he artificially keeps up respiration, circulation, Si5 ¥ digestion, and so on; and he studies the proper- fies of living tissues separated from the body. In m these dissevered parts, the muscle contracts, the secretes, the nerve conducts stimulus ex- ~ getly as during life ; yet, if these tissues, severed em the group of their organte conditions, can ‘still act and waste, they have no longer the power 6f repair, and therefore it is that their final death ' then becomes inevitable. The phenomena of or- | eepmbead r erarenertiene _ eémbustion, can only be displayed in the living body, and each in its special place ; no contrivance ve lias as yet availed to make up for these essential _ conditions of the activity of the germs—being in ~ their place, and in the structure of the living body. It would be a grave error to reason, from the __ marked differences just noted, that in the system _ eombustion and organic restoration might each ' take a vital part, independent of the other: since the two orders of phenomena are so mutually " attive in the work of nutrition that they may be \ said to be distinct only in thought ; in Nature they A “are inseparable. No living creature, animal or vegetable, can manifest its functions otherwise | bye stmt employment of a _ combustion and of organic synthesis. On this ground, chemical and anatomical schools must Ie sited Sitti tex vevcneltine, Sov sb wabeti + of the physiological problem of life demands the - ubited labors of both. a ie IV. - "We have thus followed the characteristic phe- thant natenmac-oven ts 40s eats Oe Satiehestions let us see what conclusion that A © Life iat Miootaat, it devours the organism.” If, : i satis Wadepiey: two preferred te wel tui that ott: peer phenomena of nutrition, that life . i f ine ee cd A tigi hap Gn Whieibehed did sbi le vation of the tissues, we should look upon life as a creation effected by means of a forming and repairing act opposed to vital manifestations. In fine, were we to attempt combining the two aspects of the phenomenon, organization and dis- organization, we should come near to the defini- tion of life given by De Biainville : “ Life isa two- fold internal movement of decomposition, general and continuous at once.” More lately Herbert Spencer has offered the following definition: “ Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, which are both simultaneous and suc- cessive ;” and under this abstract definition the ~ English philosopher mainly aims at pointing out the idea of evolution and succession observed in vital phenomena. Such definitions, how incom. plete soever they may be, have at least the merit of expressing one aspect of life; they are not merely verbal ones, like that of the Encyclopa- dia, “ Life is the opposite of death ;” or, again, like Béclard’s, “Life is organization in action ;” or that of Dugés, “ Life is the special activity of organized beings ;” which is as much as to say, Life is life. Kant defined life “an inner principle of action.” This definition, which reminds us of the idea of Hippocrates, has been accepted by - Tiedemann and other physiologists. As a mat- ter of fact, there is no more an inner principle of activity in living matter than there is in inert mat- ter. The phenomena that occur in minerals are, it is true, directly influenced by external atmos- pheric conditions ; but that is the case also with the activity of plants and of cold-blooded animals. The seeming freedom and independence of men and warm-blooded animals in their vital manifes- tations depends on the fact that their body pre- sents a more perfect construction, which enables it to produce such a quantity of heat that it has no absolute need of borrowing warmth from the medium. In a word, the spontaneity of living matter is but a false appearance. There is the constant presence of outward principles, foreign exciting causes, which always act in call- ing out the manifestation of the properties of a matter which is at all times, in the same way, of itself inactive. We will not proceed with these citations; which might be multiplied endlessly without find- ing a single thoroughly satisfactory definition of life. Why is this so? It is because, in regard , | to life, we must distinguish the word from the thing itself, Pascal, who understood so well alt 7 the weaknesses and illusions of the human mind, bids us observe that true definitions are really

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a manana but he recognizes primi- tive words that are understood without any need of defining them. Now, the word /ife is in that situation. All men understand each other when they speak of ’ Jife and death. It would be impossible, at any rate, to separate these two terms, or these two correlative ideas, for that which lives is that which will die, and that which is dead is that ‘which has been alive. When we are dealing with a phenomenon of life, as with any phenome- pon of Nature, the first condition is, to under- stand it; its definition can only be given a poste. riori—it is the conclusion gathered from a previ- ous study; but, properly speaking, such a propo- ’ gition is not a definition, it is a view, a concep- ‘tion. Our business, then, will be to learn what conception we should shape for ourselves of the phenomena of life, at this day, in the present state of our physiological knowledge. That conception has varied, as a matter of courze, with epochs and in accordance with the advance of knowledge. At the beginning of this . century a French physiologist, Le Gallois, pub- lished, even at that date, a volume of experiments ‘on the principle of life, and the seat of that prin- ciple. We are now no longer looking for the seat of life; we know that it dwells everywhere, in all the molecules of organized matter. The vital _ properties are in reality only in the living cells, and all the rest is merely arrangement and mech- anism. The very various manifestations of life are expressions, combined and diversified in many thousande of ways, of fixed and unchanging or- ganic elementary properties. Therefore it is of less consequence to know the immense variety of vital manifestations which Nature seems unable even to exhaust, than it is to fix with rigorous precision the properties of tissues that give rise to . them. At this day, for this reason, all the efforts of science are directed to the histological study of those infinitely little points which conceal the true secret of life. How deeply soever we may now be able to penetrate into the secrets of those phenomena peculiar to living beings, the question rising for solution is always the same. It is the very ques- tion asked in the oldest times, at the beginuirg of science. Is life due to a special power, or force, or is it only a mode of action of the general forces of Nature? In other words, does there exist in liv- ing beings a peculiar force, distinct from physi- cal, chemical, or mechanical forces? The vital- have always answered by bringing an number of vital manifestations within w strated physico-chemical explanations. It be owned that the latter have steadily ground, and that especially in our times they more and more every day. Will they thus ceed in reducing everything to their theories, will there not remain, spite of all their eff quid proprium of life, still irreducible? This ds the point we now have to examine. By ¢ analyzing all vital phenomena, whose ex belongs to physical and chemical forces, we press vitalism back into a region of smaller tent, and therefore more easily defined, Of the two orders of nutritive phenomena substantially compose life, and originate all manifestations, without exception, there is that of destruction, of organic disassimi which henceforward takes its place wi ably among chemical actions; these dec tions in living beings present no greater nor mystery then do those shown us by inorganic ies. As to the phenomena of organizing genesis, and of renovation through nut they do seem at the first glance to be of an ly special vital nature, not reducible to g chemical action. This, however, is only so in a pearance, and to account for the matter pletely we must study these phenomena under twofold aspect they present, that of an o chemical synthesis, and of an organic eve which is proceeding. In truth, vital genesis ¢ prises phenomena of chemical synthesis arra’ and unfolded after a special order, which their evolution. It is necessary to disti chemical phenomena in themselves from their lution, for these are two completely se a things. In so far as they are synthetic acts, itis clear that these phenomena arise only from gem eral chemical forces; and this is plainly p by studying them one by one in their succ The calcareous matters found in the shells of lusks, the eggs of birds, the bones of mammal very certainly formed during the evolution of embryo according to the laws of common try. The fatty and oily matters, too, are in the same way, and chemistry has already ceeded in the artificial reproduction in its tories of a large number of immediate p and essential oils which naturally belong to animal or vegetable kingdom. So, too, amy ous substances that are developed in animals, oF. pei hy ’ ie, ve e i Pa ait ” ~~ = &. ee = oe Ee Vee ot’ oe! lCUelClUe COU ee Sas pts al 4 Rs Pa ot # EEE MY Pea Lae f ™ Hae “? Z re £ Neer TaN a 2 “ eps ye pa Ne a See eo are Ph o;.% ote ee le, le ae ET 6 Sy Me YE 8: * ed. ae ‘ ees ck ELS EE” OLA ROSS RLAR EL CL Lk.

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¥ ah ~ =i. 3 vii si 4 gre produced in the green leaves of plants by the gnion of carbon and water under the influence of - the sun, are really very well-marked chemical If the synthetical processes are much : r- Jess clear in the instance of azoted or albuminoid matters, the reason is, that organic chemistry is mot yet far enough advanced to explain them; but it is very certain, nevertheless, that these sub- stances are formed by chemical processes in the ‘organisms of living beings. It must be owned that the agents of organic synthesis, the germs and cells, may be said to be entirely exceptional agents. It might be said, in the same sense, as to phenomena of disorganization, that ferments gre agents special to living beings. In my own «f view, it is a fact that there is such a general law, and that chemical phenomena are made to occur > Gm the organism by special agents or processes ; but that fact does not at all affect the purely ehemical nature of the phenomena that take place, and of the products that result from it. After this study of chemical synthesis, let us take organic evolution. The agents of chemical phenomena in living bodies do not stop with pro- ducing chemical syntheses of exceedingly various substances, but go on to organize them and apply them to the morphological construction of the new being. The most potent and wonderful among ithese agents of living chemistry is unquestiona- ’ »t bly the egg, the primordial cell that contains the germ, the organizing principle of the whole body. We are not present at any creation of the egg ex nihilo: it comes from the parents, and the origin of its virtue of evolution is hidden from us; but _ teience is ascending nearer to this mystery every iday. It is by the germ, and by reason of that ‘kind of power of evolution it possesses, that the perpetuity of species and the descent of beings are established; by it we understand the neces- » sary relations existing between the phenomena of nutrition and those of development. It explains for us the limited duration of the living being, for _ death must come when nutrition stops, not because aliment fails, but because the developing progress _ of the being has reached its end, and the cell’s impulse of organization has exhausted its virtue. . Agaim, the germ directs the organization of the being, by forming living substance with the \ aid of surrounding matter, and by giving it those _ Qualities of chemical instability which become the eause of the unceasing vital movements that take e Place in it. The cellules, those secondary germs, im the same way govern the nutritive cellular or- ganization. It is very clear that these are purely _ chemical acts; but it is not less plain that these Pe 4 dhcatenh tte; vin ohvhtis tease increases and builds up, follow in linked succes- sion with a view to this result, which is, the or- ganization and the growth of the individual, whether animal or vegetable. There is, as it were, a scheme of life, which sketches the plan of every _ being and of every organ ; so that if, considered by itself, each phenomenon of the organization — depends on the general forces of Nature, yet, taken as a whole, and in their succession, these phenomena seem to disclose a special bond among them ; they seem to be guided by an unseen con- ditioning something in the course they follow and in the order that holds them together. Thus, the chemical synthetic acts of organization and . nutrition come to view as if they were ruled by 2 an impulsive force governing matter, working with a chemistry applied to an end, and bringing together the laboratory’s senseless reagents, as the chemist himself does. That force of evolution, imminent in the ovule which is to reproduce a living being, unites within it, as we have explained, the phenomena of generation and of nutrition; both, therefore, have an unfolding character, © which is their basis and essence. It is this evolutive power, or property, which . sf we now merely designate, that alone could com- pose the guid proprium of life, for it is certain _ that this evolutive property of the egg which will - produce a mammal, a bird, or a fish, belongs nei- ther to pliysics nor to chemistry. The theories of the vitalists cannot, at this day, hover over the whole field of physiology. The evolutive power - of the egg and the cells is thus the last stronghold of vitalism ; but, in taking refuge there, it is easy . to see that vitalism changes into a metaphysical conception, and breaks the last tie that bound it to the physical world, or to physiological science. — When we say that life is the guiding idea, or the evolutive force of the being, we merely express the thought of a unity in the succession of all the morphological and chemica] changes effected by the germ, from the beginning to the end of life, Our mind grasps that unity as a conception it can- not escape from, and explains it by “2s force;”” but the mistake is in supposing that this meta- physical force acts after the manner of a physical force. That conception does not quit the region of mind, to react in presence upon those phenom- ena for the explanation of which the mind has formed it; though it issues out of the physical world, it has no retroactive effect upon that world. In a word, the metaphysical evolutive force by which we may describe life is useless to science, because, being outside of physical forces, it cam

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Siliiastin cicada tein We need here to (iid thethaniben Vobivten thn wttingleyliecl weeks ere ne Pomme pyeledl World, wie shaves basis, but which can borrow nothing from it. expressed that discrimination in those _ words of his we repeated at the beginning of this - @abay ; science recognizes and adopts it in our day. © To conclude, if it is possible to define life by ser tp enc enihctten sential it remains no less the truth that chemical, and physical forces are the only agents in the living organism, and the phy gist has nothing else than their action to and explain. Descartes’s phrase must be ac ed: “ We think metaphysically, but we live act physically.” IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. Br B. W. DALE, 1, —SOCIETY. the autumn of last year I spent two very pleasant months on the other side of the At- lantic. Since my return I have been asked, as a - matter of course, by all my friends, what I think _ of America. I had to answer or to evade the " question almost as soon as I was on the landing- stage at Liverpool, and before my portmanteaus were fairly through the custom-house ; I am near- Ty sure, indeed, that the question was asked me _ on the tender before we had reached the landing- stage. I have had to answer or to evadeit nearly every day since. © I say that I have had to “ answer or to evade” #; for the question cannot be fairly answered in an omnibus, or between the courses at a dinner- party, or while putting on one’s great-coat after _& committee-meeting, or while talking under an umbrella to a friend one has happened to meet in the street in a shower of rain. Indeed, I am mot sure that I have a right to express any Opinion on America and the American people, _ even when there is the opportunity for express- ing it deliberately and fully. I sailed from Liv- _ @rpool'on the Ist of September, and reached " Liverpool again on the 17th of November. In seven or eight weeks what trustworthy judgment can a man form of the habits, manners, temper, _@nd character, of a population so varied in its origin and occupations as that of the United . States, and covering so vast a territory? After 80 brief a visit, what right have I to form any confident opinion on American institutions ? _ © Ido not imagine that all Americans are like the accomplished professors at Yale, or like the clergymen I met in New York, Brooklyn, Bos- ton, and in several of the smaller cities of New England, or like the distinguished physicians showed me hospitality at Philadelphia and’ Chil cago, or like the Education Commissioners the chairmen and members of school committees; with whom I spent many interesting days in | ie eral great cities, or like the heads of commercial houses to whom I was introduced by my friend and fellow-traveler Mr. Henry Nor do I suppose that I have a complete exhaustive knowledge of American manners and character because I staid in many hotels, and traveled several thousands of tniles : steamboats and in railway-carriages. I can tell what I saw. But I saw enough to c me that some of the representations of the ican people which have become popular in land are gross and slanderous libels. An American who had formed his conc of Englishmen from the typical “ John Bull” ia top-boots, with a cudgel in his hand, would’ rather perplexed on meeting Dean Stanley, hospitality to Americans has given hima tation on the other side of the Atlantic as enviable as that which he has won by literary genius ; nor would his perplexity ‘be ened if from the deanery at Westminster crossed over to the House of Commons; happened to see and hear Mr. Gladstone. | might go to fifty London dinners and still ea rere EO to be found. — At churches, concerts, museums, pictu' and theatres, his curiosity would still be isfied. He might ride in innumerable omni he might travel morning after morning by underground railway, and go from London Br to Chelsea every afternoon in a penny boat, never see the object of his search. He might down to Oxford, or York, or Brighton, or & ae = * "5 5. ' a 4 at it Se ee ep ae oe OE—E Xe ae ae ee a ee ee es ee ae ee ee. Pee” ede of |

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ot FLSA Ss ee -: 34? = Pe ey ton } , . POPS ete ee a ", a aA ~ bury, and still look in vain for the John Bull of -_ his imagination. Neitber in appearance nor in manners would the men he met with correspond to the familiar type. At an agricultural show he might find a man here and there who looked dressed for the character, but the chances are ten to one that if he began to talk with the burly-looking farmers he would discover that many of them, though a little rough in their ways and rather loud in their speech, were wholly unlike im their temper and spirit what he had supposed that every Englishman ought to be. Occasionally, no doubt, the type is realized—re- alized physically and realized morally—but it is possible to live for months in many parts of Eng- ~ Jand without seeing a man who has anything of the appearance of the John Bull of one of Punch’s gartoons ; and when you have found a man who | Jooks as if he might have sat for the picture, he often turns out to have no moral resemblance to the conventional ideal of our national character. The people I happened to meet with in New York and Chicago, in Boston and Philadelphia, in _. Washington and the manufacturing towns of New England, were equally unlike the high-fa- ‘Yutin’, self-asserting American of caricature and popular fancy. They were quiet instead of noisy, modest instead of ostentatious and boastful, reti- ‘gent rather than demonstrative. &. My own impressions were confirmed by an English friend who had been living in New York _ ° for several months, and who asked me whether I bad not been struck with the extreme gentleness of American manners. Nor was it the gentleness merely that impressed me. There was something _ of the old-fashioned formal courtesy which has now almost disappeared in this country. It is one of the reproaches, indeed, which the Repub- licans of America fiing at the Democrats that the triumph of the Democratic party in 1801 de- stroyed the good manners of the people and made them rude and insolent. Before Jefferson’s election to the presidency—so it is said—the . @hildren, when they passed their elders on coun. ‘tty. roads or in the streets of the smaller towns, . made a respectful bow ; but with the accession _ Of the Democrats to power the bow began to sub- side, “first into a vulgar nod, half ashamed and half impudent, and then, like the pendulum of a dying clock, totally ceased.” To illustrate this charge, a popular author, Mr. Goodrich, tells a |) characteristic story: “How are. you,.. priest?.” said a rough fellow to a clergyman. “How are _ you, Democrat?” was the clergyman’s retort. '“ How do you know I am a Democrat?” asked the man. “How do you knowlamapriest?” = said the clergyman. “I know you to bea priest by your dress.” “ I know you to be a Democrat by your address,” said the parson.’ It is true, no doubt, that the kind of respect , which the people in an English agricultural vil- lage sometimes show to their pastors and masters is not to be found, as far as I know, in the | United States. -The little girls do not draw up against the wall and make a respectful courtesy to every well-dressed stranger they meet. If you say “ Good-morning”’ to a man you happen to pass in the rural parts of New England, and who looks like a prosperous agricultural la- borer, but who is probably the owner of a farm of eighty or a hundred acres, be will not feel so honored by your condescension as to stand still and pull the front iock of his hair; he may even stride on with a grunt which is hard ly courteous. The servants or “helps” have not exactly the manners of servants in England. I always found them respectful and attentive, but there is a certain something with which we are familiar on this side of the Atlantic that is ab- sent. It is quite clear that they do not suppose cer qynent Geb ee ee in Getegie: tnlles--ant-speddendiniala the cloth, band the lobster-salad, the cold chicken, and the bread, pour out the wine, and take round the fruit ; they wait “ for love ” and not for wages. Perhaps, when the dinner is half over, they take their seats and are waited on themselves. American servants reminded me occasionally of these kindly volunteers. Seneca tells one of his correspondents that he should treat his slaves not like beasts of burden, but as “humble friends.” Seneca would have found himself quite at home in America. If he thought that the slaves who waited on him should be. treated as “ humble friends,” he would have treat- ed free men and women who waited on bim' as friends that required to be described by another epithet. I found that the servants took guitea hospitable interest in me. The day before I left New Haven I called to bid good-by to friend, whose guest I had been during the earlier part of my stay in the city. He happened to be out, but the house-maid who opened the door understood the object of my call, and hoped I was well, and that I had bad a pleasant time in America, and that I should have a good voyage, and find all well at home. I do not think that the girl ? James Parton's “ Life of Thomas Jefferson,” Pp 564, 585. ‘

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id ther work at all the worse ‘because she felt herself at liberty to speak in this way to her master’s friend. Sometimes, indeed, this sense _ of social equality may show itself in ways which ” strike an English traveler as rather odd and not quite agreeable. An English gentleman told me that he was being driven through the beautiful park at Philadelphia by an American lady with whom he was staying. She wanted to leave the carriage at a particular point, walk through the Exhibition Building, and meet the carriage at an- other entrance, and she asked her coachiman, a colored man, whether he thought the doors at the other end of the building were open. “Dunt know,” was the reply; “hadn’t you better get down and ask?” If he had proposed that the gentleman should “get down,” it would have been more consistent with our notions of pro- 1 I was told that there are delicate distinc- tions among the servants which it is necessary for a stranger to remember. When you leave the house an Irish girl will take your dollar _ with as much satisfaction as a servant in Eng- ‘land receives the customary “vail.” I believe that most German and Swedish girls will be equally accommodating. But I heard that if by chance your friend has a genuine American girl , . for a house-maid, she will resent the offer of money as an insult. Whether this is true or not I cannot say, as I did not happen to have the opportunity of trying the experiment. A story that was told me by an English lady living at Ottawa—the wife of a colonel in the English army—shows that the conditions of American life have affected Canada. A girl applied to her for a house-maid’s place, and asked what seemed to the lady extravagant wages. ‘“ How much did you have at your last situation?” asked my friend. “ Well, ma’am,” was the reply, “I only had six dollars a month, but the lady gave me music-lessons.” American mistresses have their sorrows, and are disposed to envy ladies in England, who seem to have their servants more perfectly under command. But English mistresses are not with- out their annoyances. I believe that the real 1 An Englieh servant who has not been well “ brok- en in” can sometimes be sufficiently free and inde- pendent. A lady in the south of England had a new house-maid who, after being in the house a fortnight, Omitted to put any water on the dinner-table. When she was reminded of her omission, she replied, “ Fur varteen days I ha’ putt they bottles on the table and none of yar have drank any warter ; I dunt mean to trouble on the other side of the Atlantic, ag « this, is the difficulty of finding servants who r understand their work. In the relations servants and masters I saw nothing that was fensive ; indeed, I am democratic enough to that the friendly ease of the American is more satisfactory than the absolute pression and mechanical deference which are seen in the servants of many English houses, When I said that in America there something of the old-fashioned courtesy among ourselves must have vanished for at , fifty years, I was not thinking of the relations of the “lower orders” to their “betters,” but of the manners of educated American society. Ag and again I was reminded of the characters Miss Austen’s novels. There was just a touch : the same formality. “ Politeness,” which is" & word that has very much gone out of use in 1 land, still survives in America; according to am American author, “politeness appears to havé been invented to enable people who would A rally fall out to live together in peace.” As the word is in more common use in America t among ourselves, so I think that in the life, even of those who are in no danger of “ ing out,” there is more of what the word ¢ The disappearance of the reverential habits of last century is, of course, deplored. Jonatl Edwards’s children always rose from their when their father or mother came into the This surprising custom does not exist in any the families that showed me hospitality; but f noticed that one of my young lady friends itl called her father “sir,” and that she used thé — word not playfully, but with all the respect with — which she would address a stranger. Her father — was not “stiff and unsociable” as Jonathan E& wards was thought to be by “those who had but a slight acquaintance with him,” but one of the — kindest, simplest, and most genial of men. His — Bs Se children were on the freest and easiest terms wit c him, teased him and played with him just as chik — dren on this side of the ocean tease and play with — their fathers; but the line of filial respect was never pasoed, and the respeet showed iteclt tails deferential “sir.” The “sir” was used, i yd unconsciously, I ceked my young fiend; sie was a bright, clever girl, whether she gene Kee called her father “sir;” she said that she ¢ i not know that she ever did, but within five mis!) utes the word was on her lips again. A day or — two afterward I asked a gentleman, whom I be 1 Hopkins's “‘ Memoir” prefixed to Kngiish edition of Edwards's Works, p. 44. - , . te , : , npn “x- so ao ees entlCcermlC KllCUcrllClCUCcermlC elCUr eelUCrce.lCUrtlC hi lO ekllrkrrtlCUCOlUlUlUCc lCcr lO Cre rr UClUrrrrlC rrtlCr rl lUlUrcrtlCUC rlC rl Ur hlUrhmhlUlUlUC hlUlC lO —_— ah oe ae eee COU CU anaes 2's yea oe a ae |

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ealih Pb: are ge tah. TY 7 Sit omy an peat fone! Ee OP Ae ae iS a Te Ae he ‘ a P : ee ty rs Ser of oes iS eB Fi, a ® on » ese Mako "iene fei naceeioa.” ee " when addressing their father to say “sir.” He said, “Oh, yes—is it not customary in England ? We teach our children to do it; we have not too ‘mach of the spirit of reverence in America, and we think it desirable to cultivate it.” I came to the conclusion—to me a very unex- pected one—that the Americans are a reserved people. They are not eager to talk-to you about their own affairs. Manufacturers, except when I asked them, did not tell me how many men they employed. Merchants were not anxious to im- press me with the magnitude of their business transactions. Nor, indeed, did I find that the strangers I met were very anxious or, indeed, very willing to talk at all. I often found it hard to discover whether the people I was traveling with approved of Mr. Hayes’s Southern policy or not, or even whether they belonged to the Re- publican or the Democratic party. When I was fortunate enough to find a man with a cigar in his mouth standing on the platform of a Pullman ear, I could sometimes make him more communi- . eative; amd occasionally, under these conditions, I learned a great deal about the country. But, as a rule, strangers opened slowly and shyly. _* Nor was ‘this because I was an Englishman» I used to watch the people in railway-carriages—a dozen or twenty in a Pullman drawing-room car, forty or fifty in an ordinary car—and if they did _ not know each other they would travel together all day without exchanging half a dozen words. Occasivnally three men who were friends would ask a stranger to take a hand at whist, but this '. Was not very common. Perhaps the reticence is confined to the wealthier people. On the lines which have two classes of carriages I often spent half an hour in a smoking-car intended for both : classes of passengers. There I generally found much more freedom. Working-men talked to each other without any difficulty; but even there the passengers who had come from the first-class carriages sat and smoked in silence. I remember one conspicuous exception, how- ever, to the general reserve. In the smoking- cabin of a steamboat a Southern gentleman, 2 professor in a college of some reputation, gave _ the company an elaborate account—@ propos of . nothing—of the exercises he had had to perform for his degree in a German university. As most of the men were obviously men of business, and just as uninterested in university affairs as in the incidents of the gentleman’s personal history, they smoked on in silence, looking at him occasionally with an expression of stolid wonder, alleviated ieiliy ‘white ujdening nil: deasiniaiaas ones other occasion, and equally without provocation, the same gentleman gave the same company the most minute information about his physical ail- ments and how he treated them, and was listened to with the same look of amusement, perplexity, . and wonder. It was very odd. He was under fifty, so that he had not become garrulous through old age. He had not lost the control of his tongue by drinking whiskey-and-water. I had several private talks with him outside the smoking-room, and fdund him an intelligent and well-read man. He had seen a great deal of the world, and though he was extraordinarily communicative about his opinions and doings, he could talk pleasantly about many things besides his own learning, headaches, and attacks of indigestion. But he was the only instance I happened to meet with of an American absolutely free from reserve. As a rule, the people appeared to me to be more rex served than ourselves. The same quality of their national temper- ament shows itself in another form; as a rule, they are undemonstrative. The late Lord Lytton tells us that on one occasion when Kean was per-__ forming in the United States, he came to the man- ager at the end of the third act and said: “I can’t go on the stage again, sir, if the pit keeps its hands in its pockets. Such an audience would extinguish Etna.” After receiving this alarming threat the manager appeared before the curtain and informed the audience that “ Mr. Kean, bav- ing been accustomed to audiences more demon . strative than was habitua] to the severer in- telligence of an assembly of American _ citizens, mistook their silent attention for disapprobation ; and, in short, that if they did not applaud as Mr. Kean had been accustomed to be applauded, they could not have the gratification of seeing Hv. "Ketn “ast as’ bo ‘had Geen aootstoaers act.”! Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was lecturing many years ago in some city in Vermont or New Hampshire, and the same “severe intelligence of an assembly of American citizens” baffled and perplexed him. There was no sign of interest. His brightest wit and his shrewdest humor failed to produce even a passing smile. The people sat as if they had been in church listening to the dullest of sermons. But as he was walking away from the lecture-room with the full conviction that he had made a miserable failure, his host said to him quietly: “ Why, Mr. Holmes, you said- 1 Upon the Efficacy of Praise,"” “Caxtoniana,” vol. 1., p. 335.

