Reel ae a+ e Pe irdate hateoeie, oo oe) yemtieee eee . HARVARD UNIVERSITY. LIBRARY OF THE MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY bY\> GIFT OF | eM a) dcber % VQ — Mcrsces lees \S\ As aah) FS ee. ee ee Au —" on a THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ele mor Gime SCIENCE MONTHLY EDITED BY J. MCKEEN CATTELL VOLUME LXXXIill JULY TO DECEMBER, 1913 NEW YORK THE SCIENCE PRESS OS Vol. LX XXIII, No. 1 | JULY, 1913 -_ LY\2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY EDITED BY J. McKEEN CATTELL , CONTENTS Ancient Man, his Environment and his Art. Professor GEorGE GRANT MacCurpy : ‘ : XS “ : : - : 2 Suga? Suspended Changes in Nature. Professor Jamzs H. WALTON - - 23 Heredity, Culpability, Praiseworthiness, Punishment and Reward. Dr. C. B, DAVENPORT . ‘ : : ‘ : : : ‘ . 33 Gustav Theodor Fechner. Professor FRANK ANGELL. ‘ : . 40 The Intellectual and the Physical Life. Dr. James FREDERICK RocErs 50 Women Teachers and_Equal Pay. Mrs. EitrriepA HocuBAum Pore . 65 The Business Man and the High School Graduate. James P. MunroE. 73 Vulgar Specifics and Therapeutic Superstitions. Dr. Max Kaun . eet Lester F. Ward as Sociologist. Professor E. A. Ross. : ; o OF The Progress of Science: ~— The Passing of the Victorian Era; Vital Statistics and the Marriage Rate ; Scien- tific Items : ; : : : : : : : : . 100 THE SCIENCE PRESS LANCASTER, PA. GARRISON, N. ¥. aa - NEW YORK: Svs-Szarion 84 _ Saneis Nomsre, 30 Cents YEARLY SuBscRiPtion, $3.00 “COPYRIGHT, 1912, By THE SCIENCE PRESS Walker Prizes in Natural History By the provisions of the will of the late Dr. William Johnson Walker two prizes are annually offered by the Boston SocrETY oF NaTURAL HistToRy for the best memoirs written in the English language, on subjects proposed by a Committee appointed by the Council. For the best memoir presented a prize of sixty dollars may be awarded; if, however, the memoir be one of marked merit, the amount may be increased to one hundred dollars, at the discretion of the Committee. For the next best memoir a prize not exceeding fifty dollars may be awarded. Prizes will not be awarded unless the memoirs presented are of adequate merit. The competition for these prizes is not restricted, but is open to all. Attention is especially called to the following points :— 1. Inall cases the memoirs are to be based on a considerable body of original and unpublished work, accompanied by a general review of the literature of the subject. 2. Anything in the memoir which shall furnish proof of the identity of the author shall be con- + sidered as debarring the essay from competition. + cd 3. Although the awards will be based on their intrinsic merits, preference may be given to memoirs bearing evidence of having been prepared with special reference to competition for these | prizes. 4. Hach memoir must be accompanied by a sealed envelope enclosing the author’s name and | superscribed with a motto corresponding to one borne by the manuscript, and must be in the hands of the Secretary on or before April 1st of the year for which the prize is offered. 5. The Society assumes no responsibility for publication of manuscripts submitted, and publica- tion should not be made before the Annual Meeting of the Society in May. Subjects for 1913 and 1914:— Any biological or geological subject. . GLOVER M. ALLEN, Boston Society of Natural History, Secretary. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. University Control - : By J. McoK&EEn CATreELL, Professor of Psychology in Columbia University ‘ Together with a series of Two Hundred and Ninety-nine Unsigned Letters by Leading Men of Science holding Academic Positions and Articles by JoszrpH Jastrow, GEroran T. Lapp, Jonny J. Srmvenson, J: E. | GruicuTon, J. McKarn Catrrenu, Goran M. Srrarron, Stswart Paton, Jonn Jay CHAPMAN, Jamus P. i Monro and Jacos Goutp ScHuRMAN. A great variety of questions concerning general pereeraity administration are dealt with in an original and helpful way.—WNature. These quotations and examples are taken from Professor Cattell’s informed and thorough discussion of ian subject of university control, a subject upon which he has had much to say of late, finding occasion for caustic criticism of existing American conditions, and standing as the champion of an academic democracy and a teach- ing profession upon which a man may enter without forfeiting his self-respect.—The Dial. : Sentences and paragraphs that betoken the expert, highly-trained mind, the suggestions that come to re-« fresh a:d tell us that a new day is about to dawn in educational writing.—The Boston Evening Transcript. SCIENCE AND BDUCATION A series of volumes for the promotion of scientific research and educational progress ~ VOLUME I. The Foundations of Science. By H. Pormoars. Containing the authorized English translation S by Gores Brucs Hatstup of “Science and Hypothesis,’ ‘‘The Value of Science,” and ‘Science F and Method.” In Press. ' VOLUME II. Medical Research and Education. By Riowarp M. Seon Wiu1am H. Wace; w. H. j Howstt, Francum P. Mati, Lewaurys F. Barker, Caanuus 8. Minot, W. B. Cannon, W. T. — Councitman, THHoBALD SmitH, G. N. Stewart, GC. M. Jackson, E. P. Lyon, James B. Hurnics, Jonn — M. Dopson, C. R. Barpnsen, W. Orxtxs, 8. J. Meurzpr, James Ewine, W. W. Kuan, Henry H. Donatp- ( son, Cunistian A. Hurter, and Haney P. Bownircu. In Press. ts i VOLUME III. University Control. Now Ready. Pages 2+484. Price, $8.00 net. hy GARRISON, N. Y. THE SCIENCE PRESS LANCASTER, PA, SUB-STATION 84, NEW YORK CITY | - Et Ee POT Teiah SOLEN-C EH MO NT BLY. JULY, 1913 ANCIENT MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART By GEORGE GRANT MacCuURDY- ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ARCHEOLOGY IN YALE UNIVERSITY HE relation of culture to the environment is always a fruitful theme for discussion. To minimize the difficulties in the way of reconstructing the environment of the earliest races of man would be to deny the all-pervasive influence of environment as a factor in human development. We are so accustomed to think in terms of our own sur- roundings that any other set strikes us at once as strange and unreal. This is particularly true when we attempt at one fell swoop to divest Fic. 1. A GREAT MOUSTERIAN ROCK SHELTER, where a female skeleton of the Neanderthal type was recently found. Photographed by G. G. MacCurdy. 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Fic. 2. GREAT CAVE OF PLACARD (CHARENTE), where drinking cups made of the top of the human cranium were found. Photographed by G. G. MacCurdy. ourselves of the heritage of all the ages and assume the primitive réle of Hoanthropus for example. Environment presupposes mind, matter, space and time. With these combined in workable proportions it is conceivable how the result- ant might be that thing we call human culture. Mind, with its power to register and to profit by its own experiences, is that which has leavened the lump. As long, however, as those accumulated experiences remained individual, there was no real progress. Means had to be devised to translate individual experience into racial experience. The one who discovered this secret, who first deposited that little bank account on which the race has ever since drawn, is entitled to be called the first man. There were from the beginning as there are to-day individuals with exceptional minds, who contrived to live up to the full measure of the light that was given them, thus contributing little by little to racial experience, which at first could help them very little in return; but which as it grew and as ways were found to make it more generally available became a dominant factor in the racial uplift. MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART i From the start then we must think of man as an inventor. What was his first invention? Aside from air and water, food-getting and defense are the primeval needs. These are met precariously without artificial aids. Something to supplement the teeth, the nails, the fist must be found; and to be found must be at hand and appeal readily to the senses. The most omnipresent and tangible of all raw materials are stone and wood. Both of these are especially abundant along water courses. In fact, man and wood and game, the latter primitive man’s chief food supply, are all there for the same purpose—in search of water. The stones are there because the streams carried them or laid them bare. The problem is therefore one of utilization. The most utilizable of all stones is flint because of its hardness and mode of fracture, leaving a sharp, comparatively straight edge. Moreover, flint flakes can be produced by purely natural means. The accidental step- ping on one of these would suffice, after repetition at least, to prove their efficiency. Thus the oldest and most primitive implements that have come down to us are utilized flint chips. Once the flint-using habit was formed, it spread; and when the natural supply became scarce it was supplemented by artificially produced chips. Fic. 3. MAS D’AzIL (ARIBGH), which gave its names to Azilian epoch: transition from paleolithic to neolithic. Photographed by G. G. MacCurdy. 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The chief sources of flint are the chalk deposits of Cretaceous age that occur so plentifully in western Europe, as seen, for example, in the white cliffs along the southern coast of England. Approaching one of these cliffs, you will find it studded with parallel beds of flint nodules. Wherever flint occurs stone-age relics are apt to be abundant. The chalk of England, Belgium and northern France is the same age as the flint-bearing calcareous deposits of Spain and southern France; but the latter have not the white chalky appearance and are much harder; Fic. 4. TELLIER QUARRY, ST. ACHEUL. Third terrace. hence are full of caverns and rock shelters about which we shall speak later. One great difficulty that confronts the student of human origins is the paucity and fragmentary character of the evidence. This evidence is limited to two kinds: skeletal and cultural remains. The first of these is the rarest and at the same time the most incontrovertible. Not one complete skeleton has as yet been found. The less durable parts are missing. The cranial cap, the lower jaw, a few teeth, bones of the extremities, are the somatologist’s chief sources of information. LExcept in rare instances, the face bones and the base of the skull are missing. MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART 9 Of Pithecanthropus -we have only the cranial cap, a few teeth, and a femur ; of Heidelberg man, only the lower jaw; of the Piltdown skull, the greater part of the brain case, including a portion of the brow ridge, and the right half of the lower jaw. Osseous remains of Neandertal man and the later paleolithic races are more abundant. Of Homo neandertalensis alone there are now at least twenty authentic examples. The mentality of early man is reflected in the size and structure of Fic. 5. FOURTH OR YOUNGEST TERRACE AT AMIENS. Photographed by G. G. MacCurdy. the brain. Casts of the cranial cavity have been studied with great care. The cranial capacity of Pithecanthropus is estimated at 850 c.c., placing it in this respect nearer to the minimum in man than to the maximum in anthropoids. The cranial capacity of the Piltdown skull (Hoan- thropus dawsont) is given by Dr. A. Smith Woodward as not less than 1,070 c.c. The Piltdown skull apparently belonged to a female, and according to Professor Elliott Smith its brain case, though smaller and more primitive in form, is not unlike those of Gibraltar and La Quina, both paleolithic and supposedly feminine. The most striking feature *(eusOopi0od) selzAW xNv 9sUINVy-ap-ju0T ep UAeATD VY ‘AuOAYG puv [Ineig ‘uvyidey 19zy *(eusopi0q) aUINCY)-ap-JUOT JO UIoABD ‘aImjzord ay} FO J[vy 1eddn oY} Ul Woes Sf SU[ALASUS Jo SIStq OY} ! ONO] SUMMA XIG SMOOSTUY TO GNV| Byary “T “TY ‘ MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART II is the “ pronounced gorilla-like drooping of the temporal region, due to the extreme narrowing of its posterior part, which causes a deep exca- vation of its under surface.” This feeble development of that portion of the brain which is known to control the power of articulate speech is most significant. To Professor Smith the association of a simian jaw with a cranium more distinctly human is not surprising. The evolu- tion of the human brain from the simian type involves a tripling of the superficial area of the cerebral cortex; and “this expansion was not like the mere growth of a muscle with exercise, but the gradual building-up of the most complex mechanism in existence. The growth of the brain preceded the refinement of the features and the somatic characters in general.” The Piltdown skull with its primitive brain and simian lower jaw, but with a frontal profile suggesting the modern rather than the Neandertal type, tends to prove that in the lower Quaternary the differentiation among Hominide had already progressed much farther than has been generally supposed; and that we shall have to go a long way back in the past to find the parting of the ways between the ancestor of man and that of his nearest of kin among the apes. The capacity of some of the male skulls of the Neandertal type is unusually large, but the brain still lacks the superior organization that characterizes the modern human brain. The Neandertal race seems to have disappeared rather suddenly at the close of the Mousterian epoch. Art-loving Aurignacian man was of a different type both physically and mentally. Cultural remains, although much more abundant, are confined wholly to durable materials such as stone, bone, horn, and ivory. Pottery and metals are durable, but the fact that they do not occur is very good negative evidence that they were unknown. We are justified in assum- ing that wood, bark, roots, plant stems, skins, etc., were used, but not one trace of these has been preserved. It is also fairly safe to assume that fire-making was a very early invention of man, for unmistakable traces of it are found as far back as Mousterian times (and have been reported by one author in the Acheulian and Chellean). The hearth suggests a roof and these the family and possibly the tribe. At Torralba, Province of Soria, Spain, the Marquis of Cerralbo has recently uncovered a large camp site, which has yielded an associa- tion of rude eolithic and Chellean industry with the remains of a very old fauna: Elephas antiquus (and possibly also the Pliocene elephant), Ehinoceros etruscus, Equus stenonis, and a large and small deer. Some sort of tribal organization would naturally develop under such con- ditions. Man very early sought shelter under overhanging rocks and in cav- erns, but these are limited geographically while man’s range was practic- ally unlimited. La Quina (Charente) was in Mousterian times a mag- Pu. Il. BAS RELIEF FROM THE ROCK SHELTER OF LAUSSBL (DORDOGNE), repre- senting a nude female holding a bison horn; Aurignacian age. After Lalanne. “TL Anthropologie,’ XXIII., 131, 1912. MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND GIS ART 13 nificent rock shelter facing the northwest, but the overhanging rock weathered away long ago, leaving a thick talus slope over the relic-bear- ing deposits (Fig. 1). Here Dr. Henri Martin found a nearly complete female skull of the Neandertal type and a portion of the skeleton. Placard (Charente), occupied in Mousterian, Solutréan, and Magda- lenian times, is a great shallow dry cave, a comfortable and picturesque home for early man (Fig. 2). Equally picturesque is Mas d’Azil (Ariége), a subterranean stream bed with connecting caverns occupied by man in so-called Azilian times, that is to say at the very close of the paleolithic period (Fig. 3). Shelters were evidently produced arti- ficially at an early date, and no doubt varied according to locality just as they do among primitive peoples of to-day. The ancestral hairy coat was not discarded all at once, and before it ceased to be functional, some exceptional mind had set a new fashion in garb. In more favored climes this might well have been nothing more than the proverbial fig leaf. In colder regions recourse would be had to skins of animals. Much has been written concerning man and the glacial period, or perhaps more correctly the glacial epochs; for there seem to have been about four of these, all (or at least three) of which belong to the Quaternary. The phenomena of fourfold terraces in the valleys of Europe are widespread. To what extent these may be correlated with the four glacial epochs is still an open question. At Amiens in the valley of the Somme, flint implements have been found in all four terraces. Of the oldest two terraces at a height of 75 and 55 meters, respectively, above the sea, very little remains. A typical pre-Chellean or eolithic industry has been found in the old gravel of the second terrace. The third terrace about 42 meters above the sea is made up of gravel at the bottom and two loess deposits, an old loess and a recent loess (Fig. 4). Chellean industry occurs in the gravel, Acheulian industry in the old loess, and: Mousterian and Solutréan industry in the recent loess. That a considerable period elapsed be- tween the deposition of these two loess deposits is proved by the pres- ence of the so-called limon rouge at the top of the old loess, representing an old land surface, just as the brick earth at the top of the recent loess represents a decalcified land surface—the present one. The fourth terrace, the one last to be formed, is only 20 to 28 meters above the sea, the 8 meters representing the thickness of the terrace (Fig. 5). Begin- ning at the bottom, it is composed of coarse gravel with Chellean in- dustry; a whitish layer of sand and gravel containing an ancient Mousterian industry associated with a warm fauna (Hlephas antiquus, Rhinoceros merckti, Hippopotamus) ; a sterile layer of fine gravels; and lastly a thick deposit of recent loess with two horizons of later Mous- terian industry. Pu, III]. Mate Ficurm In BAS Rewier, Aurignacian age; rock shelter of Laussel. (Dordogne). After Lalanne, ‘“ L’Anthropologie,’ XXIII., 147, 1912. MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART 15 Across the Channel in. the Ouse valley, at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex), there has recently come to light a flint-bearing gravel with a remarkable association of human osseous and cultural remains with those of a Pliocene and Quaternary fauna (Pliocene elephant, Masto- don, Hippopotamus, Cervus elaphus, beaver, horse). The gravel bed is 80 feet above and a mile removed from the present bed of the Ouse. The physiographic features of this region have suffered no appreciable change since Roman times, hence the relation of the present Ouse bed to the one that existed when the Piltdown gravels were deposited indi- cates a great antiquity for the latter. All the relics in it are certainly Fic. 6. Hoanthropus dawsoni. (4 nat. size.) After Dawson and Woodward. Q@. J. G. 8., UXIX., 141, 1913. as old as the deposit. All or some may be older. The somatic char- acters of the human skull (Fig. 6), especially the lower jaw, postulate great antiquity, as does the nature of the rude flint implements. That the latter were found in association with a very primitive human type would seem to give such implements a standing hitherto denied them by some authorities ; unless it can be proved that they were derived from a deposit antedating the one which originally contained the human remains. ‘Their pedigree was needed in order to make industrial gene- alogy complete, just as the skull itself was needed to fill a gap in man’s physical evolution. It remains for the geologists to determine whether in Piltdown the prehistorian’s “ Rosetta stone” has at last been found. Perhaps they will be able to tell us also whether a channel separated the man of Piltdown from his contemporaries in the near-by valley of the Somme. The present channel dates from the very close of the paleo- lithic period. That there was a channel in early paleolithic times is . PL. IV. A BISON ON A COLUMN OF STALAGMITE; the artist completed a figure already blocked out fortuitously by nature. After Alcalde del Rio, Breuil and Sierra. (Espagne). Cavern of Castillo, Puente Viesgo, Spain. Les cavernes de la région Cantibrique MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART 17 suggested by raised beaches near Calais and on the south coast of England. All things considered, it looks as if pre-neolithic man had to con- tend with more than one glacial epoch, which means an environmental disturbance of the first magnitude. Think, for example, of a great continental ice-sheet creeping slowly but inevitably down upon New York City. What an overturning of unearned increments! What a succession of Titanic disasters at sea! But unearned increments and floating palaces were happily non-existent in past glacial times. Pre- neolithic man simply abandoned his wind-break or folded his tent of skins and carried it with him. Besides the European continental ice- sheet never reached quite so far south even as London; it never covered the spots where the Piltdown skull and the Heidelberg jaw were found. There was, to be sure, a considerable extension of the Alpine and Pyre- nean glaciers, but there was: always enough room for safety and the survival of those best adapted to the environment. The wide distribution in Europe of flint-bearing chalk deposits makes it almost an ideal place for the evolution of a stone-age culture. In many parts of Europe these flint-bearing deposits also afforded man ready-made shelter in the shape of caves and overhanging rocks. They are usually in proximity to water courses, and frequently so bunched as to invite a relatively dense population; these became centers of culture. Such favored regions as the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains in Spain, those of the French Pyrenees, the Italian Riviera, and Dor- dogne go a long way toward explaining the origin and evolution of paleolthic art. The great cave group of the Vézére valley became the Paris of the antique world. Here the arts flourished to a remarkable degree, beginning with the Aurignacian epoch and continuing through to the close of the paleolithic. It must be remembered that these early artists were limited in their choice of materials. Pebbles, pieces of schist or slate, fallen fragments from the overhanging calcareous rock, bone, reindeer horn, ivory were all utilized; but the most notable works were executed on the walls of caverns and rock shelters. Suitable wall space was at a premium; the result is that one often finds superposed figures two, three and even four deep covering the same wall space. One of the best examples of this is the great band of frescoes, five meters long, which shows inter- locking of figures as well as superposition (Pl. I.). Here as in prac- tically all polychrome frescoes there is a basis of engraving which also prepares the field for the color. This foundation of engraving is seen in the upper half of the plate. The band is readily divided into four groups or sections. To the first group belong three figures all headed VOL. LXXXII. —2. 18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY Fic. 7. MALr AND FEMALE BISON MODELED IN CuAy, discovered October, 1912; from cavern of Tuc d’Audoubert (Ariége). Votive offering for multiplication of the bison. in the same direction. The lines of the reindeer cut all others, hence it is the latest of this group. The bison comes next, its head being hidden in part by that of the reindeer. Underneath the bison are the imperfect outlines of a mammoth recognized by the contour of the head and back, and the feet. In section two the mammoth is on top. Beneath come Fic. 8. FEMALE Bison, front view; cavern of Tuc d’Audoubert (Ariége). MAN, HIS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART 19 first a reindeer and lastly a bison with the head toward the right. The mammoth is again the latest of the figures in group three. It was in- cised over the figure of a great bison. Older than the bison is the reindeer ; and oldest of all, the small figure of a horse, with the exception of the rump almost obliterated by subsequent drawings. The order for the fourth group beginning with the latest figure is: mammoth, bison, and horse. Below this ensemble is a finely engraved mammoth. That such superposition was in a large measure unconscious, unintentional, Fic. 9. ENGRAVED FIGURE OF THE HORSE WITH ARROWS STICKING IN HIS SIDE. Cavern wall of Tue d’Audoubert (Ariége). Votive offering for success in the chase. ’ there can be little question. This superposition sometimes marks a lapse of considerable time and may be of service in the dating of mural art in general. Quite recently engraved slabs of stone have been found at La Made- leine, some of them from refuse worked over years ago by Lartet and Christy. These and similar specimens from Limeuil (Dordogne) are now the property of the Museum of National Antiquities at St. Germain. Monsieur L. Didon has found engraved slabs of Aurignacian age in the rock shelters at Sergeac (Dordogne), one of which repre- senting a horse and found in 1912, now belongs to the American Museum of Natural History. Still more remarkable are the bas reliefs of upper Aurignacian age from the rock shelter of Laussel (Dordogne) repre- senting the human form. Four of these depict a female type already familiar through discoveries at Brassempouy (Landes), Mentone and 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY Fic. 10. HEAD OF REINDEER ENGRAVED ON CAVERN WALL AT Tuc pD’AUDOUBERT (ARIEGE). A club-shaped figure across the head. Votive offering for success in the chase. Willendorf (Austria). In all there is an evident exaggeration of cer- tain female characters rather than a serious attempt to copy nature faithfully (Pl. IJ.). The lines of the male figure, who has apparently just let fly an arrow from his bow, are fairly true to the original (Pl. III.). The bas relief of the female holding the bison horn was painted red; traces of the color still persist not only on the body but also over all the cut portion of the rock. The practise of painting engraved and relief figures was no doubt quite general, examples having been reported lately from La Madeleine and Castillo (Spain). The paleolithic artist was. quick to detect in the configuration of the rock a resemblance to animal forms and to heighten the resemblance by judicious use of engraving or color. To illustrate this point the figure of a bison on a column of stalagmite in the cavern of Castillo near Puente Viesgo, Spain, is chosen (Pl. 1V.). It took very little though well-directed effort on the part of the artist to complete a form already blocked out by nature. A few incised lines and the application of color (black) about the head and shoulders sufficed. A bison at Niaux MAN, HiS ENVIRONMENT AND HIS ART 21 (Ariége) and a horse at Font-de-Gaume (Dordogne) are also of this class, as is a bovine head in the newly discovered cavern of Tuc d’Audoubert (Ariege). Shortly after his discovery of the cavern Count Bégouen noted two red spots on the wall. The following day it was my good fortune to identify them as a pair of eyes, the animal’s head being formed in bold relief by the projecting rock. Such fortuitous objects as these might have been that which originally sensitized the human imagination till it was able to catch and perpetuate a likeness to familiar or cherished forms. With the gradual perfection of the likeness both with and without fortuitous assistance the fine arts were born. Nothing quite the equal of paleolithic cave art has since appeared among any people in the hunting and fishing stage of culture; for it must be remembered that domestication of animals and the arts of agriculture were neolithic innovations; so was the ceramic art. It seems almost a pity that this artistically inclined old race was not familiar with the plastic possibilities of clay. What exquisite figures of their favorite game animals they might have left to us, both in the round and in painted forms. Perhaps they did model in clay. If so the objects were not properly tempered and either poorly fired or not fired at all and have since completely crumbled away. Only one Fic. 11. WouNbDED BISON, in part engraved and in part painted (red); to the right, the head of a horse incomplete; below, six claviform figures. Pindal (Asturias). After Alcalde del Rio, Breuil and Sierra. Les cavernes de la région Cantabrique (Espagne). ‘ 22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY instance of paleolithic modeling in clay has thus far come to light, the discovery being made only last October in the newly found (July 20) cavern of Tuc d’Audoubert. I visited this cavern only five days after its discovery by Count Bégouen and his sons, who in continuing their researches less than three months later came upon two clay figures of the bison, a female 61 centimeters long followed by a male 63 centi- meters in length. These figures were never wholly separated from the matrix out of which they were so deftly fashioned. They seem to stand out of the sloping clay talus that flanks a fallen rock (Figs. 7 and 8). They are far removed from any known entrance to the cave and were discovered only after Count Bégouen had broken away huge stalagmite pillars that blocked the narrow corridor leading to that particular gal- lery, which was evidently a paleolithic shrine since mercifully guarded from unhallowed hands by Nature’s own silent white sentinels. On the walls of another gallery of this same cavern are engravings of favorite game animals: a horse, with arrows sticking in his side (Fig. 9); a reindeer with a club-shaped figure across its head (Fig. 10). In visiting a long series of paleolithic caverns with mural decora- tions one is struck not only by the number of figures of animals wounded by arrows or associated with claviform representations (Fig. 11), but also by the evident desire of the artist to leave his work in a secluded spot difficult of access. Among the most remarkable art works found in the floor deposits of caves and rock shelters are the spear throwers orna- mented with gracefully carved figures in the round or in high relief of the animal to be hunted. These facts would seem to point to one of the cogent reasons for the phenomenon of cave art. To be sure, many of the figures are so meri- torious as to make their execution well worth while for the simple satis- faction they must have given to the artist or the chance beholder. Reading between the lines, one may detect other reasons. The art might well have served another purpose. It was called forth no doubt in a large measure to meet an economic need. As the population in- creased—and no one familiar with the Vézére valley, for example, can fail to be impressed by the evidences of a relatively dense population— as this increased, the food supply of game and fish decreased in inverse ratio. In order to adjust the supply to the ever-increasing demand, recourse was had to magic, to the aid of the spirit world. The female bison closely followed by the male (Fig. 7), the wounded horse and bison (Figs. 9 and 11), the clubbed reindeer (Fig. 10) are votive offerings for the multiplication of game and for success in the chase. In the end magic was bound to fail as it always will. Then passed away the picturesque paleolithic culture, superseded by the neolithic, capable of meeting the demands of an increased population, based as it was on the domestication of animals and plants as well as on the utilitarian pot- ter’s art. SUSPENDED CHANGES IN NATURE 22 SUSPENDED CHANGES IN NATURE By JAMES H. WALTON, Jr., PuH.