m ! r\ ■'if* fa'WEi wmm ■ w*. a '$*> t Sj ,€ ft **#/ \ A LI Copyright by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 1878. INDEX. PAGE Accident, The Romano* of 571 Acland, H. W. Dos- Poison 338 .Esthetic Analysis of an Obelisk 152 Africa. The Future of 408 After-Life, Education of 25T Allen, G. Analysis of an Obelisk 152 " Dissecting a Daisy 329 Ancient Silk-Traders' Route across Central Asia.. 377 Animal Depravity 184 Animals and Plants, Colors of 43 Antiquity of Man 383 Arnold, M. Equality 481 Aspects, Moral and Social, of Health 141 Bastian, H. C. Germ-Theory of Disease 310 " Spontaneous Generation 434 Bears, Tame, in Sweden 179 Bernard, Claude. Definition of Life 511 Books and Critics 159 Bridges, J. H. Aspects of Health 141 Broca on Antiquity of Man 383 Carpenter, W. B. Spiritualism Ill Credulity 308 Carpenter. Wallace, and Spiritualism 463 Carrier-Pigeons 96 li Child, The," Dr. Ploss on 240 Clifford, W. K. Cosmic Emotion 74 " Things-in-Themselves 422 Cobbe. P. P. Little Health of Ladies 355 Color- of Animals and Plants 43 Comparative Illuminating Power of Gas and Elec- tric Lights 575 Conf any greater avail. How should we find, in tW ab- stract units and behind the nameless totals, the man of flesh and blood who lives, loves, and suffers ? 6 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE M0XTELY.—SUPPLE1IEXT. 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 strictly comparable among themselves, inasmuch as they diifer 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 Mcthode," " 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 I asoningsof 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 i 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 corn' :is to the status of a society, or even if we would understand the special condition 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 ancestors, 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. Bousing, 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 sfnd in practice, by the au- thor of " Lcs Ouvricrs Europeens," 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 OBSERVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE. 7 must 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 further 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 minutire of the housekeeping ac- count, we only get a repetition of the dialogue of " The Cobbler and the Financier" ("Le Savetier ct 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 a bit 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 bcrgslags 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. As 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- ances 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 is employed. 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 it. — 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 iEgean, some Etrurian potter, or Phoenician trader ; some artisan of Herculaneum, or laborer in Latium ; some Cantabrian miuer, 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 history was given some time ago in these pages. 1 No less interesting would lie a 1 Rente, des Deux MonrJes, 1S72, 15 Avril, article "La Famille et la Loi de Succession en France." 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. series of monographics 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, cooperation 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 a family during several generations a firm experimental basis for many an interesting study. Thus, to quote one instance, Mr. It. 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 Xew York. 1 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 arc 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 regime of rural communi- ties in Russia, feudal institutions in Hungary, and so on. By analyzing the transjbrmations 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 1 " The Jukes, a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity; also, Further Studies on Criminals." on the plan of the monographics in the " Ouvri- ers Europeens." In this way many curious types — the miner of the placers of California, the Chi- nese peasant, the freedman muleteer of Reunion, 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- nograph}' 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 Europeens " is not a man to be so easily satisfied. As a mining engineer arid 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 com- parative study of one and the same item of the family accounts through different monojrraphies, while it awakens the attention of the observer, brings to light many an instructive fact — as, for OBSERVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE. 9 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 deves-bras of the Bretons and the grandes- journies of the Bearnais 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 Europeens " does but follow the example set by Yauban, " 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 Europeens " has chosen to write 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 caJamo, 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 a 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, beins; accompanied with reports on the different sections of the family budgets, lead to important 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 Europeens " 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 Societe d'Ecoiiomie Politique and the Societe 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 and the United States. IV. Application of this Metiiod to the Study op Oriental Workmen. — 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- ropeens " 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 thoro'i I -ion. 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 ? Is 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 investi- gation is rigorous, and employed with scientific impartiality, then the facts set down will carry 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 Abbe Hue in Mongolia, and by General Ylangaly 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 Paissia, 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 OBSERVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE. 11 have a family of Bashkirs, inhabiting a country that is renowned for the beauty of its vernal sea- son : they are still half nomadic, spurn agricultu- ral labor, and live upon the milk of their young rnares like the Hippomulga? and Galactophagae of antiquity. 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 corvees (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 (ob?-ok) takes the place of husbandry-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- es in the fertile regions. But, on the other hand, weak or improvident families have parted with their traditional well-being ; a pauper class is springing up, and the inferior nobility, especially 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 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 regime 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. All 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, 12 TUB POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. and the alarming progress of usury, which threat- ens the ruin of improvident landlords. Long ago, in France as also iu 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. Iustead 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 tq 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 a 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 cleai'ly 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 coutrast 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 DA VID, JTIXG OF ISRAEL. 13 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 products of the earth, which is permitted to all. The first of these causes is not the exclusive priv- ilege 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 has 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 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 antagonism 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, KIIG OF ISRAEL. 1 By Professor W. ROBEKTSON SMITH, of the University of Aberdeen. "T~^v 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 b. c, 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 " Encyclopaedia 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- 1J: THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 arc 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 harmony by later editors, who gave excerpts from several sources rather than a new and indepen- dent history. These excerpts, however, have 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 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 (with 1 Kings i., ii.), and the parallel narrative of the Chronicler, we have a few hints for the his- tory of David in 1 Kings xi. and in the titles of Psalms (especially Psalms vii. and lx.); and, of course, such psalms as can be made out to be really by David are invaluable additions to the Davidic poems incorporated in the books of Samuel. DA VID, KING OF ISRAEL. 15 Jesse, the father of David, was a substantial citizen of Bethlehem. He claimed descent through Boaz from the ancieut 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, seq. (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. Theu 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 leaped 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. 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. l-*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., which is the principal account of the matter, caunot 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 represent 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 flight. 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- 16 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. tain that the king was aiming at his life. lie 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 ccenobium, 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 ct seq.), 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 affiiir 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. Biis 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 Kcilah, 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 ho was now openly pointed to as divinely designed for the kingship. But, though Saul was hot in pursuit, 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 DA YID, KING OF ISRAEL. 17 to reign for seven years and a half. His noble ele"7 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 i fallen heroes, show how deeply he sympathized with the disasters of his nation ; aud 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. A sham contest was 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- er and 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 preeminence 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 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. Be 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 heed fully 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 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. Tire 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. W 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 Tynans, 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 preeminence 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 con- ducted by Joab with characteristic severity. Af- 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. 13; 1 Kings xi. 15-17; Psalm lx., 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. 3. 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 internal harmony. 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 DAVID, KIXG OF ISRAEL. 10 level of ordinary Oriental monarchy, and express- in"- the ideal of a rule alter 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 element 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 Amuon, 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 Amuon was assassinated in 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 preeminence 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, seq., 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 ra'her 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, seq., 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 20 TEE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTELY.— 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 baud 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 preeminently 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 study 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 2 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 throughout 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 Davidic 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 Buudes." 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 FUTUFtE LIFE. LORD SELBORNE.— I am too well satisfied with Lord Blackford's paper, and with much that is in the other papers of the September number, 1 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 expeiience of the total cessation of his own consciousness ; and the idea of such a cessation is much less nat- ural and 7imch 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 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 21 soul and body. Each man is conscious of using his own body as an instrument, in the same sense in which" he would use any other machine. He passes a 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- crepitude, while vigor, freshness, and youtliful- 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 a man calls " himself." The resemblances in the nature and organiza- 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 func- 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, Tantcene animis sapienlibus irce? But he will see that cacli is far more effective in batter- ing the lines of the enemy than in strengthening his own. Nor will he be greatly concerned if 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 apjxovia of the " Phoedo"), 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 so 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, ami 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- rable connection it would imply ; but the ultimate causation might lie in fcomething far deeper, un- derlying both " the molecular " and " the spiritual fact." But still, to establish such antecedence 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 lie 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 Air. 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 instruc- 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 he 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 A MODERX "SYMPOSIUM." 23 these spiritual energies to be merely results of the bodily organization, as the excitation of an electric, current is the result of the juxtaposition of certain material substances. If a bodiless be- ing is Nothing, there can be no such thing as an intrinsic or independent spiritual life ; and it is difficult for ordinary miuds 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 that " 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 uubroken 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 broad 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 Sheol 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. 1 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. 1 See Job xiv. 21,22. 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 in 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 us (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 has 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 and imperfection, out of which, at the word of 2± TUB 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 laces 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 (rb dv/xoeiSes), as also on its having the power to assume qualities, as a proof that it is not a mere apfxouia. 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 by the 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 laws ruling the physical universe — the other wholly metaphysical, acting by the simple presentation of ideas to the mind (which may, indeed, be so 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. In 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 to 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 A MODFBX "SYMPOSIUM." 