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THE » Popeuka ‘sOrRyOR. wieeand aur PLesene, eome seal funny things to-night; I could hardly ‘help laughing.” Mr. Holmes was comforted. I also heard of a politician from the South who made a long speech to a political meeting in New England without provoking the faintest expression of sympathy or approbation. He thought that the audience was unfriendly. But as soon as he sat down a gentleman rose and meved, with great gravity, that the meeting should give the speaker three cheers ; and when the motion had been duly seconded and formally put from the chair, the cheers were given with well-regulated enthusiasm. The last two stories seem to show that this undemonstrativeness is characteristic of the New- ' .Englanders, and is not common in other parts of the country, though perhaps it may exist in those districts in the Middle and Western States which have been settled by immigration from New Eng- land. My own impressions favor this suppo- sition. I think that the manners of the people I saw in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, though quiet, were freer and more cordial than the manners of the people I saw in New England. * There was less restraint upon the expression of . kindly feeling, in words and tone and bearing. ‘The New-Englander is apt to keep his heart where be keeps the furnace which heats his house— underground. He does not care to have an open grate in every room, and to let you see the fire. But the fire is there, and the heat makes its way secretly to every part of the house. You see no coals burning, but behind the door of the dining- room there is a hole in the carpet, and through the register there comes a stream of hot air which keeps the room at 70° on the coldest day. There is another register in the hall and another in your bedroom. I missed the sight of the fire. When we had what the Americans call the first “snap” of cold weather, I wanted the assurance of my eyes to make me believe that though there was a frost outside there was no reason for shivering in- doors, Sydney Smith tells us that soon after the introduction of plate-glass Samuel Rogers was at a dinner-party, and thought that the window near him was open all the evening. The window was shut, but Rogers went home with a severe cold awhich he had caught from an imaginary draught. Unkindly critics might affect to mourn that his » imagination was not always equally active when he was writing his verses. He soon learned that a window might be shut though he could not see the window-frame ; and I soon learned in America that a house may be warm on a cold day—too _ Warm, indeed—though I could not see the fire. Res : _And so, though Americans, and especially per- haps the New-Englanders, are not de: a stranger soon discovers that they are among kindest people in the world. There are no li to their kindness, They find out.what their guest would like to see and to. do, and themselves no thought or trouble to gratify Their hospitality is of the best sort ; they do force a stranger to visit the places which the themselves may think the most interesting and; trpetino 5 thay comauit. bia tenten, and: inans selves absolutely at his disposal. A Brook} host would probably be very much distressed t an Englishman persistently put aside a p to drive to Greenwood Cemetery, and a F phian would be vexed if he could. not per his guest to take a drive through the ch park in which the Centennial buildings y erected ; but they would bear their di ment quietly. I wanted to see the c schools, Most of my friends had henaas miliar with the common schools, and saw very little in them that was novel or surprising; thay therefore wished me ‘o go to lunatic asy prisons, and hospitals, where they thought that I e should see something that was much more re markable, But when they discovered that preference was no mere whim they took a gr deal of trouble to satisfy it. P I was struck with the admirable temper of ee people. Though I traveled several of miles on steamboats and in railway- riages—westward as far as Chicago, and : wacd as far as Richmond—I never heard ri BS noisy quarreling which some sketches of ae ican manners might have led me to expect, my way from Chicago to Washington, the was delayed for several hours, The “ man,” as I think they called the man had charge of a portion of the line near of the stations, had left his post to attend a Democratic meeting. While he was away, wooden bridge was burned down. The train was stopped for an hour or two at a small station ine some ten or twelve miles distant from the burn. ing bridge. There was no refreshment-room, nO | ~ “bar,” and the passengers could do nothing ex cept lounge about the line, speculate on the cause _ of the accident, smoke, and wonder when t train would get to Washington; but every ¢ was in excellent temper, and accepted the aay without any resentment. After a time we went _ on, and when we were within a mile of the river — which the train could not cross, we were os an omnibus, and several of the rodh oe the country. The passengers packed themselves ee 7 aA an eee ea ever EOL OE ae Oe : S@EEFLASRESEZBSSERS HERS ESKER AVE BE sare sceaseie FPRFFFEBRSeR Eee

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¢ Pt > » = pi’ Oh ales PR x nxt eS le eed feet eS me Sd a wey . et ‘ : eng: es toes Fin aa A ee Te apa IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. as close as they could in the several conveyances —some of them having to climb to the summit of a mountain of luggage on the top of the om- pibus—and were driven, still in excellent humor, round the country and over a bridge which crossed the river a mile above or below the point where the flames revealed the scene of the disaster. At the little town on the other side we had to wait two or three hours more; but still there was not a sign of bad temper, there was no abuse of the railway in general, and only a very measured and moderate condemnation of the official whose political zeal had led him away from his post, where he might have prevented the accident. It occurred to me that if the Limited Mail between London and Edinburgh were stopped for three or four hours by a similar accident, there would be the expenditure of a great deal of stormy elo- quence; the company would be denounced for having even a single wooden bridge on the line; there would be loud threats of letters to the Times, and of actions to recover damages caused by the delay ; the zealous Liberal who had de- serted his duty to listen to Mr. Chamberlain or to some other orator of his party would be vigor- ously abused ; the offense would be treated as a characteristic illustration of the effect of Liberal principles; Mr. Gladstone would be made indi- rectly responsible for the whole business. But the Americans treated the delay with as much equanimity as if it had been an eclipse of the moon, for which no one was to be blamed, and at which no one had a right to grumble. This was not because they are more accustomed to tailway accidents and delays than we are. The trains seem to me to keep as good time in Amer- fea as in England, and it is maintained by the Americans that their accidents are not more fre- quent than ours. It is possible, I think, that the war produced a great effect on the national manners. An im- mense number of men went into the army, and had to learn to obey the word of command, and to submit to a rigid drill, For three or four years they were “under. authority.” While in the army they had no time for idleness and dissipat- ing pleasures. They had to make long marches and to do a great deal of fighting. The self-control and orderliness which seem to me to characterize the mass of the American people may be partly the effect of the discipline, the serious work, and the perils and sufferings of those terrible years. Such an experience could hardly fail to produce a deep impression on the national character. The absence of a powerful and hereditary 70 aristocracy, the trustees and heirs of the culture and refinement of many generations, produces, no doubt, a sensible difference between American society and our own. In England the classes which are never brought into contact with the country gentry or with families wearing old titles are affected more or less powerfully by aristocrat- ic traditions and manners. Even the servants and tradesmen of great people acquire habits of courtesy and deference which are not likely to be found in societies organized on a democratic basis, and these habits have an effect on their friends and neighbors. But, on the other hand, when the power of an aristocracy has begun to | Wane, their position and their pretensions will probably provoke in the classes which do not share their dignity a spirit of self-assertion which is far more “vulgar” and far more alien from the “sweet reasonableness” which Mr. Arnold wishes us to cultivate than the spirit of equality which troubles some English travelers in America, | When the mass of the English people supposed | that a duke with estates covering a whole coun- ty was as much an ordinance of Nature as Skid- | daw or Ben Nevis—when the existence of an aristocracy of wealth and of title was accepted just in the same spirit in which men accept the succession of day and night—there were certain gracious habits of mind produced by the ine- qualities of our social order. But for good or evil that time has gone by. The best men of the middle classes are, indeed, almost unconscious of the existence of the classes above them, and de- vote themselves to their business, their books, their pictures, and their public work, without troubling themselves about “society.” But the men of inferior quality cannot make themselves quite happy unless they can penetrate into the charmed circle. There is a certain measure of suppressed resentment as long as they are ex- cluded from it; and even when they obtain ocea- sional admission, and are tolerably well content with their own gocd-fortune, the mischief is not over. They begin to draw invisible lines between themselves and the “ruck” of the people about them. This in its turn provokes ill-feeling and self-assertion, and the feeling spreads—assump- tion on the one side and resentment on the other —through all the imaginary degrees of social in- feriority beneath them. Some years ago, a Bir. mingham manufacturer told me that the girls who wrapped up his goods in the warehouse refused to tolerate the humiliation of leaving the premises by the same entrance as the girls who made them in the workshops. The “uppishness ” which of-

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580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY—~SUPPLEMENT. fends many of the critics of the manners of English manufacturing districts is, I believe, the direct result of our aristocratic social order. There is no reason for a man to be “uppish ” in America. He does not live in the presence of social ingtitutions which permanently assert the secial superiority of a class to which he does not belong. To an English traveler the scare which the Americans received last autumn from the railway disturbances is very surprising. I talked with many grave and wise men—men who had studied the political and social history both of America and of Europe—who imagined that the Pittsburg riots were an outburst of the spirit of communism, and that they indicated the existence of a serious conspiracy against the institution of private prop- erty, and against the whole social order of the country. The strikes were no doubt very annoy- ing. They showed that some of the economical and social troubles from which the old countries of Europe have suffered will have to be faced in America. Perhaps, too, they showed that the pres- ent means for repressing popular disturbances are inadequate. But that the strikes were the result of a deep and general hostility against the present social organization of America, that they were the premature explosion of forces which threaten America with a social revolution, ap- peared to me to be one of the wildest and most acme eat RRR erro the brains of reasonable men. Sh to very posstite thet in covensi of the great manufacturing cities there may be a few hundreds of restless and discontented men who have car- ried with them across the Atlantic the bitter hos- tility to government and to society which exists among the less fortunate classes in many Conti- nental nations. Men with similar passions may be seattered thinly through the agricultural States. In the New World as in the Old, some of these men see visions and dream dreams. They are hoping for a social millennium in which all the present contrasts between poverty and wealth, luxurious ease and severe labor, will disappear. They have clung to the hope so long and so pas- sionately that they cannot easily surrender it. They see that under a republic these contrasts, if less violent than in the monarchical countries from which they came, are still violent enough. They believe that it is an economical, not a mere- ly-political, reorganization of society which is to remedy all human evils and redress all human wrongs. But, of all the great countries in the world, America contains the smallest number of people that can have any motive for ing g social revolution. The fiercest hatred of the in. stitution of private property gradually cools whey a man finds that he is getting his house filled with good furniture ; it vanishes altogether when heis able to buy a farm. There has been considerable distress during the last few years in some of the manufacturing districts of America; but the dis. tress has been very slight and transient compared | with what was suffered in this country during the first quarter of the present century; and the enor. mous numbers of the population holding prop A ORONO ERER SS of enormous and irresistible power. While I was staying at Bridgeport, in Con, necticut, my host proposed that we should drive twenty miles round the neigborhood, that I might have some impression of the agricultural districts - in New England. It was a charming afternom in October, and the maple and the oak and the hickory were beginning to clothe themselves fp their autumnal] splendor of scarlet and gold But it was not the beauty and the glory of the foliage which struck me most powerfully. We drove on for mile after mile, but there was not a laborer’s cottage to be seen. We came toa village—it was a group of beautiful houses with lawns and trees about them. In the open coum try, at intervals of every few hundred yards along — the road, there was a cozy, clean-looking farm — house. The houses were nearly all built of wood, and were painted white; the windows were pre tected against the sun by green Venetian shutters, I hardly ever saw a house that was in bad condi, tion. The paint was nearly always bright end fresh. There were no mansions belonging # great landlords. The farms belong to the mea who cultivate them. On my voyage out a New York lawyer, with a large knowledge of Americay affairs, said to me: “A girl will not look ata. man who wants to marry her, if he hasn’t a farm of his own. Marry a man that hires his land she will not dream of it. It sometimes happes® that a man takes a farm end can’t pay the money — down ; in that case he engages with the owner @ rent it for four or five years; but it is arranged that at the end of that term—or earlier if helt able to find the money—he shall have the farm for a price that is fixed when his occupation be gins. Tenant-farmers are almost unknown ia America.” 4 The farmer owns the farm and works on the — land himself. His sons, if he has any, work him. If he wants additional labor, he may g help from-a neighbor whose farm is too small to are SHRISSREP SE SESE Se Pere Ree 2 eSB BBE S o2 oe eh KE LS Ke BR eo Lk

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av S Fa Pee * RRAGRURPECR SERS ESSE SE BedsdhTa- bas =. oF ~ se ‘ IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. occupy all his own time, or he may get help from his neighbors’ boys when their fathers can spare them. If he is obliged to engage laborers, they are described as “hired men,” and they live in the house with their employer. In the census for 1870! the total number of persons, over ten years of age, engaged in agriculture, is given as 5,922,471. Of these, only 2,885,996, or consid- erable less than half, are described as “ agricult- ural laborers ;" if we add “‘dairymen and dairy- women,” * “ farm and plantation overseers,” and “turpentine-laborers,” we have a total of 2,895,- 272 persons employed in agriculture who are not their own masters. The “ farmers and planters” number 2,977,711—that is, the masters are more mumerous by 80,000 than the men. Add to these, “ apiarists,” “florists,” “gardeners and ‘nurserymen,” “ stock - drovers,” “ stock - breed- ers,” “ stock-raisers,” “ turpentine-farmers,” and “yine-growers,” and we have a total of 8,027,- 099; and even if some of these should be in- eluded in the class of “hired men,” the error is vary slight, for the whole of these minor classes togetber, number only 49,388, and we still arrive atthe result that in the United States the men that employ agricultural labor are more numer- ous than the men they employ. small. In Connecticut the average size of a farm in 1850 was 106 acres, and of this acreage there was a percentage of 25.8—more than a fourth — consisting of “unimproved” land; in 1860 the average size of a farm was 99 acres, With 26.9 per cent. of “unimproved” land; in 1870, 93 acres, with 304 per cent.—nearly a third—of the land “unimproved.” In Maine, in 1850, the average size of a farm was 97 acres; in 1860, 103 acres ; in 1870, 98 acres ; and the pro- portion of “unimproved” land at these periods was 55.2, 52.8, and 50 per cent. of the whole. In Massachusetts the farms averaged 99 acres in 1850, 94 acres in 1860, and 108 acres in 1870; of this acreage in the same years 36.1, 35.4, and 86.4 per cent. were “unimproved.” For the whole of the States the average size of a farm was 208 acres in 1850, 199 acres in 1860, and 153 acres in 1870; the “unimproved” land in- eluded in this acreage was 61.5 per cent. in 1850, _ 59.9 per cent. in 1860, and 53.7 per cent. in 1870.° oe ” * It is deabtful whetber all the “dairymen and ' dsirywomen " should be included in the claes employed . . .- include all considerable nurseries, _ Orchards, and market-gardens, which are owned by Of course, this implies that the farms are, It follows, therefore, that the average amount of land which each “ farmer” was actually cultivat- ing amounted in 1850 to about 77 acres, in 1860 - to about 80 acres, and in 1870 to about 70 acres. If “ considerable nurseries, orchards, and mar- ket-gardens” had not been enumerated as farms, the average holdings of those who are properly described as “ farmers ” would have been slightly increased ; but an examination of the tables will show that the difference would probably have amounted to not more than an acre. In New England the person whom we describe as the “gentleman-farmer” is, therefore, almost as unknown as the “tenant-farmer.” The same man is landlord, farmer, and laborer. He owns the soil, and he cultivates it with his own hands —cuts the drains, loads the manure, holds the plough, sows the seed, works in the harvest-field, and does the thrashing. Even if he employs “hired” labor, he shares the work with the “hired men.” In the Southern States, where the plantations are worked by the colored people, the economical condition of the country is, of course, very different. Even there the small farm system is being rapidly introduced. It was difficult, however, at the last census, to obtain exact re- turns from the Southern States “ in consequence of the wholly anomalous condition of agriculture at the South. The plantations of the old slave States are squatted all over by the former slaves, who hold small portions of the soil—often very loosely determined as to extent—under almost all varieties of tenure.” The holdings of these squatters have been treated in the census as farms “of more than three and less than ten separate parties, which are cultivated for pecuniary profit, and employ as mach as the labor of one able- bodied workman during the year. Mere cabbage and potato patches, family vegetable-gardens, and orna- mental lawna, not constituting a portion of a farm for genera) agricultural purposes, will be excinded, No farm will be reported of less than three acres, unless five bundred dollars’ worth of produce has actually been sold off from it during the year. The latter pro- viso will the inclusion of many market-gardens in the of large cities, where, although the area is small, a high state of cultivation is main- tained, and considerable values are produced. A farm is what is owned or leased by one man and cultivated under his care. A distant wood-lot or sheep-pastureé, even if in another subdivision, is to be treated as. part of the farm ; but, wherever there is a resident overseer or @ manager, there a farm is to be reported. By “improved land “ is meant cleared land used for graz- ing, grass, or tillage, or lying fallow. Irreclaimable marshes, and considerable bodies of water, will be excluded in giving the area of a farm, improved and unimproved.’’—Compendium of the Ninth Census of the United: States, pp. 688, 689, notes.

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532 ® acres,” and it is believed that the assumption an- swers to the real facts of the case in ninety-nine out of every hundred instances.' In the Middle and Western States there are larger farms, and there must be, I imagine, an occasional reproduc- tion of our own idea of a farmer, as a man who employs agricultural laborers but does none of the rough work himself; but in these cases, too, it is necesssary to remember that the farmer is not a tenant but a freeholder. This organization of agriculture, so remark- able to an Englishman, raises many economical and social questions. I was especially anxious to Jearn its effects on the intellectual and moral life of the farming population. What kind of men are these New England farmers? That they have advantages which raise them to a condition far above that of our own agricultural laborers might be assumed without much inquiry ; but are they, as a class, inferior to those tenant-farmers of Eng- land who have land enough and capital enough to release them from the necessity of working in the fields? What kind of women are their wives and daughters? Are the men majle coarse and dull by the severity of their physical labor? Do the women suffer any injury from constant asso- ciation with men engaged in rough, out-door la- bor, and from the necessity of doing their own housework ? I was driving one afternoon, in the reighbor- hood of New Haven, with a gentleman who lived among New England farmers for many years, and I told him that I should like to see the inside of one of the pleasant-looking farmhouses which we were continually passing. He said,‘ By all means,” and, at the next farmhouse, he pulled up, up. I asked him whether he knew the people who lived there. “No.” My friend’s daughter, a young lady who has also seen a great deal of country-life in New England, went and asked whether two English gentlemen might see the house, and in a few moments she came to us and said that we might goin. The farm belonged to a widow. She met us at the door,"and received us with a quiet dignity and grace, which would have done no discredit to the lady of an English squire owning an estate worth four or five thou- sand a year. Her English was excellent—the English of a refined and educated woman. Her bearing and manners had an ease and quietness which were charming. The house had three good sitting-rooms, well furnished. Books and maga- zines were lying about; and there was a small 1“ Compendium of the Ninth Census,” pp. rgd notes. iS ee - . ¥ i ne ro | THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. but pretty greenhouse. 1 wnt as da atl and saw that it was extremely neat, and that the linen looked as white as the driven snow, 7 found that the farm was an unusually large ony, being about 200 acres. How much of it under actual cultivation and how much was “up. ; improved,” it did not occur to me to ask. The farm-work was done by the lady's two sons, either two or three “hired men” who lived the house. There was another “hired man” who did “chores”—cut the wood, lit the fires, a tended to the garden, cleaned the boots, went 4 errands, and relieved the solitary “girl” of rougher part of the house-work ; when the had to be got or the wheat cut, I dare say he was employed on the farm. The house gave me impression that the people who lived in it be surrounded by all the comforts and many of the luxuries and refinements of life. The whom I have already described, was the member of the family that I was fortunate to see. When we had got back into the carriagyl charged my friend roundly with having me false. I told him that I felt sure that the house was not a fair specimen of its kind, a1 that the lady I had seen must be very most of the ladies of the same class; that mast have selected the farm inorder to give a favorable impression. However, he me that it was not so. Then I appealed to young lady who had gone into the house with m traveling companion and myself. She said @ the house was certainly rather better than t average farmhouse, but that there were vel many others quite as good; and that the la was rather superior, both in education and refinement of manners, to the average wife, but that she knew very many ladies in farmhouses who were quite her equals. The — suspicion of my friend’s good faith had to be die missed, and though I was unfortunate in happen- ing to hit upon what was admitted to be an eF ceptionally favorable illustration of farm-life New England, what I had seen made it easier me to understand and to believe those of friends who were never so eloquent as when were celebrating the virtue, the intelligence, the comfort that exist in the rural districts Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Ver mont, New Hampshire, and Maine. They reminded me that it was in the farm houses of the New England States that a large Fag of the most eminent Americans—state> en, theologians, orators, men of science—had MZAeoerew~sernraecentrrde reesecnee 2 2 6. =o een atte! of = » ae eihc ee Maiten® tale sath call acdc’, os”? tat cate m= a a a2

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FFP I eSS Reh Sebee Eide. aie PaGan Cirehei iter erie ees Fs pt a oN, yee i et : ee wa ws nie ~~ IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. received their early training; and that the sons of these plain and homely farmers had not only created the great manufacturing industries which are now established in the older parts of the country, but had been among the most adventu- rous and successful settlers in the West. An whom I met in New York the day after I landed, said that wherever I went I should find that the brains came from New England ; my New England friends did not make quite so strong a claim as this, but they asserted that from the farmhouses of the New England States had been derived a very large proportion of the intellectual and moral strength of the country. One of the most learned and accomplished men » in America, who for some years had preached to a congregation of New England farmers, assured me that they were generally men of strong, shrewd sense and sound judgment, rather slow in their intellectual movements, but with a healthy appre- ciation for solid thinking. Many of them, he assured me, had a considerable number of excel- lent books and read them. On the other hand, I was told by a distinguished lawyer that the intel- lectual development of the farmers was seriously checked by the severity of their out-door work. On the whole, however, the testimony which reached me from those who had the largest ac- quaintance with them supported very strongly the most favorable estimate both of their intelli- gence and their morals. What I heard about the farmers’ wives and daughters was still more de- cisive. These ladies generally rise early and spend their morning in house-work ; but after an early dinner, which most of them cook with their own hands, they “dress,” and are generally free to visit their friends or to occupy themselves with their. books, their music, or their needle. They take a pride in cultivating the refinements of life. At dinner and supper the table-cloth is as white and the silver as brilliant as in the houses of wealthy merchants in Boston or New York. The farmhouses are planted so thickly over the coun- try that evening entertainments are very numer- + Ous, and at many of these—so I was assured— the conversation is very bright and intelligent. Tt is a common thing for a farmer to send at least one of his boys to college, and during the vacations the lads find in their mothers and sis- ters the keenest sympathy with their literary am- bition. One lady, who had been surrounded from her childhood by the most cultivated society in New England, told me that she knew a large number of women living in farmhouses, that she constantly corresponded with some of them, and that among the farmers’ wives and daughters there were some of the most attractive, most in- telligent, and best informed women that she had ever met with. About the effect of the New England agri- cultural system on the intellectual activity and refinement of the population there may be dif- ferences of opinion; but’ there can be no dif- ference of opinion as to the effect it must pro- duce on their political spirit and principles. A population of farmers, owning the land they cul- tivate, is certain to have strong conservative in- stincts. Nor is the conservative temper the spe- cial, or at least the exclusive, characteristic of New England. To an English radical the con- servatism of the people generally is very striking. If a couple of million American voters were sud- denly transferred to English constituencies, the conservative reaction would probably receive a great accession of vigor. Of course, the Church would be disestablished within a few months af- ter the first general election ; perhaps the House of Lords would be abolished; there would per- haps be an attempt to change the monarchy for a republic; but there might be a very vigorous conservative spirit in England, as there is in America, in the absence of a throne, a House of Lords, and an ecclesiastical establishment. The respect for the rights of property, for instance, is positively superstitious. Some of the most “ lib- eral” of my Americun friends were astounded by Mr. Cross’s “ Artisans’ Dwellings Act.” They * were doubtful themselves about the policy and the justice of it; they were certain that no such act could be carried in America. The proceed- ings of the Endowed Schools Commission under the late Lord Lyttleton, and of the present Charity Commissioners, appear to many Americans per- fectly revolutionary. There are trusts in the United States which are utterly useless, because the conditions under which they were created have become obsolete ; the money is lying idle or is being applied in ways which confer no benefit on the community, but to change the trusts seems like sacrilege or spoliation. A few men are plucking up courage to make the attempt, and are coming to the conclusion that the ghosts of the founders are not likely to appear if the trusts are modified, and that there is nothing in the Ten Commandments requiring us to confer upon any man the right to determine the uses of property for a thousand years after his death ; and yet the boldest of them show a certain tre- mor and awe when they are drawn into a discus- sion of the question. They are like those pa-

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Re aa ery a ae THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. gans who, having discovered that their gods are wood and stone, want to displace them from their shrines, but approach the sacred places with a nervous dread lest, after all, they should be com- mitting some terrible offense against mysterious powers. This conservative instinct reveals itself in many directions. From what I know of Oxford and Cambridge, I am inclined to believe that in neither of them is the conservative temper so strong as at Yale. I mean that at Yale there is less disposition to try adventurous experiments, and to turn aside from the old paths ; there is a more deeply-rooted belief in the “wisdom of our ancestors,” and a greater reverence for methods of education which are sanctioned by the exam- ple and authority of past generations. At Har- vard, however, there is far less reluctance to cov ickcaes aod S teeghs cas which have been made there during the last few _ years would almost satisfy the most advanced liberals in our own universities. 2 It is possible for a nation with republican” institutions to be intensely conservative, and it is possible for a nation with monarchical institu. tions to be earnestly liberal. I do not say that, — on the whole, America is more conservative than. England, but there is a strength of conservative sentiment in America which some English states. men would be very glad to transfer to this comm try. But what I have to say about the political spirit and character of the American people must tury. ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON. By Prorzssorn MAX MULLER. IHE book to which I should wish to call the attention of English philosophers bears the title of ““ The Origin of Language,” by L. Noiré.* More clearly, howeyer, than by the title, the real purpose of the book is set forth by a short sen- tence from the late Lazar Geiger’s work “On the “Origin of Language and Reason,” printed as a motto on the title-page—‘ Language has created Reason; before there was Language, man was with- out Reason.” Indeed, the more appropriate title of Prof. Noiré’s book would have been, “ On the Origin of Reason.” It is a work which stands apart from the large class of treatises lately pub- lished by comparative philologists on the begin- ning of human speech, most of which, though containing the fruits of original thought and the results of careful research, are disappointing for one and the same reason, their authors not having perceived that the problem of the origin of lan- guage cannot be treated by itself, but must be viewed as an integral part, nay, as the corner- stone, of a complete system of philosophy. THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES, AND THE ORIGIN OF - LANGUAGE. It is one thing to trace one language, or a number of languages, or, it may be, all languages, back to their first beginnings ; it is quite another 2 “ Der Ureprung der Sprache,” von Ludwig Noiré : Maing, 1877. to investigate the origin of language. — guages can be arranged into families, and how all the languages and dialects belonging to one fam- — ily can be broken up into their simplest constit- uent elements, may be seen in any of the numér- ous books published during the last twenty years — on the science of language. While engaged in these researches, we feel that we are on firm ground. We are simply carrying on a process of analysis, and as in a chemical experiment we arrivé in the end at residua, which resist further — separation, so in dealing with language we find that, after having explained all that can be ex- plained in the growth of words, there remain at , the bottom of our crucible certain elements which cannot be further dissolved. It matters little how we call these stubborn residua, whether roots, or phonetic types, or elements of language. What is important is, that, when we have removed all » that can be removed, the whole crust of historical | growth in words, when we have broken up every compound, and separated every suffix, prefix, and . infix, there remain certain simple substances, the results, not of synthetic speculation, but of e%- — perimental analysis. These simple substances being granted, we can fully understand how out of them the whole wealth of language, as treasured — up in its dictionaries and grammars, could have — been brought together. We can unmake a lan- — guage and make it again, and it was this process be reserved for another paper.— Nineteenth Com — oe oeBewmee"s es —- == 46&S4656s afte *- oo 2 Se @& fe acenwtm ef eae ese Ss awe 6& s&s & & Fe ose ces: &

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SE MRE SSE SE | teen! nt oe enero sik coke +) See Rel eee Se el a a an a a a el he wen: ee .. / ph: HIN OF REASON. | ON THE of analysis and synthesis which I tried to rep- resent as clearly as possible in my “ Lectures en the Seience of Language,” first published in 1861. ROOTS OR PHONETIC TYPES. Those who have read those lectures will re- member how strongly I opposed any attempt on the part of the students of language to go beyond roots, such as we actually find them as the result of the most careful phonetic analysis. It was thought at the time that my protests against all attempts to ignore or skip those roots, and to derive any word or any grammatical form straight from mere cries or from imitations of natural sounds, were too vehement. But I believe it is now generally admitted, even by some of my former opponents, that the slightest concession ’ to what, not ironically, but simply descriptively, I called the bow-wow and pooh-pooh theories in -- the practical analysis of words, would have been utter ruin to the character of the science of lan- Fihek to dow tt » euindls' ete p6k ie safe road, leads us to a mountain-wall, which from our side can never be scaled, is very differ- ent from saying that there is or that there can be nothing behind that mountain-wall. To judge from the manner in which some comparative philologists speak of roots, one would imagine that they were not only indiscernibilia, but Palla- dia fallen straight from the sky, utterly incom- prehensible in their nature and origin. It was in order to guard against such a view that, at the end of my lectures, I felt induced to add a few lines, just as a painter, when he has finished a landscape, dots in a few lines in the background to show that there is a world beyond. The aci- ence of language, I felt, had done its work when it had reduced the vague problem of the origin of language to a more definite form, viz., “ What is the origin of roots?” How much has been gained by that change of front those will best be able to appreciate who have studied the history of the innumerable attempts at discovering the origin of language during the last century. Beyond that point, however, where the stu- dent of language is able to lay the primary ele- ments of language at the feet of philosophers, the science of language alone, apart from the science of thought, will not carry us, We must start afresh, and in a different direction; and it was in order to indicate that direction, in order to show to what quarter I looked for a solution of the last problem, the origin of roots, that I appealed i > cae F ibe wire ah las Deere 7 ee pes ila ~~ to the fact that everything in Nature, when set in motion or struck, reacts; that it vibrates, and causes vibrations. This seemed to me the highest generalization and at the same time the lowest beginning of what is meant by language. The two problems, how mere cries, whether interjectional or imitative, could develop into phonetic types, and how mere sensations could develop into ra- tional concepts, I left untouched, trusting that philosophers by profession would quickly per- ceive how some of the darkest points of psychol- ogy might be illuminated by the electric light of the science of language, and fully convinced that they would eagerly avail themselves of the mate- rials placed before them and ready for use to build up at last a sound and solid system of mental philosophy. SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. Prof. Noiré seems to me the first philosopher who has clearly perceived that in the direction indicated by the Science of Language there was a new world to discover, and who discovered it. Already in his earlier works there are repeated in- dications that the teaching of comparative phi- lology had not been lost on him. I confess I have often wondered at the apathy, particularly of the students of psychology, with regard to the complete revolution that has been worked before their eyes in the realm of language. They simply looked on, as if it did not concern them. Why, if language were only the outward form of thought, is it not clear that no philoso- phy, wishing to gain an insight into the nature of thought, and particularly into its origin, could dispense with a careful study of language? What’ would Hobbes or Locke have given for Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar?” What should we say if biologists were to attempt to discover the na- ture and laws of organic life without ever looking at a living body? And where are we to find the living body of thought, if not in language? What are the two problems left unsettled at the end of the Science of Language—‘“ How do mere cries become phonetic types?” and “How can sensa- tions be changed into concepts?”—what are these two, if taken together, but the highest prob- lem of all philosophy, viz., What is the origin of reason ? PROFESSOR NOIRE’S WORKS. It is impossible to do justice to Prof. Noiré’s last book, “On the Origin of Language,” without going back to his earlier works. His last work is the last stone that finishes the arch of his phil- osophical system, but it is held in its place by