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN N the physical world we are familiar with the fact that changes of all kinds are continually taking place. Prominent among these are changes of state, such as the evaporation of water, the melting of ice and the condensation of steam. These familiar transformations seem to have a common property; as usually observed they take place at very definite temperatures. To be sure, in the laboratory it is possible to heat water to 105-106° without boiling it, and to cool vapors below the temperature at which they ought to condense, but such experiments have usually been regarded as quite exceptional. Within the last few years, however, it has been found that such a reluctance to enter a new state is by no means unusual, that many cases similar to the above actually exist; moreover, that they are not restricted to ultra-refined laboratory experiments, but are a matter of common experience. If ice is heated it melts, and the temperature at which this process takes place is sharp and definite, as is evidenced by the fact that mix- tures of ice and water are used to calibrate and test the accuracy of the most delicate thermometers. No one has ever succeeded in heating ice above the temperature of its melting point, zero degrees, which is a property that ice shares with other solids such as lead, gold, saltpeter and ordinary table salt. But the reverse is not true, for many liquids can be cooled below their freezing points without solidifying. Water, for example, can be cooled below zero without changing to ice. When water freezes in nature, as in ponds and lakes, the transition of water to ice takes place at this temperature and is fairly sharp, but if a clean flask is filled with water the surface of which is protected from dust by means of a layer of oil, it is easily possible to cool the water ten degrees below its freezing point. True, it becomes solid on shaking the flask or upon the introduction of a fragment of ice, but it can be kept for hours in the liquid state, offering a passive resistance to the forces of nature which are operating to change it to ice, the stable form of water at this temperature. Water that has been cooled below its freezing point in this way is said to be in the metastable state; it is also called undercooled water, that is, water that has been cooled under the temperature at which it ought to solidify. The phenomenon of undercooling is not restricted to water, but is shown by aqueous solutions of salts and also to a marked 1 Solutions may be said to be undercooled when they have been cooled to a temperature at which crystals of the dissolved substance ought to separate from 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY extent by melted phosphorus, carbolic acid, and many organic sub- stances like thymol and betol that are seldom encountered outside a chemical laboratory. : Although many undercooled liquids are similar to water in that they may be changed to the stable state by agitation, this property is by no means general. An infallible test for undercooling is the addition of a fragment of the stable substance. Thus a bit of ice causes water to Fic. 1. CRYSTALS GROWING IN UNDERCOOLED T'HyMOL. solidify, similarly undercooled thymol becomes a crystalline mass upon the addition of a crystal of thymol, while undercooled sodium acetate solutions at once separate needle-like crystals of sodium acetate when a crystal of that substances is added. The addition of a solid fragment for the purpose of causing subsequent crystallization of the liquid is called inoculation or vaccination. The name is particularly fortunate, for the growth and spread of the crystals resembles a bacterial growth. Undercooled liquids are as sensitive to the presence of a crystal of the solid material as milk is to the presence of certain bacteria, and just as much care must be exercised in their preservation. In working with undercooled sodium acetate under no circumstances may an open flask of this substance be brought into a room in which sodium acetate has been ground in a mortar, for the dust in the air carries enough finely divided sodium acetate to inoculate the solution. Frequently the in- the solution, without such a separation taking place. Such solutions are usually said to be supersaturated. SUSPENDED CHANGES IN NATURE 25 vestigator must take his solution into the open air, but here again he must be careful, for his clothes and hair may carry enough powered ma- terial to inoculate the solutions. The amount of material required to inocu- late a solution is very, very small, far beyond the sensitiveness of the most delicate balance. Nowhere in science is the importance of the fact that “the very small is as real as the very great” better illustrated than in the case of undercooled liquids; a human hair lightly brushed against a crystal of thymol will collect enough of this material to inoculate a flask of the undercooled liquid thymol. A tube of undercooled sodium acetate may be divided by a piece of parchment paper into two parts (Fig. 3). The inoculation of the solution in A causes the separation of crystals which ulti- mately appear in B via the parchment. The pores in the parchment, which are of micro- scopic size, become filled with the undercooled solution, and as the crystals forming in the pores can not be larger than the pores it is evident that these crystals are of microscopic dimensions only. How far can a liquid be cooled below the temperature at which crystals ought to sepa- rate? This depends entirely upon the sub- : stance used. With some liquids if the under- Fic. 2. CrysTats Grow- cooling is greater than a degree or two, crys- '¢ 1N 4 Tusn or UNDER COOLED SODIUM ACETATE tals at once separate spontaneously from the soxvrioy. solution. In the case of water the under- cooling has been carried to as low as twenty degrees below zero before crystals of ice separated. Sodium acetate on being strongly undercooled shows an interesting property, for as the temperature becomes lower and lower the liquid be- comes less mobile until at fifty degrees below zero just before spontane- ous crystallization the liquid assumes a viscous glassy appearance. Its similarity to glass is more than superficial. When molten glass is cooled it gradually becomes more and more viscous until finally it has all the appearances of a solid. But at no definite temperature does it suddenly harden, as would be the case in cooling mercury or molten lead. The glass differs from the undercooled sodium 26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY acetate in one respect only: its viscosity has reached the solid stage. Glass is an undercooled substance and like other undercooled substances is in the metastable state, consequently it has the power of returning to Fic. 4. DEVITRIFIED GLASS. || the stable condition. Old glass, especially glass tubes through which | water has been allowed to pass, frequently shows this property when . heated for a few minutes. The glass crystallizes, taking on the appear- Fic. 5. OBSIDIAN FROM WHICH CRYSTALS HAVE BEGUN TO SEPARATE. Magnified about 300 diameters. ance of ground glass. Its surface becomes rough and the glass is no longer transparent. Pieces of glass apparatus which have partially crys- tallized can be found in any chemical laboratory. It is called devitrified glass: SUSPENDED CHANGES IN NATURE i Certain glassy appearing minerals like obsidian are really under- cooled substances, natural glasses, which have cooled without crystal- lizing. In the course of time they begin to crystallize. It is not un- usual to find in nature numerous samples of these minerals existing in all stages: the metastable, par- tially crystallized, and the stable or completely crystallized mineral. The rate of the growth of crystals is a specific property de- pending on the substance used. Much information has been ob- tained on this subject by study- ing the rate at which crvstals are deposited from undercooled liquids. By filling a narrow g!ass tube with the desired liquid, as shown in figure 2, inoculating at one end and measuring the time necessary for the crystal surface to travel the length of the tube, Fie. 6. OR MONOCLINIC SULPHUR. formed they are bright yellow. CRYSTALS OF NBEEDLE-LIKE When first After standing for a few hours they change the rate of growth of a crystal can be measured. Undercooled phosphorus crystallizes 200 feet a minute, water at two degrees to a dull yellow color and become very brittle. A microscopic examination of a fragment shows that it is now made up of minute rhombic crystals (Fig. 7). below zero at the rate of 8 inches a minute, while one thirty-second of an inch a minute is the velocity of crystallization of betol. In nature crystals often grow much more slowly than this. The examples cited above deal with undercooled liquids, but the phenomenon of undercooling is by no means restricted to this class of substances. When molten sulphur is allowed to cool slowly, long lustrous needle- shaped (monoclinic) crystals sepa- rate from the liquid. On standing for a few days the appearance of the erystals changes ; they lose their luster, and examination with the micro- scope shows that their crystalline form is no longer needle-like, but con- sists of so-called rhombic figures. The temperature at which the tran- sition from needles to the rhombic form takes place is 96°. Fic. 7. CRYSTALS OF RHOMBIC SULPHUR. 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The change by which water is transferred to ice and its reverse may be represented as follows: 2 At 0° ice = water. The arrows pointing in opposite directions indicate that the process is reversible. The significance may be expressed as follows: at 0° ice can be changed to water or water to ice. Similarly in the case of the sulphur, At 96° sulphur (monochnic) = sulphur (rhombic). Fic. 8. ORGAN PIPES THAT HAVE BEEN ATTACKED BY THE TIN DISEASE. Now just as the water at 0° does not always change to ice, but may be undercooled, so the transformation of monoclinic to rhombic sulphur does not take place immediately, but the needles can exist in a meta- stable state analogous to the undercooled water. And as the addition of a fragment of ice causes undercooled water to solidify, so the addition of a crystal of rhombic sulphur accelerates the change of monoclinic sul- phur to its stable form. The rapidity of the transformation of the metastable solid, however, is by no means as rapid as the change of meta- stable liquids. This is not surprising when we consider how much more inert solids are than liquids, especially when considered from a chem- ical standpoint. A most interesting example of the retarded transformation of metals SUSPENDED CHANGES IN NATURE 29 has been furnished by Professor Cohen of Utrecht. Tin is a white crystalline metal which does not corrode readily and under ordinary conditions appears very permanent. After a particularly cold winter in one of the small towns of northern Germany, it was noticed that in one of the churches the tin pipes of the organ were full of holes and that the tin around the edges of those holes was brittle and would crumble to powder very easily. A similar occurrence had been reported in St. Petersburg where, after a severe winter, blocks of tin which had been stored in the custom house were found to have crumbled to powder and a number of cases of tin buttons used for military uniforms had undergone a similar change. It was noticed that in the case of the organ pipes, and also on the tin roofs of certain public buildings, the tin had taken on in spots a wartlike appearance ; moreover that the warty growth seemed to have the power of spreading. Wherever the tin had changed in this way it had lost its original properties and would easily crumble to gray powder. Because of the appearance of the tin and the spread of the warts over its surface this phenomenon was called the “tin pest” or the “tin disease.” That the powder found was still tin and not a product of the corrosion of the metal was easily demonstrated, but the transition of a bright malleable metal to a dull gray powder was for many years a great mystery. But just as there are two kinds of sulphur which can be transformed into each other, so Professor Cohen showed that tin exists in two forms, white tin with a specific gravity of 7.28 and gray tin with a specific gravity of 5.79. These two forms can be transformed into each other, the transition temperature being 18°; At 18° tin (white) =tin (gray). But if gray tin is stable below 18° how can we explain the fact that tin pails and tin pans remain bright year after year? The average temperature of the northern part of the United States is far below 18°, conse- quently why do not our tin utensils crumble into the gray modification of the metal? Fortunately for the housewife, the white tin Fic. 9. THE Spreap or exhibits to a marked degree the property (" pee peers eM of metastability. It remains unchanged at temperatures far below 18° and even contact with the gray tin changes it but slowly to the stable form. But once let the trans- formation of the tin begin, and the spread of the disease is certain. The surface of the tin becomes disfigured with blotches which gradually 30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY spread until the whole substance succumbs to the disease. Results of the tin pest are frequently found in museums. A tin vase in the British Museum which was found in Appleshaw, Hampshire County, England, and which dates back to 350 B.c. shows very strikingly the effects of the tin disease. The metal is not corroded, but it is dull in color and is so brittle that it can be broken with the fingers. Some of the fragments on being melted gave white tin with its original toughness and luster. Fic. 10. A TWO-HUNDRED-YHAR-OLD MEDAL THAT IS SUFFERING FROM THE TIN DISEASE. Every one who has studied the advance of science during the last few centuries realizes that our modern inventions and processes of manufacture have been in many cases foreshadowed in the ancient | world. The use of gunpowder by the Chinese and their extraordinary success with glazes, as well as the perfection obtained by certain of the old civilizations in the use of cements, pigments, dyestuffs and in metal- lurgical processes, is familiar to every one. What the modern scientist discovers by painstaking investigation was learned in those days either by accident or as the result of centuries of experience. Consequently the fact that the tin disease was known in those days ought not to be surprising. Professor Cohen has pointed to an observation of Aristotle. SUSPENDED CHANGES IN NATURE BI They say that Celtic tin melts much more easily than lead. A proof for the fusibility is that it melts even in water. It is apparently very sensitive to exterior influences. Jt melts also in the cold, when there is frest. The knowledge of the tin disease is no more modern than the know!l- edge of most other diseases. In this connection it is interesting to speculate on the antiquity of the use of tin. This metal is one of the easiest to obtain from its ores, and may have been used far earlier in the history of mankind than is generally supposed. Evidence in the form of utensils, etc., would of course have been destroyed by the tin disease. We are indebted to the investigations of Professor Cohen for a more striking example of a metastable metal, that of the “explosive” anti- mony. By passing an electric current through a solution of antimony chloride this metal may be deposited on platinum in the form of a thick metallic coating. This electrolytic antimony is in the metastable con- dition exhibiting the same state of passive resistance towards change as the metastable sulphur, sodium acetate and water. If scratched with a file it changes to the stable form of antimony with explosive violence, heat is given off and dense clouds of whitish vapor are evolved. The metal has changed to the ordinary antimony, used so much in manufac- turing as a basis for bearing metals. The method of bringing this change about and the velocity of transformation reminds one forcibly of the transition of undercooled water to the stable form. That many other metals have the property of existing in the meta- stable state is highly probable. In this connection the hardening of steel is of especial interest, particularly so since the manufacture of steel has played so important a réle in the advance of civilization. The method of tempering steel has been the subject of numerous trade sec- rets. In a book of recipes published in the sixteenth century the reader is told that steel may be hardened by quenching it in rain water in which snails have been boiled ; also that Ye may do the like with the blood of a young man XXX years of age, and of a sanguine complection, being of a merry nature and pleasant... ., distilled in the middst of May. Fortunately for this type of young man the modern steel manufac- turer uses other methods for hardening steel. The discovery of hardening steel by the quenching process is of course as much of a mystery as the method of raising bread by fermenta- tion, we only know that it is an ancient process and moreover of great interest from the standpoint of delayed transformations. If the alloy that we call steel is taken at a high temperature and al- lowed to cool very slowly it becomes soft and tools made from it will not have a cutting edge. Sudden chilling, however, produces in the metal a decided hardness. The results obtained by different rates of cooling have 32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY been explained by the investigations of the last few years. When cooled slowly the steel undergoes a transformation changing to a form very much softer than that which existed at a higher temperature. If chilled suddenly the steel remains in the same form that was stable at high tem- peratures, consequently the property of hardness is retained. Here again the analogy to the other cases of delayed transformation is evi- dent, for the quenched steel is exhibiting the same state of passive re- sistance as the white tin that remains unchanged at a temperature below 18°. Now since the tin is not permanent under those conditions the question occurs to us, does steel slowly return to the stable form and thus in time grow softer? That we do not know; we can only say that if such a change does take place hundreds of years are necessary to bring it about. Japanese swords hardened in this way and made as far back as the fifteenth century when carefully preserved are apparently as hard as ever. If, however, this kind of steel is heated to the temperature of boiling water it gradually softens, reverting to the stable form. And if heated to 150° the softening takes place in a very few minutes. From these examples of retarded transformation an idea of the ex- tent and the importance of this phenomenon in the physical sciences may be obtained. New cases are constantly being discovered, in fact, the reluctance of substances to assume a new state seems to be pretty general. And as it so often happens in science that discoveries which seem at first to be of theoretical importance only, ultimately are shown to be intensely practical, so the study of this phenomenon has cleared up the mystery of the tin pest and promises to be of great importance in the study of metallurgy and many other branches of applied chemistry. HEREDITY 33 HEREDITY, CULPABILITY, PRAISEWORTHINESS, PUNISH-— MENT AND REWARD By Dr. C. B. DAVENPORT CARNEGID INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON, COLD SPRING HARBOR, N. Y. Wie studies in heredity are yielding results whose social bear- ings can not be overestimated; and of these bearings not the least significant are those that relate to responsibility. To make these bearings clear we have, first of all, to grasp the current views about man. It is often stated that man is a gregarious species; this illustrates the old point of view. Now we say: “ Man is a congeries of elementary species or biotypes and hybrids between such; and some or most of these biotypes are gregarious.” It is the necessary abandonment of the view that mankind is fundamentally uniform and homogeneous that involves such a change of our fundamental conceptions. There is, indeed, no statement that can be made about man that is universally true; and here is where our social codes, our laws, our works on ethics find their real limitations. We hear it said: “Human nature is pretty much the same the world over”—yes, in its variety. Let us consider some of the evidence for such biotypes in man. Every one is familiar with the ordinary anthropological races ; the white- skinned, black-skinned, brown-skinned, yellow-skinned and red-skinned. And inside each of these races no less marked subraces or strains may be distinguished. Take the white race alone. There are the blue-eyed subrace of Scandinavia and the brown-eyed subrace of the Mediterranean coast; the straight-haired western Finns and the curly-haired strains found in spots of Scotland; the tall strain of Ayrshire and Galloway and the short strain of Polish Jews; the dolicocephalic Corsicans and the brachycephalic Dalmatians. Coming to America we find, similarly, in southern California that a subrace that is nonresistant to tuberculosis and bronchitis has been partially segregated ; in a valley of the Berkshire Mountains is isolated a nearly pure strain of feeble-mindedness, includ- ing much epilepsy and migraine; in eastern Massachusetts is a partially pure strain of deaf-mutism. We have evidence of localities (frequently much inbred) where are being isolated more or less pure-bred strains of albinos, of dwarfs, of syndactyls and polydactyls, of the non-resistant to cancer, of myopics, of hermaphrodites, of melancholics, of eminent scholars (e. g., the Dwight-Edwards-Woolsey complex of the Connecticut Valley), of military men and statesmen (ce. g., the “first families” of Virginia), of sea captains and naval officers (e. g., the Hull-Foote fam- ily of Connecticut) and so on. Such “families” have just the same VOL, LXXXII.—3. 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY biological significance as the blue-eyed or long-headed races; they are properly called biotypes. If some of these biotypes do not persist for more than a few generations it is because of the constant cross-breeding that is going on between biotypes. When a blue-eyed Irish girl marries a south Italian the children are all brown-eyed—the potential blue-eyed biotype is brought to an end by hybridization. So when a great color artist marries a woman who belongs to a non-artistic family the chil- dren may not belong to the artistic biotype; but, under appropriate ma- tings, the characteristic of the biotype may reappear in later generations. The objection is raised to this view that it overlooks the importance of opportunity in determining the vocation in which one finds success. This objection is founded on the fundamental theory that all men have equal capacities for all things and the reason why one person succeeds in one occupation and another in a different occupation is because they have different opportunities. And the objection vanishes when this theory falls. A year in a Berlin conservatory of music would be a great opportunity for some people; but not for me. How often is the dearest wish of a man to have his son take up the profession in which he him- self has succeeded frustrated by the son’s entire lack of taste or capacity for such a profession. “ Opportunity” assumes an innate capacity for taking advantage of it. Hence, those who have had a “superior oppor- tunity ” must have had a germ plasm specially adapted thereto. Those who regret a lack of early opportunities really (within limits) regret their inability to respond more adequately to such stimuli—such culture —as came to them. Now, “all men” are born into thousands of dis- tinct biotypes and what is true of those of one biotype is not true of others. A single standard “before the law” is as unbiological as it is cruel. Consideration of the inequalities of persons “ before the law” in- volves an examination of the foundations of law and society. Again and again, in various parts of the world, men have come together in communal life for physical and moral support, responding to a gre- garious instinct. A leader is selected to enforce these communal customs that past experiences have proved to be favorable to the com- munity. Moral law is merely this: behavior that is favorable for the specific community is “good”; behavior that is harmful for the com- munity is “bad.” Good and bad thus refer to conduct which is judged in its relation to the experiences, traditions and ideals of the given community. Now, conduct is reaction to a stimulus; what the reaction shall be depends not only on the stimulus, but also on the nature of the reacting protoplasm; particularly, in man, of the senso-neuro-muscular complex. While in the young the relation of stimulus to reaction is relatively simple, during development there appears, most markedly in gregarious HEREDITY 35 species, an inhibitory mechanism by which the expected reaction may be stopped. The inhibitory mechanism (aside from its usefulness to the individual) is a device for protecting the community from reactions that, however favorable originally to the individual, are antisocial. Children at birth have the inhibitors undeveloped, but they have a marvelous capacity for acquiring them in some or all forms. Many a person, however, unfortunately for himself and society, is incapable of acquiring the full complement of them; he tends constantly or period- ically, throughout life and despite the best training, to react directly to the stimulus that falls upon him, antisocial though the reaction may be. Such a person may have perfect “society manners” and be faithful in conjugal relations but on occasion will take from shops articles for which she has no need; or another is regarded as a valuable member of his community, a leading member of the bar and a pillar of the church, but about once a year consumes a nearly lethal quantity of alcoholic drinks; or another is an agreeable, generous, affectionate young fellow who, about once a month, secretly sets fire to buildings in order to feed an irresistible love of the excitement produced by the flames; or a young girl who does well at school starts out from a comfortable home ostensibly to go to Sunday School, but makes it a practise of spending the afternoon in the rooms of some marines; or a lad of refined home, beloved of his parents and loving them, slips out of doors instead of going to bed at night and sleeps in entry ways or wanders out into the country and spends the night in a barn. These are examples, among hundreds that could be cited, of a lack of specific inhibitions. The stimulus can not be shunted off; it must lead to the specific response. Just as the amceba throws out its pseudopods along the path of the incident ray and so moves from the source of light; as the moth flies towards the candle; as the carrion fly is directed in its movements by the scent wafted to it from afar, so such persons perform their unsocial acts as part of their necessary reactions. In another set of cases every reaction to a stimulus is of a socially desirable sort. All desires for the property of others, all inclinations to avenge insult by violence, all tastes and appetites, including the sex instinct, are readily inhibited—are under perfect control. And why are they under control? Because, first, the person who has the inhibit- ors came from a fertilized egg that carried the determiners for them; and, secondly, was surrounded by influences that were favorable to their development. In what sense can these people be held to be equal before the law with those considered in the preceding paragraph? Even in numerous elements of mood and behavior the influence of the hereditary make-up is striking. One person is prevailingly elated, jovial, irrepressible; another quiet, depressed, melancholic; another, still, alternates in these moods and when elated he believes he can do 36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY anything, but when depressed a sense of helplessness overpowers him. Again, one person is original and independent while another is always imitative. Here is a famous lecturer who has quelled mobs with his eloquence but who is prevailingly diffident; while there is a woman who has lived always in the backwoods and is as forward as a Canada Jay. Sincerity or insincerity, generosity or stinginess, gregariousness or seclusiveness, truthfulness or untruthfulness, are all qualities whose presence or absence is determined largely by the factor of heredity. The way a person reacts to a given stimulation is, thus, determined by the germinal determinants that have fallen to his lot and the training and experience that have favored or repressed the complete development and fruition of such determiners. The self-control which he realizes he is exercising at any moment is a part of his involuntary reaction. And the individual can no more alter his reaction than he can pull himself up by his boot-straps. How opposed is the conclusion, to which we seem logically forced, to the theory of organized society as carried out in its laws and in its treatment of persons. Here are two men, one whose reactions are all social; the other whose reactions are prevailingly antisocial. The first we praise, we heap with honors, we supply with the good things of life. The other we condemn, we hold him culpable, we confine him to a cell seven feet by four with little air and less daylight, and we feed him with the poorest food. We are rewarding the one and “ punishing” the other. Yet each has turned out the necessary product of his own organism under the conditions in which it has developed. Neither exercised any selection of the elementary constitution of his organism, which was decided at the time the two germ cells united; neither had any control over the conditions of early development of the determiners, over his early education and the development of the germs, if any, of inhibitions. If the reactions of the organism are socially “ good,” for- tunate that person; if he “ elects ” to study hard and prolong his educa- tion he does so because of a liking or ambition for which he is in no way responsible. Society does well to care for the good organism, to preserve it from overwork, from accident, from corroding influences. If, on the other hand, the reactions of the organism are socially “bad,” unfortunate that person; if he “selects” bad companions and runs away from school, his reaction is in such case a necessary consequence of his make up. Society does well to restrict the product of the bad organism, protect society from it, or, if it seems best, to send it to the scrap heap. No doubt there are persons who are trainable, but have not had their inhibitions cultivated. It is sometimes possible to develop these dormant germs even relatively late in life. The infliction of pain is occasionally of educative value even in youth at the age of puberty. In other words punishment for crime may have, in some cases, a deter- HEREDITY 37 rent effect. But to punish the organism for an anti-social or “bad” reaction just because it is “bad” and in proportion to its badness (as we habitually do in the courts) is just as reasonable as the act of the little child who flogs his broken hobby horse because it no longer goes. When a crime is committed society’s first query is: Who is culpable? Let us find him and he shall be punished. The police officer bribed the gunman to slay the Jew. Who is culpable? The gunman? He reacted to the bribe in a fashion that was predetermined from his make-up and training. In his sordid way the policeman knew whom he could bribe. We can not blame the gunman any more than we blame the tiger. The police officer, then? No, he reacted to the stimulus of greed and fear that was predetermined from his make-up and training; the bear at bay would do the same. The responsibility goes back to society that permits the combinations to be made that react in this fashion and after such combinations are made fails to protect itself against their reactions. But, if these offenders are not culpable may they not be freed? By no means. These organisms are, as their product proves, bad; send them to the scrap heap. In general, if the trespasser has been apprehended, consider both the stimulus and the reaction. If it appears probable that there are undeveloped inhibitors the state should supply the training that may develop them. If not, the person should be permanently segregated from society, while his life should be made as happy and useful as possible; or else he should be entirely cut off. Especially should he not be permitted to reproduce his defects. A word as to the rewards that society gives to those who are its effective and good members. Wages, salaries, profits, honors are such rewards. Because I am only half as good to society as another I get only half the reward. May I therefore complain? No, society is justi- fied in making distinctions in its rewards. But I have no claim on a reward for attaining which I have done nothing except what I could not help doing; that I am good in any degree is no virtue of mine. Yet, from another point of view, the organism that is I has a virtue in so far as it reacts socially, and it may well call society’s attention to the importance to society of its output and, in that measure, of the impor- tance to society that it should be adequately supported. The man who invented a machine for making horseshoe nails made a fortune out of it, but he had no claim to that fortune; his germ-plasm had the deter- miners for inventiveness—his father also made machinery and was even interested in horseshoe nails. Society should certainly see that so good an inventor is properly supported. Indeed, society should see that the prize of special reward is held up before those who need its stimulus; but society may well fix a limit to such special rewards and not permit profits beyond such a limit. The successful lawyer and physician have no absolute claim to their large fees. Society in general recognizes the 38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY value of their reactions and wants to see the reacting organism ade- quately sustained. That boldness, swiftness, certainty of manipulation and that precise knowledge which belong to the great surgeon are not due to himself, but were, in their elements, antecedent to him. He could not help his valuable innate qualities, his knowledge is largely a heritage of the past, his education has been possible because of his educability and because of preexisting knowledge. He can not base his claim for a large fee on any virtue for which he is responsible; but only on the ground that society should adequately sustain his obviously “good” organism. Of the question, in what that adequacy consists, society must be the final arbiter. Thus the recognition of the part that heredity plays in determining human behavior leads us to see more clearly how secondary the indi- vidual is to society, leads us to avoid placing “ blame” on the bad and - fulsome praise on the good, leads us to recognize the true worth and the real limitations of education, religion and other good influences, and leads us to conclude that the greatest advance that humanity can make is to secure an increasing proportion of fit marriages producing the largest number of effective, socially good offspring to carry on the world’s work. So much J wrote last December and sent to the editor; but shortly after there appeared in Science (January 10) the address by Professor Edwin G. Conklin on “ Heredity and Responsibility ” and the editor suggested that, since Conklin’s views and mine were not wholly in accord, that I should discuss our points of difference. Immersion in other work has caused a delay of four or five months. For the most part Conklin and I are fundamentally in agreement. Certainly no farmer believes that the yield of his crop is predetermined in the seed he plants; nor are reactions controlled solely by one’s germ- inal determiners. The most able artist needs training; but training is vain if there be no capacity whose development is to be cultivated. The importance of training, for the trainable, no one ranks higher than I. Thus I agree heartily with Conklin’s statement: The factors which determine behavior are not merely the present stimulus and the hereditary constitution, but also the experiences through which the organism has passed and the habits it has formed. Only I would add: The effect of the experiences and the capacity for forming habits are, to a degree, determined by the hereditary constitu- tion; just as my bantam chicks develop into bantam hens no matter how well I feed them. But in his discussion of responsibility I am able to detect a differ- ence of opinion between my way of looking at things and Conklin’s. When he says it is the duty of society to produce proper environmental HEREDITY 39 stimuli for the child I agree completely but when he states that we have half-used talents that we may greatly improve, I feel like adding “ if only the proper stimulus is afforded ” (such as Dr. Pepper afforded Dr. Conklin when Dr. Pepper reminded him that he could do what he had to do). But in the last two paragraphs of his address Dr. Conklin’s views diverge more widely from mine, and I confess I can not follow him. We are agreed that through bad environment or culture potential inhi- bitions may fail of development; but I can not see how a man is respon- sible for the consequences of this bad culture of inhibitions any more © than he is for not knowing how to read if he has never been taught. And my reaction to his inquiry: “Is it not a fact that belief in our responsibility energizes our lives and gives vigor to our mental and moral fiber ” would be a denial. The moral fiber of my dog leaves little to be desired, and there is much in the devotion of many an untaught denizen of Central Africa that can not be matched in the descendant of any Puritan; yet it is fair to doubt if their actions are energized by a “belief in their responsibility.” I do not think that “shifting all responsibility from men to their heredity or to that part of their environ- ment which is beyond their control helps to make them irresponsible ” or alters to any appreciable degree their behavior; the Puritan will be a Puritan still; the wayward girl will be wayward still. My view is that a person really can not react otherwise than he does under the circum- _ stances in which he finds himself placed; a person, therefore, who accepts the theory that he is not “ responsible” can not fail to continue to react in the same old way; except in so far as the idea may cause him (if he reacts that way) to put himself in the way of getting his environ- ment improved. If I am not (but others are) responsible for my con- duct then I must seek good intellectual and moral influences. And if my neighbor is not responsible for his conduct, but I with others am, why then I must bestir myself to help train him and his children. Man has become in truth his brother’s keeper. As the farmer cultivates his crops and rejoices to see them grow, so every man of us lends his service to the culture of his fellow men. But as the corn stalk is powerless in and of itself to add one kernel to its ear, as the spaniel can not train himself to become in any degree a terrier, so I can not find any mechan- ism in man by virtue of which he can react to a given stimulus in a way opposed to that indicated by his inherent traits and functions, including the culture that they have experienced during their development. 