25 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 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 Being, 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. K. 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 has 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 and 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 so 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 26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 1 1 null, 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. Sonic gratitude, 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 recognize 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, skillfully 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 properly 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- A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 27 ious ears little else than the passionate outcries of souls that cannot endure to part with hopes 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. I do 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 1 — 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 still 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 sun:: by a concord of seraphic voices." — Dr. Chalmeri 'a 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. 2S THE POPULAR SCIENCE 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 fe- 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, hss 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 forever; 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 often er 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 ambition, 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 east 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 can 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 A MODERX "SYMPOSIUM." 29 Christianity — that Christianity which as a living force iu 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. Karri- son 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." 1 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 appears 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. 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 flin" - 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, mediasval 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 runs 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. 30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. some stinging words about some good work for j 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 a clog. 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 utlers 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 thus 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 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 31 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 fully 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 in man. The very order of Nature presses us to the conviction that this insatiable longing which somehow she generates and sustains in man, ami 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 fiDds 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 w r orlds ? 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 °>9 Oil 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. Of course, I consider Catholicity to be exclu- sively the one authoritative exhibition of revealed Christianity. I will set forth, therefore, the doc- trine to which I would call attention, in that par- ticular form in which Catholic teachers enounce it ; though I am very far indeed from intending to deny that there are multitudes of non-Catholic 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 us for the end for which we were created." Now, 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 it into practice? The number of believers, who 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 thought 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 action, or instrument of excitement, yet the affec- A MODEEX "SYMPOSIUM." 33 tions require a something more vast and more en- during than anything created. He alone is suffi- cient for the heart who made it. 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 open 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 which soothes and satisfies those to whom it is vouchsafed. We know that even our nearest 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 is the sole or even the chief inducement which 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 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 tcholc ; 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 comes into contact with these. Yet I admit that 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- suaded himself cf its truth : I mean the accusa- 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 preeminently concentrated their energy on the 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. love and service of God, and preeminently 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. 3. 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. 1 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. C. The conscious self or ego is entirely hetero- geneous to the material world: entirely hetero- 1 I shall not, of course, be understood to deny the existence and frequency of miracles. geneous, therefore, to that palpable body of ours which is dissolved at the period of death. I do not think any one will account it extrav- 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 1 .— [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, ami 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. A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 35 that what I urged has been in substance dis- placed; 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;" aud he seems not to believe in thtm 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 far as he knows, "the thoughts, affections, and volitions, are not likely to perish with his body." Prof. Huxley seems to 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- ment we have hitherto got is Mr. Hutton's " per- sonal wish," and Lord Blachford's ila scriptum est. I confess myself unable to continue an argu- ment which runs into believing " because I am told." It is for this reason that the lazzarone at Naples believes in the blood of St. Januarius. My original proposftions 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 methods applicable to morals — not as a physical fact, by methods applicable to physics. 3. The moral facts of human life, the laws of man's mental, moral, and affective nature, must 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 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 hu- 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 it ; and physicists and biologists may very easily forget its importance. It can be learned only by long and refined observations in moral and men- tal philosophy as a whole, and in the history of civilization as a whole. V. 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- ture state a selfish or personal hope. 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 36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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, " dear brethren, who would care to be saved in a 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 about the hopes which men cherish for the fu- 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 wdiich we are ob- serving, or have observed and are now recalling, and with a view to get at some result which baf- fles our direct observation and hinders some 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 affectjpns : 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 of giving and taking, the sense of protecting and A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 37 being protected, a pity for suffering, an adniira- ' tion of power, goodness, and truth. All of these imply an external world to act in, human 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 a 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 a 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. Kr. 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. 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 38 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 contuse 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 be a " 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 " to me. 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 I s:.id 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 ice our bodies ? I say no, nor are we our minds. Have we no sense of personality, of unity ? I am 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 consensus or the condition, but the man) thinks, wills, and feels, just as much as that visible or- 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., etc., 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 in the interstellar spaces with which Lord Blachford threatens us. But, as the poet says : " Trasumanar significar per verba Non si porria " — "If" 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 which 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 A MODERN "SYMPOSIUM." 39 Blachford for a happy illustration of my own meaning. But it is he who expects the tune to exist without the fiddle. / say, you can't have a tunc without a fiddle, nor a fiddle without wood. III. I luve 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 satisfy 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, I never have supposed that biological science was in the positio:: 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 thing that I should try to run down ; and I must protest, with all sincerity, that I 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 1 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 aud moral facts, I have explained 40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 again I 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 maybe 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 ? '" I will 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 1 ' is simply 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 — 77 Kev yrjBrio'ai Xlpla/j-os, TIpid^oi6 re ira7oes. 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- cal or physiological basis," I could not have ex- pected to read such an illustration of my mean- ing by Prof. Huxley. Perhaps he will permit me to inform him (since that is the style which he affects) that there once was — and, indeed, we may say still is — 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 four-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 ; aud 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 iu 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 A M0DER2T "SYMPOSIUM." 41 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 human organism. Prof. Huxley says that, and I call it materialism. Nor do I 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,' 1 '' 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 it is. 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 part in 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 would 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. 42 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTELY.— 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 ashamed 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, nuxley 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- ume of " Lay Sermons ; " and he has waged many a war with theologians and philosophers on reli- gious and philosophic problems. "What, if I may ask him, are his own religion and his own philoso- phy ? He says that he knows no scientific men who " neglect all philosophical and religious syn- 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 cut 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 debris of the just I made perfect. But Dr. Ward, as might be ex- I pected, falls back on the beatific ecstasy as con- I ceived by the mystics of the thirteenth century. I No word here about moral activity and the social | converse, as in the Elysian fields, imagined by I philosophers of less orthodox severity. THE COLORS OF ANIMALS AXD PLANTS. 43 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 iu 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 ecstasy 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 is an inane and unworthv crown of a human life. 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 cure 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. THE COLOES OF AXIMALS AXD PLAXTS. 1 By ALFRED EUSSEL WALLACE. II.— THE COLORS OF PLANTS. THE 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 chlorophyl 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 li conscious" or '-perceptive," which seem free from any ambiguity, and make not the least difference to my argument. brown ; and many of these differ greatly from each other in their chemical composition. These inquiries are at present in their infancy, but, as the original term chlorophyl seems scarcelv ap- plicable under the present aspect of the subject, it would perhaps be better to introduce the anal- ogous word chromophyl 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 4A THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. in the several genera and species of the vegetable kiugdom. In animals, as we have seen, color is greatly influenced by the need of protection from, or of warning to, tbeir 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. Hi., p. 50V). 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 been 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 (((tractive 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 cither 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. The dry fruits, or capsules 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 uo 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 COLORS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 45 another. 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 is 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 /ittle 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 can 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 Midler, 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- 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 fertilization. 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. 1 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 observed 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 Umbelliferas, 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, 1S70. 4G THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. The beauty of Alpine flowers 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 debris 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. Ilerman Muller'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. 1 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 J), glacialis ; the saxifrages of the high Alps with bunches of flow- ers a foot long, as in Saxifraga longifolia and S. cotyledon, or forming spreading masses of flow- ers, as in S. opposififolia ; 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 Malva sylveslris, Epilobium angnsiifolium, 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. 32, 110. tundifolia, Epilobium parviforum, Polygonum avi- culare, and Geranium pusillum, which have small or inconspicuous flowers, and are so constructed that if insects should not visit them they are able to fertilize themselves. 1 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 oceanic 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, 2 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. 8 See Nature, September 6, 1870. TEE COLORS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 47 west coast of South America, and with a tolera- bly luxuriant vegetation in the damp mountain- zone, yet produce hardly a single conspicuously- colored flower ; and this is correlated with, and no 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- iness 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 in a 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 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 48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. exquisitely beautiful such pictures are, and how completely they give us all requisite information as to form, surface-texture, solidity, and distance, and even to some extent as to color — for almost 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 lead the eye to become specially adapted for their perception; and it is quite possible that at first these were the only kinds of light- vibrations which could be perceived at all. When the need for differentiation of color arose, rays of greater 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 masses, 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. 