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. the works which preceded it. The most impor- tant of them are: 1. Die Welt ale Entwickelung des Geistes, 1874. “The World as an Evolution of Spirit.” 2. Der monistische Gedanke, eine Concordans der Philosophie Schopenhauer’s, Darwin's, R. Mayer’ s, und L. Geiger’ s, 1875. * Monistic Thought: a Concordance of the Philoso- phy of Schopenhauer, Darwin, R. Mayer, and L. Geiger.” 8. Grundlegung einer seitgemassen Philosophie, 1875. “ Foundations of a new System of Philosophy.” 4. Die der Causalitat, 1875. “ The Double Nature of Causality.’’ 5. Hinleitung und Begriindung einer monistischen Drkenntnislehre, 1877, “ Introduction to a Monistic Doctrine of Perception.” These works, though written, or at least pub- lished, within a short space of time, show a con- stant advance toward a clearer perception of the nature of language. Noiré is not one of those philosophers who sacrifice their delight in truth to a stationary infallibility. He is one of the few students who can still say, “I was wrong.” With regard to the origin of language, he has openly retracted what he had written but a few years be- fore. In his first book, “The World as an Evo- lution of Spirit,” he still looked upon language as some sort of copy of the external world, “The first human sound,”’ he wrote (page 255), “‘which deserves the name of word, cannot have differed from the warning calls of animals, except by a higher degree of luminousness in the images which excited and followed these calls. They ex- cited the idea of approaching danger among fel- low-animals. . . . I assume that men were held together by the ties of social life in herds or tribes even before the beginning of the language. War was then the natural state—war against animals of another species, and against neighbors of the same species. It is not unlikely that a peculiar sound or watchword united the members of a single tribe, . sothat they could collect by it those who were scat- ‘tered abroad and had lost their way, or encourage each other while engaged in fight with other tribes. Let us suppose that but once one member of a tribe warned the other members by imitating the watchword of a hostile tribe when he saw the en- emy approaching, and we have in reality the origin of the first human word, capable of doing what words have to do, viz., to excite, as they were in- tended to do, an idea in the mind of cognate and creatures.” “TI found afterward,” Prof. Noiré continues,' “that Darwin, in his ‘ Descent of Man,’ had start- 1“ Ursprung der Sprache,” p. 170. ed an hypothesis almost identical with After declaring that he could not doubt guage owed its origin to the imitation and fication, aided by signs and gestures, of natural sounds, the voices of other animals, man’s own instinctive cries, he says:! ‘As mon _ ape-like animal should have thought of the grow] of a beast of prey, so as to indicateto fellow-monkeys the nature of the expected dangery but this would have been a first step in the formm tion of a language.’ “The difference between my own hypothesls and that of Darwin consists only in this, that I after all see in the contents of the first sound of . : language something more natural, more familiar, more human, viz., the hostile neighbors, while 7 Darwin makes the wild snimal the first object of a common cognition. With a little reflection; however, it can be seen that such an attempt if utterly impossible, for the objects of fear, and trembling, and dismay, are even now the least ap+ propriate to enter into the pure, clear, and tran- quil sphere of speech-thought (Aéyos), or to supply the first germs of it. The same objection it. of course to my own theory. “From whatever point of view we look them, these hypotheses can never stand serious criticism. A call of warning is “a call of terror, and terror communicates itself by sym-~ pathy. But according to mine and Darwin's theories, one more particularly gifted Home pri migenius would have had to ruminate and reflech ~ thus: ‘How can I make my fellows of the threatening danger?’ and then, by some kind of momentary inspiration, he would have uttered the dreaded sound. Let us grant, what is impossible and utterly incredible, that he cal- culated on his being understood ; how could he have been understood by others without there being the same inspiration on their part answer ing to hisown? And that is to be the beginning of ; language ! The fierce howling of the wild animal, the battle-shout of the enemy, are these to have, been the first germ, the centre of crystallization, of that wonderful intellectual creation which, rest-. ing on the solid ground of human consciousness, has become the mirror of the world, of earth and. heaven and all their marvels? Nothing is more incredible, more unlikely. And as I recognize the insufficiency of my own hypothesis, it was im- | possible that the whole philosophical ee | of the problem, and the erying mi tween it and his Pap long remain a secret to the serious and profound mind of Darwin. He, too, in « clear and consid- 1“ Descent of Man,” vol. 1., p. 5%. creedaqantroefeeeretmeewemenrerwuoeeeeree ces oreenoasoS 2s — = ‘ = — a = 2 = SS = & nae ace -.. vw y>

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= FN ee Sa ee ee a eS he ee > ea ee ee ee «| he ee PPO rE ate) VB SR CTC ST aR TT FS We tad} Sig S Ate Pasi Sate : I ee ON THE ORIGIN OF REABON. erate confession, has admitted the inadequacy of _ his former views, and I can do no better than to quote his last words, which dispose of our eom- mon phantasmagoria once and forever: ‘ But the whole subject of the differences of the sounds produced under different states of the mind is so obseure, that I have succeeded in throwing hard- ly any light on it; and the remarks which I have made have but little significance.’” * We cannot sufficiently honor the noble spirit that dictated these words, particularly if we com- pere it with the manner of other philosophers who seem to consider the suggestion that they ‘ could ever grow wiser as the greatest insult. To watch the struggles of a mind impelled by a strong love of truth, and following up his prey in the right direction, though not without eccasional swervings to the right and to the left, is certainly far more interesting and far more useful than to have results set before us with- out our knowing how they have been obtained. Prof. Noiré has evidently been for a long time under the influence of Schopenhauer and Geiger, the former by this time well known in England also ; the latter, a man of high promise and full of original thought, who died in 1870, after hav- ing published two books: one “On the Origin of Human Language and Reason,” 1868 ; the other “On the Origin of Language,” 1869. After a time, however, Noiré went beyond Schopenhauer and Geiger ; and though he continues to express for both of them the warmest admiration, he now differs from them on some very essential points. He differs from Schopenhauer because he, Noiré, is a thorough-going evolutionist in body and mind; he differs from Geiger, because he no longer recognizes the first beginnings of lan- guage in involuntary interjectional sounds, but in sounds naturally accompanying the earliest acts of man, Where Noiré agrees with Geiger, I am generally at one with both of them; andI say this, not in order to establish any claims of pri- ority, which are utterly out of place in a disin- terested search after truth, but simply in order to define my own position in this decisive battle of thought. Whatever otbers have done before him, to Noiré belongs the merit of having rallied the scattered forces and led them to victory. When a student of the science of language points to the supreme importance of a right understand- ing of language for the solution of the most in- trieate problems in psychology or logic—when ? Darwin, “ Expression of the Emotions,” p.93. I feel bound to add that I do not see in the words of Mr. Darwin so complete a retractation of his former philosophy of language as Prof. Noiré imagines. | he tries to show, for instance, that the formation of species is a question belonging in the first © instance to subjective philosophy, and inseparable from the question of the formation of concepts —when he represents the whole history of phi- losophy as in truth an uninterrupted struggle between language and thought, and maintains that all philosophy must in the end become a philosophy of language—he is apt to be taken for an enthusiast, But, when a philosopher by profes- sion subscribes to every one of these positions, the case becomes different. In Germany Prof. Noiré’s reputation as an original thinker is by this time firmly established ; and if less has been heard of him and his system in journals and newspapers, this is said to be due to the fact that, like Scho- penhauer, he is not a university professor, and therefore without colleagues to support him, and without a large train of clientes, which originally meant cluentes or hearers, to swear by their mas- ter. It has also been said that the age of abstract philosophy in Germany has passed away, and that physical science now occupies the throne which formerly belonged to Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. This is not so. There is no lack of phi- losophical productiveness, but there is certainly a lack of philosophical receptivity in Germany, so that books which thirty or forty years ago would have excited general attention, now pass unheed- ed, except by the smaller circle of working phi- losophers. Books which in England would sell by thousands, and be reviewed in all the leading _ journals, sell in Germany by hundreds hardly, and are generally discussed in the correspondence only that passes between the author and his friends, There are exceptions. Some philosophical books have made a stir in Germany even in these days of iron and blood. But there is generally a reason for these exceptional successes. The same taste which finds a satisfaction in the more or less -Turkish atrocities of sensational novels, is grati- fied, it seems, by a class of philosophical writers who try to outbid each other in startling asser- tions and unblushing negations, and who, if they speak but loud enough, and have some friends to speak still louder, attract, at least for a time, a crowd of idle listeners. The following specimens of this kind of popular, or rather vulgar, philoso- phy are taken from Noiré’s books, and elsewhere: “Man possesses many internal qualities, such as imagination and the milt.” “ An external quality is seeing, an internal one is digestion.”’ “ Thought is a secretion of the brain, as other secretions come from the kidneys.” “ Man is what he eats. Homo est quod est.”

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THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. a of the history of philosophy. He never indulges in the excited language of the raw recruit with whom every little skirmish is to rank as oneof A lady published some letters addressed by her to Prof. Moleschott, in which the following sentiments occur : “ The moral rule for each man is given by his own nature only, and is different, therefore, for each individual. What are excesses and passions by themselves? Nothing but a larger or smaller overflowing of a perfectly legitimate impulse.” A philosopher ' belonging to the other sex in- dulges in the following dithyrambus : “ Enjoyment is good, and frenzy and love are good, but hatred also! Hatred answers well when we cannot have love. Wealth is good, because it ean be changed into enjoyment. Power is good, because it satisfies our pride. Truth is good, so long as it gives us pleasure ; but good is lying also, and perjury, hypocrisy, trickery, flattery, if they secure us any advantage. Faithfulness is good, so long as it pays; but treason is good also, if it fetches a higher price. Marriage is good, so long as it makes us happy; but good is adultery also for every one who is tired of marriage, or who happens to fall in love with a married person. Fraud is good, theft, robbery, and murder, if they lead to wealth and enjoyment. Life is good, so long as it is ariddle ; good is suicide also after the riddle has been guessed. But as every enjoyment culminates in our being deceived and tired, and as the last pleasure vanishes with the last illusion, he only would seem to be truly wise who draws the last conclusion of all science—i. e., who takes prussic acid, and that without delay.” ’ T need hardly say that Prof. Noiré's style is as far as possible removed from such ravings, at which even a Greek cynic would have smiled, but he is nevertheless by no means a timid philoso- pher, and never shrinks from any conclusion that is forced on him by facts or real arguments. What distinguishes him from most philosophers is brs strong feeling for the history of philosophy. There is in all he writes a warm sympathy with the the great battles of thought. He has a clear — perception that the roots of his own system of philosophy go back through Schopenhauer, Kant, and Leibnitz, to Spinoza and Descartes, and it is with a full consciousness of what he owes to every — one of his intellectual ancestors, that he takes his _ own position on the high-road of philosophic _ thought. On the tower built up to a certain height he rears his own story, and he invites us to see whether it does not command a wider and clearer view than the loop-holes of his predeces- sors. If there is an evolution anywhere, itis im — philosophy, and a philosophy which ignores its + antecedents is like a tree without roots. The great leaders in metaphysical speculation during — the last four centuries are to Noiré not only names to be cited, but living powers with whom = he has to reckon, and from whom, even when he treats of the most recent problems of the day, he demands an answer in accordance with their Thus, when he has to define the point from — which he himself starts, in approaching the great - questions of our time, and more particularly the — questions of the origin of reason and language, he, like every true philosopher, feels the influence _ of Descartes, the founder of modern metaphysics. His Cogito remains the starting-point of modern philosophy, whatever we may think even of the very first of his conclusions, ergo sum. . What separated Descartes from the philosophy of the middle ages, and gave him that strong position which he still holds in the history of philosophy, was his fixing his starting-point on the subjective side, and assigning to cognition the first place BESEFSEERERSZERB past, without which there is no prophet and no philosopher. He is not always anxious to im- press us with the fact that his system is a new system, that his thoughts are quite bis own, quite among all philosophical problems. We must _ know “how” we know before we ask “what” — we know. Every system of philosophy which plunges into the mysteries of Nature without original, He knows what has been said before him on the old questions which disturb our own philosophical atmosphere, whether by the ancient philosophers of Greece, or by the schoolmen, or by any of the great leaders of philosophic thought, from Descartes to Kant. He never announces as a new discovery what may be read in any manual 1 R. Schuricht, as quoted in Carriere’s remarkable book, “Die sittliche Weltordnung,” p. 2% (Leipzig, having solved the mysteries of the mind, the sys- tems of natural evolution not excepted, is pre Cartesian and medieval. But, though breaking the fetters of many of the traditional ideas of the schoolmen, Descartes remained under the sway of others. He remained a dualist, never doubting the independent exist- ence of two separate worlds, the world of thought and the world of matter. The world of thought was given him in his Cogito, but the world of & PE ZEXESERP SE ESEESERE SITE BAER E RES Se#gange

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had Galt Sty, thie Shite matter was a world by itself, beyond the reach of the Cogito. Mind with Descartes was a sub- stanee possessed of the property of thinking, if we use that word in its largest sense, so as to comprehend perceiving, willing, and imagining. Matter was a substance possessed of the property of extension—extension comprehending the qual- ities of divisibility, form, and movement. Hav- ing put asunder these two substances, how was he to join them together again? And, even if he could have joined them, how was he to prove that the knowledge which mind seemed to possess of matter was correct ? Descartes’s solution sounds strange to our ears, yet it can be translated into modern philo- sophic thought. He starts with thé conception of God, which he finds impressed on his mind ; and, as the conception of God involves the con- ception of a perfect being, Descartes considers that every possibility of delusion in the world which he has created, is ipso facto removed. This , which changed the uncompromising skepticism with which Descartes begins his phi- losophy imto an equally uncompromising faith, was influenced no doubt by the theological atmos- dices of the day, or, as many have done, a com- __. promise with his own convictions. Every man, even the greatest philosopher, is a slave of the language in which he has been brought up. He may break some of its fetters; he will never break them all. If Descartes lived now, he might have expressed all that he really wished to say on the character of our cognition in the words of Dr. Martineau: “Faith in the veracity of our faculties, if it means anything, requires us to believe that things are as they appear—that is, appear to the mind im the last and highest resort; and to deal with the fact that they ‘only ap- pear’ as if it constituted an eternal exile from their reality, is to attribute lunacy to universal reason.” “Trust in God as a perfect being,” and “an unwillingness to attribute lunacy to universal reason,” sound very different ; but their intention is the same. Noiré takes his first step with Deseartes. He starts from the Cogito, as what is certain above everything else, and as that without which noth- _ ing ean be certain ; but he protests against the _ Tupture between the subject and object of knowl- edge, and still more against any attempt to heal it by means of the concursus divinus, maintained by Descartes and his followers. One of the most ON THE ORIGIN . pes Malebranche, went 90 distinguished Cartesians, far as to maintain that when our soul wills, it does not act on the body, but that God intervenes to produce the desired effect; while, when the soul perceives, it is not influenced by outward objects, but again by God only, calling forth in the soul the sensations which we ascribe to the action of the material world. Here we have the true precursor of Bishop Berkeley. SPINOZA. At this point Noiré, like all modern philoso- phy, becomes for a time and up to a certain point Spinozistic. The very fact that we cannot bridge the gulf between two heterogeneous substances, such as mind and matter, shows us that there can - be no such gulf. Thus Spinoza was led on to admit, in place of the two, or, in reality, three, substances of Descartes’s philosophy, one sub- stance only, of which mind and matter, or, as he would say, thought and extension, are inberent qualities. Body and soul being the same sub- stance under two different aspects, the problem of body acting on soul, or soul on body, van- ishes. Individual souls and bodies are modes or modifications, whatever that may mean, of the one eternal substance, and every event in them is at the same time both material and spiritual. Noiré goes hand-in-hand with Spinoza, but only for a part, though a very important part, of his journey. The permanent gain from Spinoza’s philosophy, in which we all share, is the clear perception that spirit cannot be the product of matter (materialism), nor matter the product of spirit (idealism), but that both are two sides of one and the same substance. Noiré parts company with Spinoza where Leibnitz diverged from the great monistic thinker, viz., when it became a question whether all ex- isting things, material or spiritual, could be satis- factorily explained as so-called modes of one eter- nal substance. What are these modes? Whence did they arise? What would the eternal sub- stance be without such modes? Such questions led Leibnitz to postulate, as an explanation of the given universe, not one substance, like Spinoza, nor three, like Descartes, but an infinite number of individual monads. Each monad was to him a univetse in itself, each was endowed with two qualities of thought and force. The two impor- tant differences between Spinoza and Leibnitz were, first, Leibnitz’s recognition of the individ. ual as something independent, not derivative ;

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540 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. and, secondly, his substitution of force instead of extension. DESCARTES, SPINOZA, LEIBNITZ, AND LOCKE, ON : LANGUAGES. iad titel mab cals imme. omate deien Denneaten and Spinoza on these points, but he declares him- self most emphatically a pupil of Leibnitz on another point also, viz., the proper study of lan- guage, as before all things an empirical study. He had asked Descartes what place he assigned to language in his system of philosophy, but he received from his works no answer which would show that he had ever given serious thought to the relation between his Cogito and the Logos. We might have expected that Descartes would have treated words as material sounds, as me- chanical products running parallel with the ideas of the mind, but neither provoking ideas nor provoked by them, and fulfilling their purpose simply by means of the concursus divinus. But, instead of this, he simply repeats the views then current, that, “if we learn a language, we join the letters or the pronunciation of certain words, which are material, with their meanings, which are thought ; so that whenever we hear the same words again we conceive the same things, and, when we conceive the same things, the same words recur to our memory.” ! Neither does Spinoza return a more satisfac- tory answer as to the mutual relation between language and thought, and we look in vain for any passage in which he might have attempted to bring the facts of language into harmony with his general system of philosophy. He distin- guishes in one place very clearly between ideas or concepts on one side, and images or percepts and words on the other. But it is again the old story. Words are there to signify things,’ but how they came to be there and to perform such an office, is never even asked. In another’place, words and images are said to consist in corpo- real movements which have nothing to do with thought (ideas). Once Spinoza asks himself the question how, on hearing the sound of pomum, a Roman thought of what had no similarity what- 1 Epistola 1.,35: “Sic qaum linguam aliquam ad- @iscinus, literas sive quarundam vocum, que mate- riales sunt, pronunciationem conjangimus cum earum significationibus, que sunt cogitationes, ita ut auditis iterum fisdem vocibus easdem res concipiamus, atque fisdem rebus conceptis, ewdem voces in memoriam recurrant.” 2“ Ethica,” ii., Propositio xlix., schol. : “ Verba quibus res significamus."’ Ibid.: “ Verborumnamque et imaginum eesentia a eolis motibus corporeis coneti- tata, qui cogitationis conceptam minime involvunt.” ever with that sound, viz. an apple; and the answer is, by the concatenation of ideas. “The body,” he says, “has frequently been affected at one and the same time by the sound of pomum and by the sight of an apple, and hence, on per. ceiving the sound of pomum, it perceives its fre quent or constant concomitant, the apple.”! The question, “ Whence that sound of pomum, and whence its first concomitancy with an apple?” ig never asked by Spinoza, One remark only shows that his thoughts must have dwelt on the diffi. culties of language. In one passage he com- pares words with footprints, and remarks that when the soldier sees the footprints of a horse, he thinks of cavalry and war, while the peasant who sees the same marks is carried away in his thoughts to the plough and the field. This shows an advance beyond the then current view of the purely conventional character of language, and Sen et 08 ee far more than they express. Noiré, not satisfied with Descartes and Spino. za, turns to Leibnitz, not, however, because that philosopher seemed to him to have solved the problem as to the relation between language and reason, but because he was the first to point out that, as in every other part of Nature, so in lan- guage, it was the inductive method only that could lead to any valuable results. Before you attempt to find out how language arose, he would say, collect all that there is of language, classify, analyze, sift, label; only when that has been done, and done thoroughly, will there be a chance of discovering the simple elements of human specch. This was the conviction which guided Leibnitz in his own linguistic lebors, in his col- lection of living dialects, in his bringing to light the earliest documents of his own language, in his encouraging emperors as well as missionaries in the compilation of dictionaries of hitherto un- known and barbarous tongues. It was in this way that he became the founder of the science of language, as an inductive science. It was in this way also that he was led to conceive the possi- bility of a more perfect, or so-called universal, philosophical language. But the vital question as to whether thought was possible without lap- guage, or language without thought, remained outside the horizon of his speculations. At the same time, while Leibnitz was laying the foundation of comparative philology, Locke approached nearer than any one before him to 1“ Ethica,” ii., Propositio xvili. 2 “Lectures on the Science of Language,” vol. j., p. 158 (tenth edition). SB.- BABSEESTESaRESERE SESE FERS A GFRBGASESSBSESFESSRESER SSSA RS

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what is now called the philosophy of language. In his great though very unequal work, “On the Human Understanding,” he pointed out that words were not the signs of things, but that in their origin they were always the signs of con- cepts; that language begins in fact where ab- straction begins, and that the reason why ani- mals have no language is that they do not pos- sess the power of abstraction. This observation was little regarded at the time, till it was re- marked how completely, and yet how undesign- edly, it had been confirmed in our own time by the discoveries of the comparative philology.' When it had been shown by a very considerable amount of evidence that every word in every language that had been carefully analyzed was formed from a root, and that every root expressed an abstract idea, a concept, not a percept, then the coincidence between Locke and Bopp became startling, and gave a new impulse to a new phi- losophy both of language and thought. Lange, in his “ History of Materialism,” has called Locke’s work “On the Human Understanding” a “ Criti- cism of Language.” We may go further, and say that, together with Kant’s “Criticism of Keason,” it forms the true starting-point of mod- ern philosophy. LEIBNITZ’s “ MANADOLOGIE.” But, before we leave Leibnitz and the lesson which Noiré thinks should be learned from him even at the present day, we must endeavor to see more clearly how Leibnitz freed himself from the charm of Spinoza’s monistic philosophy, and how Noiré, who calls his own philosophy Monismus, yet breaks loose from Spinoza, by admitting not one monon, but many mona. The escape from the ty xal way is not so easy to those who have once been under its spell, as Leibnitz would have us believe. His well-known remark, “Spinoza aurait raison, s’il n’y avait point de monades,” is rather the saying of a philosophical cavalier, and might be met by the easy retort, “ Leibnitz aurait raison, s'il n’y avait point de substance.” Nor did Leibnitz by any means shake off the almost irrepressible longing of the human mind after the One, as the source of the Many. At first sight his monads seem to form a real republic of small divinities ; but not only is there for them all a “preéstablished harmony,” but in the end his monads are represented as created by one monad, which itself is not created. There is an “unité primitive ou substance simple originaire dont 1 See M. M."s “Lectures on the Science of Lan- guage,” vol. i., p. 405. ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON.

toutes les monades créées ou dérivatives sont des fulgurations continuelles, de moment en mo- ment.”! Are these fulgurations pour ainsi dire a-very real advance on Spinoza’s modes? The real solution, if there can be a solution of what is in reality one of the so-called antinowies of the human mind, would seem to lie in our clearly un- derstanding that we can never conceive the Many without the One, nor the One without the Many ; but it will be best to let Prof. Noiré speak for himself : * “* $pinoza’s doctrine received its necessary com- plement through the great Leibnitz. That the In- finite alone exists and can be conceived by itself only; that all single phenomena are throughout dependent on the Eternal and the Infinite ; that the two true attributes of substance, namely, extension and thought, cannot be given to us by experience, but must be conceived immediately; that our imagi- nation misleads us when it attempts to count and measure, where, according to their nature, count- ing and measuring are impossible—all these were precious truths which, difficult to understand, could ripen and bear fruit at a much later time only. “*The principle of individuality remained en- tirely neglected in the philosophy of Spinoza. In- dividual beings are nothing but modifications, af- fections of the One-and-All, the eternal and infi- nite God-world. Nature, however, there can be no doubt, is entirely founded on individuality, and higher knowledge as well as higher reality arises only through the combination of forces which were originally distinct. ‘ Spinosa aurait raison, #il n’y avait Point de monades.’ With these words the opposition of the philosophy of Leibnitz to that of Spinoza is clearly pronounced. The thought of an evolution of the world has already pierced through the mind of Leibnitz. “ That the lowest monad consists in extreme limitation, most perfect isolation and exclusion ; that with the progress of evolution higher monads ann Donel sateeed Sh soueey reas ception, and having the law of their existence in themselves; that an inner quality is given to all beings down to the lowest inorganic matter, deter- mining their form and expressed in it, until the highest form of existence, man, lets shine forth the light of his intelligence as the very crown of crea- tion, illuminating himself and the world around: this is the object and the true kernel of Leibnitz’s ‘ ’ “ And if man himself is a true iudividual, there- fore a being in active and passive relation to the rest of the world, it follows that all his endeavors, and all his acts, and all his knowledge, proceed from his limited nature only. Absorption in the a ” § 41. nr .<0 I be Erkenntniss-lehre,”’ p. 126.

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. Infinite would annihilate him no less than a disso- lution into primary atoms. His individuality ex-_ ists and maintains itself only in opposition to all ~ the rest. Independent active force is the true character of all things in the world.” THE INTELLECT ACCORDING TO LOCKE, KANT, SCHO- PENHAUER, AND NOIRK, What Noiré takes away with him from Leib- nitz are the monads, or, as he prefers to call them, the mona, leaving the preéstablished harmony in the same philosophical lumber-room with the con- cursus divinus, and pronouncing no opinion on the necessity of admitting, beyond all individual mo- nads, one supreme or creative monad. Having settled his accounts with Leibnitz, Noiré has next to pass through the ordeal of Locke, and to de- fend his mona from becoming mere canvas, or tabula rasa. What are the monads with which he undertakes to build up the world; and, more particularly, what are those monads of which we have to predicate the old Cartesian Cogito? The so-called faculties of the soul had long ago been - ‘destroyed by Spinoza, the innate ideas had fallen ander the strokes of Locke. Well did Herder say:'“ All the forces and faculties of our souls, and of anima! souls, are nothing but metaphysical abstraction. They are effects, subdivided by us, because our weak mind cannot grasp them as one. They are arranged in chapters, not because in Nature they act in chapters, but because an ap- prentice apprehends them most easily in this manner, In reality, the whole soul acts every- where undivided.” In Locke’s philosophy there temained nothing but the perceiving subject as tabula rasa on one side, and on the other the ob- jective world, throwing its picture on the white surface of the soul. Nothing was in the intellect except what had come into it through the senses ; and if Leibnitz rejoined, “ No, nothing, except the intellect itself,” the next question clearly, which philosophy, in its historical progress, had to an- ewer, was, “ What, then, is that intellect ?”’ The answer was given from two opposite quar- ters, by the philosophers of France and by the philosophers of Germany. Penser c'est sentir, was the answer of Condillac, La Mettrie, and Diderot. Kant’s answer was the “Critik der reinen Ver- nunft,” giving to the world what is the only pos- sible definition of the intellect, i. e., the fixing of its limits, What these limits are, according to Kant, is well known by this time to all students of phi- losophy. Man can possess a knowledge of phe- nomena only; what lies beyond the phenomenal 1 Noiré, “ Ureprang der Sprache,” p. 47. world is beyond his perception and perception and conception are, according Kut, 7 neither innate or cognate, but inevitable, irremov. able; they cannot be thought away, as he ex: : presses it, when we speak of perception and com. — ception. They are contained in them as light is _ contained in color, as number is contained ii — counting, analytically, not synthetically: They ae are that without which thought could not be com. ceived as possiblein man. If it made theirnature more intelligible, there would be no harm in call, ing them laws of sense, and laws of thought. Within the charmed circle described by Kant, side man, imprisoned within the walls of his senses, and with no more freedom of movement as than the categories or the chains of his intellect will allow him ; on the other side we have a world, of which we know nothing except that it is, and — that by its passing shadows it disturbs the repose of our prison. As far as the prisoner is concerned, nothing that later philosophers have added has materially changed his position. Space and time have re- mained, what Kant was the first to prove them to be, necessary forms of our sensuous intuition. The number of the categories has been changed, and by some philosophers, in particular by Scho- penhauer, they have been reduced to one, the category of causality, as the one primary form of all human thought. Thus armed, the subject, or, as we might say with Noiré, the monos, expects the mona, But what about these mona? What about the outside world? Can we really know it only as it appears? Can we predicate nothing of it? It is from this question that the most powerful impulse to philosophic thought proceeded. We might follow the stream of philosophy which, start- ing from this point, and following the course in- dicated by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, seems for the present, like the river Sarasvati, to be lost beneath the grcund. But Noiré calls us away from that enchanted valley, and bids us follow him in another direction, from Kant to Schopen- hauer, and then onward to his own system. ~ The transition from Kant to Schopenhauer is easy, and may be stated in the form of a single syllogism. He accepts all that Kant teaches about = Space and time are the inevitable forms of his - Fe sensuous perception, the categories the inevitable _ forms of his mental conception. These forme of - , the human intellect is safe ; outside it, it becomes entangled in antinomies or inevitable contradic: = tions, without finding any criterion of its own to solve them. According to Kant, we haveon ong BSEBPAIZEEREESLERE TSS es TEUrgeSE EZESgREFEESES ES RZSsRae

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“Sw? 424.) ee Se ee : < ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON. the subject or the I; or, if he modifies Kant’s doctrines, he does so chiefly by simplifying them. But he differs from Kant in his view of the ob- ject, or the Non-I. Our only real knowledge, he says, of anything really existing is our knowledge of the I, which involves not only being, but con- scious being, resisting, or, as he prefers to call it, willing. Therefore, if we say that the Non-I ex- ista, we say at the same time that it exists as something willing, resisting, and, if not actually, at least potentially, conscious. We know no other kind of being, and therefore we cannot predicate any other. As we, the I, are to others as the Not-I, so the Not-I must be to us as the Not-L This is the bridge from Kant to Schopenhauer, from death to life. As soon as we have arrived on the opposite shore, as soon as we have recog- nized in all Nature, in all that is not ourselves, something like ourselves, Noiré bids us welcome. This is the threshold of his own philosophy. THE TWO ATTRIBUTES OF SUBSTANCE. The first question with him, after he has ar- _ tived at his monads, is, What are their inherent ' attributes? He does not ask, What is intellect ? or, What is matter? but, What is essential in or- der to explain the whole of the subjective and objective evolution of the world? Like Descartes, like Spinoza, and like Leibnitz, he requires two attributes only, but he defines them differently from his predecessors, as motion and sensation. Out of these materials he builds up his universe, or rather, taking the universe as he finds it, he traces it back through a long course of evolution, _ to those simple beginnings. As Goethe said, “No spirit without matter, no matter without spirit,” Noiré says, “No sensation without motion, no motion without sensation.” According to these two attributes, philosophy has to deal with two streams of evolution, the subjective and the objective. Neither of them can be said to be prior. On the one hand it may be said that motion precedes sensation, because mo- tion causes vibration, and vi- bration of the conscious self is sensation. I see, I hear, I feel, I taste, I smell—all of these, trans- lated into the highest and most general language, mean, I vibrate, Iam set in motion. But, on the other hand, motion exists only where there is sensation ; it presupposes sensation; it means something which is nothing except in relation to something else, and that something else capable of perceiving. The two streams of evolution WEAT.€

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run parallel, or, more correctly, the two are one stream, looked at from the two opposite shores, SUBJECTIVE EVOLUTION. Taking the subjective aspect first, Noiré shows how sensation begins in its lowest form, as a mere disturbance or irritation. But even that irrita- tion presupposes something that reacts, some force which is conservatriz sui, and it is that power of reacting against foreign disturbance which constitutes the beginning of real senéa- tion. Sensation is, in fact, conscious motion or reaction. We may define every kind of sensation as conscious vibration, and we are able now to de termine the different kinds of sensation by the number of vibrations acting within a given time upon certain specially receptive organs. Let the line A B represent the y7y_ part of a second ; let each straight line (|) represent 4,000,000,000 vibrations, and each curved line (—) one vibra- tion. Then, disturbed and set to vibrate in uni- son with these vibrations, the eye within this py, part of a second would see red, the skin would perceive about 31° of heat (Centigrade), and the ear would hear the tone of ¢’"”’.! While one monon maintains itself against the inroads of another, or in reality of an infinite number of other mona, it vibrates. It asserts its existence by vibration, i. e., by a constantly and regularly repeated attempt to maintain iteelf against foreign inroads. Vibration in the high- est sense is the struggle between being and not being. So far as for a moment one monon has to yield, and as it were to surrender some of the ground which belonged to itself, it recognizes in the very act of yielding the existence of something else, able to disturb, but unable to annihilate, so that when we say of something that it exists, what 1s 7“ “i i“ ’ we really mean is that for a moment it is where we were before. And here we have the first glimmering of the category of causality. It is by looking upon a disturbance as caused, and by fixing that cause outside ourselves, that we translate disturbance, or irritation, or vibration, into the perception of an object. The gradual change from the one to the 1 Noiré, “ Grundlegung,” p. 56,