40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER By Proressork FRANK ANGELL LELAND STANFORD UNIVERSITY OMEWHERE Huxley says that certain men are counted great be- cause they represent the actuality of their own age and mirror it as it is, Such a one was Voltaire, of whom it was said that he expressed everybody’s thoughts better than anybody. But there are other men who are great because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. In both of these respects Gustav Theodor Fechner was one of the greatest men of his age and perhaps, as not a few psychologists feel, one of the greatest in the history of science. But in reflecting the tendencies of his age Fechner’s influence was less like that of a mirror than of a many-sided prism which bends and teflects light in all directions, sending it out tinged by the action of the medium through which it has passed. There are few divisions of the domain cultivated by natural science in the first half of the nine- _ teenth century over which Fechner did not pass, and there are few on which he did not leave the imprint of his originality. In the second edition of the “ Elements of Psychophysics,” a work in which Fechner laid the foundations and built somewhat of the superstructure of the present science of psychology, the editor, Wundt of Leipzig, has ap- pended a list of Fechner’s published writings. Excluding editions other than the first, and including translations of physical and chemical works which with Fechner usually meant critical revisions, the list com- prises 124 titles, and a classification of these under the headings of nonsensical, humorous, literary, chemical, physical, psychological, esthetic, statistical, physiological, encyclopedic, logical and philosoph- ical, would perhaps more than anything else give a representative idea of Fechner’s almost unparalleled many-sidedness. His first published works were an inverted reflection of his univer- sity career as a student of medicine. The condition of medical study in the first quarter of the nineteenth century may be inferred from Fechner’s objections to entering a profession in which he had taken his degree; although qualified by the examination to practise medicine, he remarks: I could neither open a blood vessel, apply a bandage nor perform the simplest obstetrical operation. GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER 41 Accordingly, the first use he makes of his medical knowledge is to satirize, in the main, with kindly humor, the medical disciplines, espe- cially the materia medica, of his own day. For the medicine of that time was still in the bonds of authority, it still harked back to Galen and Hippocrates, though, as Fechner remarked, it had become what its adherents called so “rational” in its methods, that had Hippocrates himself come up for a medical degree, he would have “fallen through” as not knowing Greek and as being unacquainted with the “ Hippo- cratic method.” These first publications of Fechner appeared under the pseudonym of Dr. Mises—a nom de plume which he used for many years in con- nection with what he perhaps thought were the Fliegende Blatter of his scientific and literary activity. But in whatever he published— literary criticism, riddle books, psychological investigations or philo- sophical treatises—Dr. Mises is always a co-worker. In his last con- troversial writing, “On the Principles of Psychological Measurement and Weber’s Law,” a subject with about as much affinity for the hu- morous as a table of logarithms, it is Dr. Mises who begins the article with a quotation from Wieland: Noch einmal sattelt mir den Hippogryphen Ihr Musen Zum Ritt ins alte romantische Land, and so he goes on to say, I once more saddle—and probably with my 86 years, it is for the last time —my war-horse for a ride into the romance land of Psychophysics. It was indeed his last ride, for that volume of Wundt’s “ Philo- sophie Studies,” which contains this article, also contains the funeral oration which Wundt delivered over Fechner’s bier on the twenty- seventh of November, 1887. But it is in the philosophical writings especially that it is at times not easy to distinguish between Dr. Mises and Fechner the philosopher, and it is the infusion of something dangerously akin to humor in the unconventional treatment of philosophic questions no less than a curious tendency towards a practical mysticism which made the cut and dried philosophers of Fechner’s day shake their heads doubtfully at this philosophy which moreover was attached to no school and sprang from no accredited system. It is perhaps not to be gainsaid that the fanciful Naturphilosophie of the early part of the nineteenth century for many years tinged faintly Fechner’s speculative views, but it was too arbitrary in its methods and too vague in its conclusions to radically affect or infect a mind so incredibly ready as was Fechner’s to submit its problems to the test of experiment. At any rate we find that in 1824 Fechner had undertaken the first of those translations of French physical and chem- ical text-books which busied him not a little in this period of his career. 42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The work translated was Biot’s “ Traité de Physique,” and the budding scientist sagely questions If the Oken-Schelling Philosophy could have shown anything of that fine scientific correlation of optical phenomena which Biot presented with so much clearness. What were the requirements for a lectureship in physics at Leipzig in the year of grace 1824, the writer can not say, but in that year, aged 23, Fechner began lecturing on that subject, his published work up to that time consisting of two essays by Dr. Mises, a cram-book of physiol- ogy and a text-book of logic for school use. But whatever Fechner’s qualifications when he took the lectureship, he speedily became a skill- ful experimentalist and investigator. It was a time when the scat- tered observations in electricity and magnetism were beginning to be bound up into connected theory. In 1824 Oersted discovered the at- traction of the galvanic current for the magnet; it was in this decade that Faraday was making his classical researches on the action of in- duced electric currents and that Ohm announced the famous law of electric force which bears his name. Into this broad and rapid scien- tific movement Fechner threw himself with all his tireless zeal, and ex- cluding his translations of French chemical and physical works, pub- lished in the period between 1828 and 1848 no less than 21 investiga- tions on electricity and magnetism, devoted mostly to testing the laws and theories of the electric current, especially the fundamental facts underlying the great law of Ohm. The generous equipment of ingeni- ous apparatus, which we are wont to find in German laboratories, was wanting in Fechner’s day, so that he had in these investigations to patch out his equipment at his own expense and often with home-made devices, but “despite these drawbacks,” says his biographer, Kurd Lassowitz, himself a physicist, “he succeeded,” through skillful and careful arrangements of his measurements, together with his tireless industry, in obtaining results of surprising accuracy, and Wundt testi- fies that, even to-day, Fechner’s measurements of the galvanic battery may be safely commended to any one looking for a model of logical method in the domain of natural science. But beside the electrical investigations, his activity in other kinds of work was unceasing; a bulky Haus Lexikon in 8 volumes, of which he wrote fully a third, a pharmaceutical journal, of which he was at once editor and chief contributor, so-called translations of which he was as much author as translator, text-books in physics and chemistry—his literary and scientific output in this period alone would have insured him no small amount of space in any future Haus or Konversations- Lexikon of his fatherland. But the load was too heavy for him to carry, and the straw, or rather bale, which finally broke him down was the bulky Hauslexikon. In GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER 43 1840 after premonitory symptoms of an overstrained nervous system, a three years’ illness set in of so depressing, perhaps so desperate a character, that few could have weathered it and retained their reason. His illness was partly physical, a distaste for food, and partly men- tal, a distaste for work—the more alarming symptom in a man of Fech- ner’s natural activity—together with an inability to control the course of his ideas or even to distinguish between the real and the imaginary. Added to these evils there developed such a supersensitiveness of the eyes that for almost three years Fechner had to live in darkness. With- out means and without earning power, tortured by physical pain, sit- ting in darkness, anticipating total blindness and perhaps insanity, it is small wonder that his thoughts turned again and again to suicide as the only source of escape from his woes. That Fechner did not put an end to his life is perhaps due to certain traits which were his, by right of inheritance from his father—an almost ideal representative of the high- minded, conscientious German village pastor—to wit, a keen sense of duty and a tough energy of will which set themselves against the un- bridled flight of illusionary ideas. He wrote: For almost a year I struggled the greater part of each day to banish these ideas from my thoughts, and while this exercise served as a distraction, it was of the most painful nature that it was possible to conceive. Few could have passed through an ordeal like this and have re- tained reason, and no one unchanged in his views of what makes life worth living ; and so, when Fechner took up academic work again it was not with lectures on molar and molecular forces but with discourses on subjects of ethics, of psychophysics and of esthetics ; “ from the physicist had come forth the philosopher.” But while his lectures were compara- tively few in number and given seemingly as a quid pro quo for the 850 Thalers of salary allowed him yearly by the government during his ill- ness, there was no falling off in his pristine zeal in speculation or indus- try in investigation. Among Fechner’s earliest writings, for which he made Dr. Mises Sponsor, was a satire on the methods of reasoning of the natural phi- losophy of his day, entitled “The Comparative Anatomy of the An- gels.” Applying, for example, the much-used doctrine of continuity, he finds that the angels, as the highest and most perfect of created beings, can have no legs, for, “beginning with the lowest animals, we see the scolopenders have, God knows how many legs”; next above them come the butterflies and beetles with six; mammals have four; birds, which re- semble angels in their free movement through space, together with hu- man beings, who, by their own account are half animal, half angel, have but two. At each step towards angelism two legs disappear, with the step from man upwards all legs must have gone; ergo, angels have no legs. But this also follows a priori: for as the most perfect of created 44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY beings, angels have the most perfect shape, which is acknowledged to be the sphere with its perfect legless symmetry. Again passing along in ascending order the series of sense organs of human beings, we go from crude mechanical touch and pressure up through taste, smell and sight, to the refinement of vision which is capable of reaction at meas- ureless distances. From this and many other chains of ingenious rea- soning Dr. Mises concluded that the eye is the propotype of the angel in form and function, and by other reasoning, equally ingenious, he finds that the planets are conscious beings, to wit, angels. In the “Zend Avesta,” published in Fechner’s fiftieth year, the jest of Dr. Misses has become a matter of serious earnest. The earth is a higher being, possessed of higher consciousness, the vehicle itself of human consciousness and the connecting link between man and God. Simi- larly the remaining planets are conscious beings, while, at the other end of the scale of existence, the planets also have consciousness. Now looking at such utterances, as they stand by themselves, one would naturally suppose physicist had disappeared in the mystic, and that the laboratory had given place to the oracle. But if this was the madness of mysticism, there still remained signs that the old Fechner- ian spirit was still alive, for in the succeeding year we find him en- gaged in counting the steps of men and women passing by his house to serve as material for a statistical study on the ratio of the masculine to the feminine steps, published by the Saxon Academy of Sciences. As a matter of fact the coming of the “Zend Avesta” had been foreshadowed sometime before Fechner’s illness in a little work entitled, “ Das Biich- lein des Lebens nach dem Tode,” dedicated to the daughters of a dear friend who had passed away. The little book is rather a message of comfort than a didactic sermon, but in the doctrine that the soul after death becomes diffused into the general consciousness of nature we have the seed that later developed into the remarkable system of Fechner’s metaphysics. But if consciousness is a general attribute of nature it must be shared by plants, and so we find that the first work written by Fechner after his illness was the “Nana or The Conscious Life of Plants,” necessary prolegomena to the “Zend Avesta.” When the greater part of Thoreau’s Week on the “Concord and Merrimac Rivers” had been turned over to him by the publishers as a waste product, Thoreau is re- ported to have said he had a library of about a thousand volumes, over 900 of which he had written himself. Almost a like fate awaited Fech- ner’s publications of this period and for reasons that are obvious; the physicists could but shake their heads at a colleague who had given up his exact investigations in order to urge the phantastic thesis of plant consciousness and the professional philosophers of that time were unable to reconcile the author of the Sa eie a with the seer of the “ Zen- davesta.” GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER 45 But it was perhaps less the difference in value that he placed on the subjects of metaphysical speculation, than the different way in which he approached them that separates Fechner from the idealist of the early nineteenth century. Believing no less absolutely than Hegel, that the reality of the world must accord with what is reasonable, he saw clearly that this reality could not be deduced by dialectics, but that it must be _ worked out as one works out final questions in physics, namely, by gen- eralization and by analogy. In other words the metaphysics of Fechner was an inductive metaphysics or “ Metaphysik von Unten,” as he en- joyed terming it, and as a philosophy of this kind must change with progress in positive science, it becomes a scientific philosophy, so that in this respect Fechner is the precursor of Lotze and Wundt. But it was chiefly with the weapon of analogy that Fechner attacked the problem of the ultimate nature of the cosmic world, and if in the history of philos- ophy, this logical weapon had ever before been used with such subtlety, such precision and with such bewildering variety of application the writer is unaware of it. The profusion of arguments in behalf of the thesis that plants have mental processes that differ in degree but not in kind from that of animals is overpowering and in many points unassailable, save by a fine old crusted prejudice against the doctrine in general, and whoever takes up the “Zend Avesta” with the expectation of finding there a mystic blend of “ confusion, illusion and illation,” will be speed- ily undeceived by the opening chapters which bear a closer resemblance to Newton’s “ Principia” than to the book of Revelations. He asks, for example, that the scientific notion of force be extended from inorganic to organic matter, from physics to biology. For force in the scientific sense is not an immanent power residing in bodies by means of which they pull or push one another, but it is a simple phe- nomenon of motion, and is measured by rate of change of motion. In- stead of saying “ Here is a force at work” one should rather say “ Here is a law of nature.” This applies no less to growth of the cell than to atomic attraction and repulsion; to explain organic motion by an in- nate power of adaptation is logically as wrong as to attribute to the sun an innate gravitative force. In the case of combustion we have only to consider the direct interaction of the particles of the bodies pres- ent, but in organic bodies we have an extraordinary close and compli- cated combination of parts into a unity, so that the necessary change of the separate parts can only be determined with relation to the entire system. The writer gives this not in any way as the beginning of an expla- nation of Fechner’s metaphysics which would lead one far beyond the scope and limits on this paper, but merely as an illustration of the kind of argument to be met with in the “Zend Avesta,” and to indicate how far removed in its methods was the “ Philosophie von Unten” from the 46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY systematic philosophy of the time, even as its souree—the deeply reli- gious turn of Fechner’s nature had little place among the conventional philosophizing motives. Incidentally it may be said that the publication of Fechner of a little volume of riddles in rhythm for children between the appearance of the “Zend Avesta” and the work on the plant soul may throw some - light on the failure of the professorial absolute idealist to understand the nature of the versatile founder of the “ Philosophie von Unten.” But the year 1848 was a very unfavorable one in Germany for the reception of a new philosophy, particularly for a philosophy to which it was so tempting to attach the tag of mysticism. The German folk, wearied with the pretensions and dialectics of the rationalistic philos- ophers, aroused by vital questions of constitutional government and interested in the vigorous growth of natural science, had no time to waste on such questions as the mentality of plants and planets; the shallow materialism of Vogt and Biichner seemed to fall in easily with current theories of physical science; as a verbal proposition it seemed much easier to understand the statement that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile, than to work out Fechner’s involved, if keen, reason in regard to the seat of the soul. And so the “Zend Avesta” rested quietly with the “Nana” on the book shelves of the publishers. But in no wise discouraged, Fechner once more attacked the question of the parallelism of soul and body as a special problem “von unten a and in 1859 published the famous treatise on psychophysics. The motive for this work was to determine, if possible, exact rela- tions existing between the mental acts, the “psyche,” and the accom- panying physical process, or, in short, to determine quantitative rela- tions existing between mind and body. Considering the general disbe- © lief in regard to the possibility of such determinations, which had been summed up by Kant in the dictum that psychology could never be- come a science because it could never be treated mathematically, Fech- ner’s plan might reasonably be termed bold. But when one thinks of the practical difficulties of the undertaking that Fechner had. to create new scientific concepts and name them, that he had to create and de- velop totally new methods of investigation and that he had to invent new apparatus or apply old to totally new uses, it might seem as if Fechner had passed from the region of the improbable to that of the impossible. The occasion for the psychophysics was a simple investigation on our discriminative sensibility for lines and weights, made by the physi- ologist E. H. Weber, one of the “seven sages of Gottingen.” Weber simply states that we have the power to distinguish between the lengths of two lines which are to each other as 39 to 40 and between weights with a ratio of 20 to 30. Moreover, these ratios are general, holding for centi- GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER 47 meters or inches, and for pounds or ounces. Taking up these hints, Fechner ransacked the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth to see if this general relation which, with characteristic modesty, he called Weber’s law, did not hold true for all kinds of impressions, for sounds, for colors, lights, temperature, short intervals of time; he even ques- tioned if it did not hold for our feelings ; in short, if it was not a funda- mental law of human activity. With characteristic thoroughness he launched forth into new seas of experimentation. He tells us: For several years I considered it a daily task to experiment about an hour for the purpose of testing Weber’s Law and for elaborating new methods of research. This daily task consisted in “hefting” and comparing pairs of small weights, in analyzing out the multifarious factors involved in judgments of likeness or difference and in noting the results. In so far as Weber’s law is concerned it can not be said that the outcome of this vast accumulation of data is decisive, but so far as regards the working out of psychophysical methods of measurement, the experimen- tation was extraordinarily fertile. For the development of the Fech- nerian methods meant that Fechner had founded a new science and reared somewhat of its superstructure in a domain whose only uniform- ity seemed boundless variability, and that later psychology has failed to find either the universality or the exactness in Weber’s law which Fech- ner hoped to show is assuredly a matter of small importance in com- parison with the birth of a quantitative psychology. In the latter part of the treatise Fechner passes over to discuss what he calls “ Inner Psychophysics,” and here we strike a mine of acute and subtle psychological observations on sleep and dreams, on hallucina- tion and illusions, on memory and after-images from which most writers of text-books and no small number of investigators up to the present day have “lifted” no small amount of ore. Taken as a whole, from the first remarkable chapter, remarkable at that day, on the conservation of force, through the mathematical treatment of methods of “mental measurement” up to the final discussion of psychophysical motion, the “ Psychophysik” is a work which in the library of science one need not fear to place on the same shelf with the “ Origin of Species.” If the importance of a work is to be measured by the number and repute of its critics, Fechner had no longer any cause for feeling that his theories were of no significance to the learned world, for among the cloud of witnesses who rose up to testify against the “ Psychophysik” we find the names of v. Helmholtz, Hering and Mach, and later Wundt and G. H. Miiller of Gottingen. Indeed so acute and penetrating was the criticism of Miiller, that Fechner was obliged to defend himself in a new work entitled “Revision of the Main Points of Psychophysics.” Later on he wrote a sort of omnibus reply to all his critics and up to the 48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY very year of his death he carried on the psychophysical war with un- abated vigor. His last extensive: article, written in his eighty-sixth year, was on “ Weber’s Law,” and Wundt’s judgment on it is that it was the clearest and most perfect presentation of the subject which Fechner had given in the course of his forty years work in psychophysics. The seeming hopelessness of psychology as an exact science lies in the perplexing multiplicity of the variable factors perturbing every at- tempt to determine facts and laws—errors of memory, errors of obser- vation, errors of contrast and expectation, the brood of errors hatched by the changing rhythms of attention—and it was to devise ways of sifting out these errors that Fechner for years devoted his tireless ingenu- ity. But a satisfactory treatment of such conditions means the accumu- lation of large numbers of observations, which in turn calls for statis- tical handling of the materials gathered. Here again Fechner’s genius found a fresh field to cultivate, for in endeavoring to see if some gen- eral principles were not at work in shaping what may be broadly called esthetic proportions, such as those of picture frames, visiting cards, decorative crosses and the like, he found that these classes of objects varied in their dimensions like the variations in the sizes of races of men, species of animals, like variations in temperature and rainfall and countless other objects in art and nature termed by Fechner “ Collec- tive Objects,” “ Collective Gegenstainde.” Mathematical analysis of the data in this field resulted in the formulation of a branch of statistics or applied mathematics which has become exceedingly useful in working out biological problems. Nor did he rest here; keenly interested in art (he contributed five articles to the cause célébre of the genuineness of the Holbein Madonna, Dresden vs. Darmstadt), he followed up his in- vestigation on simple esthetic proportions with a general investigation on esthetic laws carried out in the spirit of the psychophysics “von unten auf” by observation and by experiment. And here be it said that if there is any trait of Fechner which amazes a student of his work more than aught else, it is his incredible ingenuity in applying experi- mentation to problems where no one dreamed that experiment could be applied. Well! “Kurz und gut.” In his seventy-first year he pub- lished the “ Vorschule der Aesthetik” in two volumes and therewith created the science of experimental esthetics—the third and last dis- tinctive product of his creative genius. His last published work was a clever and witty critique of the Mendel Fountain in Leipzig. What has so far been set down here got itself delivered substantially as it stands, some eleven years ago, on the occasion of the centennial of Fechner’s birth. Since that time the tide of Fechner’s fame has swollen until it has overflowed into the German popular magazines. The “Zend Avesta” has passed into the third edition, the soul-question GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER 49 has been born again with no less than Friedric Paulsen as accoucheur. Ebbinghaus has dedicated to Fechner’s memory his classical treatise on psychology, and Mobius, the neurologist of Leipzig, has commemorated him in a volume of medical essays. Kiilpe, the philosopher and psy- chologist of Bonn, has been unwearied in critical appreciation of Fech- ner’s achievements, and William James, who twenty-five years ago gave his official opinion that the “ proper psychological outcome of Fechner’s work was “just nothing,” has made the amende honorable in a gener- ously sympathetic essay in the “ Pluralistic Universe.” In glancing over the earlier pages of the present paper, the writer had the feeling that it resembled more a card catalogue of Fechner’s publications than an ap- preciation of his work and works. If so, the fault les somewhat in the faceted many-sidedness of Fechner’s activities, as well as in the writer’s deficiencies in power of interpretation. Perhaps the perspective of time now reaches far enough for us to view the outline of what he wrought in fairly true proportions. If so, one may say in brief that, able and ingenious physicist as he was it is doubtful if he could ever have risen to the stature of a Faraday; his philosophy will perhaps attract mainly those rare minds who, while working officially by the pale cold light of the intellect, are still prone to follow the promptings of the spirit into regions lying beyond the pale of syllogistic reasoning. His more solid and probably lasting achievements belong to the latter half of his life, to the period of the “ Psychophysics” and the “ Aesthetics.” As for the daily life itself, it was outwardly singularly uneventful even for a German “Gelehrter.” He rarely left Leipzig, but, year in and year out, conscientiously fulfilled within its walls the duties of a public-spirited citizen. And the city responded by awarding him in his middle age an honorary citizenship, and at his death, with rare municipal good taste, erected a modest bust to his memory at the very turn of one of the winding walks in the Rosenthal where he had passed many a sunny afternoon of the long German summer days, discoursing with his friends on things that are little dreamed of by many a school philosopher. In accord with his scanty means was his dwelling in the Dresdener Strasse, fittingly called a nest; his study was furnished with a chair, a table, a stove and some bookshelves; a catalogue of the library resting on the shelves would usually indicate a stack of manuscript and a table of logarithms: sonst Nichts. Here there passed quietly away on the nineteenth day of November, 1887, almost exactly twenty-five years ago, the philosopher, the art critic, the humorist, the mathematician, the friend of children, the creative genius in science, Gustav Theodor Fechner. Verily, as Wundt said, in the funeral oration, “we shall not look upon his like again.” VOL, LXXXII.