1 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 Mensehheit" (Stutt- gart, 1S71). 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 "violet-colored." 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 liii r h perception and appreciation of color is a comparative- ly recent acquisition, and may be correlated with a gen- eral advance inmental activity. TEE ORIGIN' OF TEE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 49 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 earth 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 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- millcm's Magazine. THE OKIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATION-FIGUBES. By RICHARD A. PROCTOR. ALTHOUGH the strange figures which as- tronomers still 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 to me : "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 say about subjects which belong especially to as- tronomy as a 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— "... W"hen all the deep unsounded skies Shuddered with silent stars, she elomb, And as with optic glasses her keen eyes Pierced through the mystic dome, Regions of lucid matter taking forma, 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." 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 cither 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 have 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 ; TEE ORIGIN OF TEE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 51 and the speculations of the ingenious Dupuis found favor with the great mathematician La- place. 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 found 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 it deserves. 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 an end. This great space surrounds the southern pole of the heavens, and this shows that the first observers of the stars were not acquainted with the 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 far south as the equator, we should certainly have had pictured in the old star-charts some constella- tions in that region of the heaveus 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 its 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 withfn 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, 52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. with a motion so slow that 25,868 years are re- quired for a single circuit of the swaying axis around an imaginary line upright to the plane in which the earth travels. And we know that in consequence of this reeling motion the points of the heavens opposite the earth's poles necessarily change. So that the southern pole, now eccen- trically placed amid the region where there were no constellations in old times, was once differently sit- uated. But the circumstance which seems to have been overlooked is this, that, by calculating back- 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- stellations would have ridden high above the southern horizon, other star-groups showing be- low them which were not included among the 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 map?, but much nearer to the last named. Near this spot, then, we may be sure, lay the southern pole of the star-sphere, when the old constella- tions, or at least the southern ones, were in- vented ; and, if there had been astronomers in the southern hemisphere, Eta Hydri would cer- tainly have been their pole-star. Now, it is a matter of no difficulty whatever to determine the epoch when the southern pole of the heavens was thus placed. 1 Between 2,100 and 2,200 years before the Christian era, the southern constellations had the position de- scribed, the invisible southern pole lying at the 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, quam proxime, 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 r the pole (or at what is technically called its sub-polar meridional pas- sage), the pole-star of the period shone directly down that long passage, and I doubt not could 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. TEE ORIGIN OF TEE COFSIELLATION-FIGURES. 53 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 in 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 iu 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 consideration does not apply very forcibly to them. But those south of the equator I are only seen above the southern horizon, and i change little in position during their progress from east to west of the south point. The lower i 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- li 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 t 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 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 iu 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 5± THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 sufi'ered 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 aud 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 5 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- worthy that all the remaining constellations form- ing the southern limit of the old star-domes or charts, were watery ones — the Southern Fish, over which Aquarius is pouring a quite unnec- essary stream of water, the great sea-monster, toward which in turn flow the streams of the River Eridanus. The equator, too, was then occupied along a great part of its length by the great sca-serpeut Hydra, which reared its head above the equator, very probably indicated then by a water horizon, for nearly all the signs below it were then 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 pictured 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, " I 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 On one point we can entertain very little sun. 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 rainbow from making its appearance before the flood. The wildest theory that can be invented 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 THE ORIGIN OF TEE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 55 failed to show the prismatic colors. The theory I 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 in a 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 tire." 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. " Iliad " 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, so inferior as actually to borrow Homer's words 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 Danae 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, then, respecting the two famous " shields " is, that 56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 whrch 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 hei - e 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 opportunit} - , 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," says 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 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 TEE ORIGIN OF TEE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 57 a sculptured representation of these imagined figures in the heavens may have been interpreted and expanded into the narrative of a contest between 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 iu 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 Bootes 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 wofully. 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 three stars (the horses of the plough) into a long 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- tinently 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 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- 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 figures in their as- tronomical temples or observatories, and made 5S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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. AVilford 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 Paraseia (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 twelve 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 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 the 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 to a new- moon festival regulating the month, and seven THE ORIGIN OF TEE CONSTELLATION- FIGURES. 59 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 aided 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 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 b. 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 tin 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 60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 b. 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 preeessional 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 Abbe Moigno do, by saying that astronomy began 2170 b. c, the first astronomers being instructed su- pernatural!)-, 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, 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 89° 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 Bam, 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) THE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. 61 the winter sign was the "Water-Bearer, the bright Foroalhant 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 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 nam- 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 XHIh. 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 synibolisms. 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. THE TEIAL OF JESUS CHEIST. Br ALEXANDER TAYLOR INNES. II.— THE ROMAN TRIAL. rpHE 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 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- 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 cequi. 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 for a 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. When the sceptre departed from Judah, it passed into the strong, smiting hands of Rome ; and al- ready all the nations had begun to exchange their terror of its warlike might for that admiration of its administrative wisdom which has grown upon the world ever since. And already, too, that admiration was mingled with confidence and trust. Those Eastern races felt, what we two thousand years after can historically trace, that the better part of the unequnled authority of the Roman law was due to the stern, hard virtues of the early race and early republic. Its influence was dimly recognized then, and it is clearly trace- able now, as having sprung from the instinct of righteousness which guided prater and proconsul in every subject land, long before Ulpian or Gaius had written out that instinct into immortal law. Pontius Pilate was at this time the represent- 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. lie was the procurator Ccesaris ; the procurator, deputy, or attorney, of Tiberius in that province. And he was no procurator fisca- lis, 1 with functions equivalent to those of quaes- tor. Pilate's was no such subordinate or finan- cial office. He was a procurator cum potentate ; a governor with civil, criminal, and military ju- risdiction ; subordinated no doubt in rank to the adjacent Governor of Syria, but directly respon- sible to his great master at Rome. And what 1 The name is still used in Scotland, having had there \ originally its old sense of " the deputy of a provincial judge appointed by him to look after money-matters." I 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 gi*eat magistrates and representatives. He be- came perpetual Princeps Senatus, or leader of the legislative house. He became perpetual Pon- tifex Maximus, or chief of the national religion. He became perpetual tribune, or guardian of the people, with his person thereby made sacred and inviolable. He became perpetual consul, or su- preme magistrate over the whole Roman world, with the control of its revenues, the disposal of its armies, and the execution of its laws. And, lastly, he became perpetual imperator, or military chief, to whom every legionary throughout the world took the sacramentum, and whose sword swept the globe from Indus and Gibraltar to the pole. And yet in all he was a simple citizen — a mere magistrate of the republic. Only, in this one man was now visibly accumulated and con- centrated all that for centuries had broadened and expanded under the magnificent abstraction of Rome. Tiberius, therefore, the first inheritor of this constitution of Caesar 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 Csesarea or Vitellius at Antioch, but Tiberius at Rome. He was the Proconsul or TEE TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST. 63 Governor of Judea under the still-existing re- public, 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 praetorium 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 praetorium," 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 Floras, 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 praeto- 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 passovcr dawn ; within, the clash of Roman steel, the al- tars of the Roman gods, and perhaps the sculpt- ured frown of the distant demigod 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- 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 — ovk e|e. I860, from the prolegomena to which my information is derived. COSMIC EMOTIOX. T7 " They shall surely set thee in the way of divine righteousness ; yea, hy him who gave into our soul the Tetrad, well-spring of Nature everlasting. " Set to thy work with a will, beseeching the gods 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 ti.ee. " 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 Keason on high, who best holdeth the reins of guidance. " Then, when thou lea vest 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 a previous verse commands; of all men be most shamefast before thyself: ■navTiav Si fxaXiar' aio-xvveo cavrov.) 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."— Sir "Walter Raleigh. 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 Hie 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 ail things uniform " (i? eirri)," 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 tilings as it is permitted, namely, as the Demiurgic law has assigned to every one its place." So the commentator, reading into the verses TS 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, Erkenniniss-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, tiian to remember that tins 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 trood cheer, for they are of gods' kindred whom holy Nature leadeth onward, and in due order showeth them all things." The expression (UpaTrpcHptpovrra .... St'iKwcnv tKairra) belongs to the right of initiation into the mysteries. Nature is 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, East 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 as- signed to it. 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 suc- 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 (avaywybs Xvais), the freedom that is progress, is scientific inquiry, or a scientific view of things (SiaXeKTiKi) rwv uvtccv iiroiTTeia), 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. When 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. Across the 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 COSMIC EMOTION. 79 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- cred 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 problem — 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: " " I am 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 lire 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, 1 Swinburne, " Songs before Sunrise." 