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544 other has been so fully elaborated by the most re- cent school of English philosophy, that English readers will hardly find anything new in this por- tion of Noiré’s philosophy. We must only re- mark, as against all philosophers from Descartes to Kant and his school, that even the most primi- tive perceptions or empirical cognitions are never entirely passive. Malebranche said: “In the same manner as the faculty of receiving different figures and configurations in the body is entirely pas- sive, and involves no action whatever, the faculty also of receiving different ideas and different mod- ifications in the mind is entirely passive, and in- volves no action whatever. I call thig faculty, or this capacity which the mind possesses of receiv- ing all those things, the understanding (1’entende- ment).” “We hold, on the contrary, that every impression becomes perceived by our resistance only, and every resistance is active and self-con- scious, We suffer, no doubt, in seeing and hear- ing, but we suffer because we resist. Kant says, “If I take away all thought from an empirical cognition, there remains no cognition whatever of an object, for nothing is thought by mere intuition, and the fact of my sense being affected gives me nothing that relates to any ob- ject.” But whatever we may do in abstract rea- soning, we cannot in rerum natura take away all thought from an empirical cognition, without de- stroying it. This is what Schopenhauer urges, with great success, against Kant. He shows that even the simplest intuition involves activity, sen- sation, and thought. In giving to our sensuous disturbances an object, in saying of these objects that they are, we are not only passive; we are active, we think, we are using Kant’s own cate- gory of causality, in addition to the intuitions of space and time. In placing the cause of our sen- suous disturbance outside ourselves, we apply what Kant calls one form of our sensuous intui- tion, viz., space. In placing one disturbance by the side of another, we begin to count, and apply Kant’s second form of sensuous intuition, viz., time. There is, in fact, according to Schopen- hauer, no real sensation without the first germs of intellect in it. Kant takes the intellect as some- thing given, as ready at hand, whenever we want to apply it to the brute material supplied by the senses. Noiré looks upon the intellect as grad- ually developing from the lowest indications of conscious sensation to the highest achievements of discursive reasoning. On this point he was, for a time, as it would seem, chiefly under the in- fluence of Geiger. Geiger, speaking historically rather than psychologically, says: THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. “* One thing is certain, that as far as our obser- % vation reaches, man is rational. And yet he has not : always been rational. Reason does not date from all eternity. Reason, like everything else on earth, — had an origin and beginning in time. And, like the species of living beings, reason did not spring into existence suddenly, finished, and in all its per- fection, as it were by a kind of catastrophe ; but it - has had its own development. We have in lan guage an inestimable and indispensable instrument for seeing this. Nay, 1 believe that whatever plausible theories on the descent of man may have been started elsewhere, certainty and assurance can be obtained from language only.” bocca Geiger seems to me to mix up two ideas inthe _ word rational. When he says that man was not’ always rational, he means rationalis, not rationa- bilis ; and between these two words the difference _ is immense. We agine wih Herd whed BUG * How is it possible that from unesnsdeunaniill non-sentient matter consciousness and sensation — should suddenly shine forth, unless the inner qual- __ ity, though in a dark and to us hardly perceptible ee manner, belonged before to those substances from — which the first animal life, in its meyers form, was developed ?”’ (p. 198). It may probably be objected that the inner quality here spoken of is only a different name for _ the qualitates occulta, which form the terror of _ modern philosophy. But honest philosophers — must not allow themselves to be swayed by the « clamor of the day. No doubt the abuse that was ~ made of occuit qualities, innate ideas, and of, faculties and instincts, was very great; but be. — cause modern philosophy had shown that these — terms were musty with the crust of long-accu. mulated misconceptions, there was no ground for _ throwing away these old terms, like broken toys, Every one of them, if only carefully defined, has its legitimate meaning ; and with all the prejudice, __ attaching to their name, the theory of occult qual ities and their gradual manifestation rules really — supreme at the present day, though thinly veiled under the new name of evolution and potential . = 4 Noiré’s philosophy rests on a most compre. _ hensive theory of evolution ; it is the first attempt _. at tracing the growth of the whole world, not only __ of matter, but of thought also, from the beginning _ of time to the present day. As the philosophy — of Nature strives to account for all that exists by a slow progress of evolution, beginning from the simplest elements, and ascending through endless ._ combinations to the highest effort of Nature, re- . _ alized in man, the philosophy of thought starts — ee rere e » — & GELS

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a _ versal force of Nature in different forms, in itself - whether in the form of light, heat, sound, or any- . we have, in fact, advanced but little beyond Des- * the solution of the problem of life before its eyes ; ’ but we cannot confess too openly that as yet vital * from the lowest to the highest forms of life, with ‘all the new light that patient research has thrown _ teady to acknowledge, nor to dwell sufficiently on from the lowest indications of conscious feeling, and follows the growth of thought through every variety of perception, i magination, and concep- tion, to the latest work of philosophy. OBJECTIVE EVOLUTION. Noiré is a true evolutionist, subjectively and objectively. But he is a follower of Cuvier, not of Lamarck. He avails himself of all the new light which modern science, particularly through Robert Mayer and Charles Darwin, has shed on that oldest of all problems; but he is not a Dar- winian, in the ordinary sense of the word. With Robert Mayer, be holds' that “ there is but one uni- eternal and unchangeable. Whatever we perceive, thing else, is due to motion, and must be solved as @ purely mechanical problem. Nor can any motion be lost; it can only be changed into a new kind of motion.” Even organic life is looked upon as a me- chanical process, though it is fully admitted that science has not yet mastered it. In this respect cartes, who likewise looked upon animals, and even on the human body, as mere machines, though in the case of man the machine was con- nected with a new substance, the soul. Physical science is no doubt fully justified in always keeping nay, in representing such a solution as the high- est triumph which mechanical or chemical science could achieve. But it should never allow the anticipation of that triumph to influence philo- sophical speculation. We know exactly what a cell is composed of, but no synthesis has yet pro- duced anything like a living cell, absorbing, growing, and generating, if only by self-division. We may laugh at the occult quality of vital force, force is to us an occult quality. Leaving the origin of organic life as an open question, and remembering that even Charles Darwin requires a Creator to breathe life into matter, we may afterward follow the progress ) upon it, Noiré here goes entirely with the evo- Tae Ls tdiates even in the Bathybios Hae- tkelii, To me he does not seem to lay sufficient Stregs on the many gaps which the most laborious members of the evolutionist school are the most ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON. the indications, supplied by Nature herself, that she may have had more than one arrow in her quiver. He differs, however, most decidedly from the evolutionists in the explanation of the pro. cess of evolution. He looks upon the struggle for life, the old wéAeyos warhp rdyrawv, the bellum omnium contra omnes, on the survival of the fit- test, on natural selection, influence of environ- ment, and all the rest, as merely concomitant agencies, and places the original impulse in what Schopenhauer called Will—a word, as it seems to me, as badly chosen as could be to express what Schopenhauer wished to express. What he means by Will is simply the subjective form of what appears objectively as Force. Where other philosophers would say that everything is what it is by its own nature, what the Hindoos call svabhdvdt, Schopenhauer says it is so by its will, wishing to indicate thereby that the nature of everything, from a stone to an animal, is not de- termined by any other higher will, but by itself alone. He is thus driven to speak of an uncon- scious will in stones and plants, and he dates the beginning of a conscious will from its first mani- festation in the animal kingdom. It is not quite easy to see how far Noiré adopts Schopenhauer's theory of will Will, as used by Schopenhauer, does not differ much from _ fact, however, or—from another point of view— from accident. The broader question is really this, whether we are to admit that each thing is a law to itself, or that there is a higher, universal law for all. Schopenhauer ends with a republie of separate wills, without a supreme ruler—nay, without a superintending law. Hence the aver- sion he felt and expressed to the theory of evolu- tion. “What has philosophy to do with beeom- ing?” he writes; “it ought to try to understand being.”' No doubt, what exists, and is what it is by its own will, cannot easily. be conceived as changing, and yet what greater change can be imagined than that from an unconscious will in stones and plants to a conscious will in animals and men? Here it is where Noiré separates him- self decidedly from Schopenhauer. To him all being is becoming, and al) becoming is deter- mined from the first. There could be no con- seiousness in the animal world unless its unde- veloped germs existed in the lower stages from which animal life proceeds. Here is the funda- mental difference between Lamarck’s chaotic, pan- genetic evolution, and that development which is from beginning to end the fulfillment of a will, a purpose, a law, or a thought. 1“ Grundlegung,” pp. 6, 11. 71 3 “ Einleitung,” p. 198.

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‘$464 ~THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. KINETICS AND ASTHETICS. Noiré divides the whole of philosophy, accord- ng to the views just explained, into two branches, _which he calls Kinetics and Zsthetics. By Kinetics every problem from the first mo- tion of the atom to the revolutions of the solar system, from the formation of the first cell to the life of man, has to be solved as a purely mechani- cal problem. By Zsthetics, using that word in the Kantian sense, he tries to unravel the growth of the sub- jective world, from the first tremor of the embryo to the brightest thoughts of man, from the first reaction of the moneres to the highest flights of human genius. The field for the study of Kinetics is open ; it is the whole realm of Nature, which anybody may explore who has eyes to see. It is physical sci- ence in the largest sense of the word. Experi- ence and experiment are the two tools, Nature the never-failing material, for those who want to work out the history of evolution in the objective world. For the study of Zsthetics the same tools are at hand, but where is the material? where are the documents in which to study the growth or his- tory of the sentient subject ? Must we be satisfied either with introspection, the most uncertain of all _ vivisectory experiments, in which he who dissects is at the same time he who is being dissected? or with the study of that short period of growth which we call the history of the world, compris- ing no more than a few thousand years, filled with names of kings and battles rather than with an account of the silent growth of the mind? No wonder that men accustomed to deal with facts, and to base their theories upon them, should turn away with dismay from mental sci- ence in which every fact can be disputed by men who profess that they do not see it, and where there is hardly one technical term that admits of ‘One definition only. An exact philosophy of the ‘human mind seemed to become more and more ‘hopeless the greater the achievements in the con- quest of Nature. LANGUAGE, AS SUBJECTIVE NATURE. And yet while philozophers complained about the scarcity or the total absence of trustworthy materials, there were old archives brimful of them, if people would only see them, open them, and read them. What should we say if we were told ‘that, in studying the growth of the earth, we must be satisfied with looking at its surface only—that everything else was hidden and lost ? Were there not chronicles of the past written on that very surface, if people would only recog. nize them as such? Was there not a history to be read in every bit of coal, in every flake of — flint? We can hardly understand how men could have been so blind as not to see what stared them in the face; and yet all mental phi — losophy has hitherto been struck with such blind" ness. Noiré is, in fact, the first philosopher by profession who has perceived what students of — the science of language, more particularly Gei. ger, have pointed out again and again, that lan guage is the embodiment of mind, the nature, so to say, of mind, the subjective universe in which the whole objective universe is reflected, pew ceived, imaged, and conceived. Here is the realm of mental science, here are materials, aj real as any that physical science has to deal — with. Nor have we only the surface, the living — language of the day, in which to study the rem nants of that unbroken series of growth which begins with the first conscious sensation. We — possess in the so-called dead languages petrifac- tions of former stages of growth, and in the many families of human speech a wealth of form comparable only to the numberless forms of vegetable and animal life which overwhelm the student of objective Nature. The evolution of sensation, therefore, can be studied as well as the evolution of motion, viz., in the enormous wealth of language. The history of the human minds — the history of language ; the true philosophy of — peter sincere hemor —is the philosophy of language. I quote from Noiré (“ Einleitung,” p. 218): ‘* How could such a new creation as we have in forms? How could what is rational and “ proceed from what is without reason and ae speech ? “Tf we want to know the means by which man reason worked its way from small to always-increasing clearness with reference 4 the qualities of things, and always higher self consciousness, this can be done historically only, — by investigating the regular development of the conceptual contents of words, which, without sual, ” contents, are empty sound. Concepts, as Geiger shows, determine each other in their genesis, #0 that not every one could spring accidentally every other, but certain concepts only from concepts, according to rule. While there can ' no science to determine the connection “ concept and sound, » scientific method must found, following the development of without reference to their phonetic forms; and ia , yg er — eo =’ fe ws ses woes -_

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zs! As ws — = Cs ERSRTRAERAETP ASI RESP eSTrranereenoe = ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON. must try to find the empirical laws according to which concepts can be concatenated, laws which alone enable us to judge of real relationship of ideas, as phonetic laws of real reiationship of sounds. Thus only shall we gain an insight into the nature of reason, and be enabled to ascribe to it'that certainty which consists in a knowledge of a necessity determined by law.” Let us see now how Noiré works out this new discovery. What he takes as granted on the subjective side of his philosophy is sensation, corresponding to motion. Thai sensation, how- ever, is something different from what we have made it, by separating from it in language what in reality can never be separated from it, viz., some kind of self-conscious thought. Even the faintest shiver is pervaded by something which we must accustom ourselves to call thought. The fact is, we suffer from the abundance of terms which have been created to signify the «various manifestations of sensation as well as the faculties corresponding to them, and which, from being used loosely, have encroached on each other to that extent that it is almost im- possible now to disentangle them. It would be the greatest benefit to mental science if all such words as perception, intuition, remembering, ideas, conception, thought, cognition, senses, mind, intellect, reason, soul, spirit, etc., could _’ for a time be struck out of our philosophical dic- tionaries, and not be admitted again until they had undergone a thorough purification. Sensa- tion, then, in the sense in which Noiré uses it, so juggler, by showing that the bird was still to be found in the empty egg-shell. Give u. sensation, such as it really is, not such as it has been imag- ined to be for logical purposes, as something distinct from thought, but impregnated with thought, and everything in the human mind becomes intelligible, and penser may as truly be said to be sentir as the oak-tree is the acorn. But then it has been asked: “Is there no such thing as mind, soul, reason, intellect, etc. ? Is not the soul a simple substance? Is not rea- son a special gift?” Such is the influence of words on thought, that as soon as we throw away a word, or attempt to define its meaning, every- body thinks he is being robbed. But the sun rises just the same, though we say tlow that it does not rise; the moon has not been minished, though for thousands of years she has been told that she is waning; and all our mental life will remain just the same, though we deny that reason has any independent substantive existence. All the various shades of sensation from the first to the last were doubtlessly distinguished and named for some very useful purpose. The mischief was, that there were too many distinctions to remain distinct, and that, as usual, what was meant as an adjective was soon changed into a substantive, Perception, intuition, remembering, ideas, con- ception, thought, cognition—all these exist as modes or developments of sensation, but sensa- tion itself exists only as a quality of the monon, and therefore neither mind, nor intellect, nor reason, nor soul, nor spirit, being all modes or products of sensation, can claim any substantive existence beyond what they derive through sen- far from being the lowest degree only of mental | sation from the monon. To speak of reason as & activity—so far from being what is most easy to understand and what would seem to require no explanation at all—is really the most mysterious act, the act which we can explain by no other, of which there is no simile or metaphor anywhere. Like motion, sensation will always remain an ul- timate fact—a ne plus ultra of human philosophy. French philosophers imagined that by their tenet of Penser c'est sentir they were degrading thought, “and such had been the influence of fashion that | _ few only at the time could see that sensation, being at al} events the indispensable antecedent _ Of thought, was in no way a viler function, but had a perfect right to claim precedence of ' thought. The French tenet became faulty only because Condillac and his school took senfir in its unnaturally restricted sense. They had pre- _ Wiously taken out of sentir all that is penser, and _ then thought they could startle the world, like a thing by itself, as even Kant does, is simply philosophical mythology ; to speak of mind, in- tellect, reason, soul, or spirit, as so many inde- pendent beings, with limits not very sharply de- fined, yet each differing from the other, is neither more nor less than philosophical polytheism. A | man is not, however, an atheist because he does not believe in Aphrodite as a goddess; nor is a ph er to be called hard names because he not believe in mind, intellect, reason, soul, or spirit, as so many independent substances, or powers, or faculties, or goddesses. Noiré sees all this quite clearly in some parts of his works; but at other times he seems still under the sway of the old philosophical theogony. Thus he sometimes identifies himself with Geiger, whose words he quotes on the title-page of his text-book : “ Language has created Reason ; before there was Language, man was without Reason.”

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548 I do not object to this statement so long as it is only meant as a protest against the received opinion that language is the handiwork of rea- son; that man, because he was possessed of rea- son, was able to frame for himself and others an instrument of communication in language. Gei- ger’s words convey much truth, as calling atten- tion to the fact that it is reason rather which was built up by language than language by reason. But what is reason without language? What shall we think of language without reason? When we say that language has been built up by reason, it is the same as when we say that a living body is built up by a vital force. Rea- son, like vital force, is a result which we sub- stantiate and change into a cause. With every new word there is more reason, and every prog- ress of reason is marked by a new word. The growth of reason and language is coral-like. Each shell is the product of life, but becomes in turn the support of new life. In the same man- ner each word is the product of reason, but be- comes in turn a new step in the growth of reason. Reason and language, if we must separate them for our own purposes, are always held together in mutual dependence; and if we wish to arrive at a true understanding of their nature, all we can do is to break up the two words and knead them into one, viz., Logos. Them and then only ~ shall we see that reason by itself and language by itself are nonentities, and that they are in reality two sides of one act which cannot be torn asunder. “Then what is Logos?” it will be said. “Is that term clearer than language and reason? Are we not simply placing one idol in the place of two?” I believe not. Logos is the actof the monon, freeing itself, by means of signs, from the oppressive weight of seneations. Logos is what ~ ite name signifies, the act of collecting, arranging, classifying ; and this act is performed by signs, and chiefly by words. PERCEPTS AND CONCEPTS.. An order to undersiand this process of gather- ‘ing and naming, we must go back to where we left the stream of the philosophy of language, and chiefly to Locke’s observation that words are the signs of concepts, confirmed as it was by the later discoveries of Compargtive Philology, that all words are derived from roots, and that roots ex- press general concepts. If that is so—and no one doubts it—then. the question recurs, ‘“ How does sensation, which deals with percepts only, arrive at concepts, and bow can concepts be ex- in Sin, a a ae es * twee .- ‘ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. pressed by vocal sounds?” Our chief di Give tas aw agile “enethod teptaeniielgidi ts more wenfel then'the’dlothictién batted galt cepts and concepts, yet the line which separates them from each other, like that which a sensation from reason, is by no means 80 . as we imagine. Instead of saying that we - not think in sight nor see in thought, I d say, on the contrary, that we never really see without thought, and never really think without sight. There is no percept which, if we examine it closely, does not participate more or less in the nature of a concept, nor is a concept possible except on the ruins of percepts. We ever take in a thing as a whole. When we look at a poppy, we see its red color, and perhaps, make quit? sure, the shape of its leaves; b 7 then we have done. We have here a percept which, on account of its very incompleteness, represents the first step toward a concept From these imperfect percepts still more drops away when the immediate impression ceases. I call this a kind of involuntary abstraction, E might also call it memory. Much difficulty hag been raised about the so-called faculty of mem ory, but the truth is, that the real problem to be solved does not lie in our remembering, but ig our forgetting. If no force is ever lost, why should the force of our sensations ever b Jess vivid? The right answer is that their is never lost, but determined only by new forees, and in the end changed into those faint and more general sensations which we call memory. *- remembered sensations lead us another step nearer toward concepts. In one sense concepts may be called higher than percepts, and they cem tainly constitute, as all true philosophers have — 5% seen, the chief difference between man and brute, — But from snother point of view concepts are low er, less vivid, Jess clear and acourate than. cepts, and they certainly constitute the " source of our errors. Kant says that without percepts are empty, percepts, without concepts blind; it would perhaps be truer to CER CEE and if torn asunder, they are nothing. HOW ARE CONCEPTS NAMED? The process by which percepts are ¢ bing changed nto concepts by no means wk form, but admits of endless variety. What com cerns us, however, at present, is not so much the formation of concepts, as the process by 4 concept can be fixed and named.. We may uh derstand how the faint recollection of the re SE en gn een ee ee saan 2 ay

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» - Pe onc Ur at a aed CR tact ica Oe Raine A Fl kate ete ee ee ON THE. ORIGIN. OF REASON. color of the poppy, separated from everything else, particularly after it has been strengthened by the red color of other flowers, of birds, of blood, or of the sunset, becomes in the fullest sense of the word a concept. But while we can point to the flower, the bird, and the red sky, we never can point to the red as such, apart from the things to which it belongs. Unless, there. fore, we have signs to assist our memory in the retention of concepts, they would vanish almost _ as soon as they have risen. This is not a merely theoretic difficulty, but it must have been felt as & very serious practical difficulty, from the first beginnings of civilized life. How to distinguish blood from water, except through the concept of red, and through some sign for red ? It is the object of Prof. Noiré’s last book to give an answer to this question, “ How are con- eepts framed and named?” That language does not begin with mere sensation, that man never attempted to name a single subject in its com- pleteness, he takes for granted, for the single reason that it is a superhuman task. Try to name a whole oak, and you will find that lan- guage cannot even get near it. All names are made from roots, all roots are signs of concepts. Bring the oak under a concept, under the con- cept of eating, for instance, and you can name it, as it was named ¢rryés, the eaten tree, the food- tree, par excellence ; but not otherwise. I be- lieve, however, that one class of roots has here been overlooked, and must indeed be ascribed to the purely perceptive phase of the human mind, viz., the demonstrative or pronominal as opposed to. the predicative roots. Those sounds which simply point to an object—this, that, I, thou, he, ete.—are in their most primitive form purely sensational. They are few in number, but they are made to render the greatest service in the later formation of words. With the exception of this small class of roots, however, Prof. Noiré is certainly right that all roots are signs of concepts. We may take any word we choose, it will invariably lead us back in the beginning, not to a single sensation, but to a concept. A book is originally what was made of beech. The English beech, the Latin fSagus, the Greek @yés, oak, were all so called from the root gay, to feed, to eat; that is to say, the tree was conceived as giving food to cattle, whether acorns or beech-nuts. But even gay, to eat, is a secondary root, and may be traced back to the Sanskrit root bhag, which has preserved the more general meaning of dividing. Wool, vellus, &p-sov, Sanskrit firnd, all come from a toot var, to cover. A horse was called equus, Sanskrit asva, the swift, from a root as, to be sharp and quick; while the cow, in contradis- tinction to the runner or the horse, was called Bots, Sanskrit gaus, from a root 54 or gd, to go, to move slowly. We may tap language wherever we like, the sap thut runs from its veins is always We saw before how concepts arose; we also saw why it was necessary that concepts should have signs. They would have vanished without . signs, and it was desirable that they should not vanish. The question that remains to be answered is, how concepts were expressed in sounds. THE INTERJECTIONAL AND MIMETIC THEORIES. The most common theories hitherto advocated on that point have been the inéerjectional and the mimetic, or, a8 they have also been called, when misapplied to etymological purposes, the Pooh- pooh and Bow-wow theories. According to the former, roots are derived from involuntary excla- mations forced out by powerful impressions. According to the latter, they are formed from imitations of natural sounds, such as the barking of dogs, the lowing of cows, ete. In my lectures on Mr. Darwin's “ Philosophy of Language,” I tried to explain how, with certain modifications, both of these theories could be defended, not in- deed as supplying actual roots, still less actual words, but as furnishing the materials out of which roots might be formed. Yet the arguments against this theory of mine are powerful. It is perfectly true, as Prof. Noiré points out, that the simplest sensations which, we should think, might be expressed by interjections, are never so ex- pressed, but are reached by language in the most circuitous way. To hunger and to thirst are two very primitive sensations; but have they been expressed interjectionally ? The word hunger is as yet without any ey. mology ; it may possibly be connected with San- skrit kars, to dwindle away; krisa, lean, lank; the German hager. The Latin esurio, derived from edo, means I wish to eat. The same mean- ing we find in the Sanskrit asandyati, to desire food. The Greek weiva, hunger, is connected with wéves, labor, xévouat, I labor, I strive, I reach after food; the original conception being Se eee the German spannen, to stretch. ' To thirst, Gothic thaursja, Sanskrit trish- y4mi, shows its original conception in Greek, répaopm, I am dry ; Latin, torreo ; Gothic, thaur- sus, dry. The same root supplied material for

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~ "ve i ete So terra, dry land ; tes-ta, dried clay, bowl, French téte; testudo, turtle; probably for torrens, tor- rent, torris, torch, and even for French aussitét.’ This shows how language works. And with regard to objects which might most easily have been named after the sounds which they utter, we find again that generally they are not so named, while in such words as cuckoo, cuculus, Noiré points out that these are not names, but rather proper names, or nicknames, and that they came in long after the concept of the bird had been framed. Sounds such as bow- wow, or baa or moo, would remind us, he thinks, of single objects only, and would never be fit to express conceptual thought. I had tried to show, in my lecture on Mr. Dar- win’s “ Philosophy of Language,” bow even out of such sounds the materials for roots or phonetic types might have been elaborated, and how in the same manner as various cries would leave the concept of crying, various sounds, such as baa and moo, might, by mutual friction, be raised to a root, containing the concept of to cry. THE SYMPATHIC THEORY. Prof. Noiré has brought forward no argu- ments against this theory, but he has started a new theory, which, so far as it reaches, supplies certainly a better explanation of phonetic types and rational concepts than my own. He points out that whenever our senses are excited and the muscles hard at work, we feel a kind of relief in uttering sounds.* He remarks that particularly when people work together, when peasants dig or thrash, when sailors row, when women spin, when soldiers march, they are inclined to accom- pany their occupation with certain more or less vibratory or rhythmical utterances. These ut- terances, noises, shouts, hummings, songs, are a kind of reaction against the inward disturbance caused by muscular effort. These sounds, he thinks, possess two great advantages. They are from the beginning signs of repeated acts, acts performed by ourselves and perceived by our- selves, but standing before us and continuing in our memory as concepts only. Every repeated act can be to us nothing but a concept, compre- hending the many as one, and having really nothing tangible corresponding to it in the outer world, Here, therefore, was certainly an easy bridge from perception to conception. Secondly, as being uttered, not by one solitary man, but by 1 Bréal, “‘ Mélanges,” p. 318. ® This point has been illustrated by Mr. Darwin in his “ Expression of the Emotions,” chapter iv. THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. men associated in the same work, these sounds _ have another grea, advantage of being at once intelligible. It cannot be denied that Noiré’s — arguments in support of his theory are very strong, nor can there be any doubt that, as most — of our modern tools find their primitive types in cave-dwellings and lacustrian huts, a very large — portion of our vocabulary can be derived, and, has been derived, from roots expressive of such primitive acts as digging, cutting, rubbing, pull. ing, striking, weaving, rowing, marching, etc. My only doubt is whether we should restrict ourselves to this one explanation, and whether @ river so large, so broad, so deep as language may not have had more than one source. Human language had, for instance, from a very early time; to express not only acts, but also states, or even sufferings. In fact, as Prof, Noiré has himself shown, all the work of our senses admits of a double application, an active and passive one. We listen actively, and we hear passively; we watch actively, and we per~ ceive passively ; we scent and sniff, and we per- ceive disagreeable smells ; we grope, and we feel; | we taste tentatively, and we taste something bit- ter, whether we like it or not. Though in mod- ern languages these two sides are often expressed. by one and the same verb, the two concepts were originally quite distinct. To hear was probably — to vibrate, to be moved, to be struck; and the. root kru, or klu, which im all the Aryan lan guages means to hear, may have been connected | with other roots, such as kru, to strike; krad, to — sound. Where we say, I hear the thunder, the a. old expression might have been, I tremble, I - shake from the thunder. Hence the old con- struction of such verbs with the ablative or geni- tive preserved in Sanskrit or Greek ; while audire in Latin has lost every trace of the old concept, — and governs the general objective case. To listen in the active sense of watching, giving ear (aus- — culto), might have been expressed by a root con- nected with the low, breathing sounds uttered by — a number of people who are waiting together for some great event. Instead of this, we find that — in Sanskrit it is expressed by a secondary root, srush, to hear, a kind of derivative from sra, to hear, stil pronent in the Hagiish: to. Roten, Angra Saxon hlosnian, hlystan. In cane snsannattntidetinstenain near the interjectional theory. Whether, for in- stance, the root anh, to choke, should be called — interjectional or mimetic, or whether, as Noiré — would have it, it was produced by the sympathy of activity, will be difficult to determine. If — BEER EESEEESESERFERPGR acteegeEe ae? Bose SPSERFSsERBESCSS RLY