—4. 50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE PHYSICAL LIFE By JAMES FREDERICK ROGERS, M.D. NEW HAVEN NORMAL SCHOOL OF GYMNASTICS A bias notion is common and deeply rooted that men of large achieve- ment, especially in letters or art, were physically inferior if not downright sickly and infirm. If one questions this idea, he is informed at once that Stevenson was far from well or vigorous, that Heine lived in a “ mattress grave,” that Chopin died of consumption at an early age, and that Darwin was hardly better than an invalid for much of his life. Even great military minds have found lodgment in miserable shacks of bodies, and Macaulay tells us that, at the battle of Landen, probably the feeblest persons present were the “hunchback” duke of Luxemburg and “that asthmatic skeleton,” the Prince of Orange. The evidence is very striking and also appealing, for while the sickly mediocre are not especially interesting to any one, the fine quali- ties of the sickly great are magnified, through our sympathy, by the infirmities which beset their paths. The genius displayed by such is often given more credit on this account than it in cold blood deserves. For example, Stevenson, though a writer of delightful things, does not seem by any means certain of maintaining the high place in literature awarded by the admirers of his personality. Heine, brilliant as he was, does not rank with Goethe; and Chopin, though unique in his way, is master in a comparatively narrow field. We should sadly miss his ex- quisite tone arabesques, but we never expect from him the sublimities of Beethoven or Brahms. Of the notables named above, it might be remembered that one, Heine, did not complain of a serious illness until he was thirty-nine and that his paralysis was not confirmed until he was forty-seven; that Darwin also was in good health until he had returned from the voyage of the Beagle and was fairly launched in his life work; and that the leaders at the battle of Landen, while frail and sickly, were yet able to knock about on many fields of battle. Even of Stevenson it is said by Mr. Balfour that, “considering his fragility, his muscular strength was considerable and his constitution clearly had great powers of re- sistance.” But for his Bohemian ways and his utter disregard of the laws of bodily well-being, he might have had a much greater degree of health and comfort. The examples given of great men who were invalids are not always so well chosen, and there is often a tendency to exaggerate the infirmi- INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE 51 ties of those named. For instance, Storrs in his life of St. Bernard in- forms us that the Hussite warrior Zizka was “half blind from his youth,” and achieved his greatest victories after complete blindness came upon him. The truth is, Zizka had the use of but one eye in his earlier life, but as that, so far as we know, was a good one, he was a very long way from being half blind. He did win his greatest battles when totally blind, in his last three years, but he was necessarily surrounded, as every general must be, with faithful and sharp eyes in the heads of his lieutenants. -Storr’s other infirm hero is Doge Dandola, whom he describes as “blind and bearing the weight of almost a hundred winters when he stormed Constantinople.” The Doge was eighty-four, which is some remove from a hundred years, and he was not blind at all. He was really an example of prolonged vigor. Granting that there are wide deviations from the rule, we would set against the popular notion its antithesis that the intellectual life—that genius, to use that ill-defined but expressive word—is never at war with physical health and strength, but that, on the contrary, as a rule, the greatest men in all fields of endeavor have been lusty persons, and rela- tively free from serious or prolonged illness, and, where not robust, have usually shown wonderful vitality and powers of endurance. Moreover, they have, we believe, been more careful than the ordinary man to pre- serve their health, and have often husbanded their energy as the average mortal would not think worth his while. Genius, of course, is no respecter of bodily tabernacles and takes up its tenancy in all manner of them, from the sickly and deformed to the most heroic and symmetrical, but its light will vary according to its conditions of bodily housing, as the light of a lamp will vary according as its wick is splashed at intervals with fuel of uncertain quality or is constantly bathed in pure oil. The mind of genius has its equally elab- orate complement of brain machinery through which it expresses itself, but that brain mechanism depends in turn upon the rest of the body which elaborates, furnishes and keeps pure its supply of energy-material in the blood. It stands to reason that the more well ordered the body, the more active and vigorous will be the organ of the mind, and that anything which depresses the proper functioning of the physiological machinery must impair in so much the product of that organ, both in kind and amount. As there is no line to be drawn between genius and ordinary mental activity, what is true of one physiologically applies as well to the other. It is quite true that accident or sickness often turns a man to a par- ticular calling. Dickens was always thankful for an early illness which gave him a strong inclination to reading. Had Sir Walter Scott not been in childhood confined to bed with his diseased ankle, he might never have found introduction to the realm of romance which he later 52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY revealed with such skill to the work-a-day world. It is not unlikely that he would have entered the army as did his son, and have furnished a mark for Napoleon’s cannon. In a profession where, until recently, its members have preached, even if they have not practised, the neglect and abuse of the body, one would expect to find many examples of the feeble and sickly who have risen to eminence, or who, in the course of an active, strenuous life, from their very attitude toward the body, have brought on ill health and weakness. Yet among the great religious leaders there have been many examples of fine bodily presence and especially of phenomenal energy and endurance. In an age of over-indulgence it is difficult to know just what the asceticism of the medieval monks amounted to, but even where, by their devotion to a mistaken ideal, the bodily machinery was un- doubtedly more or less damaged, they often showed that they pos- sessed a wonderful vitality and fund of nervous energy. Among religionists St. Bernard is described as being, in early life, a man of fine presence; in later years he is pictured as “most delicate,” without flesh. Those who knew his labors “ felt as if in him a lamb had been harnessed to pull a plow.” He was extremely ascetic, suicidally so, it would seem, as his friends had at one time to rescue him from himself and place him in the hands of a shepherd who taught him a few items of common sense. Nevertheless he is reputed to have surpassed robust men in his endurance, a trait readily attributed by his biographers to superior spirituality. Though strong enough for his monastic work, Bernard was undoubtedly physically unfit to lead the crusade which he preached, else he would not have refused the post. On the surface at least he does not appear to lend much support to our present thesis. According to his half-legendary history, Francis of Assisi was a dashing young man who was turned from a life of frivolity to the relig- ious life by a severe illness. There is no doubt but that St. Francis abused his body and lived the unsanitary life. His conscience must have smote him, for when he came to die at forty-five he begged pardon of “ Brother Ass, the body,” for having neglected him so shamefully. The fiery Savanarola did nothing by halves, and we are told that, like Bernard, he was so severe in his mortifications of the flesh that “his superiors were frequently obliged to curb his zeal.” There is no record of any sickness and notwithstanding his asceticism he must have been anything but weakly to the day of his martyrdom. Luther, as a monk, apparently damaged his health by the over- zealous mortification of the flesh. In his post-monkish days he per- haps went to the other extreme. He was apparently a very vigorous, active man until forty, when, doubtless from his too generous living, a troop of ailments settled upon him. In Erasmus we have another example of the scholar of the cloister. INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE 53 He was highly sensitive to physical influences. He could not bear the stoves of Germany, but required an open fire-place. He was hyper- sensitive to odors and delicate in his diet. He lived to be seventy despite attacks of gout and, as his days were crowded with work, he must have had a strong, though sensitive, constitution. Of modern preachers, Robert Hall was a sufferer for years from renal colic, though he possessed great vitality. Jonathan Edwards was frail and Channing was not robust, but there is a numerous company who loom large in bodily impressiveness and health, and who show us the possibilities of the religious genius lodged in a fitting temple. John Wesley “loved riding and walking, was an expert swimmer and enjoyed a game of tennis.” His journal has been called “ the most amazing record of human exertion ever penned by man.” “On horse- back he traveled more miles, spoke oftener and to more people than any man who ever lived.” “ Hight thousand miles was his annual record for many a long year, during each of which he seldom preached less frequently than five thousand times.” At eighty he writes, “I find no more pain or bodily infirmities than at five and twenty,” and he im- puted this in part “to my still traveling four or five thousand miles a year and to my constant preaching.” Chalmers had a “ great look” with his “ large head, large chest, his amplitude in every way ” and his “ erect, royal air.” He “had a frame of adamant, that bade defiance to the weather, and that actually exulted in the wildness of the blast ” as he hurried over the moors. Spurgeon’s body cast a shadow of no mean dimensions and he was in such vigor as to do an immense amount of work. Brooks was a man of great physique, who was so well that when taken with the grippe at fifty-five, he exhibited the impatience with sickness characteristic of one who has always been well by exclaiming, “ How strange it all is, this being sick!” Beecher is another example of health and bodily vigor and it is interesting to note that it was his great maxim to keep his body “in first-rate working order, for he considers health to be a Christian duty, and rightly deems it impossible for any man to do justice to his mental faculties without at the same time attending to his physical powers.” From Bernard to Beecher is a long interval of time, but a greater gap in ideas of the Christian life, and the last few examples prove that bodily abuse is not essential to spiritual power. Among artists Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo would hardly be denied first place, and a second, later trio, Titian, Rubens and Turner, would rank very high. Raphael died at thirty-seven. He was beautiful, with an almost delicate face, but there is no history of sick- ness or any bodily weakness. Just prior to his sudden death from plague he had entered into a contract for an arduous piece of work. Leonardo, “ painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mechanical engineer 54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY and natural philosopher,” was a person of splendid physique “ who out- stripped all the youth of the city in feats of strength and horseman- ship,” and who was “zealous in labor above all men, with a strength more than human.” Michelangelo was almost as ascetic in his habits as a monk and he labored with “furious” intensity, with chisel and brush, up to his seventieth year, when he still had energy left to plan and carry forward such great architectural works as St. Peter’s. Hven in his last year he is described as “ healthy above all things,” notwithstanding the storm and stress of adverse circumstances against which he had to contend throughout life. It was said of Titian that his death from plague came (at the age of ninety-nine) as a surprise to his friends, since he lived “a life so strong and resisting that it seemed able to withstand all the assaults of time.” Rubens lived sparingly and was devoted to horseback riding. Despite bodily care he suffered from attacks of gout, so common in that age. It was not, however, until in his fifty-seventh year, when his attacks became more severe, that he had to adopt the use of the mahl stick in painting, a utensil which few painters have sufficient nerve control to do without at any time. The fact that “not the remotest trace of approaching old age, not the slightest failing of mind or skill, can be detected even in his latest works” testifies that he had not declined up to his sixty-third year. Of Turner, the last of this sextette of artists, we know that his health was perfectly sound, that he walked his twenty miles or more a day with ease, often sketching as he walked. He could work fifteen hours at a stretch without weariness, and his digestion was so vigorous that all extremes of living were alike to him. He “ worked harder and produced more than any artist of whom we have any record.” As Hamerton said, “Man is an intelligence served by organs and few intelligences have been better or more regularly served than Turner. His nervous system was so sound that he could work anywhere and everywhere.” At the age of sixty-seven he had an illness, but it was not until seventy that we “are sure that he declined as an artist, ... when his health and with it, in a degree, his mind, failed suddenly.” Among musicians we have no trouble in selecting the greatest. All others stand on a lower plane than Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Those who mark the physical imperfections of men of genius will at once say that Bach was blind and Beethoven deaf. Bach did become blind at sixty-eight, after such severe use as perhaps no other eyes ever received, and Beethoven (strange fate) did become deaf, his affliction beginning at twenty-eight years. This terrible defect undoubtedly INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE 55 affected his general health materially, though his vigor seemed little impaired. Up to the time of his failing sight, in 1747, we have no record of any sickness of Bach, while his untiring energy, as shown in his vast amount of work, bears sufficient testimony to his great vitality. He was able to be, besides a marvelous maker of music, “a particularly excellent father (he had nineteen children), friend and citizen.” Of Beethoven it is sufficient to know that he was spoken of as the “image of strength,” as power personified—that there was concentrated in him “the pluck of twenty battalions.” He was a great walker, and no day in Vienna, however busy or stormy, passed without its consti- tutional, “a walk, or rather run, twice round the ramparts... or further into the environs.” Notwithstanding the constant effect of his deafness and the fact that digestive disturbances early began to keep him company, “his splendid constitution and extreme fondness for the open air counteracted his physical defects and even in his last illness ” “his constitution, powerful as that of a giant, blocked the gates against death for nearly three months” and during the struggle his fancy seemed to soar more vigorously than ever. Of the third of the great B’s, Brahms, burly, well-knit, muscular, the “very image of strength and vigor,” there is little to say beyond the fact that he was never sick. Widmann says “he displayed an absence of physical sensitiveness of which few could boast.” “ His constitution was thoroughly sound, the most strenuous mental exertion scarcely fatiguing him,” and he could “go soundly to sleep at any hour of the day he pleased.” Like Beethoven, Brahms was a lover of nature and a tireless walker. If we step down from the company of the greater to that of the lesser gods of music, Mozart, Weber and Chopin are presented by the advocates of the feebler life for genius. Chopin we have already men- tioned. Weber was weakly and tuberculous. With health and strength he might have equaled Beethoven. Mozart, though of inferior bodily presence, did a lifetime’s work before his early death from typhus fever. He was trained by his father to take care of himself and would probably have lived the allotted time but for the stress of want, and overwork for thankless and unremunerative patrons. Over against these few exceptions we could set quite a company of master musicians full of health and vigor. Handel and Haydn with their “continuous, sunny healthfulness.” Spohr, “of sound health and herculean frame,” his life filled with uninterrupted success and honors up to seventy years. Then there was Wagner, “the best tumbler and somersault-turner of the large Dresden school,” an adept at every form of bodily exercise, who “still performed boyish tricks (such as standing on his head) 56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY when nearing three score and ten.” Despite dyspepsia and a sus- ceptibility to erysipelas he always possessed “an unusual amount of physical energy.” Verdi is another example—the old-man-progressive produced his greatest works after he was seventy, his “ Otello” being first performed when he was eighty. The executive musician especially needs a good physical balance, for the strain upon his nervous system is very great. We find no invalids in the list of great singers. Liszt, Rubinstein and Paderewski were physically strong and robust, while Joachim and Ole Bull were men of long, healthful and vigorous life. A partial exception to the tule is met with in that strange personage Paganini, the severity of whose early training damaged an already frail constitution. He was extremely temperate and had a marvelous use of muscle and nerve in the weaving of his musical magic. He died at fifty-six. When it comes to the philosophers, among the ancients we must include Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. From what has come down to us we know that Socrates served as a hoplite, or heavy foot soldier, and that in more than one campaign he was conspicuous for both bravery and endurance. He was short, thick-necked and corpulent, although thoroughly schooled to temperance. He was evidently as finely robust physically as morally, until his untimely death at the age of sixty-six. Of Plato we are positive only that he lived to be seventy years of age. From his writings we know how greatly he appreciated bodily development and well-working. Of the details of Aristotle’s life we know little, but there is no evi- dence to signify that he was not always in at least fair health, and it would seem from the amount of his work that he must have been a man of great vitality. Philosophy does not seem to have agreed so well with the moderns, and it seems to have fitted better into inferior somatic conditions than a combination of brain and handiwork as in the artists and musicians. Hobbes was an enthusiastic tennis player until beyond seventy and wielded his pen vigorously after he was ninety. J.S. Mill was “ healthy and high spirited.” Comte, Leibnitz, and, after his youth, Descartes, were all in fair health and strength, but Locke, Spinoza and Kant could not boast such physique. Of the three, Spinoza alone was'short lived, Locke living to the age of seventy-two and Kant to that of eighty. Spinoza, always of delicate constitution, was early afflicted with pulmonary disease and suffered also from ague. He was extremely abstemious, which did not tend to improve his condition, but it was not until he was forty that he became a confirmed invalid. In Locke’s case prudent habits seem to have kept a delicate constitution in even balance of health up to the age of thirty-five, but from this time on, with all his care of himself, he was seriously handicapped by complicated and INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE |. 57 increasing infirmities, chief of which were “chronic consumption and asthma.” All this “ painfully impeded his schemes of work and occa- sionally induced states of mind altogether at variance with its otherwise robust character.” He was twenty years in writing his famous “ Essay on the Human Understanding” and it was done “by incoherent par- cels and after long intervals of neglect.” No man was ever more impressed with the value of health and vigor and his “Thoughts on Education ” begin with the bitter words, “ Our clay cottage is not to be neglected ”—for “he whose body is crazy and feeble will never be able to advance in it.” Immanuel Kant is a shining example of what can be done in econ- omizing the bodily forces, and of how much may be accomplished in the way of mental work by a frail body which is kept in a fair state of health. “ Possibly a more meager, arid, parched anatomy of a man has not appeared upon this earth.” “ His organization was so delicate that he was extremely sensitive to impressions from external objects, and Jachmann relates that a newspaper fresh from the press and still damp would give him a cold.” “His digestive organs were early deranged and gave him perpetual trouble.” Yet he said of himself that he was healthy, “ that is in my usual weak way.” If we can trust DeQuincy, “ Kant’s health was even exquisite.” That “weak way” interfered with his work and he exclaimed: “Think of it, friends! Sixty years old, constantly disturbed by indisposition in plans only half completed.” “He spoke of himself often under the figure of a gym- nastic artist, who had continued for nearly fourscore years to support himself upon the slack rope of life without once swerving to the right or to the left.” We owe to Kant’s clock-work regularity and temper- ance of living the product which his fine brain produced, and his vast influence upon the world. _ Herbert Spencer is another example of a philosopher who is put down as an invalid, and invalid he was for the greater part of his life after thirty-five. At thirteen he became homesick at school and started one morning at six for home; walked forty-eight miles the first day, forty-seven the second and twenty miles the third day, and in the whole time had very little to eat. It would seem that only a child of very remarkable vitality could have carried out such a program and sur- vived. As he himself says, “ It can scarcely be doubted that my system received a detrimental shock . . . although there was no manifest sign of mischief.” As a boy he excelled in running and was a good skater. At sixteen he speaks of himself as “strong, in good health, and of good stature,” but easily excited and kept awake. _ At twenty-one as a draughtsman he worked from eight in the morning to twelve at night and one day a week to three a.m. Keep- ing these hours, either with his routine or literary work, he found him- 58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY self at twenty-eight becoming sleepless. At thirty-five “the mis- chief had been done.” “His nervous system finally gave way.” A night of sound sleep became unknown to him, while distress in the head and dyspepsia kept him company the remaining days of his life. Still, it must be kept in mind that even at sixty he writes, “ My vigour is pretty well shown by the fact that I found myself running up stairs two steps at a time” and “it seems remarkable, considering my fre- quent bouts of dyspepsia and perpetual bad nights, I should have re- tained so much vitality.” It was only between sixty-two and sixty-nine that he could truly be called an invalid with a capacity of only a few lines of work per day. The work of science has often been carried on by men in not the best of health, nor of especial vigor. It has also so fascinated many of its disciples as to lead to bodily unbalancing from over-application to a sedentary calling. Galileo did an enormous amount of work, but his health was sometimes indifferent and he suffered from a number of illnesses. Darwin inherited a strong constitution and up to his voyage on the Beagle was “ well, and vigorous and passionately fond of out- door sport.” His chronic nervous weakness seems to have been brought on by the privations and over-exertions of the five years’ journey of exploration. By careful limitation of work and removal of unnecessary distractions, he lived to a good age, and accomplished a large amount of work. Sir Isaac Newton was in fair health most of his days, though, from excessive mental work and absent-mindedness about eating, he had a nervous breakdown at fifty-four from which he was some months in recovering. ; Franklin was proud of his physical attainments. “ He was as tem- perate as it was possible to be in that age.” He was an expert swimmer and at eighty he was fond of displaying his strength. He nearly died from attacks of pleurisy, and late in life he fell a victim to the diseases of the age—gout and stone. On the whole, Franklin throughout a long life may be considered an unusually vigorous and healthy person. Huxley, strong and vigorous, worked at a terrible pressure and wore out before his time, but there have been many other scientists of note whose health was more constant, as Faraday, Tyndall, Agassiz and Lord Kelvin. When it comes to men of letters, it would seem that health and vigor might be less frequent. The conventional poet, like his verses, seems a part of the world immaterial, until we become intimately acquainted with him and find that he too lives on bread and butter, beefsteak and onions. Of the dramatists, Shakespeare, for aught we know, was reasonably healthy and vigorous. Moliére led a busy, combative existence. Play- INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE 59 houses were even worse in hygienic conditions then than now, and cold and fatigue seem to have injured his health. He continued his acting and writing with scarce abated vigor until his fifty-fourth year, when, just after playing the part of the invalid in the “ Imaginary Invalid,” he burst a blood vessel in a fit of coughing and did not survive more than half an hour. Moliére was described as “neither too stout nor too thin, tall rather than short; he had a noble carriage, a good leg and his complexion was brown.” This eye-witness saw nothing especially sickly or feeble about the great player and playwright. Goethe, great as scientist and novelist as well as poet—a universal genius—was likened in his youth to an Apollo. His frame was strong and mus- cular. In his mature years, Hufeland, one of the great physicians of the time said that “ never did he meet with a man in whom bodily and mental organization were so perfect. Not only was the prodigious strength of vitality remarkable in him, but equally so the perfect bal- ance of functions.” Goethe knew what sickness meant. From self-confessed youthful excesses (“ However sound and strong one may be, in that accursed Leipzig one burns out as fast as a bad torch”) he suffered some severe chest affection and he was for a time “uncertain whether he was not yet consumptive.” In mature life he more than once suffered from renal colic and from rheumatism. Such attacks had but a transient effect, however, upon his wonderful physical make-up. He was a big eater, as have been so many great men (energy for work must be sup- plied by bread and butter) and he was a profound sleeper. Even when beyond the age of eighty he was still so vigorous as to produce truly remarkable works. Of the personal history of Dante we know little, but he was evi- dently made of elastic stuff and we read of no sickness which came to him in his wanderings. He took part in the civil wars of his city. He died at fifty-six of a fever contracted in the lagoons of Venice. Milton possessed a “peculiar grace of personal appearance.” He seems to have been in good health up to about forty years, when he lost ground somewhat, and in later life, especially during his blindness, his health declined. Speaking for himself at forty-seven, he says: “ Though thin, I was never deficient in courage or in strength.” He exercised regularly with the broadsword and says he “was a match for any one.” His blindness seemed to accompany the onset of gout, a disease hardly due in his case to intemperate living. Of the great modern English poets, Tennyson was a man of splendid physique—“ one of the finest-looking men in the world.” In regard to his health he said of himself: “ What my infirmities were I know not unless short sight and occasional hypochondria be infirmities.” Wordsworth, according to Hayden the artist, was of very fine heroic 60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY proportions. He led a simple life and was healthy and vigorous. He was “ag robust as one of the peasants of his native Cumberland.” At sixty he walked fifteen to twenty miles a day; he was “still the crack skater on Rydal Lake, and, as to climbing mountains, the hardiest and youngest are yet hardly a match for him.” Even at seventy-three he was “ wonderfully well and full of vigor.” Browning had some headache, sore throat and colds, but his son wrote, “ He was the healthiest man I ever knew,” and another biographer called him “ brilliantly healthy.” Until past seventy he could take long walks without fatigue, and endure an amount of social and general physical strain which would have tried many younger men. If we turn to the writers of what Dr. Johnson called “ irregular and undigested pieces *—of essays—in the expectation of having only invalids for wielders of the pen, we find the inventor of this beautiful form of literature, Montaigne, speaks of his body as “ strong and well knit.” “ My health is vigorous and sprightly, even to a well-advanced age, and I am rarely troubled with sickness.” He considered health “the fairest and richest present that nature can make us.” It was not a time of long living and Montaigne considered that he had reached a “well advanced age” when he had passed forty. At forty-five he became afflicted with stone in the bladder, which doubtless shortened the days of what was for him old age. Bacon’s health was always delicate. He speaks of himself as “a man of no great share of health, who must therefore lose much time.” His nervous system seems to have been exceedingly sensitive and he swooned upon slight cause. By careful management of his health by the admirable rules he has laid down for others, he survived the storms of his political career and his friends expected for him a good old age. In his sixty-sixth year, when driving in London, he suddenly hit upon the notion of using snow as a preservative. He stopped his carriage, purchased a fowl and with his own hands stuffed it with snow. He was seized with a sudden chill, the cold and chill were succeeded by bronchitis, and he died within a few days. Bacon, like Kant, deserves to be remembered as one who lived his philosophy and who with small resource of vital energy kept that at its best and so made the most of the marvelously fine thinking machinery with which he was endowed. , The more modern essayists, Lamb and DeQuincy, did not present a very vigorous aspect. DeQuincy was, according to Carlyle, “one of the smallest man figures I ever saw ... you would have taken him for the beautifullest little child.” Yet he was not so frail even though small, and while hypersensitive to pain “he was wiry, and able to undergo a good deal of fatigue. Indeed he was a first-rate pedestrian, and kept himself well in exercise. He considered that fourteen miles a day was necessary for health. He never took cold, and even at be INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE 61 seventy he was active and vigorous.” He easily outwalked James Hogg, who was much younger and who has been described as “ hale and hearty as a mountain breeze.” So much for this “ invalid.” Lamb, who had “ the appearance of an air-fed man and whose light frame” with its “almost immaterial legs” “seemed as if a breath would overthrow it,” was spoken of as being “as wiry as an Arab,” and Proctor said he “ could walk during all the day.” In this list of worthies Carlyle and Doctor Johnson should have a place. The great lexicographer “in his bodily strength and stature has been compared to