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 80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 : " I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprin- kled systems, " And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems. " 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 upon 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 limitless 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 knowledge 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 as are practically identical with ourselves. 1 Whitman, "Leaves of Grass." 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, that does not teach the worker in it to distrust his own powers of prevision as to what he is COSMIC EMOTION. 81 likely to find ; to expect the unexpected ; to be suspicious of his own accuracy if everything conies 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 is not to be regulated by a pedantic schoolmaster who thought he could whip the centuries with his birch-broom. The cosmos, theD, 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 fight 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 knowledge, 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, 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 cfoeth 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, iu 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. I shall 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. 82 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 contemplate, 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 general 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 far ruder changes. Thus, we have rocks com- posed entirely of organic remains, and climate changed by the presence or absence of forests. 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 he 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 fare 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 all men fainting from false peace or strife, O thou, the resurrection and redemption, The godhead and the manhood and the life." 1 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. J " Songs before Sunrise." COSMIC EMOTION. 83 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. When I 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. Ab, 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 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, tyvxapiov el ^acrra^ov venpov — " 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 not a man stir up, but avoid and flee. The way in which freedom, or action from within, has 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 is 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. 84 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 highly 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 Caesar 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 1 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. Eevolt ! and still revolt ! revolt ! What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagos of the sea; 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 ofheroes 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. METEORITES AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 85 good in the ethical sense. And yet, when we act 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, Eeiucarnate with fresh generations ; The great god Man, which is God." 1 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 administrative machinery, the education of the 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 construct 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. — The Nineteenth Century. METEOKITES AND THE OKIGIN OF LIFE. By WALTER FLIGHT, D. Sc, F. G. S. THE 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 I was first fit for life, and there was no living thing i 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 ft-w weeks or years it teems with vegetable and animal life, which life originated by 1 Swinburne, " Songs before Sunrise." 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 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. many cases a large quantity of debris must be shot forth in all directions, much of which may 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 seemVwild and visionary ; all I main- tain is that it is not unscientific." J 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." 2 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'apres lequel le premier Developpement de notre Globe peut s'ctre effectue," he writes : " It may be amat- ter of curiosity, but it is in no wise necessary, that we should know on what principle or from J " Address of Sir "William Thomson, Knt., LL. D., F. K. S., President." London : Taylor & Francis, 1871, p. 27. 2 " Theorie des Volcans. Par le Comte A. de Bylandt Palstercamp." Paris : Levrault, 1838, tome i., p. 95. what organized body the great mass of our globe has been derived ; it is sufficient for us that we exist in a 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 was 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 aerolite thrown off from the sun himself 1 with a force proportional to its mass, 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 eclat port ait enlui le germe de ioute 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 aero- 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- puliire wissenschaftliche Vortrage," published last year. 2 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 " PopulSre wissenschaftliche Vortrage. Von H. Helmholtz." Braunschweig : Vieweg und Sohn, 1876. Drittes Heft, p. 135. METEORITES AND TEE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 87 der about through space may not also strew germs 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, 1 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 Zollner, "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." 2 Helmholtz did not long delay in replying to Zbllner'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. 3 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. Zoll- ner." Leipzig: Engelmann, 1ST2, p. 2i. 3 "Handbuch der theoretischen Physik. Von W. 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 aerolite 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- Tbomson und P. G. Tait." TTebersetzung von H. Helm- holtz und G. "Wertheim. Braunschweig: Vieweg unci Sohn, 1874. Erster Band. Zweiter Theil. 11. 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. jection arising from the circumstance that these bodies must hare 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 have 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 themselves 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 a 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 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 the 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 in a 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, departe- 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 Thenard 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, METEORITES AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 89 leaving a slight carbonaceous residue. The crys- tals really appear to be of two kinds : acicular crystals, 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 cold nitric acid, sulphuric acid, or turpentine. An analysis of 0.0078 gramme of the crystals soluble in alcohol gave the following numbers : Sulphurous acid . 0.010 Sulphur . . 005 Carbonic acid . . 008 Carbon . . 0.0022 Water 0.003 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 konleinite, which occurs in crystalline plates and grains in the lignite of Uznach, in Switzerland. Kraus makes the fus- ing-point of konleinite 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 IZth, 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 a time. 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 so small a quantity of so precious a substance, so 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 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 mm by 20 mm and 35 mm , 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 " celestial ite." 1857. April 15th, 10.11 p. M .— 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. Wohler 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 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 lith, 8 p. m. — 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 Cloiiz found to possess the follow- ing composition : Carbon 63.45 Hydrogen 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 C 2tl H 2n +2 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 aerolite 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 durk color to the presence of a hydrocarbon. 1869. January 1st, 12.20 p.m. — A most re- markable fall of stones took place on New-Year's- day, 1869, at Hessle, near Upsala; it is the first aerolitic shower recorded to have taken place in Sweden. The meteorites have so loose a structure that they break in pieces when thrown with the 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 Arno soon crumbled to a blackish-brown powder resembling coffee-grounds. Similar powder was found on the ice at Hafslavi- 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 in a closed tube it gave a small brown distillate. A quantity dried at 110° C. possessed the following composition : Carbon 51.6 Hydrogen 3 8 Oxygen (calculated) 15.7 Silicic acid ...... 16.7 Iron protoxide 8.4 Magnesia 1.5 Lime 0.8 Soda and lithia 1.5 100.0 The combustible ingredient appears to have the composition ?iC 9 H 4 2 . 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. Nordenskjold, 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 THE LIVINGSTONIA MISSION. 91 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 Wohler to be as follows : Iron 80. 64 Nickel 1.19 Cobalt 0.49 Phosphorus 0.15 Sulphur 2.82 Carbon 3.67 Oxygen 1109 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 ; 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'ceil sur les principales Publications de Physiologie vegetale," refers to the researches of Uloth, 1 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 £rassica Napus, had germinated ; and at the close of four months other crucifers and some grasses and leguminou^s 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. — Popular Science Review. THE LIYIXGSTOXIA MISSION. NARRATIVES OF DRS. J. THORNTON MACKLIN AND JAMES STEWART. THE 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- 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 i Flora, 1ST5, No. 17. 92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 Uala, 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 fast in the thicket more than once. In most 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 smell is much gratified. Our water-courses and streams 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, aud 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, 21f 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 THE LIYINGSTONIA MISSION. 93 on them. 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 not take part in these proceedings. Smoking is a common 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- ication — 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 ; "till, 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 : "Livingstoxia, 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 cases of fever, mostly slight, and lasting only a day or two. With this exception, and that of a 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 80° or 50°. " 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 he had been part of the two days and Dights 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 94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. Lala 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 shall 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 also arrived at Livingstonia the other day. He comes straight from the Punjaub, where he has been 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 dis- 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 experimenlum cruris 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 have tsetse 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 a 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 BRIEF NOTES. 95 and myself have Lad pretty severe attacks, and some of the others have also suffered. The last man to succumb, Shadrach Ngunana, from Love- dale, who has never yet had the slightest touch of fever, has suffered slightly. Average health among the others. A greater variety and better food would prevent that anremia that seems to be the worst part of the fever. " James Stewart." — Geographical Magazine. BEIEF NOTES. 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 during 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 Oraefi 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. From a brief digest of the statistics of trichinosis published in the Medical and Surgical Reporter it appears that 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 two deaths. 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 39 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 7 - 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 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. TJic 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 water in 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 may 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 a 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 kill a large dog ; while a very small quantity would be enough to kill a child. The 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 Sci- 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. SCIEXCE A2TD MAK 97 SCIENCE AND MAN. 1 Br JOHN TYNDALL, F. E. S., LL. D. AMAGN'ET attracts iron, but, when we ana- lyze the effect, we learn that the metal is not 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 Birming-ham and Midland Institute, October 1, 1S77; with additions. 43 know that such positions cannot be filled with- out grave disturbance of that sequestered peace which, to them, is a first condition of intellectual fife. 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 9S TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT principles on the otherwise bewildering flux of phenomena. He has been described by the Ger- man Licktenberg as " das rastlose Ursachenthicr " — 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 it as a tree. 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 distribu- 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 modern discoveries and results are strewed through scien- tific literature. Confining ourselves to recent times, Dr. Ingleby has pointed out 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 1S37, some deep-lying truth. The writings of Faraday furnish frequent illustrations of his profound belief in the unity of Nature. "I 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 an 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, SCIENCE AND MAN 99 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 rhythmic. At a 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 once more intrenches itself. But the inter- nal force again accumulates, the new barrier is in its turn broken, and the mind finds itself surround- ed by a still 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 V72 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- tuations are incessantly going on. 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 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 produces 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 100 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. heat is absorbed. Mix the liberated hydrogen f 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. If the outside heat be nil, the in- 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 of zinc falls short of what is produced when there is no decomposition. How far short ? The ques- tion admits of a perfectly exact answer. When the oxygen and hydrogen recombine, the heat ab- sorbed in the decomposition is accurately restored, and it is exactly equal in amount to that missing 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 con- 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 in 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 junction was chilled. Now, the current in the SCIESCE AXD MAX. 101 thernic-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 electricity, and then retransmuted into its first form at a distance from its origin. As water in a state 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 precise amount of heat missing in the battery. All the effects obtained from the machine are 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 a perfectly definite amount of heat has bsen pro- duced. I now contract my biceps muscle with- out causing it to perform external work. The combustion is quickened and the heat is increased, this additional lieat 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. 