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moe ~ 2 oo eer +“. ¥ ‘a 5 : eee + EN Sy ee = 5 ’ 7 She Bit x Poa he os ade Kady id) yi se THE LAW OF LIKENESS, AND ITS WORKING. originally it was meant to express the sense of | root, in its simpler form, vap, gives us the Greek oppression and choking, it would be due to a sympathy of passivity, rather than activity; and a sound uttered from sympathy of passivity comes very near to an interjectional or mimetic sound. Prof. Noiré has, I believe, struck a new vein, but when he comes to work out his theory more "jm detail, he will probably find that the prim- itive centres of force from which the endless rays of thought radiated, do not all lie in the same direction. Locke’ remarked, long ago, and others had done so before him, that all words ex- \pressive of immaterial ideas are derived from words expressive of material subjects. “By which,” as he adda, “ we may give some kind of guess what kind of notions they were, and whence derived, which filled their minds who were the first beginners of language.” Nothing is more likely than that their daily occupations should have supplied the first concepts through which the framers of language gradually laid hold of everything that attracted their attention. If they had a word for plaiting or weaving, they could derive from it not only the name of the spider, but likewise of the poet who weaves words and thoughts together. I agree with Aufrecht _ that we should derive from a root vabA, to spin, the Sanskrit firnavbhi, spider, Greek Sos, web, and Suves, poem, while Greek expressions such as SdAous cal pir piOovs nal phdea, oixodouhyara, _ BrBor, xnpdy ipalyew, show how many branches may spring from one single stem. The same -rpwov, warp. The roots vabh, however, and wap, before they came to mean weaving, meant throw- ing, also sowing; and in an intransitive sense, even our modern verb to wabble, clearly onomato- poetic, according to Mr, Wedgwood, has been traced back historically to that root by Prof. Pott. I fully agree, therefore, with Noiré, that the primitive occupations of man, and the sounds which accompany them, would supply ample ma- terials for carving out of them a complete diction- ary. I also agree with him that man finds the most natural metaphors for the expression of natural phenomena by referring them to himself, by looking upon them anthropopathically. When the color red had to be expressed he called it a crying color, a bitter taste was a biting taste, a shrill note was a sharp-cutting note. All this is true, and much more. But though I willingly say eSpyxas to Prof. Noiré, I still think we ought not to shut all other doors that may lead into the dark passages of language, and that we ought, in our searchings after the earliest ramifications of human thought and human language, to guard against nothing more than against the arch-enemy of all tru I hope in a future article to show more in de- tail how the gradual development both of the material and of the framework of reagon, the so-. called categories, may be studied by means of an historical analysis of language. — Contemporary Review. THE LAW OF LIKENESS, AND ITS WORKING. Br Dx. ANDREW WILSON. HAT the offspring should bear a close re- semblance to the parent forms one of the most natural expectations of mankind, while the converse strikes us as being an infringement of some universal law that is not the less recogniz- able because of its unwritten or mysterious char- acter. “The acorn,” says a great authority on matters physiological, “tends to build itself up again into a woodland giant such as that from whose twig it fell; the spore of the humblest lichen reproduces the green or brown incrusta- tion which gave it birth ; and at the other end of the scale of life, the child that resembled neither + “ Lectures on the Science of Language,” fi., p. 373. the paternal nor the maternal side of the house would be regarded as a kind of monster,” Thus true is it of the humblest as of the highest being, that the law of likeness or “heredity,” as it has been termed, operates powerfully in moulding the young into the form and resemblance of the par- ent. But the law that is thus admitted to be so universal in its operation exhibits, at the same time, very diverse readings and phases. The likeness of the parent may be attained in some cases, it is true, in the most direct manner, as, for example, in the higher animals and plants, where the egg or germ, embryo, and seed, become transformed through a readily-traced process of

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development into the similitude of the being which gave it birth. So accustomed are we to trace this direct resemblance between the parent and the young in the higher animals and among ourselves, that any infringement of the law of likeness is accounted a phenomenon of unusual kind. Even extending to the domain of mind as well as of body, we unconsciously expect the child to exhibit the traits of character and disposition which are visible in its parents, and to grow up “the child of its father and mother,” as the ex- pression runs, in every phase of its bodily and mental life. A wider view of the relations and harmonies existing in Nature, however, shows us that this direct development of the young into the simili- tude of its ancestors is by no means of universal occurrence. Many forms attain the resemblance to their progenitors only after passing through a series of changes or disguises, often of very com- plicated nature. And a very slight acquaintance with the facts of physiology would serve to show that the law of likeness, like most other laws regulating the world of life, has its grave excep- tions, and that it exhibits certain phases of sin- gular interest in what may be termed its abnor- mal operation. The young of an animal or plant may, and frequently do, exhibit very remarkable variations from the parent in all the characteris- ’ ties which are associated with the special nature of the being. The circle of repeated and perpetu- ated likeness may thus be broken in upon at any point, and the normal law of heredity may be re- garded as occasionally superseded in its working by the operation of another law—that of varia- tion and divergence. Forms unlike the parents are thus known to be frequently produced, and these errant members of the family cirele may be shown to possess no inconsiderable influence on the nature and constitution of the world of life at large. Family likeness, as every one knows, lies at the root at once of the differences between, and relationships of, living beings. The offspring must resemble their parents and their own kind more closely than they resemble other groups, elze our knowledge of the relationship of one form to another must be regarded as possessing no sound basis whatever. But admit that the young may not resemble the parent, and a veri- table apple of discord is at once projected into the apparent harmonies of Nature, and dire con- fusion becomes the order of the day. As will be hereafter shown, however, while the law of variation does undoubtedly operate, and that to a . Very great extent, among living beings, other and 559 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY:—SUPPLEMENT. compensating conto are brought 10 ght by the careful study of development at large; and the old law of like producing like may be seen,: Ae) of the law of likeness may be safely commended, _ to the seeking mind. And in the brief study of, this law and its operations we may firstly glance, 4 aA idées,” says Buffon, and the advice is emi, nently appropriate to those who purpose to enter upon ® popular study of an important,” natural law. One of the simplest instances of development, _ in which the young are not only transformed di- ‘ rectly into the likeness of the parent, but repre _ sent in themselves essential parts of the parent-: body, is illustrated by the case of the little worms) © known to the naturalist as Naidides, and familiar, — to all as inhabitants of our ditches, and as occur-. ring in damp mud and similar situations. If a, Nais be chopped into @ number of small pieces, _ each piece will in time develop « heed and tall; and become a perfect worm, differing in no re~ spect, save in that of size, from the original form. A Nais cut into forty pieces was transformed. — through the operation into as many small worms. — of its own kind. Heche er of Hees oo redity operates in the plainest and most direct. fashion. The young are like the parent-stock, because they consist in reality of detached por-. tions of the parent’s personality. The experi- — ments of naturalists carried. out on animals of ¢ lower organization than these worms, such as, the little fresh-water polyp or hydra, show a pow- 2 er of artificial reproduction which is of literally marvelous extent; and all such animals evince at é once the simplest mode of development and the plainest reasons why the young should exactly re. semble the parent. It might, however, be alleged. that such artificial experimentation was hardly, i to be accepted as illustrative of natural develop. ment; but im answer to such an observation the — naturalist might see heh an Gees method of reproduction occurs spontaneously and naturally in the ais and in certain other — animals of its class, A single Nais has been ob- — served to consist of four connected but distinct portions, the hinder three of which had become, almost completely separated from the original — ty ra £5 eA - MOC eaNae BS? 8bpeecesaeeeeueeswteeoretse

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te ee wel a * *: os es SSR, ar 4 ‘ Os, Rie Meee r ye * : te, ae tc oS ot Cee Sn » ia, x a THE LAW OF LIKENESS, AND ITS WORKING. body —represented by the front segment. A new head, eyes, and appendages, could be traced in course of formation upon the front extremity of each of the new segments ; and, as development terminated, each portion could be seen to gradu- ally detach itself from its neighbors ; the original worm thus resolving itself into four new individ- uals. ‘The most curious feature regarding this method of development consists in the fact that the bodies of these worms and of nearly-related animals grow by new joints being added between the originally-formed segments and the tail. If, therefore, we suppose that one of these new joints: occasionally develops into a head, we can form an idea of the manner in which a process, origi- nally intended to increase the growth of one and a single worm, becomes competent to evolve new individuals, each of which essentially resembles the parent in all particulars. The great Harvey, whose researches on ani- mal ‘development may be regarded as having laid the foundation of modern ideas regarding that process, adopted as his physiological motto the expression, omne animal ex ovo. While it is undoubtedly true that the egg, or ovum, must be regarded as the essential beginning and type of development in animals, we note that, as in Vais, thé ‘production of new beings is not solely de- pendent on the presence of that structure. Just as plants are propagated by slips and cuttings, 80 animals may be developed from shoots or spe- cially detached portions of the parent-body. And it is in the development of the egg, or in the course of what may be regarded as the most regular and defined stages of that process, that the exceptions to the law of likeness are most frequently met with. One of the most remark- beings exactly resembling themselves, not a sin- gle ‘male aphis being represented within the limits of this’ Amazonian population. Seven, eight, nine, or even eleven generations of these wingless females may be produced in this man- ner, and the swarms of plant-lice which infest our vegetation attest the fertility of the race. But in the last brood of these insects, produced toward the close of autumn, winged males appear in addition to the females, which latter also pos- sess wings. ‘The members of this last brood produce eggs of ordinary nature, which lie dor- mant during the winter, but which in the suc ~ ceeding spring will inaugurate the same strange life-history through which their progenitors passed. The case of the plant-lice may for the present be dismissed with the observation that the law of heredity appears to operate in this instance in a somewhat abnormal, or, at any rate, in a very unusual manner. The true simili- tude of the winged parents is not attained until after the lapse of months, and through the inter- ference, as it were, of many generations of dis- similar individuals ; while no less worthy of re- mark is the circumstance that one sex alone is capable of giving origin to new beings, which sooner or later produce in turn the natural dual- ity of sex, forming the rule of both animal and plant creation. And the case of the plant-lice is rendered the more remarkable by the considera- tion that of 58,000 eggs laid by female silk-moths which were separated from the opposite sex, only twenty-nine developed into perfect caterpillars— the female plant-lice possessing a fertility under like circumstances which would be amazing even if taking place under the normal laws and con- ditions of development. Cases of the unusual development of ani- mals, which sérve as parallel instances to the case of the plant-lice, are by no means rare. Thus in the case of the starfishes, sea-urchins, and their neighbors, the egg gives origin to a free-swimming, active body, which develops a stracture of its own, and appears ina fair way to become, as might bo expected, the future starfish. But within the body of this first em- bryo another formation is seen to take place; and sooner or later this secondary development comes to assume priority, and appears as the true and veritable representative of the young starfish —the primitive body or embryo which produced it being either absorbed into its sub- stance, or cast off on development being fully attained and completed. The production of the second starfish, as it were, out of a first-formed

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- -BB4 ‘THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. embryo, is paralleled by the curious case of a certain kind of gall-flies (Cecidomyia), within the larve or caterpillars of which other young or larve are produced. The present case partakes _ thus of the nature of a striking exception to the ordinary laws of development, seeing that a young and immature form possesses the power of producing other beings, immature like itself, no doubt, but capable of ultimate development into true flies. In other words, heredity, or the power of like producing like, which ordinary observation demonstrates to occur usually in the mature and adult being, is here witnessed occur- ring in the young and imperfect form. Certain very typical but more complicated cases of animal development than the preceding instances are witnessed in the reproduction of ’ those curious animal-colonies collectively named “zodphytes.”” Any common zoéphyte, such as we may find cast up on our coasts or growing attached to the fronds of tangle, is found to con- sist of a plant-like organism, which, however, instead of leaves or flowers, bears numerous lit- tle animals of similar kind, connected together so as to form a veritable colony. Each of the little members of this colony possesses a mouth, * gurrounded by arms or tentacles, and a little body-cavity in which food is digested; and it may be noted that each member of the colony contributes to form the store of nourishment on which all the members, including itself, in turn depend for sustenance. Such a veritable animal- tree, growing rooted and fixed to some object, increases by a veritable process of “ budding.” As the animal-buds die and fall off, new buds are thrown out and developed to supply the place of the lost members; the zodphyte, like .the tree, renewing its parts according to the strict law of heredity, and each new member of the colony bearing as close a likeness to the ex- isting members as that borne by the one leaf of a tree to its neighbor-leaves. But, as the tree sooner or later produces flowers which are destined to furnish the seeds from which new trees may spring, so the zodphyte in due time produces animal-buds of a kind differing widely from the ordinary units which enter into its composition. These varying buds, in very many cases, appear in the likeness of bell-shaped or- ganisms, and, when they detach themselves from the zodphyte-tree and swim freely in the sur- rounding water, we recognize in each wandering bud a strange likeness to the familiar Medusa or jelly-fishes, which swarm in the summer seas around our coasts. Living thus apart from the zodphyte-parent, these medusa-buds may pass weeks or months in an independent existence. — Ultimately, however, they develop eggs, and with _ the production of the eggs the clear, elegant, — glassy bodies undergo dissolution, and vanish — away amid the waters, to which, in the delicacy — of their structure, they presented so close a re- 4 semblance. From each egg of the jelly-fish-bud there is gradually developed, not a medusa, but _ a zodphyte. The egg, in fact, develops a single bud of the zodphyte, and this primitive bud, by @ process of continuous budding, at last produces — the connected, tree-like form with which the life. _ history began. Thus the zodphyte is seen to give origin to a jelly-fish, and the jelly-fish in turm re. produces the form of the zoéphyte—one genera- tion of animals, as the older naturalists believed, “ alternating ” in this way with another. - The law of likeness would at first sight seem to be ill-adapted, in virtue of its essential nature, to explain the cause of an animal, such as ‘the — 3 zodphyte, producing an entirely different being, represented in the present instance by the jelly- fish-bud ; and it might appear to be equally inex. , plicable that the progeny of the jelly-fish should — revert to the zoéphyte stock and likeness. The case of those curious oceanic organisms, allied to the “ sea-squirts,” and known as Salpe, presented to the zodlogists of former years phenomena of _ an equally abstruse kind. The salpe are met with floating on the surface of the ocean in two distinct forms, One form exists in the shape of a long, connected “ chain” of individuals, while the other form is represented by single salpe. — It was, however, ascertained that these two va rieties were linked together in a singularly inti- — mate manner by their development. The chain- salpe were found to produce each a single egg, which developed into a single salpa; and the latter, conversely, produced each a long “chain” of individuals — the one variety, in fact, repro- a ducing the other. The apparently mutual devel- — opment of the zodphyte and the jelly-fish, and of the chain and single salpa, is, however, explica- ble, as far as its exact nature goes, on other grounds than those on which the naturalists of © ’ former years accounted for the phenomena, The — jelly-fish is not ad istinct animal from the zodphyte, — but merely one of its modified buds, produced, — like the other parts of the animal-tree, by a pro- cess of budding, and destined for a special end— that of the development of eggs. The latter il. lustrate the law of heredity because they are to be regarded as having been essentially and truly — produced by the zodphyte, into the form of which os Bepesesa terest ereaweaetseecenrmsenme e®eeegsaaeanstenmepvestaeaeeaesoeaenhueus

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‘THE LAW OF LIKENESS, AND ITS WORKING. each egg directly develops. And similarly with the salpz. The chain-salpa may be regarded as corresponding to the zodphyte, each individual of the chain producing an egg, which develops again into a chain-salpa, through the medium of the single and unconnected form. To a still greater extent in insects and some crustaceans—such as barnacles, etc.—may the process of development be complicated and ex- tended. The egg of the butterfly gives origin, not to the aérial winged insect, but to the mun- dane caterpillar, which, after passing an existence devoted solely to the work of nourishing its body, envelops that body in a cocoon and becomes the ehrysalis ; finally appearing from this latter in- vestment as the winged and mature form. In the case of all insects which, like the butterfly, pass through a metamorphosis, as the series cf changes is named, the law of likeness appears to be protracted, and its terms somewhat evaded or extended. The egg, in other words, develops into the mature form only after passing through an extended development, and evolves the simili- tude of the parent-form through certain interme- diate stages of well-marked kind. And so, also, with the well-known barnacles which attach them- selves to the sides of the ships and to floating timber. The young barnacle appears as an ac- tive little creature, possessing limbs adapted for swimming, along with feelers, eyes, and other appendages. Ultimately, the embryo barnacle forms its shell, loses its limbs and eyes, attaches itself by its feelers to some fixed object, develops its flexible stalk, and passes the remainder of its existence in a fixed and rooted condition. The development in this latter case, although in due time producing the likeness of the parent, clearly leads to a state of life of much lower character, and to a structure of humbler grade, compared with the life and organization of the young bar- nacle. The invariable law of heredity in the va- rious examples detailed is thus seen to operate sometimes in clear and definite manner, convert- ing the offspring into the likeness of the parent directly, and with but little change, save that in- volved in the process of growth, into the parent- form. In other cases, the operation of the law is carried out through an extended and often com- plicated process of development ; and the obser- vation of the manifold variations which the work- ing of the law exhibits, adds but anether to the many proofs of the inherent plasticity of Nature, and the singular adaptations which are exhibited to the varying necessities of living beings. Among the higher animals, as we have noted, Wage fe s aie ~ the process of development for the most part evolves the likeness of the parent in a simple and direct manner. True, in all higher animals, as in lower animals, the mere formation of organs and parts in the body of the developing being constitutes a process in which, from dissimilar or from simple materials, the similarity of the ani- mal to its parent and to the intricacy of the adult form are gradually evolved. But we miss in higher animals these well-defined and visible changes of form through which the young being gradually approximates to the parental type and likeness. Direct heredity forms, in fact, the rule in higher life, just as indirect heredity is a com- mon feature of lower organisms. The frogs, toads, and newts, form the most familiar excep- tions to this rule among higher animals ; the young of these forms, as is well known, appearing in the form of “ tadpoles,” and attaining the like- ness. of the adult through a very gradual series of changes and developments. But in no cases can the existence of hereditary influences be more clearly perceived or traced than in cases of the development of higher animals, in which traits of character, physical peculiarities, and even dis- eases, are seen to be unerringly and exactly re- produced through the operation of the law of likeness; while in certain unusual phases of de- velopment the influence of the law can be shown not less clearly than in its common and normal action. The case of the “ancon” or “ otter” sheep serves as an apt illustration, not only of the trans- mission of characters to the offspring, but like- wise of the sudden appearance and development — of characters not accounted for by heredity. In the year 1791 a ewe belonging to a Massachusetts farmer produced a lamb differing materially from its neighbors in that its legs were disproportion- ately short, while its body was disproportionately long. This departure from the ordinary type of the sheep could not be accounted for in any way; the variation being, as far as could be ascertained, perfectly spontaneous. The single short-legged sheep became the progenitor of others, and in due time a race of ancons was produced ; the va- riety, however, falling into neglect, and ultimately disappearing, on account of the introduction of the Merino sheep, and of the attention paid to the development of the latter breed. The law of like- ness in the case of the ancon sheep proved nor- mal in its working after the introduction of the first ancon. The offspring of two ancons was thus invariably a pure otter sheep; the progeny of an ancon and an ordinary sheep being also

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pure either in the direction of the sheep or the ancon ; no blending or mixture of the two races ever after taking place. The law of likeness thus holds good in its ordinary operation, but takes mO account and gives no explanation of the ab- struse and unknown causes arising from the law of variation, and on which the development of the first ancon sheep depended. The heredity and transmission of mere influ- ences, which have been simply impressed upon either parent, and which form no part of the par- ent’s original constitution, presens some of the most marvelous, as well as some of the most in- explicable, features of animal and plant develop- ment. Thus, an Italian naturalist, taking the pollen or fertilizing matter from the stamens of the lemon, fertilized the flowers of the orange. _ Phe result was, that one of the oranges, subse- quently produced, exhibited a portion of its sub- stance which was not only colored like the lemon, but preserved the distinct flavor of the latter fruit. Changes of similar nature have been produced in the fruit of one species of melon by fertilizing the flowers with pollen of a different species, and thus producing, through the operation of the law of likeness, a blending of the character of the two species, Equally certain, as regards their effects on the young forms of animals, are the effects of the transmission of influences or qualities im- pressed on the parents. The birth of a hybrid foal, half quagga, half horse, has been of sufficient influence to transmit to the subsequent and pure progeny of the mother the banded stripes or markings of the quagga ; the influence of the first male parent and offspring extending, as it were, to the unconnected and succeeding progeny. The case of the human subject presents no exceptions to the laws of heredity and of heredi- tary influences, since the common experience of every-day life familiarizes us with the transmis- . Sion of the constitution of body and mind from parent to child; while the careful investigation of the family history of noted artists, sculptors, poets, musicians, and men of science, clearly proves that the qualities for which they are or were distinguished have, in most cases, been transmitted to them as a natural legacy and in- heritance—so fully does science corroborate the popular saying that qualities of body and mind " “run in the blood.” A notable case of the operation of the law of likeness in perpetuating a singular condition of body is afforded by the history of the Lambert family. Edward Lambert was exhibited in 1731, at the age of fourteen, before the Royal Society - THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT. of London, on account of the peculiar condition — of his skin, which was covered with horny scales; : these appendages, in their most typical develop. * ment, according to one account, “looking and rustling like the bristles or quills of a hedgehog shorn off within an inch of the skin.” In 1757 the “porcupine-man,” as Lambert was’ called, again exhibited bimself in London. He had in the interim suffered from small-pox; the disease having had the effect of temporarily destroying the roughened skin, which, however, reappeared during his convalescence. Lambert's children presented the same peculiar skin-development, and the correlation between parent and in this case was most marked, even in the date of the first appearance of the abnormality, since the _ skin developed its scales in each of his children, as in himself, about nine weeks after birth. In Lambert's grandchildren this peculiarity was also well marked; two brothers, grandsons of Lam- bert, being exhibited in Germany on account of be 7 their peculiar body-covering. The history of the Kelleias, a Maltese’ family, is no less instructive than that of Lambert,as tending to prove the distinct and specific opera- tion of the laws of heredity. Gratio Kelleia— — whose history is given by Réaumur in his “ Art de faire éclore les Poulets,” as a kind of lesson in the rearing of poultry—was a Maltese, who possessed six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. His parents possessed the ordinary ie number of digits, and hence the law of variation may be regarded as operating in the case of the human subject, as in the ancon sheep and in es lower ntilanate ell: ta produihaly sudden anii'epeat al taneous deviations from the normal type of a + species or race. Kelleia’s family consisted of four children, the mother exhibiting no abnor- mality of hands or feet. The eldest son, Salvator, exactly resembled his father. George, the second and feet were deformed. André, the third son, ex- hibited no abnormality; and Marie, the daughter, had deformed thumbs. The operation of thelaw . of heredity was not especially marked in this first generation, but its effects were of very striking character in the second. To begin withthe family of André, none of his children exhibited any divergence from the normal type. Of Marie’s — : family, only one, a boy, had six toes ; his fingers being normal. Of George’s four children, one boy possessed hands and feet of ordinary type; one girl had six fingers on each hand, but, curi- ously enough, six toes on t’e right foot only; while the remaining two girls had each six fingers Veresrecre ert wdeeseerwvecrnrwmeeeserseee wae wee an ee a eee Gee lO, le, “el

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\ THE LAW OF LIKENESS, AND ITS WORKING. __ and six toes on each hand and foot. Salvator’s family likewise consisted of four children, three of whom possessed the six fingers and six toes of their father and grandparent; the fourth and youngest possessing the ordinary number of di- gits. The four mothers of the second generation of Kelleias exhibited no abnormality in respect of hands or feet, and hence the hereditary influ- ence of the female parent doubtless made itself felt in the development of a proportion of normal hands and feet—although, as far as the genealogy of the family is traced, the proportion of six- fingered and six-toed members clearly tends to exceed that of those possessing the normal num- ber of fingers and toes. Having thus selected and marshaled some of the chief facts relating to the occurrence of hered- ity or the likeness between parent and offspring, it may be fairly urged that these facts seem to establish the existence of some well-defined law, in virtue of which the bodily structure, the mental characteristics, or even the peculiarities induced by disease, are transmitted from one generation to another. And it also becomes an important study to determine the causes which operate in producing such variations in the law of inheri- tance as we have endeavored to illustrate in the ease of certain groups of lower animals. Can we, in other words, account for the similarities and resemblances, and for the diversities and varia- tions, which living beings present, apparently as a natural sequence of their life, and of the opera- tion of the laws which regulate that existence ? The answer to some such question as the preced- ing closely engaged the attention of physiologists in former years, the result of their considerations being the framing of various theories whereby the facts of heredity could be correlated and ex- plained. It is evident that any explanation of heredity must partake of the nature of a mere speculation, from our sheer inability to penetrate deeper into the investigation of its laws than the observation of phenomena can lead us. But, when rightly employed, generalizations and theo- ries serve as leading-strings to the truth; and, moreover, aid in the most valuable manner in connecting facts which otherwise would present ® most confusing and straggling array. We may, in truth, sketch in the outlines of the subject in theory, and leave these outlines to be deleted or intensified by the subsequent progress of know]. edge. Buffon speculated, about the middle of last century, on the causes of heredity, and viewed the subject from a very comprehensive stand. point. He assumed that the ultimate parts of 557 living beings existed in the form of certain atoms, which he named “organic molecules,” and main- tained that these molecules were received into the body in the shape of food, and became stored up in the various tissues and organs, receiving from each part a corresponding “ impression.” The molecules in each living body were, in fact, regarded by Buffon as plastic masses, which not only received the imprint, in miniature, of the organ in which they had lodged, but were also fitted to reproduce that organ or part. Poten- tially, therefore, each molecule might be said to carry within it some special portion of the body of which, for a time, it had formed part. It was organic and, moreover, indestructible. For, after itself and its neighbors had been freed from cor- poreal trammels by the death of the organism in which it had existed, they were regarded as being capable of entering into new combinations, and of thus building up afresh the forms of living animals or plants similar to, or widely different from, those in which they had previously been contained. Buffon’s theory had special reference to the explanation of cases of the “ spontaneous generation ”’ of animalcules in closed vessels, but it also served to explain the cause of heredity. The molecules, each charged with the form of the organ or part in which it existed, were be-* lieved ultimately to pass, in the case of the ani- mal, to the egg-producing organs, or, im the plant, to the seed; the egg and the seed being thus formed, as it were, from materials contrib- uted by the entire body. The germ was to the body at large, as a microcosm is to the greater “ cosmos.” A second authority who framed an explana- tion of the causes of likeness was Bonnet, who maintained that lost parts were reproduced by germs contained in the nearest portions of the injured body; while, by his theory of emboite- ment, it was held that each germ was in itself the Tepository of countless other germs, these bodies being stored up in a quantity sufficient for the reproductive needs of countless generations, Prof. Owen's. explanation depends upon. the recognition of the fact that certain of the cells of the germ from which the living being springs pass into its body, and there remain to transmit to its successors the material characters which it has acquired ; while, also, the repair of injuries, and the propagation of new beings by budding and like processes,.are explained on the supposi- tion that these germ-cells may grow, increase, and operate within the organism which they are ulti- mately destined to propagate. Lastly, Mr. Dar-

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658 win has come to the solution of heredity with his theory of Pangenesis, which may be said to avail itself of all that is reasonable and probable in the explanations just discussed, and also to in- clude several new and important ideas of which the older theorists took no account. As paving the way for an understanding of this and other explanations of the law of like- ness, we may briefly glance at some of the chief facts with reference to the structure and intimate composition of living beings, with which micro- scopic study has made us acquainted. When the anatomist or physiologist seeks to unravel the complications of human structure, or when, indeed, he scrutinizes the bodies of all animals, save the very lowest, he finds that each organ or tissue of the body is composed of certain minute vesicles or spheres, to which he gives the name of cells. Cells, in fact, are the units of which the bodily whole is composed. Nerves thus resolve themselves, under the microscope, into fibres, and the fibres, in turn, are seen to originate from cells. Muscles similarly originate from muscle- cells, Each tissue, however compact it may ap- pear, is capable of ultimate reduction to cells of characteristic kind. Nor is this all. The cells themselves are in turn composed of smaller par- ticles, and these smaller particles—of infinitesi- mally minute size—may be regarded as consist- ing, in turn, of the essential material of life—the bioplasm or protoplasm—with the name of which every one must be more or less familiar from the part it has played in more than one grave biologi- cal controversy. But the body of every living thing is in no case stable, viewed either in its chemical or in its more purely physical aspects. It is continually, as the inevitable result of living and being, undergoing change and alteration. Chemical action is wasting its substance and dis- sipating its energy with prodigal hand on the one side, and rebuilding and reconstructing its parts on the other. Its material particles are contin- ually being wasted and excreted, while new parti- cles are as incessantly being added to its frame. A never-ending action of waste and repair is main- tained within every living being; and it is not the ’ least striking thought which may ensue from the study of such a subject that, notwithstanding the constant renewal of our frames, we continue to preserve the same recognizable form and feat- ures. The development of new particles in place of the old appears to follow the same course as that whereby the first-formed particles were guided to their place in the developing young. Germs, or “nuclei ”—“ germinal centres,” as the THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. physiologist terms them—are abundantly to be bs descried within most of the tissues. Imbedded among the fibres of muscles, for example, are to - be seen the germs from which new muscular fibres will be developed; and in the brain itself such reproductive bodies are to be observed. Thus — the growth and continuance of our mental exist- ence may be shown to be dependent on the pres» ence of these new particles, which are destined — to renew in a material sense those powers which, — of all others in man’s nature, most nearly ap- proach the immaterial and spiritual. Nor, lastly, is the problem of existence and structural complexity lessened in any degree by 4 the consideration that man’s frame, as well ag that of all other animals, originates from a mi- — nute germ, composed primitively of a microscop- ie speck of living matter, and exhibiting in its earliest stages the essential features of one of the minute cells or units of his tissues. Through the powers with which this living germ-particle has been endowed, it is capable of passing through a defined series of changes, and of de- veloping therefrom a being of more or less com- plicated kind ; while the germ itself must be re- garded as transmitting in some fashion or other, and in a material form, the likenesses which link parent and offspring together in so close and in- timate a union. Applying the reasoning of the theory of pan- genesis to the explanation of heredity and like- ' ness in the light of the physiological evidence thus _ briefly detailed, we are required to bear in mind that, as an established fact, the cells of which a living being is composed increase and multiply to ; fortus tissues and organs, the new cells retaining the form and essential characters of the parent- cells. The cell, in short, is formed, is nourished, grows, and reproduces its like, as does the body of which it forms part. And botanists and 206l- ogists would inform us that lowly plants and ani- mals, each consisting of but a single cell, not only exist, but carry on the functions of life as perfectly, when regarded in relation to the wants of their existence, as do the highest animals or most highly-organized plants. Each cell, pos- sessed thus of vital powers, may further be re- % garded as correlating itself with the life of the body at large, in that it is capable of throwing off minute particles of its substance. These par- ticles, named gemmules, may be supposed to cir- culate freely through the system, and when duly nourished are regarded as being capable of devel- oping into cells resembling those from which they were derived. . These gemmules are further sup- BSBSBESAarFEeRTERRBVPESTSASREFRETSPABAABSBESBESTFSRESCPFREETESSBEVES FSESPBSSeSELY