Polyphemus.” Boswell speaks of his “ herculean strength” and of his “robust health,’ which was not in the least affected by cold. His great appetite and his intemperance in tea have gone into history, but he could fast for two days without difficulty, and his frequent prayer was “ that I may practice such temperance in Meat, Drink, and Sleep, and all bodily enjoyments as may fit me for the duties to which thou shalt call me.” Notwithstanding his tendency to melancholia and some attacks of gout he was anything but an invalid. The Seer of Chelsea was the descendant of a long line of “ hardy and healthy Scottish dalesmen.” He grew to manhood, he tells us, “healthy and hardy.” It was not till after his twentieth year that “he became aware that he was the miserable owner of a diabolical arrangement called a stomach.” From this time on he suffered from dyspepsia, headache and sleeplessness. He gave vent to his irritability by lamentations so grotesquely exaggerated as to make it difficult to estimate the real extent of the evil. According to Froude he had a Titanesque power of making mountains out of molehills. Notwith- standing his complaints he lived a vigorous, combative life to a good old age and even at eighty-two was able to walk over five miles a day. Among novelists, Sir Walter accuses himself of perhaps “ setting an undue value” on health and strength. For him “ bodily health is the mainspring of the microcosm. . . . What poor things does a fever fit or an overflowing of bile make of the masters of creation?” He writes in his journal, “ My early lameness considered, it was impossible for a man to have been stronger or more active than I have been, and that for twenty or thirty years. Seams will slit and elbows will out, quoth the tailor; and as I was fifty-four in August last, my mortal vestments are none of the newest.” As a young man he was a des- perate climber, a bold rider and a stout player at single-stick “ and he walked twenty or thirty miles without fatigue, notwithstanding his limp.” Attacks of rheumatism, renal colic and the awful burden of debt under which he toiled so heroically, finally overcame a constitution which, as he said, was “ as strong as a team of horses.” Victor Hugo “was born with a thoroughly sound constitution ” 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY and he was “in full vigor when many great intellects have passed inte their decline.” A Balzac “was eminently sound and healthy,” “his whole person breathed intense vitality,” yet those who were in the secret of his life asked with pitiful wonder how any man could find the time and phys- ical endurance sufficient to support the enormous work of his “ La Comédie Humaine.” Dumas’s “ health was well known and stood firm against the almost wanton test he imposed upon it.” Such abuse plus the writing of “1,200 volumes” did not seem to impair his physical vigor until after his sixtieth year. Thackeray was described in 1813 as “a stout, healthful, broad- shouldered specimen of a man.” He knew no such thing as taking care of himself and suffered the consequences, though it took time to undo him. Edward Fitzgerald tells us how he wrote “reviews and newspapers all the morning; dining, drinking and talking of a night, managing to preserve a fresh color and perpetual flow of spirits under a wear and tear of thinking and feeding that would have knocked up all the other men I know two years ago at the least.” Thackeray had the best medical advice, but, as he said, “ What is the use of advice if you don’t follow it? They tell me not to drink and I do drink. They tell me not to eat and I do eat. In short, I do everything I am not to do, and, therefore, what is to be expected?” Thackeray has the unen- viable distinction of being one of the comparatively few men of genius who have undervalued health. He preferred, as he acknowledged in his exaggerated style, to “reel from dinner party to dinner party, to wallow in turtle, and to swim in claret and champagne.” It is little wonder that the time came and came early (at fifty-one) when “he could not work at will”; when upon taking up his pen “ his number of the magazine would not come.” In Dickens we have a man of superlative energy. After writing until twelve “he came out ready for a long walk . . . twelve, fifteen, even twenty miles a day were none too much for Dickens . . . swinging his blackthorn stick, his little figure sprang forward over the ground, and it took a practiced pair of legs to keep alongside of his voice.” Dickens himself relates “a special feat of turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country for breakfast.” He was temperate in meats and drinks. James Fields said he had “rarely seen a man eat and drink less,” but he was not temperate in his outlay of energy. As his self-chosen biographer said, “ He never thought of husbanding his strength except to make fresh demands upon it,” and besides, “ his notion of finding rest from mental exertion INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE 63 in as much bodily exertion of equal severity, continued with him to the last.” All this was more than even Dickens could stand, and, as in the case of Thackeray, the machinery began early to show wear, though it was not until he was fifty-six that there was any manifest abatement of his wonderful forces. Among statesmen and warriors the strong and healthy predominate, though there are exceptions. As already noted, Bacon was not robust, nor were the Duke of Luxemberg and the Prince of Orange, mentioned previously. The greater Prince of Orange, William the Silent, was of a very different type, as were Marlborough, Gustavus Adolphus, Crom- well, Frederick and our own model of physical manhood, Washington. Among statesmen we may compare with Bacon such men as Gladstone, Bismarck and Lincoln, all of them giants in physical powers. It goes without saying that the superb will of Napoleon “ had its roots in an abnormally firm vitality.” His bodily machinery, of which he in some ways took fastidious care, furnished him with a supply of nervous energy at Napoleonic pressure which sufficed for a working day of from fifteen to eighteen hours. He said of himself that he “was conscious of no limit to the amount of work he could get through.” It is interesting to note that his critics have made careful study of his physical condition as affecting the outcome of his last compaign. Most of them are of the opinion that there was a visible physical decline, one dating this from the cold of the Moscow campaign; others from his confinement at Elba, while one who knew him well attributed the lassi- tude which now and then came over him to the feeling of perplexity in the new conditions under which he worked. Whatever may have brought it about, the Napoleon of Waterloo “was no longer the Napoleon of Marengo or Austerlitz, and, though he was not broken down, his physical strength was certainly impaired.” In selecting the representatives of various kinds of brain work, the author has tried to be unbiased by his thesis, and for good-measure allowance to the common notion, has admitted a few names to the list, such as those of the Duke of Luxemberg, which would hardly nowadays find place among the immortals. Of those mentioned, some seventeen may be said to have been more or less delicate from childhood, though . most of these were by no means sickly much of the time. Some eight or ten more, like Darwin and Spencer broke down after a healthy, vigorous youth and early manhood. At least fifty were robust and many of these remarkable for physical powers. The remainder were probably above the average in physical endurance, even if their physique and health was not so impressive. Genius, superior mental power, or whatever we may choose to call that quality which lifts one man above his fellows in any line of work, does not prefer to have lodgment in inferior bodies, and when this so 64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY happens, it finds itself sadly handicapped. ‘Though the soul tides may at times rise very high in those of frail physical nature, the ebb is always lower and more prolonged than in those possessed of greater vitality. The handicap of weakness and ill health has been most recog- nized by greatness itself, and we have eloquent comment upon the value of health and strength from such men as Plato, Bacon, Locke, Mon- taigne, Addison, Wesley, Spencer, Moliére, Franklin, Carlyle, Beecher and others. The handiwork of an artist or executant musician is, in a way, a record of his physical condition, and for him to do consistently good work health must be equally constant. Even Michelangelo failed as a sculptor in his later years, though he flourished as an architect. The combination of brain and hand work is in itself conducive to better health than brain work alone, which may also help account for what, in our brief preceding list, would seem to indicate the superior health of such men. The pursuit of religion, philosophy and science may be more spas- modic, but even here health and strength add greatly to the product, in both quality and quantity. Had the more vigorous men of the middle ages devoted their talents to spiritual affairs, the reformation might have come earlier or might not have been necessary. To-day the church recognizes that the adequate unfolding of the bodily forces is necessary to the full use of the mental powers with which one may be endowed. Asceticism has given place to temperance. Crusades for the sake of a sepulcher are succeeded by crusades against conditions which war upon physical sanity. It is inspiring to know what has been accomplished under heavy handicap, but it is sad to contemplate what the same mental powers might have accomplished had the handicap never existed. There are quite enough other agencies for tempering and annealing the soul with- out preventable sickness and infirmity, and an untimely end rings down the curtain before the possibilities of the player are fairly exhibited. One can not distinguish a fool from a philosopher by either his appearance, physique or vegetative capacity, but, given the finer mental endowment, he in whom that equipment is backed by superior physical balance and endurance is sure to prove the man of larger accomplish- ment in every sphere of endeavor. WOMEN TEACHERS AND EQUAL PAY 65 WOMEN TEACHERS AND EQUAL PAY By Mrs. ELFRIEDA HOCHBAUM POPE ITHACA, N, Y. RGUMENTS opposing the progress of women are apt to begin with a praise of “typical, sweet” femininity, continue with a retailing of the fixed and inherent failings of women, add instances of selfish action on the part of individual women, such as taking away a man’s seat, obstructing a man’s view, getting in front of him in a ticket or bank line (forgetting that women have been carefully educated to consider themselves as creatures of privilege), and end with visions of race-extermination. Arguments opposing the equal remuneration of women with men, where the services rendered are of equal value, have not escaped con- tamination from this kind of logic, in witness whereof we can point to two articles published in the Hducational Review, in the past year, entitled “'The Monopolizing Woman Teacher,” by C. W. Bardeen, and “Women and ‘ Equal Pay,” by Arthur C. Perry, Jr. It was in 1869, forty-four years ago, that J. S. Mill wrote: The general opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural vocation of a woman is that of a wife and mother. I say, is supposed to be, because, judging from acts—from the whole of the present constitution of society—one might infer the direct contrary. They might be supposed to think that the alleged natural vocation of women was of all things the most repugnant to their nature; insomuch that if they are free to do anything else—if any other means of living, or occupation of their time and faculties, is open, which has any chance of appearing desirable to them—there will not be enough of them who will be willing to accept the condition said to be natural to them. If this is the real Opinion of men in general, it would be well that it should be spoken out. After nearly half a century’s progress of civilization and thought, it remains for an educator to speak out this very sentiment in the following words, apropos of the granting of equal salaries to men and women in the schools of New York City: Suppose society were to embark upon a world-wide attempt thus to abrogate natural and economic law by legislative fiat. A severe temptation would be placed upon all women wilfully to disown their natural mission in the scheme of nature. With the material reward before them double that which the normal life would yield, they would become unwilling to renounce the larger for the smaller. There would follow a gradual but sure lowering of the wage standard set for both men and women until both sexes were on a basis of self-support only. Under this condition neither sex could be expected to undertake the pHEport of a family and the family would disappear. VOL. LXXX1I.—5. 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY This strain immediately gives us our clue, for we have heard it often before, as when we laid claim’to souls and to minds, and though the gods of nature and of economics are appealed to, we know that we are dealing with the ancient sex prejudice, conscious or unconscious, which the present day is gradually overcoming with the increasing realization of the sanctity of human personality irrespective of sex. It was still longer ago that Wendell Phillips said, in 1851: When Infinite Wisdom established the rules of right and honesty, he saw to it that justice should be always the highest expediency. What is the clear and natural justice of paying women teachers equally with men? ‘Two persons are expending an equal amount of energy in rendering services of equal value. In exchange a return energy is given in the form of financial reward. ‘There is no reason why the return energy should diminish in quantity, the moment the recipient is a woman, but retain its normal volume if the recipient happens to be a man. Is it not an ancient principle of justice that the laborer is worthy of his hire? The immediate reply to this will be: It is just that a man receive more, because he has to support a family. And Mr. Perry, whose argument rests on the ethics of not violating the principle of the “ market-value ” of teachers, unmindful of the principles of the bargain counter, says: The fact that the great majority of men have families to support has led to an economic balance whereby men’s wages expressed in terms of money are such as enable a man to support his family. This is plainly an economic fallacy, since wages and salaries are not a result of a nice adjustment to personal and family needs. A man supports his family in accordance with his wages; he does not receive wages in accordance with his family. And does the man who has no family receive less and the woman who has a family receive more? Is it the custom to arrange salaries on a sliding scale in accordance with celibacy or marriage among men? Why is it that late marriages are so common? Is it not because the incomes earned are thought not to be sufficient for the support of a family? Does any one know of a scheme like the following? An instructor in a university receives a salary of $1,000 a year, and manages to be fairly comfortable on it. He marries, and the trustees grant him an additional $100. He has a child, and his income is increased again by $100, and again for every succeeding child. We leave it to the trustees to estimate the proper value of a child on the basis of a full professor’s salary. Now the wife dies, and $100 are subtracted from his salary, and as his children become self-supporting the salary is reduced in proper measure, leaving him, when all his children have departed in the status quo with his original WOMEN TEACHERS AND EQUAL PAY 67 salary, for as a single person he requires no more. No doubt such a sliding scale would be most acceptable to college instructors so long as it went up and would encourage early marriage. The only bitter pill would be to have the scale slide down. In the actual world, how- ever, the bachelor does not receive less because he has no family and the married man does not receive more because he has. The woman teacher still generally receives even as high as fifty per cent. less than a man, whether she has a family to support or not. But, it is replied, the single man expects to have a family in the future for which he must lay a financial foundation now. Is then the young woman not expected to have a family? Will her savings be less of a help to the future family because they are feminine? Or will they go farther for the same reason and do they therefore not need to be so great? Is not the family the ultimate loser by this principle of stint- ing women, since the family funds are derived from one source alone? After marriage, if both father and mother are capable of earning, is the family not the gainer if the earnings of the mother are at the same rate as those of the father? If the father dies, is the family not the gainer by having full support instead of two thirds or thereabout ? The highest expediency that attaches to natural justice is brought out by an economic principle that few will dispute. Women who are discriminated against in the matter of pay immediately become a cheap labor class, and cheap labor is bound to injure the cause'of well-paid labor. This injustice bears within itself the germ of that economic vengeance that has wrought such harm in the profession of teaching, and has been so conducive a factor in driving men out of the ranks. This principle has been brought home to the laborers in industry, and in the ranks of labor the feeling is becoming wide-spread that men and women have a common cause, and all movements that make for eco- nomic improvement for women are apt to find there much greater sup- port than in the so-called higher ranks of society. The world of trade could easily appreciate the principle also. Ifa woman set up a suc-~ cessful business with a margin of profit 25 per cent. or 50 per cent. less than that of her masculine competitors in the same business, would the men not immediately protest and combine to force her to sell at their terms or to wreck her trade? It has been stated that where men and women teachers receive equal wages the men will vanish. ‘This assertion, however, seems to rest on the implication that the wages are low, for when it has been suggested that women receive the high wages of men, opening the way for a natural competition irrespective of sex, the answer has frequently been that the natural result of this competition would be that the men would be chosen and the women would be left. Now certain qualities excellent in a teacher have been conceded to women. For instance: 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Taking it altogether the fine women who as a whole make up our teaching force exert a healthful influence over their boys and are successful disciplinarians. The woman is quite as apt as the man to establish that connection between her mind and the child’s which is the foundation of instruction. Even a woman’s knowledge is apt to be sufficient, at least for the high school. But it is possible that these virtues exist only at a low rate of wages and take wings at an equal high rate. It is one of the characteristics of arguments springing from the traditional view of women that quite opposite assertions are made to fit the same theory. Thus women are better than men and they haven’t so pronounced a moral sense; they have no time for professions, and they waste time in frivolity ; they are thrifty, and they are extravagant; they are physically weak, and do the physical work of the household; in the case of women teachers, they drive men out of the profession of teaching, and they can not compete with men; and again: they are not worth so much because they leave teaching to marry, and they are not worth so much because they do not marry. Perhaps it would be safest to adopt the high and equal rate of salaries even if it leaves man, as the superior teacher, victor in the field, since in education we are concerned with the best results obtainable. We sincerely trust and believe, however, that even at an equal high rate of pay it will be realized that men and women are needed in the schools as in the home. Woman is as much a factor in human life as man, and her interpretation of life and knowl- edge is just as necessary for a complete view. If there is no difference between the masculine and the feminine viewpoint surely there is no reason for discrimination. But the very possibility of a difference of conception is of immense potential value educationally, and forbids a lessening in value because of sex. Surely if we need the feeling for and interpretation of the “ Arma virumque cano,” the destructive ele- the feeling for and interpretation of the Prima Ceres unco glaebam dimovit aratro, Prima dedit fruges alimentaque mitia terris, Prime dedit leges: Cereiis sunt omnia munus. Ila canenda mihi est of the constructive element of civilization by representation through fostering womankind, especially as arms are beginning to lose some of their prestige. But as long as we regard education as a thing to be provided, in large measure to be sure, but at as low an expense as pos- sible, we shall encourage the cheap labor of women teachers and the proportion of men and women will not be normal. As soon as we realize that education is an investment whose returns are to be meas- ured in quality and diversity of knowledge and of character, we shall be glad to invest capital in that enterprise, though for intangible and indirect returns, and we shall recognize that woman’s share in the product is as important as man’s. WOMEN THACHERS AND EQUAL PAY 69 As far as the theory goes, held by Mr. Perry, that a budget per- mitting the expenditure of only a certain fixed amount for teachers’ salaries forces a reduction of the men’s salaries because of the necessary averaging, it is a matter of fact that a budget can always be increased where the need is felt to be actual. ven the “ practical administration difficulties” of a huge system like that of New York City should not prevent meeting actual needs. In smaller systems, the budget can always bear an increase when a man teacher is needed who will not come at the salary allotted to women. In women’s colleges the principle of exclusive femininity is inevitably disregarded through the crying need of some masculinity, possible naturally only on the teaching staff. A certain proportion of men is felt to be absolutely necessary either for the sanity of the educational process or for the protection of the mas- culine teachers themselves from the danger of feminization. When that proportion is threatened the budget does not stand in the way. And thus it is possible for a new-fledged doctor of philosophy, untried and without teaching experience, simply because he is a man, to obtain a salary 25 to 50 per cent. higher than that of a woman professor who may have greater knowledge, greater experience and every requisite for a successful teacher. Is it a wonder under such conditions that we do not find women stimulated to do more productive work? It is quite possible, too, that the youth has no obligations whatever, and that the woman has financial and family obligations. It is possible that the ease of obligations may be vice versa. It is certainly wrong for us to assume that the man has always the financial burdens to bear, the woman never. Can we, who have taught in college and high school, not name numerous cases of that kind? Do we not also know of men teaching in the high schools who were merely taking advantage of the relatively good salaries they could obtain as teachers until they could get a foothold in another profession, thereupon to leave the teacher’s calling forever? And have we not seen in the same schools women teaching at lower salaries, some of whom were supporting relatives, sending brother or sister to college, and some even husbands? As far as the theory of the market value of the teacher goes, we need only point to Germany to be covered with shame for our mercenary attitude towards education. In that land swarming with Ph.D.’s, despite the enormous supply, the teacher, masculine, to be sure, receives a very fair salary and generous pension provision, without regard to a market value determined by the laws of supply and demand. The same principle and view of life that reduces the pay of the woman teacher reduces the pay of women in whatever field. It forces girls in factories and department stores into lives of shame, and gives the washerwoman who supports a family (and who ever hears of a _ washerwoman who has not a family and sometimes a husband, too, to 70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY support?) for labor that is by no means unskilled $1.25 a day, while the unmarried Italian who digs ditches gets $1.75 or $2.00. There are other causes, to be sure, besides sex discrimination, which have encouraged unequal wages. Foremost among these is that women have not realized their own worth, have not demanded equal wages, have not been able to do so, in fact, through lack of organization. Moreover, in the past, women were crowded into a very few callings, among which teaching was a very prominent one, and thus they com- peted with each other. In the past, too, when women left the home to work, it was because they were forced to. Any addition, however meager, to the family income was welcomed. In the higher walks of life, again, women were content to earn the luxuries, depending on their families for the home and necessities. The parents, meanwhile, took pride in the fact that their daughters did not “have to” work. The effect on the worker, on the profession and on the family was bad. You got cheap labor, poor and half-hearted labor, and the family was out something, too. With modern times has come the realization that labor and self-support are necessary for the dignity, the character and the development of women, and that the welfare of society and of the family demands that she become a contributor of wealth rather than a mere consumer. But we shall not have the best efforts from women in professions until professional rewards are open to them. ‘That in- crease of salary, with advance in position, based on merit alone is a necessary stimulus no one can deny. It will be well when all women realize the harm that is done, not only to their sisters, but to their pro- fession, when they permit themselves to be stamped as cheap labor. And as for the man, we fear that it is not chivalry that fails to recognize the equal value of woman’s labor with his own. We fear that it is not chivalry that frowns upon the married woman teacher. And s0 we hope that he will be moved to a more generous spirit when he realizes that woman’s loss is his own. The modern marriage is a halving of resources, whereas the colonial family was a doubling of resources. What the wife formerly actually produced by the labor of her hands in the way of food, clothing and household supplies, in a personal field of industry, quite free from competition either with her own sex or with the other, she must now produce in the form of the wherewithal to buy the food, clothing and household supplies. Her field has become wider, she must compete with others, but her capabili- ties have also grown wider, and must increasingly grow as she, with her husband, progresses farther and farther from that rude and simple life that was enclosed by four walls and called forth only a few of the manifold potential powers of hand and mind. Men must come to an _ insight of the economic waste of an unproductive life for their women, or of production without fair returns. But perhaps they will also begin WOMEN TEACHERS AND EQUAL PAY 71 to realize forms of waste that are not so material When women, through motherhood, have that insight into the growing mind that no one else can possess, we prefer to have them withdraw from the pro- fession of teaching. Is there no sense of a tremendous pedagogical loss? Because women alone can be mothers is that a reason that they should be nothing else? Shall their souls and their minds be refused their proper occupations even after motherhood is past, and shall they be condemned to atrophy because of a great though not exclusive function? Is there no insight into this spiritual waste? Does not society suffer from all these forms of waste? When we demand that a woman sacrifice her talents and ambitions, in other words, her natural powers, in order to become a wife and mother, we must not close our eyes to the fact that it is a sacrifice, and that sacrifice means waste. Our marriages rest upon a wasteful basis, and must become increasingly wasteful as civilization takes away more and more woman’s former productivity in the home, unless she is granted a free field for her energies outside of the home. The young woman teacher must look forward, then, to contributing her share to the establishment of the home by her earning powers before she is married and afterwards when she can. The more she earns, the better. With this earnest view of the necessity of contributing to the family support, her profession will become something more than a means of occupying durance vile. It follows as the night the day that early marriage will be encouraged where two are contributing, and when marriage does not mean sacrifice and dependence on one side, and sacrifice and a heavy burden on the other side. Men, while necessarily bearing the financial burden alone for some of the time of married life will yet not be sacrificing more of their individual energy to the family than the mother who is giving of her life substance. For the woman a life of development and service will be added to motherhood, as a life of development and service are added to the fatherhood of the man. For we conceive of fatherhood as something more and nobler than the occupying of all one’s time and energies with earning money for the children. Will there not be more time for fatherhood when the pressure of financial responsibility is lessened? And who knows what rich rewards of womanly forces future society will reap from allowing women to develop according to the divine promptings from within rather than by rule of man. For the full honors and rewards of effort, whether in the household or in scien- tific academies, have never yet been granted to women. ‘They have never yet been permitted to drink freely of the cup of life. Let the men who openly or covertly regard women as their inferiors consider this, and for the sake of the future give her an equal chance. It was Schopenhauer who said, in quite a different connection, we may be sure, “First they bind our arms, and then they sneer at us because we are 72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY impotent.” And it was Wilhelm von Humboldt who wrote of “the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.” If women are to develop humanly, they must not be arbi- trarily cut off from the inspirations and the rewards that stimulate the growth of human mind and character. A discussion of this general nature seemed necessary, because it was felt that prejudice against remunerating women teachers equally with men was mere prejudice based on a failure to grasp the wide bearing of the forces at work in the natural and historic evolution of women. We have still to consider the fact that there will always be some women in the profession of teaching who no longer look forward to marriage, though the terminus ad quem of this hope is nowadays very problemat- ical, and who have no dependents whatever. This will be true, even after women have become large factors in all the professions, in most of which they already are represented, and after they have invented some new ones. But their number will not be very much greater than that of the single men in like circumstances unless women preponderate immeasurably in the population. If there were an injustice in giving them the full return for their labor, it would yet be less than the sum total of injustice of the old system. Moreover, dare we not hope, with the special penchant of women for charity and philanthropy, with the noble roll of “old maids ” who are milestones in the progress of civiliza- tion, Frances Willard, Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Jane Addams, that the surplus energy earned will go for the improvement of society? Society needs the development of all its latent energies for its own purification and advance. Who dares, unless he was present when the foundations of the earth were laid, brand woman’s energies as inferior because proceeding from a woman, and say to her, “ Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further” ? BUSINESS MAN AND HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE 73 THE BUSINESS MAN AND THE HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE By JAMES P. MUNROE BOSTON, MASS. aN? so very long ago the merchant, the manufacturer, the teacher, the young man, and the public in general were under the spell of the boys’ magazine, wherein the first prize—the prize of partnership in the business and