1 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, as the combustion of zinc may be caused to pro- duce them. By turning the handle of a magneto- 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 102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 all." 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- pendently; 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 would place the same man on the summit of a 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 so 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 SCIENCE AND MAN. 103 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 saw 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 Hclmholtz, 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. Tour 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 ; 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 by a 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 aerial 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 smokmg, 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, 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, aud 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 peasaut 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 escape 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 knowl- edge of our time ? If so, it cannot be called un- scientific. On the same ground the anthropo- morphic notion of a creative architect, endowed with manlike powers of indefinite magnitude, is to be regarded with consideration. It marks a phase of theoretic activity, which the human race could not escape, and our present objection to such a notion rests on its incongruity with our 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 iu 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- SCIEXCE AND MAX. 105 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 cau 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 witli 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. [In 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 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 a-soeiated 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, 106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 "). 1 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? "It 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 crudest 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 to do so. 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- i Translated by Dr. William Smith. Trubner, 1873. 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 or- 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 what I 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 preexistent 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 tne 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- tinct 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 to 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 kindness could conciliate, and no discipline tame. SCIENCE AXD MAW. 107 They 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 he 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 wheu 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 aeons 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 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, again, 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 moral 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 10S TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. important factor, unlocking moral energies which might otherwise remain imprisoned and unused. If the preacher thoroughly fdel 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- 1 cling ? " 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 hansman'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," is 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 brawler and a 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 SCIENCE AND MAN. 100 known some of the most pronounced among them not 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 tbeologic 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 has grown incongruous with intelligence. " Su- perstition," says Fichte, " has unquestionably 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 is a 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 "iEnone :" " And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in 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 were the forces whose interaction and adjust- ment throughout an immeasurable past wove the 110 TUB POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. triplex web of man's physical, intellectual, and moral nature, and such are the forces that will be effectual to the end. 1 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 Emer- 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, Aud 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 approba- 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. 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 transac- 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, he 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. PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISE. Ill PSYCHOLOGICAL CUKIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. By WILLIAM B. CARPENTER, C. B., M. D., LL.D., F. R. S. SINCE 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 foil;! 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 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 unpre- 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 seances, 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, 112 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MOXTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. taking his cue from Mr. Crookes, who six rears 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 Ac regards as important and well-established truth. Reserving for another place 2 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 different times by Mr. Wallace, I cannot blind myself to the fact that the very scientific distinc- 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 imscientific, 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 ' It would seem that there is no longer the same disposition to admit scientific inquirers to spiritual- istic seances. Things do not go so well when skeptics are present ; and while Mr. Home rebukes those who would exclude nil lmt the "faithful," his 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." a The forthcoming new edition of my lectures. most gladly lay aside for the scientific investiga- tions which afford me the purest and most undis- turbed enjoyment, seems to me the same as is 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 dis- 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 to my 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 it. I know too well that I thus expose myself to severe obloquy, which (as I am not peculiarly thick-skinned) will be very unpleasant to myself, and unfm-tunately 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 expose 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. Eeason 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 confirmation of the doctrine of " Epidemic Delusion " than this reproduction of the "Dancing Mania" under a different form of " possession ? " PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 113 Philosophy of Spirittalism. As Moses & Son kept a poet, so does spiritual- Una 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 " ^materialization " 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. 1 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 " Is there any such. Thing as Matter? ' (Oxon.). Human Xature for May, 1877. 44 By M. A. 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, whose 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 : J " 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 he soar into the feigner realm of spiritual light and principles [which is, of course, inhabited by his critic]. . . . Eightly or wrongly, Mr. Home has been most cruelly attacked by a 1 Human Natwe, a Monthly Journal of Zoistic Sci- ence, May, 1877. m TEE POPULAR SCIENCE EOETELY.-SUPPLEEEET. 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 mediums — 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 on the 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 without 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 opin- 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 to use." 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 witchcraft, I cannot contemplate with- out a shudder the doom that might befall me if I 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" instruc- tions given to the counsel for a defendant — " No case; abuse the plaintiff's attorney" — I pass on to the next " curiosity." What Mr. Wallace means by " Demonstra- 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- on 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 (ho 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. PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 115 It has also appeared to me that the " spirit- ualistic " production of flowers, fruits, etc., in dark seances, 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, as to justify the assumption that it is a 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 coufederate, 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. 351.) 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 Ke- port "), as " demonstrably not brought by the me- dium." I shall now, with Mr. Home's assistance, in- quire into the probative value of each of these cases: " Let me give " (says Mr. Home, op. cit., page 352) " 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 seance 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, '/would like to have lilies-of-the-val- ley.' " 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 ? ' > " ' If 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 seance, 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 w-hich 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. "I 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? Don't you think it is perfectly astonishing ? ' A 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 (saya Mr. Home) they are in sea- son. The " spirits" never bring flowers which are out of season, or the products of distant lands. 116 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. Wallace's own case no precautions whatever had ' been employed I The " medium " was Miss Nichol (of whom more anon) ; and the production took place for the first time, and " at a very early stage of her development." The only shred of evidence adduced by Mr. Wallace that the flow- ers and ferns had not been brought in by the " medium," consists in what he asserts to have been their condition — they being "all absolutely fresh as if just gathered from a conservatory, and covered with a fine, cold dew." This, in Mr. Wallace's opinion, made it " absolutely impos- sible " for Miss Nichol to have kept them con- cealed about her person " in a very warm, gas- lighted room four hours before the flowers ap- peared." Now, granting Mr. Wallace's testimony on this point — as to which I fully admit that he was specially qualified to judge — to have been entirely unbiased, there is one little defect in his narrative, which, as will presently appear, serious- ly impairs its probative value. The whole thing happened more than ten years ago ; and such a triviality as Miss Nichol's having left the room during these four hours, or having had an opera- 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 feet, 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 of the healthful condition of Mr. Wallace's mind. If the latter, what is the probative value of the "demonstrative" performance in Mr. Wallace's drawing-room ? But now for the other case specially cited by Mr. Wallace, that of Mr. T. A. Trollope. Here the " medium's " dress had been carefully exam- ined by Mrs. Trollope before the seance began, and a previous search of the room had been made by the gentlemen of the party. Now, con- sidering how cleverly (as will be presently shown) the concealment of the " properties" required for " spirit materialization " can be managed by in- genious ladies, it would have been more satisfac- tory if the examination of Miss Nichol's dress had been effected by an experienced female searcher ; and the assistance of a clever detec- tive might have been a useful help to the gentle- men-searchers of the room. But even if all these precautions had been adopted, a trick so simple that (as M. Robin the conjurer said) " it makes one laugh to see how easily people can be de- ceived," would have been quite sufficient to get over the little difficulty. 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 seance, 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 seance, it would be essential that after its commencement nothing shoidd 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. Home, " plays a great part on these occasions. ... I have known of PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 117 eases,' 1 he continues, "whore 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 he 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 '' I 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 seance. 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 seance 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 has 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. In 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 seance ; " 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 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 aerial transportation from her house in Highbury Hill Park into a se curely-closed room in Lamb's Conduit Street ; and that the seance 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 seance, 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 seance, with full permission to publish it. The following vc /•- 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 seances] 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. " Seance 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 1 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 hi 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 118 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. friend who had been present at the seance, 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 Koscoe, 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. What Mr. Wallace deems " Rigid Condi- 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 Emelie 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. What Messrs. Wallace and Crookes regard as " Trustworthy 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 that 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- tific society, those proofs of occult powers, for lack of which they have been drifting into materialism and infidelity.'''' 1 1 1 give this extract on tbe authority of Mr. Home (op. "At., p. 247), whom I can scarcely suppose to have deliberately forged, even to blacken Colonel Olcott, PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 119 The inditer of this precious stuff is the trust- worthy witness whose assurance that he has proved, " 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 and his "Scientific Tests." 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 seance" being a new version of the " cabinet-trick " originally introduced by the Davenport brothers ; while the second was a " dark seance," 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 as a 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 gdbe-monches who, as Mr. Home says, are ready to swallow anything from gnats to camels. 