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s THE LAW OF LIKENESS; AND ITS WORKING. posed to be thrown off from cells at every stage of the development and growth of a living be- ing. More especially do they aggregate together to form «he germ, or the materials from which the germ is formed. Transmitted thus from par- ent to offspring, the latter may be regarded as potentially composed of the gemmules derived from its parent—which, like the organic mole- cules of Buffon, are charged with reproducing in the young form the characters they have acquired from the parent. Regarded from a physiological standpoint, this explanation of the transmission of likeness from parent to offspring appears, it must be owned, to present no difficulties of very formidable kind. Sci- entific evidence regarding the functions and prop- erties of cells is thoroughly in agreement with the theory, as far as the behavior of these bodily units is concerned. The exercise of scientific faith and the weighing of probabilities commence with the assumption of the development of the gemmules from the cells ; and it may be asked if the belief that these gemmules are capable of transmission and aggregation, as held by this theory, is one in- consistent with the tenets and discoveries of bio- logical science at large. If we inquire regarding the feasibility of the mere existence of such mi- nute gemmules, we shall find that physical sci- ence opposes no barrier to the favorable reception of such an idea. The inconceivably minute size of the particles, for example, given off from a grain of musk, which scents a room for years without losing so much of its substance as can be determined by the most acute physical tests, lies beyond the farthest limit even of the scientific im- agination. The particles of vaccine lymph diffused through the body by the lancet of the vaccinator, are much more minute than the smallest cells; yet, judged by the standard of development and by the effects of their multiplication in our frames, their existence must be regarded as anything but problematical. Then, as regards numbers, the eggs of some animals exist in quantities of which, at the best, we can only form a dim and approxi- mate‘idea. A small parasitic worm, the Ascaris, is known to produce 64,000,000 eggs, and some of the orchids will produce as many seeds; while the fertility of some fishes is almost inconceivable. It has been objected, it is true, to this conception of the manner through which the law of likeness operates, that it is difficult to believe in the com- plicated powers and tendencies of the gemmules to select and carry the special qualities of the cells from which they originate; and that, in short, the conception credits the gémmules with powers of too mysterious and occult a kind for ordinary acceptance and belief. But, in answer to this objection, it may be urged that the powers with which the gemmules are credited are not a whit more extraordinary than those possessed by cells, or than those which nerve-cells and nerve- fibres possess, for example, in forming and trans- mitting the undetermined, mysterious force which, under certain conditions, becomes resolved into thought and mind. The mere conditions of hered- ity which the theory explains, constitute, in fact, a greater draft upon scientific credulity than is demanded by any conditions or ideas included in the explanation itself. Moreover, there is hardly a condition, illustrated by the examples of hered- ity and animal development already given, which is insusceptible of explanation through the aid of this theory. The cases of fission illustrated by . the fresh-water worms, and the process of budding exemplified by the zodphyte, become intelligible on the idea that a determination of the gemmules to the parts concerned in these processes takes place, and that by their aggregation they form parts resembling those from which they were de- rived. The curious phases of reproduction in the plant-lice, in which, it will be remembered, fe- male insects were seen to be capable of produc- ing generation after generation of beings re- sembling themselves without the intervention of the opposite sex, are likewise explained by the supposition that gemmules aggregate in quanti- ties in the egg-producing organs of the insects. These gemmules are further regarded as being charged with the power of perpetuating the like- ness of the stock from which they were origi- nally derived, and being transmitted from one generation to another, until, through some more special modification, the periodical production of fertilized eggs in autumn is once more illus- trated. The exact nature of “alternate genera- tions ” of the zodphytes and salpe becomes clear to us if we presume that the gemmules of the pro- ducing form, such as the zodphyte, are multiplied and specially developed to form the jelly-fish-bud, which, finally, as we have seen, is launched abroad charged with the task of reproducing the zodphyte. Each egg of the jelly-fish contains thus the gemmules inherited from, and which convey the likeness and form of, the zodphyte; the special development of new beings seen in this case presenting a contrast to the ordinary in- crease of the single zodphyte by budding. The metamorphoses or changes which animals under- go in passing from the egg to the adult state— well illustrated by the insect-class—can similarly

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560 | THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY—SUPPLEMENT. be explained by the deductions of pangenesis, if we suppose that the gemmules which tend to form the perfect being undergo a progressive develop- ment, and a gradual elaboration in the earlier stages of the process. And we can the more readily apply this reasoning to the explanation of the manner in which the winged butterfly, for example, is evolved from the caterpillar, when we find that within the chrysalis-case or cocoon the body of the larva is literally broken down and resolved into atomic parts, while, by a won- drous process of reconstruction and rearrange- ment of these atoms, the perfect insect is in due time formed. Metamorphosis, in. this. respect, may truly be described as a process of the read- justment and rearrangement of the atoms and gemmules of the insect’s frame, The variations of living beings may, in their turn, be explained by assuming an irregularity to exist in the ar. rangement of the gemmules which unite to form the germ of the varying form, Modified cells will give out modified gemmules, and these last will produce variations in the new being, Any cause producing alterations in the gemmules, either in the direction of over-fertility, or in that of deficiency, will tell with corresponding effect on the germ which they tend to form. While, in cases in which bodily structures, mental qualities, or even diseases, lie dormant in one generation, and become developed in the succeeding race, the gemmules may be regarded as having been transmitted in a latent condition in. the former race, and as having been awakened and redevel- oped in the latter. The transmission of active disease to a particular generation, through an in. intervening and latend stogn; sepecpemtetitey taal preceding generation, is clearly explicable, if we! suppose that the dormant condition acts on the gemmules as rest acts on wearied muscles in 4 ing to restore their pristine strength. Some dis: eases are known to gain strength and virulence after the lapse of a generation, in which have lain dormant and inactive. And the pearance of the diseased condition becomes com © nected by the explanation just given, to use Mr, — Darwin’s words, with “the wonderful fact that | the child may depart from the type of both ite ep enhametiningnalye aaa tors removed by many generations.” . The relativity of our knowledge, howell forms a subject which may well be suggested asa + % closing thought. Whether pangenesis or any a explanation of havedity ho altimetely peeved (hae true or not, the consideration must be ever with, ) us, that we are likely to remain ignorant of ; primary causes which determine and regulate the _ more apparent laws of likeness. We may thus — scorcely hope to reach thet “law within the low ely which operates through the medium of secondary laws and ascertainable conditions. But it should form, at the same time, no mean consolation, — that we have been able te eppronch, theoretienligiiil at least, toward an understanding of one of commonest, but at the same time most abstruse, parts of the puzzle of life.— (Gentleman's Maga- FOREST AND FIELD MYTHS. By W. 8. 8. RALSTON. NCE upon a time—says a tale widely spread in Asia—four travelers spent a night in a forest, and agreed that one of them should keep watch by turns while the others slept. The first _ watcher was a carpenter. By way of passing the time, he took his’ axe, and out of the stem of a tree lying prostrate hard by, fashioned the form of a woman, shapely in figure and comely in face. Then he awoke one of his comrades, and lay down to rest. The second watcher was a tailor. And when he saw the wooden woman lying bare on the ground, he produced his work-basket and bundle of stuffs, and clothed her handsomely from head to foot. Then he slumber, after having aroused called the last of the party, who was a holy man, — strong in prayer and incantation, and went to sleep. And when the fourth watcher sew the EF BSSSS8493E SERPRERFSRERESPSOERPererecrea Pot P ott sohg ts mgEEsage _—

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* with life. Just then his three companions awoke, and gazed with wonder and admiration at the lovely creature who stood before them, Simul- taneously, each of the four travelers claimed her as his wife; the carpenter because he had framed her, the tailor because he had dressed her, the jeweler because he had adorned her, and the holy man because he had given her life. A fierce dispute arose. The authorities of the neighbor- ing village were in vain appealed to; the prob- lem, as to which of the four had most claim to the hand of the disputed bride, was too difficult - for them to solve. At last it was resolved to sub. _ mit the case toa higher court, The claimants, the judges, and the audience, all went out to the cemetery, and there prayed for a decision from on high. While the prayer went up, the woman leaned against a tree. Suddenly the tree opened, and the woman entered it, and was seen no more. As she disappeared, a voice from on high was heard, saying, “To its origin shall every created thing return.” ! _ The mythological core of this story is the idea that human and tree life may be connected. The rest of it has been supplied by teachers who wished to inculcate the doctrine that all things return to their first elements, and aarrators desir- ous of framing one of the numerous stories in- volving a problem or puzzle capable of various solutions. The leading idea has been better pre- served in the following modern Greek folk-tale : There was once a childless wife, who used to _ lament, saying, “If only I had a child, were it but _ a laurel-berry!” And Heaven sent her a golden laurel-berry, but its value was not recognized, and it was thrown away. From it sprang a laurel- tree which gleamed with golden twigs. At it a prince, while following the chase, wondered great- ly, And determining to return to it, he ordered his cook to prepare a dinner for him beneath its shade. He was obeyed. But during the temporary ab- sence of the cook, the tree opened, and forth came & fair maiden, who strewed a handful of salt over the viands, and then returned into the tree, which immediately closed upon her. The prince re- turned and scolded the cook for oversalting the _ dinner. The cook declared his innocence, but in vain, The next day just the same occurred. So on the third day the prince kept watch. The ) For the Indian originals of the story, see Benfey’s “Pantchatantra,” i., 489; for the Persian variant, the _ “Tuti-Nameb or Parrot-Book ;" and for a third, in which various additional incidente are given, the Turkish version of the “Tuti-Nameh.” The story Seems never to have become domesticated in West- _ tu Europe. tree opened, and the maiden came forth. But before she could return into the tree, the prince caught hold of her and carried her off. After a time she escaped from him, ran back to the tree, and called upon it to open. But it remained shut. So she had to return to the prince, And after a while he deserted her. It was not till af- ter long wandering that she found him again, and became his royal consort.! Hahn thinks this story is founded on the Hel- lenic belief in Dryads ; but it belongs to an earlier mythological family than the Hellenic, though the Dryad and the Laurel-maiden are undoubtedly kinswomen. Long before the Dryads and Oreads had received from the sculpturesque Greek mind their perfection of human form and face, trees were credited with woman-like inhabitants capable of doing good and ill, and with powers of their own, apart from those possessed by their super- natural tenants, of banning and blessing. There- fore was it that they were worshiped, and that recourse was had to them for the strengthening of certain rites. Similar ideas and practices still prevail in Asia; survivals of them may yet be fouad in Europe. To this day, for instance, one of the features of a Russian marriage is the thrice- repeated walk of the bride and bridegroom around a partof the church. This ceremony is accounted for by reasons in accordance with Christian ideas, but in reality it seems to be connected with the Indian marriage-ceremony of making the bride and bridegroom walk several times round a tree, a rite of which the following story gives a most remarkable form : A certain thief, having been caught, was im- paled. After dark, a woman, who had gone out to fetch water, happened to pass by his place of torture, and accidentally touched his foot, thare- by giving him great pain. Grieved thereat, she asked if she could make up for her awkwardness by rendering him any service. “You can,” he replied, “It is impossible for me to die com- fortably while I am unmarried. You have an un- married daughter. Marry her to me, and I will pay handsomely for the temporary accommoda- tion.” So she went swiftly home, and brought her daughter, and married her to the dying thief —by making her walk four times round the stake on which he was impaled.* I have told these three tales, chiefly because they are among the few important tree-stories 1 Hahn, No. 91. Cf. Basile’s * Pentamerone,” No 28 ; Schott's “* Walachische Marchen,” No. 94; “ Rus- sian Folk-Tales,”’ p. 15. 2“ Bait4l Pachisi,” No. 18.

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562 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. which I have not found quoted in the exhaustive work on “ Ancient Cults of Forest and Field,” recently published by one of the most painstak ing and judicious of living comparative mytholo- gists, Dr. Wilhelm Mannhardt, of Dantzic. To it may be safely referred all serious students of the . subjects on which it throws a copious and steady light. It is a work which no mythologist’s libra- ry should be without. But as the two volumes comprise more than a thousand pages of stiff read- ing, they are not likely (although provided, ac- cording to Dr. Mannhardt’s most laudable custom, with copious indexes) to become familiar to the getieral reader. It may be worth while, there- fore, to give a summary of their contents, a rapid survey of the great field of thought over which they range. But first a few words about the au- thor. As a child (he tells us in a charming sketch of his intellectual life, prefixed to the second vol- ume of the present work), long confinement to a couch gave him the leisure of reading such works as introduced him to the land of classic fable and “ the fair humanities of old religion.” Later on in healthier boyhood, during long hours spent in the greenwood or by the resounding shore, he became rapt in the study of Milton, Ossian, and the North- ern Sagas and Eddas, Then came the eager perusal of Grimm’s “German Mythology,” and the fate of his life was decided. Becoming in 1851 a student in the University of Berlin, he flung himself into the study of mythology. The best-known result of his labors is his “ Germanic Myths,” a most valuable work, although he now frankly admits that many of its doctrines are erroneous ; for he is not now so enthusiastic a disciple of the “storm-myth” school of Kuhn and Schwartz as he then was. Neither does he altogether agree with the “solar-myth ” school ; having been led, by long and patient study, to the wise conclusion that it is useless to attempt to find any single “ Key to all the Mythologies.” After filling for some time a professorial chair at Berlin, he was compelled, by a return of bad health, to give up Iécturing, and to retire to the secluded post of city librarian at Dantzic. Thence he has followed with unchanging interest the discoveries in As- syrian and Accadian mythology, which have thrown so much light upon the early stages of 1“ Wald- und Feldkulte,” 2vols. Berlin, 1875-"T7 (Gebrider Borntriiger). Ed. Eggers. The volumes are published separately. Vol. i. is entitled “ Der Baum- kultus,” etc., and vol fi., “ Antike Wald- und Feld- kulte, aus pom sermannd 7 ame erliu- tert.”. Hellenic religious thought. At the same his residence on the shores of the Baltic has abled him to study, under exceptionally tageous circumstances, the remains of Lettish and Lithuanian mythology; a fact which some of the most interesting portions of his present work bear witness, as well as the valuable but little-known volume he not Jong published on “The Lettish Sun-Myth.” . els also to Holland, Sweden, and the Baltic y inces of Russia, he has collected much : tion ; and, during the wars Se ee tria, and France, he had frequent opport of talking with pileenens sudeetdedl- taeda many parts of Europe to Dantzic, and of « ing from them many a curious custom, legend, song. Of late years his studies have chiefly directed to all that illustrates ancient faiths. spirits connected with the growth of herbs, 7 and trees. Some time ago he published, a5” specimens of his work, a small book on “The Corn-Wolf,” and another on “ Corn-Demons.? But they were received by “a quite death -%, silence on the part of the native press—merely ik; few kindly words from abroad, and the pathy shown by the Universities of Berlin and Vie encouraged him to proceed. Even the first ume of the present work .was received in the same discouraging manner in Prussia, Let us trust that the reception of the completed we may be one more in keeping with its great x To » Soh Hn aa ennemeneNeNeen From the earliest times of which we know thing, men have been inclined to find blances between human and tree life. In cosmogonies these are closely connected, as the Iranian account of how the first human f¢ grew up as a single tree, the fingers or twigs each one folded over the other’s ears, till the t Ahburamazda with distinct human souls. By th inhabitants of almost every land, trees were posed to be sentient beings, and survivals that belief linger on at the present day. in some places trees are informed when owner dies, in others wood-cutters beg a s¢ tree’s pardon before they fell it. Not only and does a belief prevail that spirits dwell tween the tree-stem and its bark, and that fore the barking as well as the felling of a may dislodge demons capable of doing misc but there was a widely-spread belief that 1The Roggenwolf and Korndimonen. The word sounds better than its English equivalent, is open to misapprehension. f i a

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LO Re EET vo ase FOREST AND FIELD MYTHS. ‘nad souls of their own ; that either a demon lived within the stem, or that human souls, after death, might take up their residence within it. The life of a tree, also, might be linked with that of a man, and the man’s health and fortunes might be affected by an action done to the tree. Thus the tremulousness of a shrew-ash might be connected with a man’s ague; and the disease might be eured by immuring a living shrew-mouse in the tree, which was then supposed to take back its communicated malady; and thus, according to a widely-spread German belief, if an invalid is passed through a split tree, which is then bound up; the man and the tree enter into sympathetic relations with each other. If the tree flourishes, so will the man; if it withers, he will die. But if he dies while the tree lives on, his soul will in- habit it, If the tree, says Rugen tradition, is afterward cut down, and used for ship-building, the dead man’s ghost becomes ‘the haunting pa- tron of the ship. Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that trees should sometimes bleed when wounded. Thus, on one occasion, when a musician cut a piece of wood from a tree, into which a girl had been metamorphosed by her angry mother, blood flowed from the wound. And when he had shaped it into a fiddle-bow, and played with it upon his fiddle before her mother, such a sad wail made itself heard that the moth- er repented of her hasty deed. ‘As trees are of- ten emblems of, and are connected with, a human being’s life and fortunes, they were often intro- duced into birth and marriage feasts. In Sweden many families took their names from their sa- ered and thus associated trees. The three fami- lies of Linnzus (or Linné), Lindelius, and Tili- ander, were all called after the same tree, an an- tient linden or lime which grew at Jonsboda * When the Lindelius family died out, one of the old lime’s chief boughs withered ; ' after’ the death of the daughter of the great Linneus, the second main bough bore leaves no more; and, when the last of the Tiliander family expired, the tree’s active life came to an end, though the dead trunk still exists, and is highly honored.! . Sometimes travelers, when starting on a jour- ney, linked their existence with that of a tree, just as Satu, in the oldest of tales, the Egyptian ' story of the Two Brothers, left his heart behind - him im an acacia. For trees were often sup- posed to exercise a beneficial influence on human 2 Dr. Mannhardt quotes, as his suthorities for this Statement, Hyitén-Cavallius, “ Varend,”’ i, 144 ; * Pas- Sarge, “ Schweden,” p. 217. on 4 he nt ne oes ta life. As Vard-trid, Guardian-trees, they were the homes of a spirit or genius, who led and guarded the men over whom they kept watch. In the Sailors’ Quarter of Copenhagen, according to H. Steffens, each Louse has its protecting elder- tree, which is religiously guarded and watched ; and similar trees have for centuries been con- nected with Lettish homes. In one Livonian par- ish, a certain Pastor Carlbom is said to have hewn down eighty such guardian-trees in a single fort- night of the year 1836, It was a tree of this kind which a poor Tyrolese peasant (a story tells) rev- erenced so much that he refused to sell it. At, length there came a storm which blew it down; and amid its roots the reverent proprietor found a rich treasure. Similar to the Watch-tree was also the Botri, or Abode-tree, a holy tree honored by sacrifices, and tenanted by elves. Sometimes these are tiny beings, whose linen may be seen, in fine weather, hanging out on the branches to dry. Sometimes they are of the ordinary human dimen- sions. One of the latter kind, says a Czech story, was a nymph who appeared by day among men, but always went back to her willow by night. She married a mortal, bare him children, and lived happily with him, till at length he cut down her willow-tree; that moment his wife died. Out of the willow was made a cradle which had the power of instantly lulling to sleep the babe she had left behind her; and, when the babe became a child, it was able to hold converse with its dead mother by means of a pipe, cut from the twigs growing on the stump which once had been that mother’s home. : From the idea that trees had their peculiar spirits seems to have arisen, Dr. Mannhardt thinks, & belief in wood-spirits in general. Each copse, - or wood, or forest, was supposed to have its own denizens, sometimes green of hue and mossy of hide, at other times capable of passing muster as mortal men and women. These female spirits were usually supposed to lead joyous lives, but some of them were liable to be chased and slain by the terrible Wild Huntsman, who, on stormy nights, might be heard tearing at full gallop through the forest. A further generalization may have led to the belief in a genius of tree-life, and of all vegetable life; a genius who was closely connect- ed with growth and fertility, and to whom, there- fore, reverence was to be paid, especially at the times when foliage, and flowers, and fruits, are most impressive to the mind of man. With those seasons are connected many surviving rites of time-honored descent. In many of these the gen- ius of vegetation is symbolized under the form

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G4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY—SUPPLEMENT. of a tree. In the blithe spring-time, when the | King played s prominent part in May plant-world has awakened from its winter sleep, ’ the May-tree, the head of the family to which. our May-pole belongs, is sought for in the forest all over Northern Europe, is carted away in triumph, and, decked with ribbons and other bravery, is solemnly planted on the village green, or beside the peasant’s house. With the summer heats come other feasta, in which trees play leading part, | and, when autumn gilds the fields, the last harvest- wagon is adorned with a tree gayly decked and religiously honored. When a house is finished, a _ similar tree is placed upon the roof; when a wed- ding takes place, another is set up before the door ‘of the newly-married couple. And when the short winter day begins to lengthen, the Christmas-tree plays its cheery part—a tree which, Dr, Mann- hardt observes, has now become an especially German institution, and follows German emigrants over land and sea to the New World, but which, at the beginning of the present century, was known but to, comparatively speaking, few Germans ; just as it remained till about 1830 all but unknown to ‘Hungary; and was unfamiliar later still to England and France, till its observance received an impulse in those countries from the loving hands of Prince Albert and the Duchess Helen of Orleans. Its origin is plainly heathenish, though it has been claimed for the Christian Church, on the ground that the 24th of December is consecrated to Adam and Eve; and a well-known legend relates how Adam brought from paradise a fruit or slip from the Tree of Knowledge, from which eventually sprang the tree from which the cross was made; while another states that a branch from the Tree of Life was planted above Adam’s grave, and be- , came the tree from which Christ plucked the fruits of Redemption. ; But it was not only under the forms of trees or plants that the human mind symbolized the Spirit of Growth or Vegetation, the genius of spring-tide and harvest-tide. A natural tendency toward imagining that supernatural beings are of like forms to our own led to such spirits being represented under human shapes. Of these, many still survive, though many others have perished. Sometimes these figures were single; sometimes they went in pairs. Of the single figures, the best known to ourselves is the Jack-in-the-Green—our chief representative of the numerous beings who, in various lands, when spring-tide comes, are robed in dresses made of herbs and boughs. Of the coupled symbols of this kind, the most famil- iar to English minds, not long ago, were the King and Queen of May. For in Old England the May- though new we are generally accustomed to only of the May-Queen. But in foreign ¢ there still exist all sorts of May-kings and counts, and the Mairitt is still kept up in G _ Many, though among ourselves the good old lish custom of “ going a-Maying” has fallen disrepute, and has been handed over to c sweeps, or, still worse, to negro minstrels." these May-ridings, and with the somewhat midsummer fire-festivals, are connected a of customs. Most remarkable among them is thist of carrying out to the forest a figure made of straw, or some other like material, which is emnly destroyed either by water or byfire. § puppets are thus drowned or burned at seasons of the year. That which is thus d in spring seems, at least in Slavonic lands, to personification of the winter. But in that is burned at midsummer, Dr. Mannhardt is clined to see an image of the summer parching under the blazing sun. The flinging d & puppet into water may be a rite connected rain-producing spells, especially as in times of drought the peasants in many Slavonic lands in the habit of leading about through their lages a youth or girl robed in flowers and rite of destroying a straw-man or other 7 —a rite to which an historical air has been g among us by our burning of Guy Fawkes, a : d ligious meaning among the southern Catholics by their hanging of Judas Iscariot—are the ti which they retain in some lands of an a custom of human sacrifice. To this day, in mote districts, especially in Russia, not only at fruits and flowers destroyed along with the which seems to be an effigy of either the g or the enemy of vegetation, but living ¢ also are put to death. Thus, in olden days, the Parisians were diverted by the screams of a of cats, which were burned to death in the summer St, John’s fire on the Place de G And thus, at the present day, the inhabitants of Luchon, in the Pyrenees, extract great from the wrigglings of the snakes which, on John’s Eve, they throw into a fire which ia lig under the auspices of the clergy.? For the 1 The blackening of faces at May-tide was an enstom, much older than the story of the young sweep. 2 See an account quoted by Dr. Mannhardt nothing seems to escape) from the Atheneum of Jt 24, 1869. ABS ES oA aT Da Me ce yan ae oe TET ae enh 7 BP ae Fre mus me hate + aT y & ELTLDT HED CEG? 1 bbe? ba ttevstcrcccc. ooo PAS ean oa ea ss eneel J * Biers , me we ce as are te sel 2 st Ph peo F SEFERZEER a Se ee preg? Pere tale > t Qe

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have, in many lands, given their sanction to what is really an old heathenish custom, connected with the ancient Baal or Moloch fires of Asia, the Palilia fires of the old Romans, and the Not.feuer "or plague-staying Need-fire of our Teutonic and Keltic ancestors. There seems to be good reason for supposing that into these fires, in very ancient times, human beings also were flung. In some places the straw-man, or other figure represent- ing a human being of ordinary size, was replaced by a gigantic wicker-work form. Such a figure aé this, six yards high, made of osier-twigs, used to be burned every July in the Rue des Ours at Paris, after having been led in procession through the whole city. This custom, which lasted till rope. There is an ancient and widely-spread prejudice against marrying in May, but the wed- dings in question are only fictitious and tempo- rary alliances. In honor of the supposed union of the imaginary male and female rep of the fertilizing powers of Nature, it was, and in many parts of Germany still is, the custom for village lads and lasses to be sportively betrothed to each other at May-time fora year, The cere- mony often takes place beside a bonfire lighted for the purpose. The girls thus temporarily bound are known as their lads’ May-wives or Maifrauen. So in England might similar couples be linked for a year as Valentines, in Germany as Liebchen or Vielliebchen, in France as Philippe and Philip- 1 1748, was popularly supposed to date back to the | pine. burning of a blasphemous soldier on the same spot in 1418. But that was a perversion of his- tory.) Just as figures.of the Guy Fawkes kind are yearly burned in lands which never heard of a Gunpowder Plot, so were similar figures to “the Giant of the Rue des Ours” yearly given to the flames in other places, Thus in Brie (Isle de France), un mannequin d'osier is said to be burned every 23d of June. Very interesting is it to com- _ pare this osier-twig figure with that in which the ~ aneient Britons are said to have burned human beings to death. According to the testimony of _ Cwsar, Strabo, and Diodorus, the Druids used to . construct huge figures of twigs, which they filled _ with human beings, and then consumed with fire. Thieves and murderers were preferred as sacri- fices, but if there were not enough of them forth- coming, innocent persons also had to suffer. Cw- sar’s gigantic figures, conterta viminibus, seem very like the osier-twig giant of the Rue des Ours and his monstrous kin. And there appears to be good reason for supposing that the human sacrifices thus offered up by the Britons were in- _ tended to accompany some such rites as those . with which the inhabitants of a great part of Eu- rope still hail the advent of spring or midsum- mer, or attempt to ward off pestilence from their fields and homes. Within the last few years, at least one Russian peasant has been known to sac- _ fifice a poor relation in the hopes of staying an - epidemic. _ More pleasant than these sacrificial associa- _ tions are the customs springing from the idea of _ sbridal pair as a representative of the genius of fertility. From it arose the custom of “May- weddings,” still prevalent in many parts of Eu- fies Setriend Senguann, om eticlagiot explanation 7” acustom based on an anthropomorphic form of a With all these spring and midsummer festi- vals in honor of the awakening, after his winter sleep; of the Genius of Vegetation, are closely linked those which take place in the autumn, when the harvest is gathered in. Nearly allied to the Tree-spirits, according to primitive ideas, were the Corn-spirits which haunted and protect- ed the green or yellow fields. But by the popular fancy they were often symbolized under the form of wolves or of ‘‘ buck-men,” goat-legged creatures similar to the classic Satyrs. When the wind bows the long grass or waving grain, German peasants still say, “the Grass-wolf” or “the Corn-wolf is abroad ;” in many the last sheaf of rye is left afield as a shelter for the Rog- genwolf or Rye-wolf during the winter’s cold, and in many a summer or autumn festive rite that be- ing is represented by a rustic, who assumes a wolf- like appearance. The Corn-spirit, however, was often symbolized under a human form. “Corn- mothers” pass over German fields when the grain waves; a “Kirnbaby” is, or was, supposed to dwell in the ears of English wheat ; and by Rus- sian eyes Rye-spirits are often seen, tall as the highest corn before haryest-time, short as the cut stems afterward. Many a memory of the Corn- spirit is still preserved in the ceremonies of the harvest-home. All over Enrope honor is shown to him in the reception of the last wain-load from a field, in the last sheaf left out in his behalf amid the deserted stubble. Thus far does Dr. Mannhardt carry his read- ers in his first volume, His chief aim in it is to show how there seem to have arisen, in the minds of primitive men, a series of ideas respect- 1 Valentine has nothing to do, etymologically, with St. Valentine, but comes-from Galantins, a Norman word fora lover. Philippine is a corruption of Viellieb- chea.