marriage with the “old man’s” daughter—is awarded to the boy who keeps his hands clean, brushes his shoes, picks up stray pins on the office floor and carefully saves the twine from his employer’s parcels. To do these things is indispensable; but besides this, the aspirant for partnership (and the daughter) must also— according to the story-books—write a perfect hand, never make a mis- take in addition, never forget a message, never have a deceased grand- mother on the afternoon of the ball-game, never think of aught except mastering every detail of the business, never be anything, in short, but the kind of prig that real, red-blooded boys are not. The so-called Manchester school of political economy was built around a supposed economic man wholly unlike any human being ever born. Consequently there were promulgated for nearly a century a host of solemn fallacies which have given, and are still giving, endless trouble to civilized society. In much the same way the supposed demands of business upon boys have crystallized around these story- book heroes and have led the business man, the boy and the boy’s teacher into all sorts of difficulties, misunderstandings and wild-goose-chases after educational impossibilities. It may be that the story-book boy and the story-book employer— and even the daughter—did exist at some period anterior to the middle of the nineteenth century; but since that time all three have been as extinct as the dodo. Yet much of the thinking and much of the talk about the demands of business are based, even now, upon these ancient and mendacious yarns. To reach any sound conclusions, to-day, however, one must rid him- self of the obsession of these romantic fallacies and must face the actual facts. The clean-hands, blacked-shoes fallacy has ruined thou- sands of boys who, if they had pitched in and got their hands dirty, would have turned out first-rate mechanics and mill-men, instead of sixth-rate clerks. The pin-picking and twine-saving fairy-tales have started many a boy on the downward path of petty, two-cent economies instead of on the upward way of large-minded, far-seeing business policies. While as for the other things demanded by the story-books— they are about as obsolete as sand boxes and quill pens. Who seriously cares about long-hand writing, when actual busi- 74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ness to-day is done by the aid of shorthand and the typewriter? What is the use of drilling a boy who has cost the community at least $4,000 into becoming a fairly accurate adding machine when one can buy an absolutely accurate metal one for a hundred dollars? Why lay so much stress upon errand running when the telephone is a far more efficient messenger? Why talk about learning all the ramifications of an industry, when the main hope of business success is in being a first- rate specialist? Why even specify that the boy shall know how to wield a broom, when the incorporated cleaning company will sweep the offices, and sweep them well, for far less money than the wages of the veriest greenhorn? Should the present agitation over vocational education come to nothing—which is almost inconceivable—it will have been worth while if it forces teachers, boys and, eventually, employers to ask themselves straight questions and to face actual conditions. What does modern business really require of the average boy? How fully can the boy meet—or can he be trained to meet—those requirements? And, finally, what can the school do and how far can it go in bringing the boy into line with the reasonable demands of a rational, up-to-date mercantile or manufacturing concern? Just now everybody is in a turmoil over all three of these problems; for all of us—business men, boys and schools—are in a transition state. Business itself is in the travail of readjustment—as witness the at- tempted regulation of it by the Congress and the states; and as witness, also, the vogue of anything that labels itself scientific management. The young man—still reading the old story-books about business—is finding out that those tales and the real conditions are not even fourth cousins to one another. While the schools, tired of putting boys through the treadmill work demanded by formal college entrance examinations, and looking for some better incentive to hold before the pupil, are turning (generally with more eagerness than knowledge) towards preparation for business as something at once tangible to them and interesting to the youth. It is a tremendous point gained, however, that all three of them— business man, boy and pedagogue—are working at the same problem, each from his own angle of vision, but all seriously; the business man being desperately in earnest as he finds that profits are dependent upon securing really trained men; the boy being more and more driven, by modern competition, to weigh the problems of his after-school vocation ; and the schools, as the educational tax gets heavier and heavier, feeling ever more keenly the need of showing tangible returns for the millions given every year to education. No business man can presume to say, however, that those millions are thrown away so long as he is every day wasting much good mater- ial (both human and inanimate) through haphazard, antiquated and a BUSINESS MAN AND HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE 75 unscientific ways. Since he is manfully buckling down, however, to the problems of real conservation in manufacturing, transporting and selling goods, so must the teacher, also, get down to actualities. For in all industries the chief element to be conserved is the human element; and the teacher is paid by the state to understand, guide and give a right start to his quota of those boys and girls who are to be the producers, distributors and consumers of the coming time. For years and years everybody has been saying that the real work of the schools is to produce good citizens; but no one—broadly speaking—can be a good citizen unless he is an able producer and an intelligent consumer. Education that does not have these ends in view results in dreamers, parasites and social anarchists. Education that does recognize these aims is in line to produce self-reliance, self-respect and social responsi- bility—the three main bases of sound citizenship. However high the ideals of all teachers should be, however strongly they should insist upon breadth, culture and “uplift” for their pupils, every one of those noble things of education should be soundly bottomed upon the no less noble demands of self-respecting, intelligent, purpose- ful winning of the daily bread. What higher and finer goal for all school life than the founding of a family and the rearing and training of the next generation? Yet how absolutely bound up with that true ideal of a civilized state is the ability to earn a living, in ways con- genial to the earner and in such an amount that ease of mind, com- fort of body and education for the brain and soul shall follow for the worker himself and for those depending on him? Using the word “ business ” to cover all the fields of human activity along material lines—the fields of production, distribution and con- sumption—every boy and girl in every school is going to find his or her chief interests and his or her chief medium for development in the business world. Therefore, every teacher should understand—at least in a broad way—what business is, what it demands, and how those demands are to be met—so far as they can be met—by the school. Obviously, however, the most zealous of teachers could not acquaint himself intimately with more than one general line of business activity ; and it is a serious question whether or not, if he had so trained himself, he wouldn’t then be doing the teaching profession a service by leaving it. The teacher must never forsake the teaching point of view—the view that his duty is not to train the boy for business, but to use busi- ness as a powerful instrument in training the boy. To do this, how- ever, the teacher must understand not only boys in general, but also business in general. And, however great may be the differences between manufacturing and merchandizing, between banking and baking, there are certain fundamentals characteristic of substantially every branch of that production, distribution and consumption of commodities— noting that consumption, and therefore household management, is put 76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY on a par with production and distribution—which is gathered under the one comprehensive term: modern business. The most striking characteristic of modern business is the rapidity with which it is moving from a competitive to a cooperative basis. This is resulting, on one hand, in the “trusts” and other combinations, which furnish so much good copy for the newspaper and the congress- man; on another hand, in the public service corporations, wherein quasi-public needs are supplied by quasi-private bodies; on another land, in that genuine cooperative production and distribution with which we are less familiar than are the Huropeans; and, finally, in that public ownership, pure and simple, which the modern politicians are falling over one another in their haste to promise to the people in ex- change for the people’s votes. In whatever form it may appear, however, cooperation results in two things: bigness and complexity. When two men form a partnership the profits may be out of all proportion to the business paraphernalia. But when oil producers get together, and then (at the behest of Con- gress) unmix themselves again; when the subways, elevated roads and surface lines knit themselves into a single great transportation cobweb ; when the workingmen of a whole county decide to buy their flour at a single purchase; and when forty cities and towns combine to supply themselves with water; then there result not only a bigness that has taught us to talk in billions as easily as our fathers talked in hundreds of dollars, but also a complexity which staggers us poor outsiders and, there is reason to believe, staggers the insiders as well. The third feature of modern business, growing naturally out of the characteristics of bigness and complexity, is that profits to-day are made by the geometrical progression of innumerable small gains in- stead of through the adding together of a few large gains. Selling a few hundred things at a good profit in a country store in New York state brought in to Mr. Woolworth’s employer a few thousand dollars a year. Selling millions of things for not exceeding ten cents each has enabled Mr. Woolworth himself to capitalize at $75,000,000, and to erect the highest building in the world. The mining fortunes of yes- terday were made by working the richest veins and pockets, leaving the rest to waste. The mining fortunes of to-morrow will be made from the dump-heaps of abandoned plants. The day of the telescope in business, the day of seeking new worlds in order rudely to exploit their natural resources, has gone by; and the day of the microscope in business, of getting infinitesimal profits infinitely multiplied, has come. Thus far we have been a world of wasters; henceforth we are to be a world of savers, and are thus to outwit Malthus and to make the world’s resources not less, but greater, by every added baby born. A marked characteristic of modern business, consequently, is (in merchandizing) frequent “turn-overs,” and (in manufacturing) the BUSINESS MAN AND HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE fiw utilization of what used to be called waste. The stream of trade flows so fast through a modern department store that the one cent profit here and the two cents profit there aggregate in the course of the year a huge amount of money. According to a recent article in the “ World’s Work,” the beef barons actually lose on sirloin steaks and choice cuts of pork; where their profits are made is in converting every scrap of the animal’s carcase into something that can be sold. To keep the stream of business flowing through a great store, and to make it profitable to save every hair of every beast in the Chicago stockyards, however, there must be highly-developed organization, highly complicated machinery, and just as little as possible of that most expensive form of power, the human hand. Human hands are still wanted, and in proportionately greater numbers than ever before in history; but merely as servants to machines that multiply hundreds and thousands of times the initial force given by those hands. It is nonsense, however, to talk of this as slavery to machinery. On the con- trary, it is mastery of the forces of nature, an ever-increasing mastery, which is—so to speak—kicking the brute laborer, the pick and shovel man, up into the ranks of the machine-user, and is kicking the machine- user up into the ranks of the organizer, those ranks where brains are every day setting hundreds and thousands at new work, and every day bringing what used to be luxuries down to the horizon of the common- est man. The cost of living is high, not because of the scandalous lux- ury of the rich, but because of the commendable luxury of the poor. It is true that the desire for the good things of life is growing somewhat faster than the devices and economies of modern industry can bring those good things within reach; but this is simply a question of gradual adjustment. And the fact that more men are every day wanting and demanding more things is one of the surest guarantees of a continued and genuine prosperity. An inseparable accompaniment of machinery, however, is speed. Therefore the next notable characteristic of modern business is whirl- wind pace. Thirty years ago, even New York, Paris and London were horse-car towns, with clerks nodding over pigskin ledgers, errand boys playing marbles in the roadway, with no telephone, no rapid transit in the modern sense, with scarcely any devices for making speed or saving time. To-day, even London, the archetype of conservatism, is a whirl- pool of motor-buses, speeding men and clamoring advertisements. Consequently, not merely what the business man, but what modern business itself, demands of the high-school graduate is rational and orderly speed. In the high school, in the schools below, in that larger school, the community, and above all, in the boy’s home, he must have been trained to “ go the pace,” not of dissipation, but of modern industry. Since, however, no one can get speed, without a breakdown, out of a weak or badly-built engine, so one can not get efficiency from a half- 78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY sick or ill-developed youth. Consequently, now as never before, the business world must have boys who are sound in body and in nerves and who know the value of good health, clean living, exercise, right eating and fresh air. As already intimated, the average boy of eight- een has cost the community at least $4,000 to “raise” ;—most high- school boys have cost a good deal more. Furthermore, to train that $4,000 boy to the point where he is a real asset in the business, costs that enterprise a considerable additional amount. Therefore the com- munity can not afford, the business into which the boy goes can not afford, to have him break down, because of a weak body, poor nerves, or dissipation, just when he is beginning to bring in fair returns upon his capital cost. The first thing, then, that modern business demands in its apprentices is sound bodies, steady nerves and a good working knowledge of hygiene. These things are worth far more than a knowl- edge of double-entry bookkeeping; and the school, in cooperation with the parents and the community, must provide this kind of teaching. The next essential for speed is quickness of mind, nimbleness of body and good coordination among all the senses. One doesn’t acquire these, however, by stewing all day in an uncomfortable desk over a lot of books. One gets them by using all his muscles and all his senses, in a wide variety of exercises, mental, physical and manual, directed in educative ways and by rational progression, towards well-defined ends —not occult ends, seen only by the inner consciousness of the teacher, but tangible ends visible to the boy himself. The third essential of speed is team-play. Every schoolroom should be an organism as well knit, as thoroughly balanced, as purposeful as a *Varsity football team; for that is the kind of coordination towards which every mercantile and manufacturing enterprise is rapidly, and with full understanding of its value, tending. The teacher who still uses competition instead of cooperation as a main spur towards speed, is woefully behind the times, and loses that most valuable aid in edu- cation—working together for a common result. Effective team-play, however, is founded upon promptness, ready obedience, willingness to subordinate one’s self to the general good, en- thusiasm, and that comprehensive quality called loyalty. All these are at the very root of every successful enterprise; and what modern busi- ness asks most eagerly is that the boys who come into it shall obey orders intelligently and promptly; shall see how much, instead of how little, they can accomplish to further the interests of the concern; and, in whatever they do, shall show the essential virtues of team-play: en- thusiasm, self-subordination and unflagging loyalty. But a man can not be enthusiastic and effective if he lives in a mere groove. Therefore, while the youth who is to succeed in the complexi- ties of modern industry must be a specialist, he must be a broad one. A man may move fast in a treadmill, but he gets nowhere. On the BUSINESS MAN AND HIGH-SCHOOL GRADUATE 79 other hand, a motorist, though tied to a roadway, makes his twenty-five miles an hour because he sticks to that well-surfaced track instead of trying to wander through bushes, potato-fields and gravel banks. He doesn’t leave the road, but he sees and knows the whole surrounding territory. Consequently a fourth essential of speed is thoroughness in one line with an outlook into many lines, with an intelligent interest in many things, and with a broad attitude towards all human interests. A fifth essential of speed is the cutting of red tape. Circumlocu- tion, that curse of the law, is being rapidly driven out of business, be- cause a merchant or manufacturer can not afford to waste time and lose headway in doubling and twisting. If there is a short way of doing a thing—be it in business or in school—do it; and save time, money and nervous energy. Therefore in demanding of the high school graduate rational and orderly speed, modern business asks the teachers of those young men and women: 1. That they do everything possible to send into business life sound animals who appreciate the value of good health and who know how to conserve it; 2. That they give those pupils such studies and exercises and in such a way as to result in activity of mind, thorough coordination be- tween mind and body, well-trained senses and an eagerness to work and to learn ; 3. That all the school work be so carried on as to foster a spirit of team-play, a sense of the value and power of working together for the common weal; 4. That to this end the teacher subordinate the memorizing of facts to the inculcating of promptness, obedience and loyalty ; 5. That the studies which make for breadth of view and variety of interest be emphasized, and those which make for mere information, technic and drill, be minimized ; 6. That, to accomplish this, subjects like arithmetic, bookkeeping, grammar, rhetoric, etc., be cut down to their lowest terms and fewest principles, throwing out all processes and exercises which are obsolete, little-used or cumbersome, putting in all the short-cuts and labor-say- ing devices which are of general application; and that those subjects, such as history, economics, political and economic geography, etc., which make for breadth of view; those exercises, such as rightly con- ceived manual training, ordered games, freehand drawing, etc., which make for quickness and control of the body; and those general school relationships which promote team-play, loyalty, the spirit of working together for a tangible and desirable end, be fostered, amplified, and in every way, encouraged. Above all, the community high school should be the medium for leading the boy and girl from the irresponsibility of children into the 80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY responsibility of men and women. With that end in view, the school days and weeks should be on a business basis, with long hours (diversi- fied, of course, with a proper alternation of mental and physical actiy- ity), strict accountability on the part of the pupils, and an organiza- tion based, as nearly as possible, upon the best business and factory models. So long as youth of seventeen and eighteen do not take their high-school work seriously, they will not take business seriously. And it is this lack of seriousness, this failure to realize that success in busi- ness can come only from strict attention to business, which lies at the root of most, if not all, of the complaints made by business men against the products of American schools. Those employers find many, if not most, of the boys and girls who come for employment, unfitted for and, if I may use the word, unfittable into, the complex demands of modern business life. Remembering the story-books, they think it is because these aspirants can not write and cipher and spell. But they are fast finding out that the causes of the trouble, in most instances, are weak bodies, or untrained senses, or sluggish minds, er lack of purpose, or general immaturity, or ignorance of how to work with others, or an all- round irresponsibility, or a combination of from two to seven of these common human defects. Secondary schools can not, of course, make silk purses out of sows’ ears; but they can make it their chief business to deliver to the business world boys and girls whose bodies, senses and minds have had so much organized training as heaven has permitted them to receive; who have passed out of the state of “kids” into that of men and women; who have a conception of and experience in co- operation and team-play ; who know what loyalty means; and who have taken school work so seriously that they are prepared to look upon the earning of one’s daily bread as something other than a listless game. Modern business demands these things. Experience has shown that a rightly ordered secondary school system can produce them. That all schools do not is the fault partly of the teachers, partly of the employ- ers, partly of the community in general, mainly of the parents. The fathers and mothers, and the rest of the community, must be educated to give moral and financial support to: this effective type of education. But the only persons who can educate them are the schoolmasters; and they must do it in a roundabout way by gradually introducing this ra- tional, real education into the higher and lower schools. The results will be so immediate, and in many cases so startling, as to make even the overworked business man take notice. And when he begins to realize that the school is really trying to meet his needs; when he begins to see that the millions poured into the public schools are producing effi- cient young men and young women, he will cease growling over his school taxes, and will turn some of the fortunes that he now gives or bequeaths to colleges into the far too lean treasuries of the higher and lower schools. VULGAR SPECIFICS 81 VULGAR SPECIES AND THERAPEUTIC SUPERSTITIONS?! By MAX KAHN, M.A., MD., PH.D. DIRECTOR OF THH CHEMICAL LABORATORY, BETH ISRAEL HOSPITAL, NEW YORK CITY, INSTRUCTOR IN BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HE search for the cause of things and events exists since the appearance of man on the face of the earth. The inability to explain things reasonably and convincingly induced the thinkers of ancient times to use their imaginative faculties. The ancient explainers of natural phenomena were the poets. The restless mind of man ever seeking a reason to account for the marvels presented to his senses adopts one theory after another, and the rejected explana- tions encumber the memory of nations as myths, the significance of which has been forgotten. The continual strife with the elements, the dreadful toils and dangers of man’s life, the inclemency of nature—were all attributed to a perverse divinity or demon, who delighted to inflict pain and misery upon brief-lived mortals. Such a divinity needed worship and sacrifice to propitiate him. Humanity began to fear the devil before they imagined the god. The “ earthworms” created the gods of goodness to protect themselves against the spirit of evil which they had incarnated. With fear began superstition, which is based upon fear’and igno- rance. ‘The desire to know the mysterious future has given rise to a great deal of the world’s store of credulity in the supernatural. The ancient philosopher who desired to divine the future by means of geometrical figures, the pretty maiden who counts the petals of the daisy or dandelion to learn whether her lover will be constant, and the business man who allows the clairvoyant to pass on the lines of his hand—are the ordinary examples in life of the vain endeavor to raise the curtain that hides what is to be. Living beings fear death—a rational fear. In order to prolong life, the body is to be kept healthy, illnesses are to be avoided and, if disease does afflict an individual, the sickness is to be cured. ‘This is all rational. But illnesses are almost imevitable in man’s life, and diseases are not always cured or curable. Instead of combating disease logically, men of all classes drew upon their imagination and hashed various absurd means and methods of treating their ailments. Coeval with the birth of superstition was the birth of magic. The charlatan who could unscrupulously play upon the feelings of his ignorant audience had quite a mighty following in every locality where 1 Baring-Gould, ‘‘Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,’’ p. 151. VOL. LXXXII.—6. 82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY human beings suffered and hoped. _ The establishment of the Roman Church in England did not cause the old Anglo-Saxons to abandon their ancient rites and ceremonies. The inhabitants still clung to the mysterious lore of the Druids, and were only able to attach themselves fully to the new belief by retaining quite a number of the heathen superstitions. Long after the coming of the Catholic missionaries to the British Isles, there throve in merrie England hundreds of magicians who were feared even more than the holy fathers. The ignorant per- son ever loves to compromise. He is never certain which god is the true god, and in order not to take chances, he sacrifices to more than one divinity, lest he be left in the lurch. Palmists, fortune tellers, necromancers, magicians, clairvoyants are always secure of a very com- fortable livelihood, if they do but settle in those centers where igno- rance abounds. For, indeed, they seem all omnipotent to the credulous mind. ‘They can predict the future; they can prescribe for the patient when the learned physician has given up hope; they can sell love- philters; they can cast evil spells upon our enemies; they can give us an amulet which we can wear and be forever protected against fearful maladies; they can grant good luck, and tell us how to avoid dangers and pitfalls. Above all, let us repeat, they can give us an amulet, or charm, to wear which will make us fearless of disease. The selling of amulets by magicians is a very lucrative business even in the present day. Sometimes it is not the necromancer, but the church, which sells charms to its adherents. The word amulet has quite a variety of derivations from the Roman and Arabian tongues. Amulets were so called by the Latins because of their supposed efficacy in allay- ing evil; “amuletum quod malum amolitur.” Some think that the word is derived from the Latin amula, which is a small vessel of lustral water carried about by the Romans. In the Arabian language, hamalet means that which is suspended.” Certain charms are supposed to be valid against all evils or ailments, others are efficacious only in certain specific instances. People are afraid more often of an imaginary, possible misfortune than they are of the present state of infelicity. Joseph Addison says: As if the natural calamities of life were not sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances into misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night’s | rest; and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon the plucking of a merry-thought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics. A rusty nail or a crooked pin shoot up into prodigies. ? William Jones, ‘‘Credulities Past and Present,’’ London, 1898. VULGAR SPECIFICS 83 I shall mention several curious charms or amulets that were prevalent in the various countries of the orient and occident. Among the Chinese, iron nails which have been used in sealing up a coffin are considered quite efficacious in keeping away evil influences. They are carried in the pocket or are braided into the queue. Sometimes such a nail is beat out into a long rod or wire and is incased in silver. A large ring is then made of it to be worn on the ankles or wrist of a boy till he is sixteen years old. Such a ring is often prepared for the use of a boy if he is anonly son. Daughters wear such wristlets or anklets only a few years, or for even a shorter time.* Galen mentions an amulet belonging to an Egyptian king, who is said to have lived 630 B.c. It was composed of a green jasper cut in the form of a dragon, and surrounded with rays. This was applied to strengthen the stomach and organs of digestion. The Hebrews have quite a variety of amulets or charms, each of which has a specific virtue. In the middle ages, the quack necro- mancers did a thriving business among the Jews that had settled in Spain. Maimonides, the great physician, wrote vigorously against them. Believe not in the magician or the necromancer; they do but blaspheme the name of God.* Still many of the old superstitions have remained with the Jews. When a gentile physician goes into the lying-in room of the Hebrew woman-he will notice placards on all the four walls, written in the an- cient biblical tongue. These papers invoke the aid of the great angels for protection against the evil spirits that may attack either the new- born infant or the mother. A mystic charm worn even at the present day bears the inscription Abracadabra. The word abra which is twice repeated in this amulet is derived from the initial letters of four Hebrew words: Ab, Ben, Ruach Acodesch, which signify Father, Son and Holy Ghost. During the times of the Crusades and for a long period afterwards, the very rich or the very noble carried about them, or kept hidden in a holy shrine, amulets made from a piece of wood from the true cross. As somebody has well said, A grove of a hundred oaks would not have furnished all the wood sold in little morsels as remnants of the true cross; and the tears of Mary, if collected together, would have filled a very large cistern.® Sometimes the charms worn were not so harmless, and had no senti- mentality or mystery to grant them fascinating potence. Very fre- quently, horrifying things and repulsiye substances were carried about to ward off illness. In Egypt® the finger of a Christian or Jew, cut off 3 Doolittle, ‘‘Social Life of the Chinese,’’ II., 309. “Maimonides, ‘‘ More Nebbuchim.’’ °C. Mackay, ‘‘Memories of Extraordinary Popular Delusions,’’ 1850. ® Lane, ‘‘Modern Egyptians.’’ 84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY a corpse and dried, is suspended from the neck and is reputed to have the powers of an amulet. In Flanders, a sick person imprisons a spider between two walnut shells and wears it around his neck.’ There were also specific amulets in circulation. For every ailment or unhappiness there was obtainable in the market of the necromancers, a charm which was supposed to have a certain beneficial influence for the affliction. Guttierez, a Spanish physician, who wrote a book on “Fascination” in the year 16538, states that children of that country wore amulets against the evil eye. In case a person who had the evil eye should gaze upon a child wearing this stone-charm, the vicious in- fluence of the gaze will be attracted by the stone which will then crack.