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." All this, says 120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 iu 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 seance ; " 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 iu 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. 1 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, 18*75)— 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 facsimile, in American news- papers ; and Eva Fay announced her spiritual- istic seances as " indorsed by Prof. Crookes and oiher Fellows of the Royal Society ! " Unluckily, however, for her own reputation and for that of Mr. Crookes, it happened that a 1 1 shall give the whole explanation in the new edi- tion of my lectures. young gentleman of New York, Mr. Washington Irving Bishop, of excellent soeial position — his father being a very eminent lawyer, and Wash- ington Irving having been his godfather — was moved to bestow a great deal of time and atten- 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 arts of the spiritual medinmistic healers, who re- 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, 1870.) 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 circle 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- surcjeon-general in the United States Arm)-, ad- dressed to him the following letter : " New York, March 30, 1876. " W. Irving Bishop, Esq. "Dear Sir : 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 expose as we refer to can only be productive of good results ; and we trust, therefore, in view of the importance of the whole PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 121 matter, that you will accede to our request. With great respect, we are your obedient servants, '' William A. Hammond, M. D., " Alexander B. Mott, M. D." This having been followed a month later by a requisition to the same effect by twenty-four gen- tlemen, mostly well-known clergymen of various denominations and eminent M. D.s, a public per- formance was arranged, which consisted (1) in the repetition of the most mysterious of the " mediumistic " feats, including " slate-writing " and " flowers from an invisible garden ; " and then (2) in the exhibition and explanation of the whole modus operandi, in full view of the specta- tors. From among the various attestations to the completeness of this exposure, I select the following, because, as Dr. Bellows is a val- ued personal friend of my own, I can bear the strongest testimony to his intellectual ability; moral worth, and practical clear-headedness. 1 The style in which Dr. Bellows delivers his tes- timony will confirm my own estimate of his vig- orous and thorough grasp of the subject : " New York, 232 East 15th Street, | '•October 16, 1876. f " Dear Sir : I had the pleasure and profit of attending your exposure of the acts by which the alleged proofs of spiritualism are foisted upon a credulous public. You showed in a most effectual and convincing way that a most intelligent audi- ence could be entirely deceived by the testimony of its own senses, in regard to matters which were 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. " I am of the opinion that your exhibition is 1 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 South- 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 a million and a half of pounds ster- ling passed through his hands during his four years of office. one of great public importance, and tends to dis- I abuse the public mind of a very mischievous and ; very general delusion, which indeed is becoming a | vulgar religion with thousands. No description of it can take the place of an actual sight of it. It might advantageously be repeated in every town, ; where the pretended seances of the modern necro- j mancer have played upon the weaker portion of | communities. Without attributing any exalted motive to the business which engages you, I de- liberately think, independent of any ends you seek, that your exhibition is one of the most in- structive and useful I have ever seen, as well as one of the most interesting and successful. I wish you a long succession of fortunate spectators. " Yours truly, " Henry W. Bellows." The immediate effect of Mr. Bishop's ex- posure upou Eva Fay's status was, we are as- sured by the Boston Herald, " to reduce her to the level of a pitiful street performer, obliging her to take out a license as a juggler before she could carry on the nefarious business by which 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- nal prosecutions ; but let them be " ticketed " as " licensed jugglers ; " and then be allowed to carry on their vocation without let or hinderance as long as they find people ready to pay for see- ing them. The fame of Mr. Bishop's performances hav- ing reached Boston, he was invited by a commit- tee composed— 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 not a 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 Olcott of whom I have already spoken), who was known to favor the doctrine — thus decidedly ex- 122 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. pressed itself after seeing in private Mr. Bishop's imitation of them, as well as of " Katie King," whom the Graphic's "commissioner" had pre- viously tried to rehabilitate: "Mr. Bishop unraveled the Katie King mys- tery, that seemed for a time to defy the most rigid scrutiny ; and more recently he has been engaged 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." Materialization Seances. It is, I suppose, now generally known that spiritualists claim not only to hold intercourse with "the spirits" by i*aps, slate-writing, and the like, but also to induce them to clothe them- selves afresh in a "materialized" form, possess- in.;' the substance and weight of ordinary mortals. It was Mr. Home, I believe, who first " produced " spirit-hands ; but he has been so far outdone by those who " materialize " whole figures, that he feels it incumbent upon him not only to denounce 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 seance, 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 . Total Average Annuai Rainfall at Madras, 1813-'76. Northeast Mon- BOon, Madras, Oct. -Dec Aver- age Rainfall, 1813-'76. Southwest Mon- soon, Madras, May-Sept. Aver- age Rainfall, 1813-'76. Minimum j Eleventh ' series inches. Inches. Inches. Inches. £t}l 2 .6av. 48.6 88.3 65.3 38.5 16.3 87.03 I „„ .r. QQ 42.07 f a 49.12 54.64 52.86 49.02 87.03 H2[aT.M«H 32.87 81.48 80.64 27.67 18.76 14.u4 ST - 14 - 65 14.89 19.68 18.98 18.53 15.78 group ) First 2 and second 3 series Third 4 and fourth 6 series Fifth "and sixth 7 series Seventh h and eighth a series Ninth 10 and tenth ll series Eleventh 12 series 1 Namelv, 1876,- 1865, 1854, a " * 1866,1855,1844, 3 " 1867,1856,1845, 4 " 1868, 1857. 1S46, 5 " 1869, 1858, 1847, 6 " 1870, 1859, IMS 7 " 1871, 1860, 1S49, 8 " 1872,1861,1850, 9 " 1873, 1862, 1851, " 1874,1868,1852, > '• 1875,1864,1858, 2 " 1S76, 18G5, 1854, 1S43, 1832, 1821, [1810. sun-spots only]. 1833, 1822, [1811, sun-spots onlv"|. 1884, 1828. [1812, sun-spots only]. 1885, 1S24. 1813. 1636, 1825, 1814. I-: 1 ,?. 1826.1815. 1838. 1827. 1816. 1839. 1828. 1817. 1840. 1829. 1818. 1841. 1830. 1819. 1842,1831, 1820. 1843, 1832, 1S21, [1810, sun-spots only]. 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 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 SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. 137 when taken together should form a well-marked I so far as the number admits, into three equal intermediate group. Dividing the cycle, therefore, I groups of four years, we get the following results : TABLE II. Eleven Years' Cycle of Scn-Spots and Rainfall in Madras. YEARS. Average Relative Number of Sun- Spots (Wolfs List, 1877), 1810-'75. Total Average Annual Rainfall at Madras, 1813-'76. Northeast Mon- soon, Madras, Oct.— Dec. Aver- age Annual Rain- fall, 1813-'76. Southwest Mon- soon, Madras, May-Sept. Aver- age Aunual Rain- fall, lS13-'76. Minimum Group. Eleventh, first, and second years of 12.6 43.5 76.8 Inches. Inches. Inches. 40.39 49.0T 53.50 23.02 30.27 31.06 14.65 16.71 19.31 Intermediate Group. Third, fourth, ninth, and tenth years Maximum Group. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth years of the cycle of eleven years 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, 1S33, 1S54, 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 djsproved 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 Bellari and in Hyderabad it only supplies three. But even at My- sore a deficiency of rainfall in years of minimum sun-spots is disclosed. Of four years of minimum sun-spots for which materials exist (1S76 to 1S37), not one had quite the full annual rainfall ; and the 13S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 tw T o 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 Ocean ; fourth, M. Poey's hurricane-lists for the West Indies ; fifth, the marine casualties posted on Loyd's Loss-book ; sixth, the rainfall at Ma- dras brought by the northeastern, and seventh, by 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 terrestrial phenomena? Consequently, does a 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 eleven 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 upon the percentage of casualties among the ship- ping of the world ; and that the cycle of tropi- cal rainfall has a portentous coincidence with a cycle of famine. One of the writers of this ar- 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 reexamined 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 have to deal with the great present problem of Indian administration. SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. 139 •J- V. 2 H P-) -I tO o w 55 W o B B to H Q H* B O :-; fc) 5 o B E- B B W on Eh o CM I fa fc © J B •3 W >H 55 W 1> w - H 55 B •»1 -nt>H ■0tSr-9:SI •ajqanojd •(snuipji s.onojg may) janmH Vi-.-0i6[ WP'a 55 -; T* rH O O O rn -* Ci CO - ^C( 'JPAV '0I8X-3i8I •ffjodg-ang jo jeqcun\; 3ai;b[3'jj CO CO C 00 W O CO O O GO CO id CO o r- t-h "* CO CO CO rt o H • oi : . t- . CO • a: • * 9 '. CJ * tr. jz ~Z *r oq TT — ■ CI J= H fe .a 61) >! r— ° = 2 S S S C H in c Z o en e. (3 3 b o CS o O Q0 Hi O a w o H P. < p s Hi ■-: »r s es S -J-T Hi = rO" a Hi a • S CO CD o CD CO Cs CO c . w o B a CM ^1 ©1 s 1-H CM 55 55 C N- 1 .M CO en 10 ©3 (M ©1 Tjl H 3 o rH as CO T— ( ©1 <4 CO CM CO cn w H CO CO CM ©i t- CO CO T-H CO CO lO O CO men, ovary, seed, and so on. Moreover, if you look at it closely, you will find difference of tis- sues ; not merely cells, but the coalescence of cells into fibres of various textures. And here, as we have seen, there is complete unity, though still very imperfect. It is still 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. Fas3 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., etc. — 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-maiked 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 for a 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 THE 2I0HAL ASD SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 143 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 Colum- 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 in 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 or a 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 wei^h 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 modem 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 144 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. great extent vertically upward to 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 horizontality, so to speak, of town arrangements. Water is brought from reservoirs twenty or fifty miles away ; food comes from farms miles distant, perhaps 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 horizoutality 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 workman who must live near his work, say within a mile of where we arc 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 small 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 unintcrfered 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 arc 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 ether 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. Tou are aware, of course, that it is an en- tirely modern fact. Till almost eighty years ago the growth of towns in England 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. THE MORAL ASB SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 145 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 all 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 couquest of Nature by man, was normal, was predestined, is still in great part to come. But our question still is, " Why 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 looked 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 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 French 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. I am 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 Doblest 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 H6 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 uonsense. 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 Dot, 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. I There are cases where the sudden shock of un- I foreseen calamity is transmitted with such in- 1 tense violence from the brain to the heart as to I stop its action there and then, and the man falls down dead. But such things are as rare as THE MORAL A2TD SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 147 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 bcsoin de rcspirer, 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 ierga 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, vivimpect them, and see what wis- dom can be got out 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 ? Eead 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, 148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. and the result. Those who have 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. Butne 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 you. 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 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 wanted, nor yet nearly so much as half what is 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. We have all looked at Dr. Richardson's beautiful picture of Tlygieia, 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- ing — what wages will they get, and where will 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 contented 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 ? No sudden 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 tbem, 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 town-conditions to thousands ; 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 made the one great object of concern. Think of the commonplaces of every-day talk. How one would yearn for the small-talk and scandal I of the vulgarest watering-place, by comparison ! j We must not forget that the highest health, i like the highest virtue, supposes the unconscious- ness of its own existence. Struggling, as we in England, and more especially in London and i Lancashire, are now, against social diseases of j a special and altogether exceptional kind, pro- duced by revolutionary confusion and by one-sided THE MORAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. H9 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 human 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 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 creme de la creme 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 150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. poor, the highest ideal that we cau 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 it in 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 lives of saints linked together through the middle ages, might understand this better. A Jew, per- haps, or a Chinese, whose tradition is unbroken for three thousand years, might understand it better still. In a 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 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 that 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 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- ing simple and grand and tender, shall take the 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 can do. Or, again, go into the worst hovels of Westminster or Clerkenwell, you will find, no books, but the walls lined with pictures. Science, THE MORAL AXE SOCIAL ASPECTS OF HEALTH. 