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366 +4‘ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTRLY.—SUPPLEMENT. — ing the fertilizing and fruit-bearing powers of Nature. At first, he thinks, arose the belief that each tree or plant possesses spiritual as well as physical life, being tenanted either by semi-divine spirits or by the ghosts of the dead. Then came, he supposes, a gerieralization of this idea, ac- cording to which plants or trees collectively, the grassy meadow and the leafy wood, were credited with peculiar inhabitants. And from this a still higher generalization Jed to a belief in a genius of plant-life or forest-life, or, higher still, a gen- ius of growth or fertility in general. This uni- versal genius of growth was symbolized by a bush or tree, brought in triumph from the forest, gayly decked, and solemnly planted near the homestead or in the village, or by the effigy of a human being, or by a human being dressed in or adorned with foliage and flowers, or by a pair of similar human beings, male and female, who were at times supposed to be a wedded couple. And all these ideas, he clearly shows, prevailed as well in relation to the field as to the forest, espe- cially to the life-supporting cornfield. His sec- ond volume is chiefly devoted to a comparison of old Greek and Roman ideas about the semi-divine inhabitants of the meadow and the grove with those prevalent among the inhabitants of the north of Europe, and of the ceremonies which in the north and south sprang out of them. * ‘Very closely connected with the forest and field spirits of the ancient Teutons, Slavs, and Kelts, were the “ wild folk” of classic lore. The tree-haunting Dryads of Hellenic times, as well as their successors, the Nereids of modern Greece, were clearly cousins of the northern tree-nymphs. And near relations of the Teutonic and Slavonic Buck-men and Corn-demons must have been the Fauns and Satyrs of ancient days. The simi- larity between the legends relating to these spir- its of the north and south is well illustrated by the following Tyrolese folk-tale: A peasant once hired a maid-servant of unusual strength and skill, under whose guidance his cattle prospered greatly. But after a time, as his family sat at dinner one day, they heard a voice from without ery, “Salome, come!” The maid sprang up and disappeared. And with her seemed to go the prosperity of the house. Some years later, a butcher was passing through a neighboring for- est at midnight, when he heard a voice cry, “When thou comest to such and such a place, call out, ‘Salome is dead!’” Coming to the ap- pointed place before daybreak, the butcher did as he had been bid. Then from the mountain recesses arose a cry of wailing and loud lament, and the butcher continued his journey, full vague alarm. Compare with this the well-c story which so greatly puzzled the Emperor berius — who, whatever his failings may been, at least was a genuine lover and in tor of the marvelous, though a little too given to inquire, if Suetonius is to be t what was the name of Hecuba’s mother, name Achilles bore among the maidens, and songs the Sirens used to sing. As a ship Was” sailing from Greece to Italy, a voice from thé shore hailed one of the passengers, -and him call out when he came to a certain sp “The great Pan is dead!” And when he done so, a wailing cry, as of many voices, heard resounding along the shore. Common to all Europe, also, was the idea that it was ¢ ous to work in the middle of the day, for those who then labored were liable to the wrath of some evil spirit; just as the Hellenic herd believed that Pan slept during the noontide-hour, and therefore refrained at time from music which might awake and i that guardian of flocks.’ So far as the spirits and wood-demons of Greece, Italy, and barbaric North were concerned, there is a of evidence to show that similar views of forces of Nature, as manifested in bt plant-growth and hostile storm-rage, produced over Europe almost identical beliefs in supe ural inhabitants of meadow, cornfield, grove, # i stream. Only the Centaurs offer a di Their horsy nature has never been quite torily explained ; whether they be considered 45 kinsmen of the Vedic Gandharvas, or mere sonifications of mountain-cataracts, or as pre-Hellenic inhabitants of Pelion, or—from Mannhardt’s point of view — as spirits of bill and wood, descended either from Ixion, the whirlwind, or from trees, as Cheiron from @ tree, Pholos from anash. Their equine he thinks, must have been thrust upon them by some poet or painter, who too literally « as acte Jest sere, Which osempnneh thatetil or metaphorically bestowed upon them attributes. Russia seems to be the only land at — any distance from Greece, we may observe, oe which the Centaur has become nataralized ‘in folk-lore. But his appearance there, under name of Polkan,* is probably due to the 1The herdsman's special friend ; supposing name not to be connected with ray = all, nor to. derived from a root pu=to cleanse, but to from a root pé = to guard, to pasture, ete., with whi are connected wed, grass, roiuyv, a herdsman; cf. cere, pa-nis, etc. * Pa= half, kon = horee. BE PERRY ETERS PSAMESSESZEOZTBEE MESES SAETHWEEERE SEE ER HESE ete

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- 0? ro - . tine traditions, which exercised fof centuries so great an influence on early Russian thought and art. » Not only did similar ideas produce a similar mythological population in the woods and fields of Northern and Southern Europe, but they led also to very similar festivals and religious rites. Thus a ceremony is familiar to the west of Ger- many and the greater part of France, of bringing home on the last harvest-wain a gayly-decorated tree or bough, which is received with all respect by the master, and planted on or near the house, to remain there till the next harvest brings its suecessor. And some rite of this sort seems to have prevailed all over the north of Europe. So im the autumnal harvest thanksgiving-feast at Athens, it was customary to carry in sacred pro- cession an olive-branch wrapped in wool, called Biresidne, to the temple of Apollo, and there. to leave it; and, in addition to this,a similar bough was solemnly placed beside the house-door of every Athenian who was engaged in agriculture or fruit-culture, there to remain until replaced by a similar successor twelve months later.'_ The ceremonies with which this Athenian counterpart, as Dr. Mannhardt considers it, of the Teutonic Erntemai, was attended to its destination, were singularly like those which still survive in North- ern Europe as part of the rustic harvest-home rite. In Athens, many of them were supposed to refer to the mythical expedition of Theseus to Orete; but it was a common practice in olden time to combine the harvest thanksgiving with religious rites in commemoration of some histori- ¢al or traditional deliverance. Another interest- ing parallel is supplied by the spring-tide rites, celebrated at Rome every March, and certain spring and summer festivals common to the Teu- tons and Slavs. To this day, in Germany and Russia, as has already been stated, it is customa- ry, either in the early spring or at midsummer, to carry out in procession, to a spot where water flows, some type of the winter which has passed away, or the spring which has reappeared, or the ' genius of growth and vegetation, dead or slum- bering, or brisk and full of life, and there solemn- ly to lave in the stream, or to fling into it from a '» bridge, the living Jack-in-the-Green, or the pup- pet made of straw or leafy boughs ; or else (at the midsummer festivals) to pass them through fire, and next day immerse them in running water. At Rome, in olden times, there existed twenty-four ' According to Liddell and Scott, the Eiresiine (¢iros = wool) was a wool-bound wreath, adorned with area FOREST AND FIELD MYTHS. ei eS Eo 20 95% gle T ae Po s Per ke Foe ai oe chapels, called Argei or Argeorum Sacraria, sol- emnly visited by the faithful on the 16th and 17th of March. And under the name of Argei were known the twenty-four puppets, fashioned in hu- man shape out of straw or rushes, and clothed and gayly decked, which, on the 13th of May, were carried in procession to the Pons Sublicius, and from it were flung into the Tiber by the Vestal Virgins. An old tradition declared that, original- ly, human victims were thus flung into the stream as an offering to Saturnus (Kronos) and Dispater (Hades); but that, as time passed by, and man- ners became milder, in place of the men more than sixty years old, who used to be chosen for the purpose, were substituted types in the shape of Scirpei Quirites, puppets made of straw or reeds. The sacrifice was supposed to be of an expiatory nature, likely to keep off misfortune and pesti- lence from the city. Itis possible, says Dr. Mann- hardt, that at an early period the twenty-four Ar- gei or puppets may have been carried in March to the chapels which bore the same name, and left there till the time came for their being carried away to the bridge, and thence flung into the river. At all events, the puppets were no doubt closely connected with the chapels, as they seem to be also with the figures formed of or robed in foli- age, which were, and still are, flung into northern streams. In the same way interesting parallels ‘are supplied by Teutonic and Slavonic spring and summer festivals to the ancient rites commemo- rating the death of Adonis or Tammuz. In those ancient Asiatic customs, Dr. Mannhardt sees an embodiment of a prehistoric myth referring to the temporary death of the spring-tide vegetation. The spring itself, or the plant-life it vivifies, was personified asa comely youth, beloved by the goddess of fertility, and united with her during the spring. In the summer heats he leaves her and disappears, but lives on in the unseen world of the dead. He is represented by a figure which is supposed to be dead, and which is mourned over, and laved with or flung into water, At length comes the spring, and with it returns the godlike youth, who is received with joyous rites, his reunion with his divine spouse being typified by temporary unions entered into by their wor- shipers. So in the north.of Europe, the genius of vegetation is still personified under the shape of a living Laubmann, or a Jack-in-the-Green, or a Pére-Mai, and other figures of the same kind, or under the form of a leafy puppet, or a gayly-decked tree. And this is received in, spring with+a joy- ous greeting. But at midsummer the Russian. peasant, with wailing cries such as attend a corpse,,

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en pet /okrts aoe ae ps se eal o * = $ : ee heat 568 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY-SUPPLEMENT. Joys in coffin s puppet, or flings into « stream @ straw-figure, loudly lamenting it as one dead. But when the spring comes back, the typified genius of vegetation is again hailed with mirth and revel, and to the German “ May-bridegroom ” ig given a “ May-bride,” and lads and lasses in many @ European land enter into a kind of fic- titious union, lasting for a year, as Valentines and Vielliebchen, and the like. Lastly may be considered the fires which from time immemorial have blazed at midsummer. Just as the winter solstice has from the earliest times been honored by what are now our Christ- mas revels, so has the summer solstice been for | countless ages celebrated by its fires. The night which precedes St. John’s or Midsummer-Day is still rendered brilliant in many a European land by flames; through which spring, not only young people, but also men and women carrying their little ones in their arms. For the flames are sup- posed to possess a purifying, evil-averting influ- ence. Inlike manner blazed of old the Phoenician fires in honor of Baal, and the Moloch-fires through which children were passed in order to secure them against evil influences, and the Purim fires into which Haman’s effigy was annually flung, the Babylonish demon of dearth having been con- fused by the Jews with their enemy Haman, just as some similar demon is now represented by a Judas Iscariot or a Guy Fawkes. In like manner do the women of modern Greece spring through a fire on midsummer-eve, crying, “ I leave my sins!” So in the early days of Rome, at the spring-tide festival of Palilia, when it was the custom, among other things, for men to spring through fires lighted hy sparks obtained from flints: all these bonfires being closely connected also with the “need-fires,” employed on special occasions to drive away evil spirits, or avert plagues, fires in which even at the present day birds and beasts are frequently offéred in sacrifice ; just as in olden times human sacrifices were offered up, whether such criminals or unfortunates as Cesar mentions were burned alive in England, or other human be- ings were given to the flames, as Manetho asserts, in Egypt, their bodies being consumed, and their ashes scattered to the winds, during the dog-days, in honor of Typhon. One interesting feature of some of these fire-feasts was the running of the initiated barefoot over glowing coals. This was @ feat annually performed in honor of the corn- goddess Feronia, at Soracte, by the men who called themselves Hirpi or wolves, and who were known as the Hirpi Sorani, In them Dr. Mannhardt is inclined to see a personification of the same idea as that which in the north of Europe has given tise to the belief in corn-wolves; a corp-demon genus. With their barefoot perform. ances he compares the similar feat performed — every other harvest-tide by certain Brahmans the edification of the Badagas in the § ligh- lands of Mysore. A missionary relates how. one of these Brahmans once came to him to ask for — some salve for his feet, which had been burned by ihe Guolig ainscs width te habitus longer than was usual or prudent. There is one feature of ‘Dr. Mannhardt’s work: to which it is well to call special attention:»the: rich contribution, namely, which he bas made to our knowledge of Lithuanian and Lettish mythol- ogy, superstitions, and folk-lore. But very little — is known by us of those strange races, now slowly dying out, who, in the northeast of Europe, in and warlike inhabitants of the grand-duchy of — Lithuania, the land which so long clung to ita hes- thenism ; the land which for so many centuries, before and after its incorporation with Poland, was a corstant source of danger to the growing power — of the Grand-Princes of Moscow, afterward the — Czars of Russia. Very few scholars are acquaint — ed with the language epoken either by the Lettsor — by the Lithuanians, a language to which may al — most be applied the expression so amusingly mis- applied by a popular novelist im reference to 2. Basque, that of its being a kind of “ bastard San- skrit.” And still fewer know anything, except — through the medium of Nesselmann’s German translations, of the rich stores of songs and sto ries which exist in the memories of the Lettish and Lithuanian people. In spite of what Dr. Manu» ous materials which have been recently laid up at Wilna and other Lithuanian cities. But now that he has placed upon record in his present workso — much that is valuable of Lithuanian and Leitish evidence, there no longer exists any exeuse for, — Western ignorance of the subject. All through © the two volumes of the “ Wald- und Feldkulte”™ — are scattered numerous references to the customs, ~ songs, and folk-tales, of the Letts and Lithuanians, _ people whom Dr. Mannhardt, fram his watch-tower at Dantzic, has had peculiar opportunities of ob- — serving. It will be sufficient at present tocall at- tention to a few of the most characteristic among — their number, For this purpose may be selected. the account given in the second volume of @ Lith-. ” Pe OeUR eR ANS 6 Ok OA Oh dee Sh Rhee we PRE L ba Ce SSEe.

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ar, i ioe ieee Tateye ty ae T ae as % ia ? uanian harvest-feast, and of a means of avert- ing pestilence. The first is taken from the origi- tial MS. of the work (edited by Dr. W. Pierson in 1871) on Lithuanian tradition and folk-lore, compiled during the latter half of the seventeenth century, by Matthias Pritorius and other Lutheran clergymen in Prussian Lithuania, and completed, but not published, in 1703. In it Pritorius de- seribes, among other things, the Lithuanian Sam- berios or grain-feast. In the early part of De- eember, he says, when the peasants begin thrash- ing their corn, each husbandman takes nine hand- fuls of every kind of seed-bearing plant which he cultivates—corn, beans, etc.—and divides each handful into three parts. He then collects the twenty-seven small sheaves thus made into one large heap, and, from part of the grain and other seeds thrashed out of it, bakes a small loaf for each member of his household, mixes the rest with the other materials necessary, and therewith brews beer, The first draught of this beer is re- served for himself, his wife, and bis children ; the second for the rest of the household and any stranger who may, though uninvited, accidentally be present. When the beer is ready, the father of the family, at eventide, kneels down before the _ eask, and utters a prayer, commencing with the words, “O fruit-bearing Earth,’ let our rye and barley and all our grain bear fruit.” Then he re- turns, beer-laden, to the room in which his wife and children await him, together with a cock and hen which lie pinioned on the floor. The father kneels down, holding in his hand the beer-can, | and prays for a blessing on his farm and home- stead. ‘Then all lift up their hands and say, “O God, and thou, O Earth, we offer to thee this cock and hen; receive them as freely-offered gifts.” Then he kills the fowls with a wooden ladle, and hands them over to a maid to be plucked. The housewife then sends away the servants and labor- ers, and cooks the fowls in an unused pan. When ready, they are placed on a large corn-measure, which is covered with a table-cloth, along with the above-mentioned little cakes, and round this spe- cies of altar kneel all the family. The father then utters the Creed and the Ten Commandments, _ prays for a blessing on the coming year, and three times empties a cup of beer. Then all the others . drink in turn, and the cakes and fowls are eaten. All that is eatable must be consumed. The bones 1 Zeminele; in Rassian zemlyd. “ Bless us, O Zem- inele, bless our cornfields, bless the woods and past- ures, too,” runs song, printed for the first time by Dr. Mannhardt, who obtained it from a witness who heard it sung by a peasant in 1866. must be gnawed clean by the house-dog before the master's eyes, and afterward reverently buried in the cow-house or stable. During the whole of the day the servants and laborers must be ad- dressed only in kindly terms. It was not till the year 1386 that the Lithu- anians accepted Christianity. Until then hea- thenism prevailed all over the country, except in a few towns, such as Wilna, where there were many members of the Greek Church, inclading the reigning family. But in that year Yagello, } Grand - Duke of Lithuania, married Jadwiga, Queen of Poland, passed from the Greek to the Latin Church, and made Christianity the religion of his country. The heathen Lithuanians were baptized in troops, the sacred groves were felled, the holy fires were extinguished, and an end was put to the snakes and lizards which till then had been revered if not worshiped. Heathenism, however, though scotched, was not killed, and in the gloomy recesses of Lithuanian forests it long lived ‘on, and was represented for centuries by such feasts as that of “the Thrice-nine” which has just been mentioned, and by such other rites as the following Lettish ceremony whereby to keep off pestilence. It is described in the work published at Riga, in 1636, by a Lutheran super- men have told me,” he adds, “that they were warned in dreams, by the spectres which at such times show themselves, to avert a coming plague bys Sobar.” To this day, the Russian’ peasants

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a? es Fie ar a lence. Across the magic circle thus traced, they believe that the hostile spirit, the antagonist of the genius of growth and fertility, will not be able to pass. Should any male person be rash enough to intrude upon the rites which are being solemnized by the women, he is attacked and subjected to nearly as severe treatment as Or- pheus received at the hands of his countrywomen. This strange kind of plough-driving used to be known in many lands, Akin to it was the old English custom of “ ledyng of the ploughe aboute the fire as for gode begynnyng of the yere, that they shulde fare the better all the yere follow- yng.” Later on it was partially preserved in the ceremonies still peculiar to “ Plough-Mon- day.” Still nearer to it came the German cus- tom described by Naogeorgus in his “ Regnum Papisticum,” published in 1553. The lads used to pull tle lasses out of their houses on Ash- Wednesday, and harness them to a plough, which was then driven from street to street, and from market-place to market-place. On the plough gat a man who played and sang. Behind it went another, who, with the gestures of a sower, .gtrewed sand and ashes behind him. Finally, the plough was driven into a brook, and the girls, after being ducked, were invited to a feast and adance. In Leipsic a similar rite was sol- emnized on Shrove-Tuesday, when masked and otherwise disguised youths used to compel every girl they met to help in dragging the plough, by way of a punishment for her not having become married yet. In the year 1499, as a lad was pressing a strong-minded young woman into this compulsory plough-service, she stabbed him, and excused herself before the magistrates on the plea that what she had struck was not a man but “a spectre.” To this day the custom has sur- vived, in a mitigated form, at Hollstadt, near Neustadt, where a plough-festival is held once every seven years, in February, one of the feat- ures of which is a plough drawn by six of the fairest maidens who can be found, all arrayed in the local costume. But it is time to stop. Of course it would be absurd to see, in every myth or fable with which the heathen world has edified or amused itself, a reference to vegetation spirits and their foes. To do this would be merely to repeat, with a slight variation, the error of those explorers who, having gazed too earnestly at the glorious | or sun, can see nothing but solar myths whatever way they turn; or who, blinded by the lightning’s flash and deafened by the thunder’s roar, recog- are sound enough in themselves, and which will _ carry the investigator safely if he does not lay unfair stress upon them, merely bring into discredit _ what is really well worthy of credit. The solar myth, for instance, has done right good service fm while judiciously worked by such ascholarasProf. Max Miiller. Butsome of his followers havemade it ridiculous by such imaginings as that of one of — their number, who suggests that the idea of Poly- — phemus being blinded by a heated stake may have sprung into the mind of some seer, who — saw a fir-tree stand out in bold relief against the setting sun. Such reasoners as these do infinite — barm to the cause which they support. For, dis- _ cussing sound truths, they arrive at conclusions —__ 4 which are “reductions to absurdity.” And so — the ideas which, under Dr. Mannhart’s generally © judicious guidance, have in these two most valu- — able volumes of his borne good fruit, worthy of being carefully gathered and garnered, may, in si the forcing-house of some too eager and not suffi. — * ciently experienced cultivator, bring forth noth — y ing but a kind of mythological Dead Sea apples, = neither savory nor nutritious. To him, however, the greatest credit is due. With admirable pa- tience he has gathered from literary treasure, 7 houses, requiring for their ransacking the aidof 7 very many linguistic keys, an immense mass of rich material, and he has arranged and classified — and—no small merit—indexed it, in a manner deserving of all praise. Never before have been so clearly detailed the ideas with regard to the — etn field and forest, and their connection with the unseen universe, possibly or probably entertained — rin piel ne ee ee with the comparisoz of human — life with that of the plant-world, and the inclina- — tion on the man’s part to attribute a soul like © unto his own to the sturdy oak, or the clinging — ivy, or the daisy’s opening bud; the herb or tree — being sometimes looked upon as the temporary — home or husk of a human soul, torn by a violent — death frog its fleshy mansion, or reduced to plant- ~ life by the action of a curse or spell, at others — being supposed to be the chosen habitation of © some kind of demon or haunting. spirit, whose — good-will was to be propitiated, his ill-will depre- _ cated by prayer and sacrifice—rising from these conceptions about the individual grass, or | or tree, to views with regard to spirits collec. tively haunting plains, and hills, and woods, wheth- — er in the shape of ravenous wolves, or Z satyrs, or tricksy elves, or divinely beauteous — i £20 2 Sa | ee 6. ee Le, lee ee le, Lee ee SlCi Ke lO Lea eee CUelClUClC ll ee,

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Nae tek te » 5 y BS : teresa eds. TER THE ROMANCE OF ACCIDENT. Oreads and other nymphs; and finally reaching -the highest stage of this spiritual development in the imagining of such general spirits of vegetation or growth as have been variously personified by ‘popular fancy under the form of a rustic Jack-in- the-Green or May-Queen, or a princely Adonis, or divine Pan. And, certainly, never have all the ‘thousand changing aspects, under which these ideas have been represented by popular mythol- ogy, been so clearly defined and rendered intel- ligible as in Dr. Mannhardt’s latest contribution to our knowledge of the mystic law of the corn-

field, the meadow, and the forest.— Contemporary Review.

- THE ROMANCE OF ACCIDENT. ANY of our most important inventions and discoveries owe their origin to the most trivial circumstances ; from the simplest causes the most important effects have ensued. The following are a few culled ‘at fandom for the amusement of our readers : The trial of two robbers before the Court of Assizes of the Basses-Pyrénées accidentally led to a most interesting archeological discovery. The accused, Rivas a shoemaker, and Bellier a weaver, by armed attacks on the highways and frequent burglaries, had spread terror around the neighborhood of Sisteron’ The evidence against them was clear; but no traces could be’ obtained of the plunder, until one of the men gave a clew to the mystery. Rivas in his youth had been a sbepherd-boy near that place, and knew the legend of the Trou d’ Argent, a cavern on one of the mountains witli sides su precipitous as to be almost ‘inaccessible, and which no one was ever known to have reached. The commis- sary of police of Sisteron, after extraordinary labor, succeeded in scaling the mountain, and penetrated to the mysterious grotto, where he discovered an enormous quantity of plunder of every description. The way having been once found, the vast cavern was afterward explored by savants ; and their researches brought to light a number of Roman medals of the third century, flint hatchets, ornamented pottery, and the re- - mains of ruminants of enormous size. These in- teresting discoveries, however, obtained no indul- gence for the accused (inadvertent) pioneers of science, who were sentenced to twenty years’ The discovery of gold in Nevada was made by some Mormon immigrants in 1850. Advent- urers crossed the Sierras and set up their sluice- boxes in the cafions; but it was gold they were after, and they never suspected the existence of silver, nor knew it when they saw it. The bluish stuff which was so abundant, and which was silver-ore, interfered with their operations and gave them the greatest annoyance. Two broth- ers named Grosch possessed more intelligence than their fellow-workers, and were the real dis- coverers of the Comstock lode; but one of them died from a pickaxe-wound in the foot, and the other was frozen to death in the mountains. Their secret died with them. When at-last, in. the early part of 1859, the surface croppings of the lode were found, they were worked for the gold they contained, and the silver was thrown out as being worthless. Yet this lode since 1860 has yielded a large proportion of all the silver . produced throughout the world. The .silver- mines of Potosi were discovered through the trivial cireumstance of an Indian accidentally pulling up a shrub, to the roots of which were attached some particles of the precious metal. During the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, the little village of Coserow in the island of Use- dom, on the Prussian border of the Baltic, was’ sacked by the contending armies, the villagers escaping to the hills to save their lives. Among them was a ¢iniple pastor named Schwerdler, and his pretty daughter Mary. When the danger was over, the villagers found themselves without houses, food, or money. One day, we are told, Mary went up the Streckelberg to gather black- berries; but soon, afterward she ran back joy- - ous and breathless to her father, with two shin- ing pieces of amber each of very great size. She told her father that near the shore the wind had blown away the sand from a vein of amber; that she straightway broke off these pieces with a stick; that there was an ample store of the precious substance ; and that she had covered it over to conceal her secret. The amber brought

money, food, clothing, end comfort; but those

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wi" 519 THE POPULAR SOLENOE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. turn some up with his plough. . Accidents have prevented as well as caused the working of mines. At the moment that work- men were about to commence operations on a rich gold-mine -in the Japanese province of Tskungo, a violent storm of thunder and light- ning. burst over them, and the miners were obliged to seek shelter elsewhere. These super- stitious people, imagining that the tutelar god and protector of the spot, unwilling to have the _ bowels of the earth thus rifled, had raised the - gtorm to make them sensible of his displeasure, desisted from all further attempts to work the tom, he went to Laubach, and showed it to an apothecary, who immediately dismissed him with themselves into a society in order to search far- ther into the quicksilver deposits, thus so unex- pectedly discovered, and which were destined to become the richest of their kind in Europe. Curious discoveries by ploughmen, quarry- men, and others, of caves, coins, urns, and other things, would fill volumes. Many val- uable literary relics have been preserved by curi- ous accidents, often turning up just in time to gave them from crumbling to pieces. Not only * mineral but literary treasures have been brought to light when excavating mother earth. For instance, in the foundations of an old hoase, Lather’s “ Table-Talk” was discovered “lying in a deep, obscure hole, wrapped in strong linen cloth, which -was waxed all over with beeswax within and without.” There it had remained hidden ever since its suppression by Pope Gregory XIII. The poems of Propertius,a Roman poet, long lurked unsuspected in the darkness of a wine- cellar, whence they were at length unearthed by struction by rats and mildew. Not only from beneath our feet but from above our heads may - chance reveal the hiding-places of treasure-trove. The sudden falling in of a ceiling, for example, of some chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, revealed the secret depository of the Thurloe state papers,’ Other literary treasures bave turned up im an equally curious manner. Milton’s essay op the bundle of old dispatches ; a monk found the only manuscript of Tacitus accidentally in Westphalia ; the letters of Lady Mary Montagu were brought to light from the recesses of an old trunk; the manuseripts of Dr. Dee from the secret drawer of an old chest; and it is said that one of the can- tos of Dante’s great poem was found, after be ing long mislaid, hidden away beneath a window- sill. It is curious to trace how the origin of some’ the merest accident. We need but remind the’ reader how Lady Austen’s suggestion of “the sofa” as a subject for blank verse was the begin- ning of “The Task,” a poem which grew to for- ; | midable proportions under Cowper’s facile pes. Another example of— “What great events from trivial causes spring,” is furnished by Lockhart’s account of the gradual growth of “The Lay of the Last Minstrel.” The lovely Countess of Dalkeith hears a wild legend of border diablerie, and sportively asks Scott to make it the subject of a ballad. The poet’s ee cidental confinement in the midst of a yeomanry camp gave him leisure to meditate his theme to the sound of a bugle ; suddenly there flashes on him the idea of extending his simple outline so as ta embrace a vivid panorama of that old bor-. der-life of war and tumult, A friend’s sugges tion led to the arrangement and framework of the “Lay” and the conception of the ancient harp- er. Thus step by step grew the poem that first made its author famous. The manuscript of “ Wa- verley” lay hidden away in an old cabinet for Years before the public were aware of its exist- ence. In the words of the Great Unknown: “I had written the greater part of the first volume and sketched other passages, when I mislaid the manuscript; and only found it by the merest ac- cabinet ; and I took the fancy of finishing it.” Charlotte Bronté’s chance discovery of & raanuscript volume of verses in her sister Emily’s handwriting led, from a mutual confession of the — accident, just in time to preserve them from de- furor podticus, to the joint publication of their “Doctrines of Christianity” was discovered in a ~ FF em eT aws famous work has been suggested apparently by . —=—> - : > ete 2. ek ae | eee) eee We. ee ee Uae eed 2 te [Oe sie 8 ef, a | ee ee” ee ee, ee eee’ 8. UW —=_—_ a? o ee ie kk al ee ee cident, as I was rummaging the drawer of an old, ~

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goa Se . Pg ee i ° poems, which, though adding little to their sub- sequent fame, at least gives us another instance of how much of what is called chance has often to do with the carrying out of literary projects. It was the burning of Drury Lane Theatre that Jed to the production of “The Rejected Addresses,” the success of which, says one of the authors, “ de- cided him to embark in that literary career, which the favor of the novel-reading world rendered both pleasant and profitable to him.” Most of us know how that famous fairy tale “ Alice in Wonderland” came to be written. The characters in “Oliver Twist” of Fagin, Sikes, and Nancy, were suggested by some sketches of Cruikshank, who long had a design to show the life of a London thief by a series of drawings. Dickens, while paying Cruikshank a visit, happened to turn over - some sketches in a portfolio. When he came to that one which represents Fagin in the con- demned cell, he studied it for half an hour, and told his friend that he was tempted to change the whole plot of his story—not to carry Oliver through adventures in the country, but to take him up into the thieves’ den in London, show what this life was, and bring Oliver through it without sin or shame. Cruikshank consented to let Dickens write up to as many of the drawings es he thought would suit his purpose. So the story as it now runs resulted im a great measure from that chance inspection of the artist’s port- folio. The remarkable picture of the Jew male- factor in the condemned cell, biting his nails in the torture of remorse, is associated with a happy accident. The artist had been laboring at the subject for several days, and thought the task hopeless; when sitting up in his bed one morn- ing with his hand on his chin and his fingers in his mouth, the whole attitude expressive of despair, he saw his face in the cheval glass. be ’s it!” he exclaimed; “that’s the expres- sion I want.” And he soon finished the picture. The sudden prosperity of. many a famous painter has resulted from some fortunate acci- dent. Anthony Watteau, when a nameless, strug- gling artist, timidly offered a painting to a rich picture-dealer for six francs, and was on the eve of being scornfully rejected, bad not a stranger who happened to be in the shop, come forward, and seeing some talent in the work, spoke en. couragingly to the youth, and offered him one hundred and fifty francs for the picture; nor was this all, for he became Watteau’s patron and in- structor. One day a little shepherd-boy was “seated near the road-side on the way from Ves- pignano to Florence drawing upon a polished ie 17 Et eens THE ROMANCE OF ACOIDENT. . Se ide Sad ee 573 stone, his only pencil another polished stone which: he held in his tiny fingers. A richly. dressed stranger, who had descended from a con- veyance that was following him, chanced to pass, and, looking over the boy’s shoulder, saw that he had just sketched with wonderful truth and cor- rectness a sheep and its twin lambs. Surprised and pleased, he examined the face of the young artist. Certainly it was not its beauty that at- tracted him. The child looked up, but with such a marvelous light in his dark eyes, that the it is some good angel that has led me here.” The stranger was Cimabue, the most celebrated paint er of that day; and his pupil and protégé be- came the famous painter, sculptor, and architect, Giotto, the friend and admiration of Dante and ~ Petrarch. How the fortunes of painters may hinge upon the most trifling circumstances has another ex- ample in that of Ribera or Spagnoletto, which was determined by a very simple ineident. He went to reside with his father-in-law, whose house, it so happened, stood in the vast square, one side of which was occupied by the palace of the Spanish viceroy. It was the custom in Italy, as formerly among the Greeks, that whenever an artist had completed any great work, he should expose it in some street or thoroughfare, for the public to pass judgment on it. In compliance With this usage, Ribera’s father-in-law placed in his balcony the “ Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew ” as soon as _ it was finished. The people flocked in crowds to see it, and testified their admiration by deaf- ening shouts of applause. These acclamations reached the ears of the viceroy, who imagined that a fresh revolt had broken out, and rushed in complete armor to the spot. There he beheld in the painting the cause of so much tumult. The viceroy desired to see the man who had distin- guished himself by so marvelous a production; and his interest in the painter was not lessened on discovering that he was, like himself, a Span- fard. He immediately attached Spagnoletto to his person, gave him an apartment in his palace, and proved a generous patron ever afterward. — Lanfranco, the wealthy and munificent artist, on his way from the church Il Gesi, happened to observe an oil-painting hanging outside a picture- broker’s shop. Lanfranco stopped his carriage, and desired the picture to be brought to him. Wiping the thick dust from the canvas, the de- lighted broker brought it, with many bows and apologies, tothe great master, who on nearer in-

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574 | THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. spection saw that his first glance had been cor- rect. The picture was labeled “ Hagar and her Son Ishmael dying of Thirst,” and the subject was treated in a new and powerful manner. Lan- franco looked for the name of the painter, and de- tecting the word Salvatoriello modestly set in a corner of the picture, he gave instructions to his pupils to buy up every work of Salvatoriello they could find in Naples. To this accident Salvator owed the sudden demand for his pictures, which changed his poverty and depression into compar- ative ease and satisfaction. More than one famous singer might probably never have been heard of but for some discrimi- nating patron chancing to hear a beautiful voice, perhaps exercised in the streets for the pence of the compassionate. Some happy stage-hits have ’ resulted from or originated in accidents. The odd hop skip and jump so effective in the delineation of Dundreary, says an American interviewer of Mr. Sothern, was brought about in this way. In the words of the actor: “It was a mere acci- dent. I have naturally an elastic disposition, and during a rehearsal one cold morning I was hopping at the back of the stage, when Miss Keene sarcas- tically inquired if I was going to introduce that into Dundreary. The actors and actresses stand- ing around laughed; and taking the cue,I re- plied: ‘Yes, Miss Keene; that’s my view of the character.’ Having said this, I was bound to stick to it; and as I progressed with the rehearsal,

I found that the whole company, including seene- shifters and property-men, were roaring with laughter at my infernal nonsense. When I saw that the public accepted the satire, I toned down what was a broad caricature to what can be seen. at the present day by any one who has a quick sense of the absurd.” ‘An excellent landscape of Salvator Ross's ex- ; hibited at the British Institution in 1823 cameto — be painted in a curious way. The painter bap. pened one day to be amusing himself tuning an a old harpsichord ; some one observed thathe was <4 surprised he could take so much trouble with an — instrument that was not worth a crown. “Ibet =< you I make it worth a thousand before I have done with it!” cried Rosa. The bet was taken; — and Salvator painted on the harpsichord a land- « scape that not only sold for a thousand crowns, = but was esteemed a first-rate painting. Chem — istry and pathology are indebted to what has — often seemed the merest chance for many an im- portant discovery. A French paper saysithas — been accidentally discovered that in cases of epi- leptic fits, a black-silk handkerchief thrown over — the afflicted persons will restore them immediate- - ly. Advances in science and art, and sudden — success in professions, have often more todowith # the romance of accident than most people im- agine; but, as we may have occasion again to ~ take up the subject, we quit it for the present.— Chambers’s Journal. ;

WASTE SUBSTANCES. | E, tS cscs few people in this country are aware that that usually wasted substance, a cigar-end, is utilized in Germany to a large extent, and with even beneficent results. ‘ We can imagine many of our readers wonder- ing what can be the object of collecting these small ends; and we will therefore briefly explain that they are sold for the purpose of being made into snuff, and that the proceeds of such sales are devoted to charitable purposes. There is in Ber- lin a society called the “ Verein der Sammler von Cigarren-Abschnitten,” or the Society of Collect- ors of Cigar-Cuttings,” which has been in exist- ence some ten years, and has done much good.