® For epilepsy there was in circulation a charm which had this inscription: Jasper brings myrrh, and Melchior incense brings, And gold Balthazar to the King of Kings; Whoso the names of these three monarchs bears, Is safe, through grace, of epilepsy’s fears. For convulsions, as another example, they used to wear a necklace of beads from the root of the peony. Pliny tells that for headache a remedy to be tried is the halter by which somebody has been recently hanged ; this should be worn around the neck of the patient. In 1726, Philip, Ear! of Chesterfield, wrote in great praise of the Goa Stone: The Goa Stone is an admirable preparation of various ingredients; it is made by a Jesuit at Goa; it hath the same effects with the Lady Kent’s powder, but is much stronger; it is a sudorificke, and expels all poisons and humors in the blood; it is admirable in all feavours and agues; it drives out measles and small-pox. There was a belief current in the middle ages that the cries of ani- mals had each a significance. A very plausible arrangement of the cries was made by a certain anonymous genius. One must, however, be a scholar of Latin in order to understand what the animals were saying. Arranging the conversation of the beasts in the form of a dialogue, we have the following curious effect: Cock: Christus natus est. Duck: Quando, quando? Raven: In hac nocte. Cow: Ubi, ubi? Lamb: Bethelem. “TIncredulity,” said Ashmole, “is given the world as a punishment.” It is no wonder then that human beings in order to avoid this penalty, believed all that was told them, and relied upon others to grant them the same courtesy; and then acting upon this privilege or license, helped to burden the lore of the world with tales of absurdity and incongruity. * Chambers, ‘‘Book of Days,’’ I., 372. *T. H. Knowlson, ‘‘The Origin of Popular Superstitions. ’’ VULGAR SPECIFICS 85 No natural exhalation in the sky, No scope of Nature, no distempered day, No common wind, no customed event, But they will pluck away his natural cause, And call them meteors, prodigies and signs, Abortions, presages and tongues of heaven. I shall endeavor to give a list of various specifics that were recom- mended long ago and are still in vogue wherever ignorance abounds. I am indebted to-various authors of books on magic and superstition for various references to ancient customs. The excellent “ Collectanea” of Vincent MacLean has saved me a great deal of trouble and labor in the looking up of old customs and credulities. For every evil invented by the devil, God has created a remedy. The cure was not always known, because the ingredients of the medicine were very numerous and varied. In order to obtain the remedy in its full efficiency, the portions that made up the various concoctions were to be in exact proportion, otherwise the medicament would prove futile. The numberless combinations possible were to be tried out, and those that proved beneficial were treasured. Certain localities did a roaring trade in the sale of the specific for which it was noted. In the modern times the nostrum and patent-medicine has replaced these Meccas of healing, and the descendants of the ancient sufferers and believers are now helping to fill the coffers of the quacks. As a method of curing himself, man has attempted to rid himself of his disease by transferring it to the stranger or the foe. In Germany a plaister from a sore may be left at a cross-way to transfer the disease to a passer-by. “Iam told on medical authority,” writes a certain author,® “that the bunches of flowers which children offer to travelers in south- ern Europe are sometimes intended for the ungracious purpose of send- ing some disease away from their houses.” The contagiousness of ail- ments were known in olden times, and this desire to cure themselves by transferring the malady to somebody else was often the cause for the outbreak of violent epidemics in the whole neighborhood. Sometimes, instead of passing off the sickness to a human being, they attempted to give it to some animals, and thus rid themselves of the affection. A child that was suffering from scarlet fever was treated by taking some of the hair of the patient and giving it, concealed in the food, to an ass, which was to contract the fever and thus cure the patient. A similar procedure was in vogue for the treatment of measles; the hair from the nape of the neck of the child was given to a dog. A patient that had rickets was passed over the back and under the belly of a donkey nine times, uttering no word but the successive numbers. The good-women advised anybody that had convulsions or fits to try this simple remedy: *Tylor, ‘‘ Primitive Culture,’’ II., 137. 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Every morning while fasting, the subject is to chew a piece of grass and give it to a jay to eat; when the bird-dies, the cure ensues. In northern Europe the fays, or fairies, were vested with the dreaded power of inflicting disease. Fairies were supposed to be evil spirits which might be propitiated by giving them a gracious appelation. By giving diseases and other evils a good name when speaking of them, the danger of bringing them upon oneself by his words, is turned away. For this reason, fairies were called Humenides by the ancients, and ‘‘ good people’’ by the Celts.” Morier™* mentions a general superstition which he found also, in Persia that to relieve disease or accident the patient has only to deposit a rag on a certain bush, and from the same spot take another which has been previously left from the same motives by a former sufferer. There are certain minor ailments which even in the present day, the experienced grandmother thinks herself quite as capable of administer- ing to as the most respected doctor. In olden times children suffering from skin eruptions or from general ill-health were taken to certain an- cient dames, who, by means of incantations and exorcism, were able to drive out the devil from the body of the child. In the small villages of Russia when a child is suffering from a cutaneous disease of the face, it is taken to an ‘‘old woman’’ who mumbles some words and spits several times into the mouth of the child” Incantations were one of the strongest weapons of defense against all the maladies. A person afflicted with ring worms, for example, takes a little ashes between the forefinger and thumb on three successive morn- ings, and, before having taken any food, holds the ashes to the part af- fected and says: Ringworm, ringworm red, Never may’st thou either spread or speed; But aye grow less and less, And die away among the ase.* After scalding oneself, instead of giving way to vigorous profanity, or counting up to one hundred, as Benjamin Franklin suggested, the custom was to blow upon the injured part and repeat: There was two angels came from the North, One brought fire and the other brought frost; Out fire, in frost, In the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. There is a fashion even now among the lesser civilized folks to men- tion the name of a saint or of a divinity, or say something “ good” when 1 J. G. Campbell, ‘‘Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scot- land,’’ 1900. “Morier, ‘‘First Journey through Persia,’’ 1812, p. 230; and ‘‘Second Journey through Persia,’’ 1818, p. 239. ” Kahn, ‘‘ Biochemical Studies of Sulfocyanates,’’ 1912. %8 Ashes. VULGAR SPECIFICS 87 they see somebody sneezing or yawning. In Scotland, they say to one who sneezes, “ Saint Columba be with you.” The Jews say, “God give you health.” When a child yawns, the nurse must say: “ Your weariness and heaviness be on yonder gray stone.” The Jews have a custom of giving a new name to a person who is in very bad health. The supersti- tion underlying this is the belief that the Angel of Death is instructed to slay a certain person with a certain particular name. If, however, the name is changed, the angel will be unable to identify the sick man, and death will be thus robbed, for a time at least, of its victim. Among the Celts they give a road name (Ainm Rothard) to the person who is ill; it was given upon the luck (Ar sealbhaich) of the person met. Contagious diseases had quite a variety of treatment in each case. Joubert,* speaking of the transmissibility of illnesses, says: D’ou vient qu’une maladie contagieuse se prend plustost d’un vieux a un jeune qu’au contraire.... S’il vray que L’argent ne donnent on apportent jamais la peste. The ordinary affections of childhood were treated by incantations and exorcisms, or by endeavoring to transfer the disease to the lower animals. For such a disease as smallpox, which counted its victims by the thousands every year, curious medicaments were recommended. Sheep’s dung or trickings’* were administered to such patients. Another procedure was to wrap the patient in a scarlet cloth. The Chinese make their children wear paper masks on the last night of the year to prevent the god of small-pox from ‘‘pouring it out’’ on them, as he is supposed to attack only pretty children, and thus disfigured they will pass by.” For erysipelas they suggested chantings of witches; but this was not always to be obtained for either love nor money, for the church was quite stringent in its warfare against these old women who rode on broom-sticks and had communion with the devil. In cases where the songs of the “ weird women” were not to be heard, several medleys were suggested. The ashes of a woman’s hair mixed with the fat of a swine were to be locally applied; or else one half of the ear of a cat was to be eut off and the blood allowed to drop upon the part affected. A less odious procedure and one which has a little sentimentality with it was to rub the ailing part with a golden wedding ring. The king’s evil, or scrofula, was supposed to be curable a the touch of the ruler of England. Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his childhood days, was taken by his father to Queen Anne, in order to cure the child of the malady which affected him. The first king to introduce the king’s touch into England was James I. Shakespeare has an allusion to the healing powers of this king in “ Macbeth”: 4 Joubert—cited after MacLean’s ‘‘Collectanea.’’ * Jackson, ‘‘Shropshire Folk Lore,’’ 1883. ** Doolittle, ‘‘Social Life of the Chinese.’’ 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Strangely visited people, All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures, Hanging a golden stamp upon their necks, _ Put on with holy prayers. —‘‘Macbeth,’’ Act IV., Scene 3, line 150. The cure of Naaman, who seems to have suffered from this disease, by the prophet Elisha (Kings, II., 5) was accomplished by advising the great general to bathe in a certain river. A very delightful cure must have been the one mentioned by Soane.**7 A person suffering from scrofula was to kiss seven virgins, daughters of the same mother, for seven days consecutively. Another remedy, less esthetic than the one just mentioned, was to tie a toad’s leg around the part affected. The great evils of cholera, black death or plague, had very many superstitious beliefs as the basis for their cure or avoidance. The con- dition of affairs caused by one of these dreaded diseases can be appreci- ated by perusing Daniel Defoe’s description of the state of things be- fore and after the fire of London. In Morocco, as a prophylactic pro- cedure, the priests advise the people to avoid sandhills, and to keep close to the walls to avoid the evil spirits.1* As a charm against cholera, the Japanese hang a bunch of onions or a leaf of kiri, or a rag monkey in front of their house doors.1® In some parts of Russia, when the ap- proach of cholera is feared, all the village maidens gather together at night, in the usual toilet of the hour, and walk in procession around their village; one girl walking ahead with an Icon, the rest following with a plow.?° For consumption, the white plague, which even now demands a heavy toll of human life annually, the people had very many home remedies, which probably did very little remedying. The specifics that were in vogue were rather empiric, to say the least, and sometimes altogether dis- gusting. To live at a butcher’s shop, to suck healthy person’s blood, to sleep over a cow-house, to inhale the smoke of a limekiln, to pass through a flock of sheep leaving the fold in the morning, to feed on a large white- shelled snail, to eat muggons or mugwort—all of these were current medicaments in various localities. Children who had tuberculosis were allowed to lie over night at a certain well, named in honor of a certain saint. In order to prevent the spread of this malady in the household, they buried the corpse with the face downward. In hectic and consumptive diseases, they pare the nails of the patient, put these parings into a rag cut from his clothes, then wave their hand with the rag thrice around his head, crying ‘‘ Deas Soil,’’ after which they bury the rag in some unknown place. 1 Soane, ‘‘ New Curiosities of Literature,’’ I., 206. 18 Leared, ‘‘ Morocco. ’’ MacLean, ‘‘ Collectanea.’’ 77 R. Pinkerton, ‘‘ Russia.’ VULGAR SPECIFICS 89 Leprosy was an affliction sent as a punishment of God, according to the beliefs of the ancients. Persons suffering from this illness were driven from the community and were compelled to go about masked, and to ery “ Unclean, unclean” upon the approach of a non-leprous in- dividual. Undoubtedly much that was called leprosy in the olden times was in reality syphilis. For a dreadful disease, a dreadful remedy was advised, and surely in those days of slavery the remedy was quite feas- ible for any one who was able to afford the several coins that a human life cost. It was anciently believed that a bath made of the blood of infants will cure leprosy, and heal the flesh already petrified. A sore throat was sometimes treated by a very unpleasant method. The sole of a stocking that had been worn for several days. was taken warm from the foot and tied about the neck of the patient. Sailors who suffer from soreness of the throat, take a raw salt herring with the bone taken out and apply it to the neck, tying a handkerchief over it and keeping it on all night.?* Before the discovery of the healing properties of quinine, malaria had perhaps more victims than the other severe sicknesses. At the pres- ent time, in the less civilized portions of the globe, they still apply to the magician for a cure for the ague. The chips of gallows and places of execution were thought especially efficacious, and lacking these, the branch of a maiden ash freshly cut from the tree or the water from a church font were used. Certain charms were carried about by those who feared an attack of the fever. A handful of groundsel worn on the bare breast, or else an especially blessed amulet with the inscription of the name of God upon it were suspended from the neck of persons who lived in malaria-infested neighborhoods. Bring him but a tablet of lead with crosses (and Adonai or Elohim written on it) he thinks it will heal the ague.” Another charm was prepared after the following directions: Peg a lock of hair into an oak tree and then wrench it out. As internal medi- cation, quacks recommend pills made from pitch, or a pill made by roll- ing up a spider in dough and taking it several times daily ; another usage was to take a spider and rub it up alive in butter and then eat the mix- ture, or else eat while fasting seven sage leaves seven days running. As a barometer, so to speak, of malaria, the people shut up a spider in a box “and as it languishes and dies, so will the ague.” 23 Joubert,?* speak- ing of the ague, said: Est uw vray que le fievre quarte s’en va par exces on yoronguerie et qu’elle ne fait jamais sonner campane; et qu’un home en est plus sain toute la rest de Sa vie. 1 A. H. Markham, ‘‘A Whaling Cruise to Baffin’s Bay,’’ 1874, p. 253. 2T. Lodge, ‘‘ Wit’s Miserie,’’ 1596. *% Northal, ‘‘Folk Phrases of Four Counties,’’ 1894, *L. Joubert, ‘‘Hrreurs populaires,’’ 1579. 90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Not a very profitable transaction to one of the persons concerned is the following Worcestershire superstition :?° Go to a grafter of trees and tell him your complaint. You must not give him any money or there will be no cure. You go home and in your absence the grafter cuts the first branch of a maiden ash, and the cure takes place instantly on cutting the branch from the tree. A writer of the sixteenth century in England says: Tench are good plasters but bad nourishment; for, being laied on the soles of the feet, they often draw away the ague.” An incantation which was to be chanted by the oldest female in the family on Saint Agnes’ Eve ran as follows :?" Tremble and go; First day shiver and burn. Tremble and quake; Second day shiver and learn. Tremble and die; Third day never return. Epilepsy, the falling sickness, was ever regarded with superstitious dread. For this disease special amulets were worn. The emerald was supposed to possess the power of hindering an attack, or it would break into fragments. Another charm was a ring made of seven six-pences col- lected from seven maidens from seven parishes. Still others were: Hair plucked from the cross of an ass’s shoulder, woven into a chain and worn; nine pieces of silver and nine three half pence collected from as many un- married persons of the opposite sex—a ring was made from the silver and the cost of making was paid by the copper coins. In France they hung about the child’s neck, as Brassieres relates, “wn tuyau de plume d’ote fermé aux deux extremités et dans lequel est intoduit de mercure liquid.” A broth made in the skull of a dead person; lion’s hair chopped up and eaten with milk; three drops of a sow’s milk; toadstools fresh and small ; the juice of the bracken fern squeezed out when the stem is newly cut across; the fresh blood from a decapitated criminal; a poultice of groundsel applied to the pit of the stomach to set up vomiting—were all used in the various countries of Europe. A procedure, somewhat cruel, was to take a live mole, cut off its nose, and let nine drops of blood fall upon a piece of sugar, which was then to be given to the child. In certain of the village parishes, the epileptic was advised to go into a church at midnight, and to walk three times around the communion table. The daily cramps and aches and unpleasantnesses that are found in all families had their specific remedies. The usual belly-ache attack passes without the use of any medical agent, and will, in the very great > Noake, ‘‘ Worcestershire Notes and Queries,’’ 1856. 7° J. Cains, ‘‘ History of Animals,’’ 1570. 7, W. Hone, ‘‘ Everyday Book,’’ 1560. ree VULGAR SPECIFICS QI majority of cases, pass in spite of any medicament. The layman, how- ever, suffers with aches, takes a reputed remedy, gets well, and firmly believes that it was the special mixture that he had taken which had cured him. For example, they applied in Germany a special concoction recommended by Dr. Christopher Guarnonius of the court of Rudolph II. of Bavaria (1576-1612). It is rather interesting to know how many people were able to obtain this remedy: Recipe The moss that had grown on the skull of a thief ....... 2 ounces IManies Bon enSse ie apaeres tata oreteeia oleh invelale dats) chalet) =io1-) <1) aol» ol) = 2 ounces (Grr) Gre When? moar aoge ord bcoupoodoasos OOnCor COmtc % ounce IMME GOI) a Se gh ade eds eonto uno oo too sesos bon aUrmode 3 ounce Ibiasl Gill Sot ese poo bo 5 Coe hone 200 TOU COON OOO ROIaS o 2 ounces (OMI) Oi? EOE, 3 nse ona coboce nooo odo oO oecuCUECodepUdor 1 ounce SO] CeALIMOUIACK a te oeiclcte hele larel ole ialalalelatels/elele/*|\a\a cie\eiel= «> 1 ounce Mix well and apply locally. For blows, wound and sores in children, the kissing of the injured part was supposed to be efficacious. The ordinary intestinal colic had quite a number of “specifics” for it. One cure which must have been quite difficult of accomplishment, except by the professional clown, was to stand on one’s head for a quarter of an hour.?* Perhaps after the exertion of standing upon one’s head not only the colic but more pain- ful diseases might have been cured. Persons who were liable to the at- tacks of colicky pains sometimes carried about with them wolf’s dung. In his “ Diary,” Pepy speaks about carrying about oneself a hare’s foot. Pepy also gives a prescription, which I shall here repeat: Balsam of sulphur 3 or 4 drops in a syrup of Coltesfotte, not eating or drinking two hours before or after. The making of this balsam was as follows: ‘“two thirds of fine oyle, and one third of fine Brimstone, sett thirteen or four- teen hours on ye fire, simpering till a thicke stuffe lyes at ye Bottome, and ye Balsom at ye toppe. Take this off, etc. For cramps they used coffin rings dug out of a grave, bone of hare’s foot, the patella of a sheep or lamb, or the tying of a thread around the limb below the thigh. It was also thought that if a rusty old sword were hung near the bed, or if the shoes be placed T- or X-wise over the bed, or if a pan of clean water were kept under the bed, the cramp would leave the patient. Brimstone and vervain are no honey yet bind them to thine hand and thou shalt have the cramp.” Eating buns or bread baked on Good Friday was supposed to cure diarrhea.*° Besides the cross bun, a small loaf of bread baked on Good Friday morning and carefully preserved as a medicine is good for diarrhea. It is considered **R. Hunt, ‘‘ Popular Superstition,’’ 1865. » B. Melbancke, ‘‘ Philotimus,’’ 1583. °° G. F. Jackson, ‘‘ Shropshire Folk Lore,’’ 1883, p. 191. 92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY that a little of the Good Friday loaf grated into a proper proportion of water is an infallible remedy for this complaint. Joubert says: Des amellittes avec toile d’araigne contre le mal de ventre qu’ont les enfants. Another article of diet which the loose-boweled were advised to eat was the first rib of salted roast beef. A more vulgar procedure was to sleep with puppies for several nights until cured of this ailment. In children, or for that matter in adults, incontinence of water was treated rather quaintly. It was the custom to give to a child who suf- fered with this defect three roasted mice. The mouse, being roasted is good to be given to children ... in their bed; to help them furder, it will dry up the fome and spattle in their mouthes.* Numberless as are the aches that afflict the human being so numer- ous are the remedies which purport to cure these ailments. For the general aches and pains of muscles, “the laying under your pillow for nine nights a crooked six-pence that has belonged to three young men of the name of John” *? will cause relief. Sweating was good for the usual muscular aches :34 For I do sweat already, and I’ll sweat more; ’Tis good they say to cure the aches. For the household toothache, it was the custom in Shropshire to apply the amputated foot of a live mole (oont). For intestinal worms, a live trout was laid on the stomach of the patient, and the water in which earthworms had been boiled was taken internally as a broth. Boils and abscesses were poulticed for three days and nights, and the bandages were then deposited in the coffin of one awaiting for burial.** These patients were also advised “to creep under a bramble that had taken second root at the branch end, moving on the hands and knees.” Another procedure which Diaxe speaks about is “walking around six, and crawling three times across the grave of one of the opposite sex on a dark night following the interment”—a rather shivery experience! For a carbuncle: On advertit ceux qui ont carboncle de ne passer J’eau, sur pont ou sur bateau, ne en sorte que ce soit.» A special amulet worn by nursing women to protect them against sore breasts was a heart-shaped medal made of the lead cut off the quar- rels of a church window at midnight. Bleeding of the nose was pre- vented, so was it thought, by wearing a red ribbon around the neck, or by suspending from the neck a dead dried toad, or a large key. A lace 31 Bullein, ‘‘Bulwarke of Defence,’’ 1562, p. 84. 2 Mrs. Hannah More, ‘‘ Tawny Rachel.’’ *% Webster, ‘‘Cure for a Cuckold.’’ *'T, Diaxe, ‘‘ Bibliotheca Scholastica Instuctissima,’’ 1633. 2 L. Joubert, loc. cit. VULGAR SPECIFICS 93 given unasked and received without thanks from one of the opposite sex will sometimes stop epistaxis. We see that a bone taken out from a carp’s head stauncheth blood, and so will none other part of the fish.* Poisoning had and still has its superstitious treatment. The uni- corn’s horn was remedy for all poisons. The horn of a unicorn (the animal is not to be found classified in the modern books on zoology) was worth the price of half a city.** It is needless to say that this rem- edy was not within the reach of everybody, and less poetic remedies were used by the ordinary people. The quacks, however, made huge profits selling powdered unicorn’s horn to the gullible public. It is more than a suspicion that the stuff sold was made from the horns of an ox or a ram. “Plain proof declares one poison to drive out another.” ** and they certainly gave dangerous medications to persons that were poi- soned. If the patient did not succumb to the original draught, he had very good chances of dying as a result of the remedy. For the bites of animals, many queer remedies were in vogue. A patient bitten by a dog used to eat the hair of this dog. A person stung by an adder was advised to kill the animal and apply some of its fat to the wound, or else to fry the adder and strike the place bitten with the hot flesh, or else to make an ointment from its liver and apply it locally (Noake). *Tis true a scorpion’s oil is said To cure the wounds the vermin made. The Boston Journal of Chemistry (1879) tells of a druggist from Texas who paid two hundred and fifty dollars for a “mad-stone” which had the powers to cure the bites of animals. A custom, which is prac- tised by the Hottentots also, is to kill a chicken and to thrust the bitten part into the stomach of the bird, and there let it remain till the chicken becomes cold. If the flesh of the fowl becomes dark, a cure was supposed to have been affected; if not the poison had been absorbed by the person bitten. To relieve deafness, they applied eels to the ears. For the cure of dropsy “all-flower water” was recommended. Another method for the treatment of dropsy is the one reported by Joubert: Pisser durant neuf matins sur le marrube avant que le soleil L’ait touche et a mesure que la plante mourra, le ventre se desenfiera. For the cure of rickets, they suggested sleeping on a bed of green bracken, or passing the child nine times through a holed stone against the sun. In Oxfordshire, they relieved heartache by giving the patient the last nine drops of tea from the tea-pot after the guests had been served. * Scott, ‘‘Discoverie of Witcheraft,’’ XIII., p. 10. ? Dekker, ‘‘Gull’s Hornbook,’’ IT. Grange, ‘‘Golden Aphroditis,’’ ITT. 94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Rheumatism and the joint pains were treated both by charms and by concoctions. To carry the forefoot of a hare, or a raw potato, or a horse chestnut in one’s pocket ameliorated an attack of the severe pain that accompanies all joint affections. Sailors when attacked by rheu- matism wear a flannel shirt nine times dyed. The landlubber has to be satisfied with sleeping on a hop pillow, or leaning for one night against the bellows. Common nostoe, commonly called star-jelly, a trembling gelatinous fungus that springs up suddenly after rain, is by superstitious persons believed to possess virtue as a vulnerary and in pains of joints.” Walking in fields on Friday before sunrise was advised to patients suffering with gout. Pliny says: Podagras mitigati pede leporis viventis absciso si quis secum assidue habeat. Dropping of excreted water upon the feet, or applying the lodestone were thought of benefit in this disease. D’ouw vient que les chapons sont plus et plustot gouteux que le cogs si la castration est remedy @ la goutte. For billiousness and jaundice, quite a number of the most disgusting mixtures were used. Lice seem to have been quite a current specific for this affection; lice served in all manners and form, and in all ways of preparation. Nine lice to be eaten on a slice of bread and butter ;*° or else nine lice swallowed alive,*! were two of the most conventional ways of taking this medicine. Poor, dirty communities need never complain of jaundice, for they always have the wherewithal to cure it. Die of jaundice, yet have the cure about you!—lice, large lice, begot of your own dust and the heat of brick kilns.” Goose dung made into pills and eaten several times a day was another very tasteful medicament, which was especially in style in Staffordshire. In Franche Comte, hawkweed and carrots are still con- sidered specifics for jaundice. A more convincing recipe is the one recommended by Graham :** Raw eggs eaten two at rising, fasting, and one every four hours during the day at times when the stomach is empty. Probatum est. Fall to your cheese-cakes, curds, and clouted cream, Your fool, your flaunes, and swill of ale a stream To wash it from your livers. Cancer, it was vaguely believed in certain portions of the world, was due to the growth of a toad-like body in the human organism. The first thing that was, therefore, applied to a cancerous surface was a dried toad. The doctors recommended the following composition: To a yolk ° Lindley, ‘‘ Vegetable Kingdom,’’ 1846. 4 Narsnet, ‘‘A Declaration of Popish Impostures,’’ 1603. “Tsaac Walton, ‘‘Complete Angler.’’ # Beaumont and Fletcher, ‘‘ Thierry and Theodoret,’’ V., 1. * Graham, ‘‘ Domestic Medicine.’’ “Ben Jonson, ‘‘Sad Shepherd,’’ I., 7. VULGAR SPECIFICS 95 of an egg add salt, then make a salve and apply. A prescription which was given to Pope Clement VII. to relieve his carcinoma (I believe) read as follows: Take of ChinkhniGm woh soecus coho deubous ab omnbomedo Go ae 10 ounces GEE Tc oiniel ste sit inves laiate nm /olais ss aia Nereis wisiale mks e = 5 ounces JRIOHIST pagiaods ces Bouencanmenboeoscsuaae osoebC 4 ounces INTMRNIE SE 6560.5 poluao su mboeR Oe CODE nDoMe SOUCeuE 3 ounces IDM ROO ticaccas bo cman pe DO SDONOMOO OU DOOmOOUd Oo 2 ounces Chibiniigy” Wak onko oo coupes ccnp uodomoS loco oubiCc Oot 1 ounce Dissolve in a decoction of lemon juice mixed with wine. Take a half pint before meals in the time when the moon is in Cancer, Leo or Virgo. Brassieres, speaking about the errors of medicine, relates the fol- lowing procedure for the treatment of cancer: Chacun connait ce vieuz prejuge que l’on ne rencontre plus que chez de pauvres femmes du siécle dernier. Atteintes de cancer, elle nourissent avec soin, pour ne pas en etre devoreés ce pretendu animal, en appliquant tous les matins sur leur plaies une tranche fraiche de veau.* For the treatment of urinary lithiasis, very many curious means were in use in the middle ages. Goat’s urine was recommended by all the Arabian physicians to be taken internally. The Talmud mentions quite a remarkable cure for the kidney or bladder stone. Baas speaks of this method in a very bitter way, but it is no more vulgar than many similar customs in different countries. Baas’s “ History of Medicine” is rather unfair and partial in its treatment of Hebrew contributions to medical knowledge. The method to which I am referring was cited in another paper by me on the history of the lithotomy operation.** A bone from the head of a carp is said to be good for apoplexy or the falling sickness.“ All flower water was given to patients suffering with asthma. This “all-flower water ’* was called wrina vacce. Patients complaining of chorea were usually taken to one of the holy shrines where remarkable cures were said to be performed. Lourdes in France still boasts of the survival of this ancient custom. Emile Zola in his masterly novel, bear- ing the name of this city, vividly describes how the sick and suffering from all parts of France come to this town and expect complete restora- tion to normal health. The next is Vitus sodde in Oyle, before whose ymage faire, Both men and women bringing hennes for offering do repair; The cause whereof I do not know, I think for some disease Which he is thought to drive away from such as him do please.* For shingles, herpes zoster, there was practised the following cure: “A. F. E. Brassieres, ‘‘Sur les Erreurs en Medicine,’’ 1860. “ Kahn, ‘‘ History of the Lithotomy Operation,’’ Medical Record, 1912. “J. Schroedems, ‘‘ Zoology,’’ 1659. * Googe, ‘‘Popish Kingdom,’’ 1570, p. 54. 96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The patient was taken to running water, where seven rushes were picked and were laid across the affected part; the rushes were then thrown into the stream. This was repeated on three consecutive days. “ Cata- plasme de chair de vautour avec les vifs” was applied locally to hare- skin disease.*® Si poter foureure et plumes de Vautour sur L’estomac luy peut servir en quelque chose? *° Procreative disease was, of course, more inviting to quack remedies than any other ailment of any other part of the body. The richest quacks and those that do the most flourishing business, are those char- latans who pretend to cure the sexual illnesses. I shall not discuss the remedies for all genital disorders. Sterility, however, presents very in- teresting points, and I shall just briefly give some of the ancient cus- toms that were common for the treatment of this “deficiency.” In all countries, nulliparous women traveled to holy places and prayed in the churches of the holy saints to grant them issue. At Jarrow, in Eng- land, brides sit themselves in the chair of the Venerable Bede. The old English dramatist, Heywood,** relates of the traveling to holy shrines of sterile women in order to become fruitful. Another miracle eke I shall you say Of a woman which that many a day Had been wedded, and in all that season She had no child, neither daughter nor son, Wherefore to St. Modwyn she went on a pilgrimage, And offered there a live pig, as is the usage Of the wives that in London dwell. In Egypt and other semi-civilized countries, the women who desire to become pregnant, pass several times silently under the corpses that hang on the gallows, or else they bathe in the dirtiest puddles where carrions and carcasses of dead animals abound. Juvenal®? says in one of his satires: Steriles morvuntur, et illis Turgida non prodest condita pyxide Lyde. Another Latin writer states: Credebant antiqui mulierem sterilem concipere posse, si pyxide araneam inclusam gestit in simu. Sage and salts were the ordinary ingredients of the prescriptions which were given to women in order to cause them to become enceinte. On the other hand, Gold dust is taken internally when to prevent offspring is desirable. Shot is swallowed with the same intention, and also scrapings from a rhinoceros horn.