151 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 please, 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 race. 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 a rich multiform drama every Saturday night in the Whitechapel Road. Flaring 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- thirds of the soil 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. 152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. ^ESTHETIC ANALYSIS OF AX OBELISK. By G. A. I 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 ruiu. 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 aesthetics 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 aesthetic 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 aesthetic object, however slight, is a lengthy task ; for many sep- arate factors, intellectual, emotional, and sensu- ous, must be taken into consideration and duly coordinated. 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 aesthetics, 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 waB 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 grownup 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. Boys a little more advanced in nervous and muscular development derive analogous pleasure ESTHETIC AXALYSIS OF AN OBELISK. 153 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 biff, 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 ^ ill 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 arc 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 Volaterras and Tiryns; while farther east, the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the colos- sal 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. So here, almost without knowing it, we have t 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 is a very biff 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 aesthetic 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- 154 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 instinctive 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 eifect. In mountain-countries, man's handiwork 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 l'Etoile 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 castles 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 Taj-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 aesthetic 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 heisrht ! " 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 aesthetic pleasure on viewing an obelisk is clearly the sym- ^ESTHETIC ANALYSIS OF AN OBELISK 155 pathetic reflex of that primitive Egyptian delight in something big. The next clement in order of conspicuousness is its form. This it is which on the one hand marks off the obelisk, as such, from any other massive monument, and s>\\ 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- dome, 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 octagoiial 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 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, and 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- 150 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 place. 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 Me roe 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 primaeval 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 us wider and yet wider expanses for the exercise of our aesthetic 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 with the "general evidences of cultivation JESTUETIC ANALYSIS OF AN OBELISK. 157 and painstaking human endeavor. In a High- land glen we look for unmixed Nature — purple heather, brown and naked roek, 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 wquld 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 de la Concorde. Here we have all the usual points which belong to the form as 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 Arc 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 Elysees. I have seen that relic of the Pharaohs illuminated with gas-jets and colored lanterns in honor of the Fete Napoleon. 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 wdiirlpool rapids surge with ceaseless foam, a turn of the stream brings one suddenly in view of a level reach which forms 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 ho vouchsafes in passing to the Duke of York's Column. But on the banks of a groat 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 Koman 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 Armee 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-ltir, 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 aesthetic 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. Ill 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- BOOKS AND CRITICS. 159 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. Intellectually, 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. In a 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 aesthetic 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 : to the 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. BOOKS AXD CRITICS. 1 Br MAKE PATTISON. BEFORE advancing any statements which may appear to you doubtful, I will bespeak your favorable attention by saying something which cannot be contradicted. A man 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 use of 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 1 A lecture delivered October 29, 1877. 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, as 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 1G0 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE M0XTHLY.-SUPPLE2IEXT. 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 hpoks 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 Clement, the curious bibliographer, has collected the titles of one hundred antl 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 Yalesius 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 quais in Paris, where the old book- stalls are, and, while pretending to be looking over the books, slip some of his dissertations be- tween the volumes of the boutiqiiicr. 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 seribendi 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 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 law 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 to do. 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 BOOKS AFD CRITICS. 161 lurned 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 Tope'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 S under the head of literature. There are books I which the publishers are pleased to advertise as I "gift-books," the object of whose existence is I 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 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 cooperative store of literary opinion of a highly - instructive character, and always worth attention. There are the exclusively liter- ary weeklies — the Academy, the Athenaeum, 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 monthlies 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, 162 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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. So a 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 uumber 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 hard 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 18*76, 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, aud 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. 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 BOOKS AND CRITICS. 163 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 Eome to set up again the miserable ecclesiastical government which the Komans 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 English, 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 164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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. 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. Bather, 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. Begarding 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. Bemember that, in studying the literature of the past, other countries than France and Germany come in. I have dispensed our 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, BOOKS AXD CRITICS. 165 and recreated themselves with TOO 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 hours a 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 Svo. 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, 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 has 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 " Imitatio Christi " of Thomas a Kempis. This ab- stinence from reading Comte called his hygiene cerebrale," healthy treatment of his brain. The citizens of his Utopia are to be prohibited from reading any books but those which had 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 unhealthy egotism and puerile self- complacency which deform his writings, his per- petual " mistake as to the relative value of his 166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 ou 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., ' giving a pecuuiary inducement to fill out paper j with words — to make copy, or padding, as it is called. I don't know if these things are done in j practice. If they are, they are fraudulent, and ! must, I 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 16S8, 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 BOOKS AND CRITICS. 167 a treat is to be enjoyed, and the number of these diminishes in each generation. Cultivation and intellectual 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 chef$-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. Not so. 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 maybe assigned for the book 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 cooperative store, as applied to groceries, is a discovery of our generation. But the principle of cooperation 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 Mudie, 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 Iras 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 Castle. It is only quite recently that the trading 168 TUB 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 intellectuals 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. W r e 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 BOOKS AND CEITICS. 169 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 abonnes 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 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, ' Vicns done causer, je n'ai pas cause pour quinze jours." 1 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 170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. the death. It is that we may escape from the terrihle ennui of society that we have recourse to a book. We go to read not from craving for ex- citement, but as a refuge from the tcediurn vitce, the irksomeness of herding with uninteresting fellow-mortals. The man who is engaged all the morning, and has his faculties stimulated, his in- tellect edged to keenness by the details of busi- ness, cannot, on his return to his fireside, subside into vacuity. He must have something to whittle at. He reads his newspaper as long as he can, and, when the newspaper at last gives out, he falls back upon a book. The native of a southern climate who has no business, and whose mind is never roused to exertion, has no such craving. The Italian noble does without books. He passes his day in listless indolence, content without ideas. There is no vacuity, and therefore no supply of books to fill it. Here is the key to the character of the litera- ture of our age. Books are a response to a de- maud. And the demand is a demand for recrea- tion by minds roused to intelligence but not to intellectual activity. The mind of the English reader is not, as in the southern man, torpid, non-existent ; it is alive and restless. But it is not animated by a curiosity to inquire, it is not awake to the charm of ideas, it is only passively- recipient of images. An idea is an excitant, comes from mind, and calls forth mind. An image is a sedative. The books, then, which are produced have to meet this mental condition of the reader. They have to occupy his attention without making any call upon his vigilance. There must be no reflex mental action. Meditation is pain. Fresh images must flow as a continuous douche of tepid water over the mind of the reader, which must remain pleased but passive. Books must be so contrived as to produce and sustain this beatific self-forget- fulness. That is called by publishers a success- ful book which just hits this mental level. To express all I have tried to say in one epithets — a book must be readable. If a book has this qual- ity, it does not much matter what it is about. Any subject will answer the purpose if the treat- ment be agreeable. The book must be so written that it can be read without any force being put upon the attention. It must not require thought or memory. Nor must there be any learned rub- bish about. A Latin quotation may be ventured only by an established favorite. Ouida did once hazard " facilis descensus Avernus," but it was ill-taken by the critics. Under these conditions of the public demand, it is not surprising that the species of composition which is most in favor should be prose fiction. In every other style of literary art, prose or poeti- cal, our age looks back to by-gone ages for models which it is ever endeavoring to approach, but dare not hope to surpass. In the novel, our age, but especially our own country, may justly boast to have attained a development of inventive power unequaled in the annals of all literature. It is not only that this is the most prolific species of book, more than one novel per working-day being given to the world every year, but it is that the most accomplished talent which is at work for the book-market is devoted to this class of pro- duction. If, as I laid down at the commence- ment of this lecture, supply is governed by de- mand, it is clear that this result must be so. En- tertainment without mental effort being our re- quirement, we must have our politics, our history, our travels, presented in an entertaining way. But fiction, if taken from every-day life, and not calling upon us for that effort of imagination which is necessary to enable us to realize a past age, is entertainment pure, without admixture of mental strain or hitch of any kind. For our modern reader it is as necessary that the book should be new as that it should be bound in colored cloth. Your confirmed novel- reader has a holy horror of second perusals, and would rather read any trash for the first time than " Pendennis " or " Pride and Prejudice " for the second. The book must be written in the dialect and grammar of to-day. No word, no construction, no phrase, which is not current in the newspaper, must be used. A racy and idio- matic style, fed by the habitual reading of our old English literature, would choke the young man who does the literature for the Daily Tele- graph, and he would issue in " the largest circu- lation in the world " a complaint that Mr. seems to write strange English ! Our modern reader requires his author's book, as he does his newspaper leader or his clergyman's sermon, to be the echo of his own sentiments. If Lady Flora were to ask me to recommend her a book to read, and I were to suggest Johnson's " Lives of the Poets," do you think she would ever ask my advice again ? Or, if I were to mention Tre- velyan's "Life of Lord Macaulay," the best biog- raphy written since Lockhart's " Life of Scott," she would say, " We had that long ago " (it came out in 1876) ; " I mean a new book." To a veteran like myself, who have watched the books of forty seasons, there is nothing so old as a new book. An astonishing sameness A MIGHTY SEA- WA YE. 171 and want of individuality pervades modern books. You would think they were all written by the same man. The ideas they contain do not seem to have passed through the mind of the writer. They have not even that originality — the ODly 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 are common property " — (" Au- tobiography," p. 110). When you are in 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, Cometh 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 read them," or that Mrs. Brown- ing should say : " The ne phis 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 SEA-WAYE. ON 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 long been celebrated for tremen- dous 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 migbty 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 Tulcanian forces lies deep below that part of the chain of the Andes which lies at the apex of 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, 172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 1st 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 Vuleanian 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 Vuleanian 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 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 A MIGHTY SEA-WAVE. 173 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 leave the shores wholly dry ; but presently its waters returned with tremendous force. A mighty wave, whose leugth 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 low-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 Ilaga." 