Every Christmas the proceeds of the cigarends collected by this society and its friends are ap- plied to the purchase of clothes for some poor orphan children. In 1876 about thirty children = were clothed by this society, each child being — i provided with a shirt, a pair of good leather — pep btectnthem es Par mens ten ‘ and a pocket-handkerchief. In addition to this, a large, well-decorated Christmas-tree is given for their entertainment, and each child is sent home — with a good supply of fruit and sweetmeats, Al — together more than two hundred poor orphan chil- dren have been clothed by this society simply by — the proceeds of such small things as cigar-ends. . The success of the society at Berlin has in- duced further -enterprise in the same direction, —

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and it is now proposed to erect a building, to be called the “ Deutsches Reichs-Waisenhaus ” (Im-° perial German Orphan-Home), where orphans who are left unprovided for may be properly cared for, clothed, and instructed. The site proposed for this institution is at Lahr, in Baden, where there are a number of snuff-manufactories, and it is therefore well adapted to the scheme, which we ean only hope may be successfully carried out. Although the directors of this Home propose to have a plan prepared for a large building, only a small part of it will at first be erected, to which each year or two more rooms may be added, in accordance with the original plan, in proportion to the success which is found to attend the under- taking. It will be readily understood that a good many difficulties beset this scheme, for it requires the most perfect codperation of the smoking com- munity and some assistance also from the non- smokers ; but much can be done by friends who will undertake the duty of collecting, and some of the most energetic of these are not unfrequent- ly of the fair sex. The system of collection, which is extended over a large part of Germany, is generally under- taken by one or two ladies or gentlemen in each town, who collect now and then from their smok- ing friends the ends which they have been saving up. These collectors either send on the cigar- ends to the central society, or sell them on the spot and transmit the proceeds. This latter plan, when it can be worked, is preferable, as saving expenses in carriage and packing. It is proposed that the number of children which each town shall have the privilege of sending to

the Home shall be regulated according to the amount which they have contributed to the so- ciety. fo insure the success of this institution, it will be absolutely necessary for all to unite and work together; each one must not leave it for his neighbor, thinking that one more or less can make no difference. To show, however, what might be accomplished by a thorough unity in this matter, let us say that there are at least some 10,000,000 smokers in Germany; or, to. be very much within the mark, we will teke only 5,000,000 smokers, who will give themselves the trouble, if such it is, of saving up their cigar. ends ; and, assuming that the cigar-ends of each person during one week are worth only a quarter Pfennig (10 Pfennig = 1 penny English), we have a total revenue for the year of 650,000 marks, or £32,500. Now, these £32,500, which, as a rule, are thrown away and wasted, can be used to pro- vide a home for at least 13,000 poor orphan chil- dren, Further, if the 5,000,000 smokers would contribute but once a year the value only of ¢ single cigar, say in Germany one penny, this would make an additional 500,000 marks, or £25,000, which would clothe another 10,000 children. Now we ask, is it not worth while to be care- fal in syall things, and to save up these usually wasted cigar-ends, when we see what great things might result? We can only conclude by wishing success to this remarkable institution, which has taken for its motto the most appropriate words, “Viele Wenig machen ein Viel;” or, in the words of the old Scottish proverb, “Many a little makes a mickle.”—Chambers’s Journal. — BRIEF NOTES. Comparative IMuminating Power of Gas and Electric Lights.—The Electric Light Company of Paris has erected a large frame building for the purpose of exhibiting the illuminating power of Jabloshkoff’s electric candle, and comparing its results with those of coal-gas. A correspondent of the American Manufacturer, having attended an exhibition, gives in that journal a very good account of his observations. The hall in which the experiments are made is, he says, about 60 feet long, 40 wide, and 25 high. The walls and ceilings are white. From the latter were sus- pended three chandeliers, the central one having three “opalized” glass globes about one and a half foot in diameter—each surrounding an elec-

tric candle. The other two chandeliers Were or- dinary gas lustres, each with 60 bat-wing burners, The latter alone were lighted when the corre- spondent entered the hall, but they amply sufficed to illuminate it. Soon the gas was suddenly turned off, and six electric candles were lighted. Of these three were on the central chandelier, and the others on three pillars in different parts of the room. Although all these lights were sur- rounded by large “opalized” globes, the differ- ence between the two illuminations was remark- able. These six candles gave a light much more intense and “whiter” than the 120 naked gas- jets. The eye experienced but little more fatigue in regarding the globes sifting the electric light,

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peed - aes 576 than it does in looking at the ground-giass globes of single gas-burners, On one of the walls of the illuminated hall was a series of silk specimens of all colors and tints, some of the shades being very delicate. Near by was the notice, “The electric light does not alter colors.” This state- ment seemed to be verified by the experiments. At any rate, the smallest differences of tints were easily distinguished. After a time the gas was relighted, but, notwithstanding its great brilliancy at first, its light now seemed quite feeble, and of a dirty-yellow color, as compared with the electric illumination. The cost of electrical illumination is estimated at from one-balf to one-third the price of gas, for equal quantities of light. Tue anti-malarial action of the eucalyptus-: tree is called in question by Mr. Arthur Nichols, who, writing in Nature, says that in Queensland, in the very heart of a forest extending for many miles in every direction, and composed mainly of eucalyptus of every variety, he has himself suf- fered from malaria, and has known many instances of febrile attacks among shepberds and stock- men in the locality. On inquiry, he learned that these attacks were not confined to any particular year, but that every year some cases might be expected. Again, it has been asserted that, wher- ever the eucalyptus had been introduced on a considerable scale in Algeria, the mosquitoes all disappeared. But this correspondent, writing of Australia, says that he has found these pests so intolerable on high land, where almost the only variety of tree to be found was one variety or an- other of eucalyptus, and sometimes all, that sleep was impossible while camping out at night, life a burden during the day, by reason of these insects. The anti-malarial properties of the Hucalyp- tus globulus are commonly supposed to depend exclusively on the emanations from the leaves ; but Mr. A. W. Bennett thinks it most probable that the chief effect is produced by the action of the roots on the soil. Writing of this subject in Nature, he remarks that the effect of the planting of forests in increasing the rainfall is often er- roneously reputed to be due to the “attractive force of the trees” on the moisture in the air, similar to that exerted by a range of mountains ; but this supposition he regards as untenable. The mode in which trees mainly act is, he says, by their roots arresting the rainfall which would otherwise escape by the natural drainage of the country; the combined forces of capillarity, os- mose, and transpiration, then cause the ascent through the tissues of the tree of the water thus THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.—SUPPLEMENT. arrested, and the larger portion is eventually given off into the air through the stomata of the leaves. In this way a forest-tree will in a very short time give off into the air its own weight of water, which is again deposited as rain or dew. It is quite possible, however, that the effect of the planting of trees may be apparently the reverse of this in swampy regions without natural drain- age. The water then accumulates in the soil; and if the country is bare of timber-trees and-the sun powerful, a rapid decomposition takes place 3 of the herbaceous vegetation, with consequent emanation of malarial vapors. If trees be plant- ed, the effect is to supply natural drainage ; the accumulation of water in the soil, and the conse- quent noxious effluvia, will be diminished and finally prevented, and the atmosphere rendered, if not drier, at least more wholesome, Needed Inventions.—Under the title of “ Room for Invention,” the Polytechnic Review points out a number of mechanical problems, the solution of which would be of inestimable service to the human race. The writer of the article, while ac- knowledging the great benefit conferred by the . invention of reaping and mowing machines, valls j attention to the need which exists of machines for gathering root-crops and fruit. Sundry fibres that ought to be available in textile art, as ramie, are still intractable. The gorgeous aniline colors fade with a summer’s sun. once the very emblems of health and cheerful- ness—now poison us insidiously but surely. “ Our a sewers and drains,” the author goes on to say, “are confounded in name and use, and both of them are poisonous. Our chimneys breathe forth smoke which is unconsumed fuel, and hence waste- ful. Our steam-boilers, with partly-consumed fuel, supply our engines with wet steam, and the en- gines (whose cylinders have to be supplied with oil, through faulty design and workmanship) waste part of the remainder. Our horses, shod with no regard to humanity or for tractive effect, draw wagons or cars which rattle our teeth out, on roads or rails which rattle the vehicle to pieces. The explosives which long ago were constrained to throw hurtful missiles for miles, have but in one instance—blasting—been employed in peaceful work; if we may except the gunpowder pile- driver, the precursor of a long line of explosive motors yet to come. There is yet no ice-machine — which will satisfactorily and economically com- — pete with Nature in supplying a commodity now " — so great a necessity. For these and hundreds of other evils, inventive genius must provide the remedy.” Household fires— —

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3 x ra hr of «SA = alt oh) y % vjee J . ~,"* ; “a ' re ee r a ¢ Leg 7 : yf 7 . ’ AHISTORY OF ENGLAND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY, Author of “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,” “ History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne," etc. 2 vols, 12mo0. Cloth, $5.00. . and Tories. | Commercial Restrictions. Godolphin and Marlborough. | Slave-Trade. Literature under Anne. Scotland: The Highlands, Scotch Religion, Sacheverell and the Cl A ° Oxford, Bolingbroke, Swift. Ireland: Resources, Country Life, Politics, Nonconformists— Quakers. rion, Em on. Parliamentary Corruption and Tyranny. Priest-Hunting, 1711-1730. Irish Penal Code. The Duke of Newcastle. Robert Walpcle. Pitt—Fox. Drunkenness — Gambling. Conquest of Canada. Fleet Marriages. Conquest of Hindostan. Newspapers. Religious Revival. Architecture, Painting, Music, and the Drama | Observance of Sunday. English Laborers. Wesley—-Whitefield. North American Colonies. Religion in Wales, Other writers, and among them notably Lord Stanhope, have published works cover- ing, in great measure, the same period which Mr. Lecky has here chosen to treat of; but the plans, objects, and the classes of facts, on which the present history especially dwells, are so very Cifferent from all preceding histories as to constitute an entirely distinct pro- duction. Next to impartiality, nothing has so distinguished Mr. Lecky as his power of massing facts, and preserving their due relation and subordination. The strict order of chronology he.in some cases departs from, for, as he observes, “ the history of an insti- tution, or a tendency, can only be written by collecting into a single focus facts that are spread over many years, and such matters may be more elearly treated according to the order of subjects than according to the order of time.” This is, indeed, the philosophy of history ; and, instead of giving a dry narrative of events year by year, it has been Mr. Lecky’s object “ to disengage from the great mass of facts those which relate to the per- manent forces of the nation, or which indicate some of the more enduring features of national life, and to present the growth or decline of monarchy, the aristocracy, and the democracy, of the Church and of Dissent, of the agricultural, the manufacturing, and the commercial interests ; the increasing power of Parliament and of the press; the history of political ideas, of art, of manners, and of belief; the changes ‘hat have taken place in the social and economical condition of the people; the influences that have modified na- tional character ; the relations of the mother-country to its dependencies, and the causes that have accelerated or retarded the advancement of the latter.” D. APPLETON & 00., 549 & 561 Broadway, N. ¥.

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, W. ¥. HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS,

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. FROM AUGUSTUS TO CHARLEMAGNE. D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 649 & 551 Broadway, W. ¥. 18 BEGUN IN THE MARCH NUMBER OF D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 a By WILLIAM E. H. LECKY, eer Hie H Pilg sa Avrnor oF “ Ancuix Lovet,” “Ovent we To visit Her?” src., Erc.,

OC ce 9 in Z O — (1) = 2 _ <

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Published in Parts, Imperial Quarto, PRICE, FIFTY CENTS EACH, The most Complete and Elegantly-Illustrated Work on Europe ever published. PICTURESQUE. EUROPE: A DELINEATION BY PEN AND PENCIL OF 7HE MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, LAKES, SHORES, FORESTS, AND OTHER NATURAL FRATURES, AND THE ANCIENT RUINS, CATHEDRALS, CASTLES, PALACES, OLD STRUCTURES, AND OTHER PICTU- RESQUE AND HISTORICAL PLACES GREAT BRITAIN AND THE CONTINENT. Edited by BAYARD TAYLOR. UNIFORM WITH “ PICTURESQUE AMERICA.” Tuts truly superb work, which has been for several years in active preparation, when complete, will comprise a full description and elaborate illustration of the greater part of the European Continent. Each part contains one highly-finished engraving on steel, and a large number of finely-executed woodcuts. The work will probably be completed in sixty, or at most sixty-six parts, and it is printed on heavy, toned, highly-calendered paper, made expressly for it, in the best manner known to art. The engravings of the work are all new, having been executed from sketches by Amerigan and English artists, who have traveled over every part of Europe, in ordet to secure accurate and the latest views of picturesque places. No labor and no cost have ‘been spared to render the illustrations not only entirely trustworthy, but valuable for their artistic excellence. “This superbly-illustrated serial,” says the Boston Commercial Bulletin, “is the best and most complete pictorial representation ever produced, of the most noted scenes, buildings, cities, mountains, and other remarkable points in Europe, and possesses great artistic merit. Its completeness and elegance are so marked that the purchaser feels a satisfaction in its possession as a work in which he has the fullest value received for his investment. To its owner it will prove a never-tiring picture-gallery.” D. APPLETON & 00., 649 & 561 Broadway, Now York.

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68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, Conducted by E. L. and W. J. YOUMANS. articles and abstracts of articles Scrence Montaty is a large octavo of 128 bandsomely ont en mecessary to further convey the ideas of the writer, will be — ° . TsRus: eove Temess per Lanem. of zeae Comte oes Bamber. repaid to all Subscribers in the U States. Binding-Cases for any volume will Be torwanned by tnnll, pocopia omen receipt of fifty cents.

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT, Conducted by E. L. and W. J. YOUMANS. Octavo. Double columns, 96 pages. yess * - Price, 25 cents. an cpeee gn Comers Mewsuse was established as a ent fn expression in this country to two important tendencies of the : first, the greatly ge Bs of sclentifie inquiry and the ment of the sphere of scientific tho t; and, second, th the leading mind all bute their choicest ose work f for periodical pe lication. tendencies have s your 7 pm, in so marked a degree, that the limits of the Lert pf inadequate to secure the object f for which it was started. So many excellent things were constant ly us see oped soase—fe sterling articles by the ablest men in England, Frauce, and Germavy, yt have we often called pa May ae to make our work effectual, and meet the new demande, we 10796 pases et Fa, rice 25 cent by subscription, $3.00 post-paid. enens < rs) every month, price 25 cents, or, by su - ~ @ year, farded by mail, post- -paid, upon receipt of fifty

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. PUBLISHED BI-MONTHLY. old and valued period under new and energetic m has dn the past year ed into rank of literature, sho vabowiog iteelf the equal if not the eu perler, Tike cual meres Jo Guasteten of Old World. Per annum, $5.00; per number, $1.00

The foremost American Monthly. THE NEW YORK MEDICAL JOURNAL. Edited by JAMES B. HUNTER, M. D., New Ane NR ss dab: Cahn tein nee ee The leading features of this Journal are the following : Ortersat Communications rrom Eminent Mempers oF THE PROFESSION. Reports or Inrerestine Cases 1n Private Practice. Norss ee 1x. Merropowitan Hosprrats, 1LLustratine tHe Usr or New Mersops axp New IES. TRANSLATIONS AND Exrracts GIVING THE CREAM OF ALL THE FoREIGN JOURNALS. Reports on Mepicine, Surcery, Ossteraics, Gyn aco.ocy, Laryne@otocy, Parso.oer, etc. Carrican anv ImparTiaL Reviews or att New Mepicat Booxs. Procerpines or Mepicat Soctertes. Coriovs ILtustrarions BY MEANS or Woopcurs. Tae Latest Generat Mepicat INTELLIGENCE. A General Index to the New Yorx Mepicat Jovrnat, from its first issue to June, 1876—including -three volumes—now ready. A new volume of the New Yorx Mepicat Jovrnat begins with the numbers for January and July each year. Subscriptions received for any period. Terms, $4.00 per Annum, postage prepaid by the Publishers Remittances, ivvaRIABLY IN apvaNce, should be made to D. APPLETON & 00., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. ¥.

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ANCIENT LIFE-HISTORY THE EARTH. 4 COMPREHENSIVE OUTLINE OF THE PRINCIPLES AND LEADING FACTS OF PALZONTOLOGICAL SCIENCE. - H. ALLEYNE NICHOLSON, M.D., F.R.S.E., F.L.&, Ere. PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS; AUTHOR OF “MANUAL OF ZOOLOGY,” ETC., ETO. WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. Crors, $2.00. 1 VOL., SMALL 8vo. 408 PAGES BEERS 833 The Quarterly Journal of Science. “A work by a master in the science who understands the cance of every nomenon which he records, and knows how to make it reveal its lessons. As its value there can scarcely exist two opinions. As a text-book of the historical phase of palzontology it will be indispensable to students, whether specially — geology or biology; and without it no man who aspi:es even to an outline knowledge of na’ sci- ence can deem his library complete.” Atheneum. “The Professor of Natural History in the University of St. Andrews has, by bis pre- vious works on zodlogy and paleontology, so fully established his claim to be an exact thinker and a close reasoner, that scarcely any recommendation of ours can add to the interest with which all students in natural history will receive the present volume. It is, as its second title expresses it, a comprehensive outline of the principles and leading facts of palwontological science. Numerous woodcut illustrations very delicately executed, a copious glossary, and an admirable index, add much to the value of this volume.” Nature. “There is no feature in which ordinary ogical manuals in common use are more deficient than in the sketches they give of leading characteristics of the animal and vegetable life of the successive periods which they describe. We regard the present vol- ume, therefore, as dealing with a subject in connection with which the want of a compe- tent text-book has long been a serious evil; and of the general accuracy and reliability of the information supplied by it we can speak in terms of high commendation. Prof. Nich- Se olson has wisely availed himself to the fullest extent of woodcut illustrations in aid of his ce, descriptions of fossil specimens. In his discussion of the characters distinguishing the im fiora and fauna of each of the great geological periods, he is clear in his representations a and happy in his choice of typical forms. His work constitutes a popular exposition and a summary of the facts of palzontology, suitably arranged, and it is well worthy to take its ‘fa place aimong the useful manuals for which we are already. indebted to. its industrious author.” Daily Telegraph. ? “This work ought to be a boon not only to professional students, but to the general reader. The many illustrations, which are carefully and tastefully engraved, vastly en- hance its value.” ae D. APPLETON & 00., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. ¥.

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THE ART JOURNAL FOR 1878. Tae Art Jovenat for 1878 will contain features that will render it invaluable to artists, amateurs, and all persons interested in Paintive, Scutprure, Arost- Tzorure, Decoration, Furnisnine, ORNAMENTATION, Encravine, Erontne, or Destentne in any of its branches. It will be a record of Progress in the Arts; it will afford instruction to amateurs and students; it will furnish designers with innumerable suggestions; it will give examples of what is doing in Europe and Amerioa in the different arts; it will be a choice gallery of engravings, executed in the best manner, on both steel and wood. Among the varied features for 1878 will be the following: DECORATIVE ART.—A series will be commenced immediately, designed to give instruction in the principles of Decorative Art, in the application of natural forms to or- namentation, with designs for China-Painting, Furniture, Carving, Embroidery, Lace, Wall-Decoration, Pottery, and for all industries into which decoration or orrament enters. AMERICAN INTERIORS.—Illustrations of artistic furnishing, as exemplified in American homes, will be given, engraved in the best manner possible. THE HOMES OF AMERICA.—This series, hitherto so popular, will be con- tinued, giving views of residences in different parts of the country, including the stately mansions of the wealthy, the picturesque homes of the people, and views of the residences of noted men. AMERICAN PAINTERS.—The series of articles on American Artists, accom- panied by examples of their works, has been very popular, and will be continued during the present year. The engravings in this series afford some of the best examples of wood- cutting ever given to the public. THE PARIS EXPOSITION FOR 1878.—Illustrations of contributions of an Art-character to the French Exposition of next spring will also appear. Large space will be given to this feature. STHEL ENGRAVINGS.—Each number will contain three Steel Engravings, in many instances a single plate being worth more than the price of the number. The steel engravings will consist of examples of Bririsn, American, and Continental Artists. Views of subjects in Sculpture will be given. OTHER PEATURES.—Papers on contemporary Barrisn Artists, with examples of their works, engraved on wood, will appear; American and Forzien Art-Manoract- ures will be illustrated; new Cavrcnes, Bortpines, and Moncmenrs, will be described and engraved. Nothing will be left undone to sustain the reputation of this publication as the most valuable and beautiful of all the Art Periodicals in the world. Prin paper, and gen- ead pom will continue to be of the best character, such as to win the commendation cs. Tae Arr Jovrnat contains the Steel Plates and Illustrations of the Lonpon Art Joun- - NaL Day exclusive right of which, for Canada and the United States, has been purchased by publishers), with extensive additions relating to American Art and American topics. The prop: give notice that some of the steel plates and illustrations - ing in the Lonpow Art Journat are engraved and cop in this country, and that, oe rege hradhee. -gimammam and sale of the English issue are an infringement upon the copyright of this work. Published monthly. Sold only by Subscription. Price, 75 Cents per Noweer (pay- able to the carrier), or Nine Dollars per Annum, in advance, postage prepaid by Publishers. D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. AcEnctzs: 22 Hawley 8t., Boston ; 922 Chestnut St., Ph 22 Post-Office Avenue, Bal- Albany; 42 ; ; A timore; 54 Ninth St., Pittsburg; 100 State St. State St., Rochester; 61 W: St., Chicago ; $903 North 34 S,St. Louis; 20 Bt Chavis Bt. New Orleans; 250 Sutter St Ban

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OE PL SO a ee MEL MS Ts Le Te Coe yn pees te : , at re ¥S TRE ie ee. we A ow Pale | - Ne 4 ‘ aA "" 2 ~ - err he " “ Po ba 3 y e,* COLLECTION OF FOREIGN AUTHORS = Tue design of the “Collection of Foreign Authors” is to give selections from the better current light literature of France, Germany, and other countries of the European Continent, translated by competent hands. The series is published in uniform 16mo vol- umes, at a low price, and bound in paper covers and in cloth. lL SAMUEL BROHL AND COMPANY. A Novel. From the French of Vicrorn Cuzr- BULIEZ. 1 vol.,16mo. Paper cover, 60 cents; cloth, $1.00. I. GHRARD’S MARRIAGE. A Novel. From the French of Anpré Tusunrer. Paper cover, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. Ill. SPIRITH. A Fantasy. From the French of Tutornuz Gavrien. Paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents, IV. THE TOWER OF PERCEMONT. From the French of Groner Sanp. Paper cover, 560 cents; cloth, 75 cents. V. META HOLDENIS. A Novel. From the French of Victron Cuxnsuirez. Paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents. VI. ROMANCES OF THES BAST. From the French of Comre ve Gopingav. Paper, 60 cents ; cloth, $1.00. D. APPLETON & 00., Publishers, New York. *,* Either of the above volumes sent by mail, post- to addrees in the United States or Canada, upon receipt of the price. ” ened ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY. A TEXT-BOOK POR COLLEGES AND FOR THE GENERAL READER. By JOSEPH LE CONTE, Author of “Religion and Science,” etc., and Professor of Geology and Natural History in the University of California. 1 wol., 8vo, 588 pages. Fully illustrated. Cloth. Price, $4.50. “T have desired to make a work which shall be both interesting and profitable to the intelligent general reader, and at the same time a suitable text-book for the higher classes of our colleges. In the selection of ma- terial and mode of presentation I have been guided by long experience as to what it is possible to make interesting to a class of young men somewhat advanced in general culture and eager for knowledge, but not expecting to become special geologists.”—Eatract from Preface. — | For sale by all booksellers, or will be forwarded, post-paid, upon re- ceipt of the price. D, APPLETON & 00, Publishers, 649 & 551 Broadway, New York.

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THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. Now READ YT. FORMS OF eee By Prof. Joux Trwpau, LL. Dy F.R.S. ivol. Cloth, Price, ¢1 PHYSICS AND POLITICS; «=, Thoughts on tho Appltention of the Principles of “ Matera Seléction © hy ~ se By Watrer Bacguor, Esq., author of “ The English Constitution. FOODS. By Eowanp Surm, M.D., LL.B.,F.R.8. 1vol. Cloth. Price, $1.75. MIND AND BODY. The Theories of their Reistions, By Asx. Bam, LL. D., Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen. 1 vol., 19mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOCY. By Heasenr Srexcen. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. THE NEW CHEMISTRY, By Prof. Josian P. Cooxs, Jr., of Harvard University. 1 vol., 1fmo. Cloth. Price, $2.00. THE eg + ee OF ENERCY. By Prof. Batsoun Srewanr, LL. D., F. B.S. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50. eg my LOCOMOTION ; , Walking, Swimming, and Flying, with a Dissertation on Aéronautics. By Deut Pernmonew, M. D., F.R.S., F. R.S.E., F.R.C.P.E. 1 vol.,12mo. Fully illustrated. Price, $1.75,; RESPONSIBILITY IN MENTAL DISEASE. By Hewny Mavpsier, M.D. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. THE ia SCIENCE OF LAW. By Prof Suxtpo» Amos. 1vol., Imo. Cloth. Price, $75. . ANIMAL MECHANISM, A Treatise on Terrestrial and Aéria! Locomotion. By E.J. Mazzy. With 117 Eustrations, Price, $1.75. THE meToRv OF THE CONFLICT SST wenn RELIGION AND SCIENCE, By Joun Wu. Duaren, M. D., LL. D., author of “ The lectual Development of Europe.” Price, $1.75, THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT, AND DARWINISES. By Prof. Oscanm Scumupr, Strae- burg University. $1.50. THE CHEMISTRY OF LICHT AMD PHOTOGRAPHY. 1: Its Application to Art, Science, and Industry. By Dr. Hemmann Voort. 100 Illustrations. Price, $2.00. PUNGI; their Nature, Influence, and Uses. By M. C.Cooxe, M.A.,LL.D, Edited by Rev. M. J. Bexxexey, M.A., F.L.S. With 109 Illustrations. Price, $1.50. THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE, By Prof. W. D. Warmer, of Yale College. Price, $1.50. , monny AND THE MECHANISM OF EXCHANCE. By W. Sraxuzy Jevons, M. A, F. R. S., Professor of Logic and Political Economy in the Owens Coliege, Manchester. Price, $1.75. ‘THE NATURE OF LIGHT, with « General Account of Physical Optics. By Dr. Evozxs Lowmnt, Professor of Ph ae With 188 Dlustrations and a Plate ef Spectra in Chromo- AMIMAL PARASITES AND MESSMATES. By Monsieur Vax Bexepen, Professor of the University of Louvain, Correspondent of the Institute of France. With 83 Illustrations. Price $1.50, ON FERMENTATIONS. By P. ScuOrzexsencrn, Director at the Chemical Laboratory at the Sor- bonne With 28 Iiustrations. Price, $1.50. THE FIVE SENSES OF MAN. By Jvvivs Benxerem, 0. 6. Professor of Physiology in the Uni- versity of Halle. With 91 Illustrations. Price, $1.75. THE THEORY OF SOUND IN !TS RELATION TO MUSIC. ao Prof. Prerze Busszana, of the Royai Univernty of Rome. With nemerous Woodcuts, 1 vol.,12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50, e ROSPECTUS. R= Beso oma _ pa dg a = phaad ot ag os Sill conboag ans erenag seas to the names jects included in the subjoined a SESE IOI LRT — = Dr EB. Ll bs volumes Dr. Evcens Lomwet (University of Erlangen), The Nature of Prof. J. Rosurtuat, General Mesias ond Boren, ss tomanesa. Prof. Jauus D. heyy oy = Trahan: or, | - pamrpncunscpienterdise puedaanaie: mM fo Coecamen ene bay Pie vee eeeane Fo OB, Sie OS Chatty eet fan 7 ir, MD yk. The Merwe Sptomy and ts w. ‘Lapoun Lenesay, 2. D., F. R.S. E., Mind in the Lower Animals. Str Joun gee Mg ee me Prof. W.T. Tumsertron men bars A., B. ema ae Valleys, Plaine, Rivers, rooduced, and calico ty icotian Gaede Pref, Spare Vener Vracuow (Berlin University), Morbed Phynolo- ve Nt Cu. Be » Tin’ the Theorres re “Sam wy ~ ‘ory of of Life. An Introduction to General te Prof. A. Gianv, General E.nbryology. : D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N.M-

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