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 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, but 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 svfficie?it energy to send an oceanic wave right across the Pacific, and of 174 TEE 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 upheaval 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 occasion. 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 between four and five on the morning of May 10th, corresponding to about five hours later of Peruvian time. An oscillation only was first ob- served at Hilo, on the east coast of the great southern island of Hawaii, the wave itself not reaching the village till about a quarter before five. The greatest difference between the crest and trough of the wave was found to be thirty- six feet here ; but at the opposite side of the island, in Kealakeakua Bay (where Captain Cook died), amounted only to thirty feet. In other 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 w-ith 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 a sort of network, ever changing as each set rolls on ; and considering any one of the four-cornered meshes of this wave-net, the observer will notice that, while the middle of the raised sides rises little above the surrounding level, because here the crests of one set cross the troughs of the other, the corners of each quadrangle are higher than they would be in either set taken separately, while the middle of the four-cornered space is correspondingly depressed. The reason is, that at the corners of the wave-net crests join with A MIGHTY SEA-WAVE. 175 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. 1 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 have 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 Fame laws of wave-mo- tion can be readily illustrated, also, by throwing two stones into a large, smooth pool at points a few yards apart. The crossing of the two sets of circular waves produces a wave-net, the meshes of which vary in shape according to their position. 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 176 TUE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— 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 vice 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 inconceiv- able energy. If directed entirely to 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 fractuB illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruins." But there is one aspect iu 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 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 crest 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. We are 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 to and fro. This, too, was in a part of the sea where the gieat 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 successive 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 only 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 17S TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. that it would have 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 Mercury — 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 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. — Comhill Magazine. THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 1T9 THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDKED YEAKS AGO. 1 By CARCS STEENE. IT 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 Eevelation, 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," 2 published in the third quarter of the sev- enteenth 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, 3 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 Animalium et Migratione Populo- rum." 3 " Merkwiirdiger Diskursz von dem Ursprung der Thier und Aufzug der VSlcker," 1670. 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, inherited 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 Linne, 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 original 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 180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. smaller animals produced from " sweat, transpi- ration, and putrefaction," only came into being at a far later period. Cornelius a 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 cry 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 question in what season of the year the world t 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 wild 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 pan- 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 Idumsean, 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 THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 181 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 zoological 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-vitae 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 that they had been carried by the winds or by the waves from the Old World to the 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 • 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 at all. 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 outliues 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, 1S2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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, he 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 zoologists 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 mau 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 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 case 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 a 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 and 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 THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 183 of the East. This sagacious hypothesis of ITon- tanus'a 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- cestor 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. As formerly it used to 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 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. Suddenly a 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, peacocks, 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. ISi THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. ANIMAL DEPRAYITY. " TT is of no use to talk about reason," said a -L 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 bciser 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," " a moral 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. 1 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, 1 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, 2 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 to love or hate."— (Mar- lowe.) AKIMAL DEPRA VITY. 185 It is a great mistake to suppose that herbiv- orous animals are necessarily milder than the carnivora. The contrary is often the case. The flesh-eater attacks and kills for food. The grass- eater, e. g., the Cape buffalo, and even the do- mestic bull, indulges in wanton outrages aud " 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. 1 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 us in 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 he also no good ? If all matter were absolutely transparent aud incapa- ble of throwing a shadow, would light cease to exist ? 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 face. Upon examination a cat was discov- ered there quietly demolishing a beefsteak, which it had feloniously obtained. The most curiou3 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 Zoologist, p. 2131. 186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT 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, calculating 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 will 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 eases animals merely act in accord- ance with the dictates of their ruling propen- sities. We grant this, and we ask whether this does ndt 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- ion 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 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 every 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 mediaeval tradition. 1 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 so 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 i It is a remarkable fact that the discharge of any voluntary physical function 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, bnt even when kept within the bounds of moderation —and this in the exact ratio of their pleasurableness. AXIMAL DEPRAVITY. 187 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 naivete 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- 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. 1 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 for 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. At a 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 be would ' 1 This is not literally true. Alcohol, in small doses, is being detected in natural productions, in which man has had no part. 183 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. order in a pound of ordinary sbag 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 Felidce 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- er in cats or in man this failing is invariably the "homage which vice pays to virtue, 1 ' 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 GG) : " 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 I 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 case 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 defends himself by flight. More than this, rooks have some rudiments of criminal law. Inveterate thieves are sometimes banished from the rookery, severely beaten, or even killed outright. 1 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 terra 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- i 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. ANIMAL DEPRAVITY. ISO 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. 1 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 far 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 as a general rule that he means kill- ing something. 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 affec- 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 ? Far from it. The nearer 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 190 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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- cur 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. " 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 Ncics.) "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, be 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 upon him. 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 cat 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 BRIEF X0TE3. 191 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-murder 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 tu quoque — a retort for once satis- factory, as it withdraws the pretended distinc- 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 knoio 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. BEIEF NOTES. Funeral Ceremonies at the Nicobar Islands. — We take from the Geographical Magazine the following interesting extract from a letter by F. E. Tusou : " 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 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 192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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, etc. 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 arc 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 clip the flesh of the iguana as they eat it. It was 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 his 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 f of an inch thick and the iron -pg- 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 oil was only If inch, and there was no fracture. A plate of mild steel (Siemens's), not tempered in oil, was indented 1 j£ inch, and another, tempered, If 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. THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 193 THE NINETY YEAKS' AGONY OF FKANCE. By Pkof. GOLDWIN SMITH. inOR ninety years, since the time when Calonne F 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 — apparently, 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 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 framers of the Great Charter or the Parliaments of Henry III., 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 194: THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 miracJe. 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 iu 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- cially 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 Rousseau, and from the deadly struggle of fac- tions which ended with the fall of Robespierre — Tallien, Freron, Barere, Barras, Rewbell, Talley- rand, Merlin, Fouche, and their crew. Political 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 THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 195 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- miliations, 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. in or was he 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- st^ility 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 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 196 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 Caesar ; 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 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 praetorians 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 Vendee. 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- THE NINETY YEARS' AGONY OF FRANCE. 197 tie 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 Cambaceres 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 regime, but handed on in 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. 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 VIII., 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 Sieyes would have been a safe and practical guide. The clock-work consti- tutions of Sieyes 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, 198 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 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 faineant, 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 III., 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 his 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 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- 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, m 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- lic ; 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- ful regulations of this kind needful. It is the 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 plebiscite 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 def