® A little superstition seems to be a universal trait, but it is the excess of it which has caused so much harm and misery. “R. Cotgrave, ‘‘Dictionaire,’’ 1611. »P. Bailly, ‘‘Questiones Naturelles et Curieuses,’’ 1628. t John Heywood, ‘‘A mery play of Johan, Tyb, and Sir Johan,’’ 1533, p. 27. *2 Juvenal, ‘‘Satires,’’ II., 140. 53 Leared, ‘‘ Morocco and the Moors,’’ p. 281. LESTER F. WARD AS SOCIOLOGIST 97 LESTER F. WARD AS SOCIOLOGIST By ProFessor HE. A. ROSS UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN HE late Lester F. Ward was a many-sided man and his fifty pro- ductive years brought forth a great number of ‘contributions to botany, paleobotany, geology, psychology and anthropology. For a long time as paleobotanist of the U. S. Geological Survey he led as it were a double intellectual life, devoting his office hours to fossil plants and his spare time to the sciences relating to man. He had two reading publics, two groups of scientific acquaintances, two sets of correspondence. When traveling about in Europe one day he might hear his own contri- butions discussed in a university seminar on sociology, while the next day he would be the guest of an Italian count who knew nothing of his sociological writing but loved him as a brother naturalist. Toward the latter part of his life, however, sociology engrossed his energies and it is as sociologist that he will be known to the future. Thirty years ago when Dr. Ward made his début with his monu- mental “ Dynamic Sociology,” the influence of Spencer was completely dominant save among the handful of socialists. Social evolutionism in- sisted that the improvement of society must of necessity be slow. No factors could be relied on for the promotion of progress save the blind forces which had brought mankind out of prehistoric savagery. The state, being in origin and spirit coercive, could do nothing to accelerate progress, although by ill-advised intermeddling it could do much to hinder it. Beyond protecting life and property the state should keep its hands off. f Ward was the first who, digging as deep as Spencer and basing him- self with equal confidence upon modern science, built up a totally dif- ferent social philosophy. He rejected the dogma of the superiority of the “natural” and insisted that human progress is a matter of art, is “artificial.” There is always an artificial which, from man’s point of view, is better than the natural. Instead of “ Back to nature!” the cry ought to be “ Forward to art!” The social progress we have had has come about by the haphazard contributions of a small number of origi- native individuals; but the rate of movement can be enormously ac- celerated provided society intelligently sets about it. The state has been coercive, but it is fit for higher purposes. We are still in the stone age of politics. It is practicable gradually to mould government into an instrument of collective intelligence. War, oppres- VOL, LXXXII.—7. | | 98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Luster F. WARD. sion, exploitation and superstition—the chief obstacles to progress—are rooted in general ignorance and may be removed by the diffusion of knowledge. Universal education is, therefore, the one means govern- ment may employ to hasten the advancement of mankind. His “Psychic Factors of Civilization” published in 1893 laid a deeper foundation for his program of willed social progress by setting forth the rdle of mind in organic evolution. His daring comparison of “the economy of Nature and the economy of Mind” would, at any time between the sixth century and the seventeenth, have been generally re- garded as impious and inspired by the devil. Twenty years ago biolog- ical adaptation was still regarded as something to pattern after. Ward showed, however, that improvement by natural selection is frightfully wasteful. Nature’s way of getting results is costly and should not be imitated by man. As soon as mind comes into the world a better method of adaptation is discovered. It is, therefore, in order for intelligence to search for shorteuts to happiness. Beyond democracy Ward sees a form LESTER F. WARD AS SOCIOLOGIST 99 of government he calls “sociocracy” in which the control of the social future rather than the adjustment of private property interests will be the chief function. Ten years later Ward gave out “ Pure Sociology,” in which he traced the origin of society, the course of social development and the means by which civilization had been built up. This was followed soon by “ Ap- plied Sociology,” crown of his system and his last word on the problem of accelerating social progress. While insisting equally with the social- ists on the lop-sidedness of modern progress and the non-participation of the masses in the fruits of the machine era, he utterly refused to pin his hope for the future to single tax, collectivism or any economic reform whatsoever. In his view no purely economic reform can put an end to exploitation, because it leaves untouched the great inequality of intelli- gence which alone makes exploitation possible. Education, therefore, is the antidote not only to contemporary exploitation, but to such exploita- tions as may be called into being by unforeseen future developments. Ward believed that native talent or genius appears about as fre- quently in one social class as another, in working-class children as in the children of the well-to-do. The fact that through the centuries most of the great men have sprung from the comfortable classes simply proves the might of opportunity. The bringing of full educational opportuni- ties within reach of all children will enable society for the first time to realize on all its latent assets of human capacity. Ward lived to see his ideas generally accepted by thoughtful men. No longer is progress identified with the method of natural selection. To-day no one advocates surrender to the blind forces of social develop- ment. The laissez faire theory has been abandoned. The functions of government have greatly multiplied, especially on the side of research, education and stimulation. With this about-face Lester F. Ward had something to do. He never reached the people, but he reached the people who reached the people. His program remains yet to be realized, but the leaders are moving in the direction he pointed. Sir JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER. THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE Io! THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE LOED AVEBURY AND THE PASS-| there is no finer example of the per- ING OF THE VICTORIAN ERA Durineé the nineteenth century, Eng- land was clearly the leading nation of | ~*' |entific work and at the same time the world. Previously it had been rivaled by Italy and France, even by Austria and Spain; now it has to con- tend for supremacy with Germany and the United States; soon Russia and China will be added; perhaps the Bal- kan states and Japan. The races which successively invaded the British islands were of fine stock; their struggles and their union left a people of high qual- ity. In the development of the appli- cations of science England took the lead, owing to the genius of its people, the convenient supply of iron and coal and the maritime situation. Vast wealth was accumulated, the most able and vigorous of its people being the most successful. Innumerable families were established with inherited ability and wealth. From them came the great men who gave distinction to the Vic- torian era. Four years ago, after comments on Darwin and Tennyson in view of the centenary of their births, it was here remarked: ‘‘The greatness of the Vic- torian era is now represented among the living by men of science—Hooker, Wallace, Avebury, Huggins, Galton.’’ Only Wallace is now left, still vigorous | in body and mind at the age of ninety | years. One after the other the world lost Lister, Huggins and Galton; Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker died on Decem- ber the tenth last, in his ninety-fifth year; Lord Avebury died on May 28 at the age of seventy-nine years. Avebury—not every reader of the works of Sir John Lubbock will recog- nize him under the name he bore in the peerage—was not among the greatest men of the nineteenth century, but | formance of the Victorian era. Like Hooker he inherited from his father superior natural ability directed to sci- ample wealth. He was perhaps with- out peer as an amateur, nor is he likely to have a successor. He is known for a long series of scientific and literary books which attained circulations in English and foreign editions running into the hundreds of thousands. As a neighbor and friend of Darwin’s at Down he may have been influenced by him in his work on natural history, beginning with ‘‘The Prehistoric Times’’ and ‘‘ Ants, Bees and Wasps.’’ Equally popular with his works on an- thropology, entomology and botany were his ‘‘Scenery of England’’ and ‘“Scenery of Switzerland,’’ and his books of literary philosophy, such as ‘“The Pleasures of Life’’ and ‘‘The Beauties of Nature.’’ While writing so many books con- cerned with science and letters and while most active in scientific and edu- cational organization—he was president of the British Association at its jubilee meeting and president of a long list of scientific societies—Avebury conducted the banking business which he inherited from his father. He published impor- tant brochures on currency and com- merce and had large influence in the financial world. At the same time he was an active member of parliament, taking special interest in questions of education and social reform, as in ini- tiating the movement for early closing and public holidays. Avebury so completely represented many aspects of the Victorian era that his death typifies the passing of that great period in history. Rule by the best and work for love of the work are 102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Lorp AVyErBURY. fine ideals in politics and in science, yet it is now scarcely a compliment to call a man an aristocrat and an ama- teur. Avebury himself could not fol- low the newer order. With other rep- resentatives of the old whig and liberal families, he parted from Gladstone in | 1886 over the question of home rule for | Ireland. He was out of sympathy with | the radical and socialistic democracy | into which the party to which he once belonged has moved. Amateurism in science, like aristocracy in government, is no longer credited. Avebury’s books are not now read so eagerly as in the past, and it may be that such books will not hereafter be written. We have moved forward into a new age a ae a etn THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 103 which we may hope is an advance in; been born if the birth rate had re- the civilization of the world. But the | mained what it was a few years ago. Victorian era and its great men are If one tries to fancy the tragedy of not less memorable because they belong "each single death, it is quite beyond to a past which can not return. the range of the imagination to realize the meaning of a statement such as VITAL STATISTICS AND THE _ thirty years ago there died in England MARRIAGE RATE -more people from scarlet fever than TABLES of vital statistics make an from cancer, whereas in 1910 there appeal to the imagination not surpassed Were 2,370 deaths from scarlet fever by any writings in verse or prose. The and 34,607 deaths from cancer. events in the career of an individual Reference has been made here to are insignificant compared with the vast birth rates and death rates as com- exhibit of human life displayed in piled in the excellent report of the tables of births, marriages and deaths. registrar general of England, and it If the birth of a child is of more con- may be worth while to call attention to sequence than anything else, it is surely | the data concerning marriage rates. momentous that in a single country The decreasing birth rate, the employ- such as England half a million children ment of women in industry and other were not born last year who would have | social conditions lead many to surmise 35 33 3] ¥% a4 27] 25 a3 al 19 14 ee ipalceeee wor th 6 OL <0 4 BirtH Rates, DphATH RATES AND MARRIAGE RATES IN ENGLAND AND WALES FOR THE PAST Forty Years. The birth rate has decreased from 36.3 to 24.4, the death rate from 22.6 to 13.5; the marriage rate has remained about stationary since 1880. 104 that marriage is less common now than formerly, but that is not the case. There has been little or no change in the marriage rate or in the proportion of people married in the course of the past fifty years. Curves are here drawn from the report of the English registrar general for births, marriages and deaths. These curves exhibit the remarkable decline in the birth rate and in the death rate. If they should continue in their present course there would be neither births nor deaths in England seventy-five years hence. As a matter of fact, the death rate can not decrease much farther. The very low figure of 13.5 deaths for each thousand of the population is due not only to improved conditions and a great decrease in the deaths of children and of those under forty which can be maintained and in- creased, but also to the fact that a birth rate declining in the course of a single generation from 36 to 24 has given a population containing a com- paratively small percentage of old people and of young children among whom deaths are most common. What will happen to the birth rate, no one can foretell. In France the births have fallen below the deaths, and this may happen in England and in Germany. Unlike the birth rate and the death rate, the marriage rate has not altered appreciably in the course of the past forty years. It was, it is true, some- what higher in the early seventies, but it was only 16 in the early sixties. The variation from year to year is caused by economic and social conditions, so that the marriage rate has been called the barometer of the prosperity of a nation. The lowest marriage rate in England was 14.2 in 1886; it increased to 16.5 in 1899 and has since declined to 15. The constitution of the English population is favorable to a low death rate, but to a high birth rate and a high marriage rate. Among each mil- lion of the population there were in 1901 in England 257,525 between the ages of 20 and 34; in Germany, 239,- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ‘857; in France, 233,548; in Sweden, 210,773. Most marriages occur be- tween these ages and nearly all chil- dren are born when the mother is be- tween these ages. The excess of people of these ages in Great Britain would account for an excess of marriages and births of 10 per cent. over France and 20 per cent. over Sweden. As the Hng- lish population becomes stationary we may expect a decrease in marriages and births to that extent. In Germany as in England the mar- riage rate is now about the same as it was thirty years ago. It has increased somewhat in France. The percentages of women between 15 and 49 years old who were married in 1901 was: In France, 57.7; in Italy, 56.1; in the German empire, 52.8, and in England, 49.2. In the course of twenty years there was an increase in France and Italy, a stationary condition in Ger- many and a decrease in England. In France, where the children are the few- est, the proportion of married women is the greatest as is also the number of unlegitimized unions. The decreas- ing birth rate is not caused by a de- creasing marriage rate. It appears that it is due to the fact that people now marry with the intention of having no children or no more children than is convenient. SCIENTIFIC ITEMS WE record with regret the death of Dr. William MHallock, professor of physics in Columbia University, and of Dr. William MecMurtrie, one of the leading industrial chemists of New York City. THE Paris Academy of Sciences has elected Professor W. M. Davis, of Har- vard University, a correspondent in the Section of Geography and Navigation, in the place of the late Sir George Darwin.—The mathematical works of the late Henri Poincaré are to be pub- lished by the firm of Gauthier-Villars, under the auspices of the minister of public instruction and the Paris Acad- emy of Sciences. CONTENTS OF THE MAY NUMBER roblem in Evolution. Professor William Patten. North American Indians of the Plains. Dr. # - Clark Wissler. . _ Heredity and the Hall of Fame. Dr. Frederick Adams Woods Man who discovered the Circulation of the Blood. Professor Fraser Harris. G ie Erosional Work of Winds. Dr, Charles R. 1 are 2 and the New Wepnomfess > Professor Scott earing. larship and the State. Professor F. C. Brown. Scientific Career in the United States; Scientific Items. PRESS OF THE he Popular Science Monthly } Entered in the Post Office in Lancaster, Pa., as second-class matter. ‘ er The MONTHLY will be sent to new subscribers for six months for One Dollar. SUBSCRIPTION ORDER a Publishers of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, ~—s- Sub-Station 84, New York City. Please find enclosed check or money order for three dollars, swbscrip- Sub-Station 84; NEW YORK New ERA PRINTING COMPANY CONTENTS OF THE JUNE NUMBER Some Further Applications of the Method of Posi- tive Rays. Sir J. J. Thomson. The Abalones of California. Lincoln Edwards. The President of the Ninth International Congress a Applied Chemistry. Dr. George Frederick unz. The American College as it looks from the Inside. Professor Charles Hart Handschin. Edward Whymper. Alpinist of the Heroic Age. Professor B. E. Young Alcohol from a Scientific Point of View. Dr. J. Frank Daniels. The Biologica] Status and Social Worth of the , Mulatto. Professor H. E. Jordan. The REECE of Inorganic Evolution. Sidney Liebovit A Siatistica ‘study of Eminent Women. Cora Sutton astle The Progress of Science: The Anniversary Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences; The History of the National Academy; Scientific Ttems. Index to Volume LXXXII Professor Charles 1 Please find enclosed from a new subscriber one dollar (sent at your : ae subscription — for sia months to THE POPULAR SCIEN CE Yearly Subscription, $3.00 oo SCIENCE PRESS 41 North Queen St., Lancaster, Pa. CANDIES OF RARE QUALITY The Popular Stereopticon and the one most widely used in many schools and colleges, on the lecture sage and in the home, is the Bausch fomb The Perfect Stereopticon Its scientific accuracy—oftically and mechanically—its simpiz- city in oferation—its durability—are distinguishing features. Projects ordinary lantern slides, throwing brilliant, vivid screen images. The Balopticon can also easily be arranged for direct Opaque projection of postcards, photos, sketches, maps, etc. Model C Balopticon $25 and up Opaque attachment $30 and up Highest SN . —Y Candy Depends | tice Ci Scientifically tA its Fitness WwW f Descriptive Ci Ss rite today for our Descriptive Circular Blsnicd care age 4 ¥Y for Gift Maki ing ‘Bausch € lomb Optical G. 55O ST. PAUL STREET ROCHESTER. N.Y. Sold by our Sales Agents Everywhere | New York Washlngton Chicago San Francisco ° f ree Sizes $100-50¢25¢ Refracting and Reflecting Astronomical Telescopes Standard and Portable Visual and Photographic OBJECTIVES Computed by our associate DR. F. R. MOULTON (Chicago University) OBSERVATORIES © Specula, Planes, Eyepieces, etc. Photographs and Circulars on request | ! “il LOHMANN Ree Illustration shoiy’s 6-1n. with pneumatic clock. BREENVILLE, OHIO :: U. S. & eee Ge AU GUBT, 1913 MONTHLY EDITED BY J. McKEEN CATTELL CONTENTS e Earth and Sun as Magnets. Dr. Georcz ELLery Hare... . 105 enics, with special reference to Intellect and Character. Professor _Epwarp L. THornpike . 3 ae . 125 ucation through Reading: Dkr. E. eee Keoeane : é . 139 tenesis of Personal Traits. Professor 8. N. Parren : P . 149 Sequence of Sciences in the High School. Jostan Main . : . 158 Relation of Culture to Environment from the Standpoint of Inven- _ tior ‘Dr. Crank WIssLER é Pare een ‘ : 3 Z . 164 he Future of the North American Fauna. The late Dr. Watrer Haun 169 Size of Organisms and of their Constituent Parts in relation to ongevity and Senescence... Professor Epwin G. ConKLIN : AT8 ulli’s a and its Application to explain the Curving of a _Dr. S. Zetex conan Bal Ge iy : ; . 2 a 9 ; ‘The Bureau of Goan in the Philippine Islands; The Distribution and Cause of THE SCIENCE PRESS LANCASTER, PA. - @ARRISON, N. ¥. Bee ae at _ NEW YORE: Suz-SraTi0N 84 a Neue NoMsrr, 30 Cues ie Sia Mosh Se YEARLY Somearrra, $3.00 ~ CopyRieHt, 1912, BY THE SCIENCE PRESS . pelle Scientific Items . . : 5 : : : z . 204 By the provisions of the will of the late Dr. William Johnson Walker two prizes are a offered by the Boston SocieTY oF NATURAL HisToRy for the best memoirs written in the ] language, on subjects proposed by a Committee appointed by the Council. For the best memoir presented a prize of sixty dollars may be awarded; if, however, the met be one of marked merit, the amount may be increased to one hundred dollars, at the discretion Committee. For the next best memoir a prize not exceeding fifty dollars may be awarded. Prizes will not be awarded unless the memoirs presented are of adequate merit. The competition for these prizes is not restricted, but ts open to all. Attention is especially called to the following points :— 1. Inall cases the memoirs are to be based on a considerable body of original and unpu work, accompanied by a general review of the literature of the subject. 2. Anything in the memoir which shall furnish proof of the identity of the author shall be sidered as debarring the essay from competition. 3. Although the awards will be based on their intrinsic merits, preference may be giv memoirs bearing evidence of having been prepared with special reference to competition for prizes. 4.’ Each memoir must be accompanied by a sealed envelope enclosing the suthor’s name 2 superscribed with a motto corresponding to one borne by the manuscript, and must be in the h of the Secretary on or before April 1st of the year for which the prize is offered. 5. The Society assumes no responsibility for publication of manuscripts submitted, and publ tion should not be made before the Annual Meeting of the Society in May. Subjects for 1913 and 1914:— Auy biological or geological subject. . ss GLOVER M. ALLEN, Boston Society of Natural History, Secretary. / Boston, Mass., U. S. A. University Control | By J. MoKeen Catte.x, Professor of Psychology in Columbia University Together with a series of Two Hundred and Ninety-nine Unsigned Letters by Leading Men of 8 holding Academic Positions and Articles by JosrpH Jastrow, Guorem T. Lapp, Jonn J. STEVENSON, | Creienton, J. MoKnen Catrets, Groras M. STRATTON, Stewart Patron, JoHn JAY oe Mownros and Jacos Gounp ScHuRMAN. A great variety of questions concerning general university administration are dealt with in an origing a helpful way.—Nature. These quotations and examples are taken from Professor Cattell’s iafamnied and thorough discussion subject of university control, a subject upon which he has had much to say of late, finding occasion fo: “riticism of existing American conditions, and standing as the champion of an academic democracy and a a Gog profession upon which a man may enter without forfeiting his self-respect.—The Dial. Sentences and paragraphs that betoken the expert, highly-trained mind, the suggestions that com fresh a d tell us that a new day is about to dawn in educational writing.—The Boston Evening Transcript SCIENCE AND EDUCATION A series of volumes for the promotion of scientific research and educational pro, VOLUME I. The Foundations of Science. By H. Porncarf. Containing the authorized English translation by Gsorcs Barucs Hausrep of “Science and! Hypothesis,” ““The Value of Science,’ and * e and Method.” In Press. ; a VOLUME II. Medical Research and Education. By Ricuarp M. Puarcs, Wint1am H. Wutcu, W. Howe.w,, Franguin P. Maun, Lewsiiys F. Barxwr, Caartus 8. Minot, W. B. GANNON, Councitman, THHOBALD SmiTu, G. N. Stewart, GC. M. Jackson, E. P. Lyon, Jamus B. Huret OH. M. Dopson, C. R. Barpnen, W. Orxtzs, S. J. MELTzZHR, Jamms Ewine, W. W. Kuan, Henry H. es LD SON, CHRISTIAN A. Hurropr, and Haney P. Bownitcu. In Press. oe VOLUME III. University Control. Now Ready. Pages x+484. Price, $3.00 net. GARRISON, N. Y. THE SCIENCE PRESS _ _LANCASTE SUB-STATION 84, NEW YORK CITY TH E EOruLAR SCPENCE i NW Ee EX. AUGUST, 1913 THE EARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS? By Dr. GEORGE ELLERY HALE MOUNT WILSON SOLAR OBSERVATORY N 1891, Professor Arthur Schuster, speaking before the Royal Insti- tution, asked a question which has been widely debated in recent years: “Ts every large rotating body a magnet?” Since the days of Gilbert, who first recognized that the earth is a great magnet, many theories have been advanced to account for its magnetic properties. Biot, in 1805, ascribed them to a relatively short magnet near its center. Gauss, after an extended mathematical investigation, substituted a large number of small magnets, distributed in an irregular manner, for the single magnet of Biot. Grover suggested that terrestrial mag- netism may be caused by electric currents, circulating around the earth and generated by the solar radiation. Soon after Rowland’s demon- stration in 1876 that a rotating electrically charged body produces a magnetic field, Ayrton and Perry attempted to apply this principle to the case of the earth. Rowland at once pointed out a mistake in their calculation, and showed that the high potential electric charge demanded by their theory could not possibly exist on the earth’s surface. It re- mained for Schuster to suggest that a body made up of molecules which are neutral in the ordinary electrical or magnetic sense may neverthe- less develop magnetic properties when rotated. We shall soon have occasion to examine the two hypotheses ad- vanced in support of this view. While both are promising, it can not be said that either has been sufficiently developed to explain completely the principal phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. If we turn to ex- periment, we find that iron globes, spun at great velocity in the lab- oratory, fail to exhibit magnetic properties. But this can be accounted for on either hypothesis. What we need is a globe of gréat size, which * Address delivered upon the occasion of the semi-centennial anniversary of the foundation of the National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 1913. VOL. LXXXIII.—8. ) ae 106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Fig 1. Direct PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SUN WITH DOT REPRESENTING EARTH FOR. COMPARISON. has been rotating for centuries at high velocity. The sun, with a diam- eter one hundred times that of the earth (Fig.1), may throw some light on the problem. Its high temperature wholly precludes the existence of permanent magnets: hence any magnetism it may exhibit must be due to motion. Its great mass and rapid linear velocity of rotation should produce a magnetic field much stronger than that of the earth. Finally, the presence in its atmosphere of glowing gases, and the well-known effect of magnetism on light, should enable us to explore its magnetic field even at the distance of the earth. The effects of ionization, prob- ably small in the region of high pressure beneath the photosphere and marked in the solar atmosphere, must be determined and allowed for. But with this important limitation, the sun may be used by the physi- cist for an experiment which can not be performed in the best equipped laboratory. Schuster, in the lecture already cited, remarked: The form of the corona suggests a further hypothesis which, extravagant THH HARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS 107 as it may appear at present, may yet prove to be true. Is the sun a magnet? Summing up the situation in April, 1912, he repeated: The evidence (whether the sun is a magnet) rests entirely on the form of certain rays of the corona, which—assuming that they indicate the path of projecting particles—seem to be deflected as they would be in a magnetic field, but this evidence is not at all decisive. There remained the possibility of an appeal to a conclusive test of magnetism: the characteristic changes it produces in ight which orig- inmates in a magnetic field. Before describing how this test has been applied, let us rapidly re- capitulate some of the principal facts of terrestrial magnetism. You see upon the screen the image of a steel sphere (Fig. 2), which has been Fic. 2. LINES OF FORCE OF A MAGNETIZED STEEL SPHERE. strongly magnetized. If iron filings are sprinkled over the glass plate that supports it, each minute particle becomes a magnet under the influ- ence of the sphere. When the plate is tapped, to relieve the friction, the particles fall into place along the lines of force, revealing a characteristic pattern of great beauty. A small compass needle, moved about the sphere, always turns so as to point along the lines of force. At the magnetic poles, it points toward the center of the sphere. Midway be- tween them, at the equator, it is parallel to the diameter joining the poles. As the earth is a magnet, it should exhibit lines of force resembling those of the sphere. If the magnetic poles coincided with the poles of rotation, a freely suspended magnetic needle should point vertically 108 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Mil A w tT i Soak ee 2 Say 34 1s 1 Fig. 3. Tur NON-MAGNETIC YACHT Carnegie. downward at one pole, vertically upward at the other, and horizontally at the equator. A dip needle, used to map the lines of force of the earth, is shown on the screen. I have chosen for illustration an instrument designed for use at sea, on the non-magnetic yacht Carnegie (Fig. 3), partly because the equipment used by Dr. Bauer in his extensive sur- veys represents the best now in use, and also because I wish to contrast the widely different means employed by the Carnegie Institution for the investigation of solar and terrestrial magnetic phenomena. The support of the dip-needle is hung in gimbals, so that observations may be taken when the ship’s deck is inclined. The smallest possible amount ‘ of metal enters into the construction of this vessel, and where its use could not be avoided, bronze was employed instead of iron or steel. She is thus admirably adapted for magnetic work, as is shown by the observa- tions secured on voyages already totaling more than 100,000 miles. Her work is supplemented by that of land parties, bearing instruments to remote regions where magnetic observations have never before been made. The dip-needle clearly shows that the earth is a magnet, for it be- haves in nearly the same way as the little needle used in our experi- ment with the magnetized sphere. But the magnetic poles of the earth do not coincide with the geographical poles. The north magnetic pole, discovered by Ross and last visited by Amundsen in 19038, lies near Baffin’s Bay, in latitude 70° north, longitude 97° west. The position of the south magnetic pole, calculated from observations made in its vicinity by Captain Scott, of glorious memory, in his expedition of 1901-04, is 72° 50’ south latitude, 153° 45’ east longitude. Thus the two magnetic poles are not only displaced about 30° from the geograph- 7 , . *, i a *. a lg? x2 pag es = LIQ PEN OLE LE LOIE F iin Som Sl ents ihe 6 THE HEARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS 109 ical poles: they do not even lie on the same diameter of the earth. Moreover, they are not fixed in position, but appear to be rotating about the geographical poles in a period of about 900 years. In addition to these peculiarities, it must be added that the dip-needle shows the ex- istence of local magnetic poles, one of which has recently been found by Dr. Bauer’s party at Treadwell Point, Alaska. At such a place the direction of the needle undergoes rapid change as it is moved about the local pole. The dip-needle, as we have seen, is free to move in a vertical plane. The compass needle moves in a horizontal plane. In general, it tends to point toward the magnetic pole, and as this does not correspond with the geographical pole, there are not many places on the earth’s surface where the needle indicates true north and south. Local peculiarities, such as deposits of iron ore, also affect its direction very materially. Thus a variation chart, which indicates the deviation of the compass needle from geographical north, affords an excellent illustration of the irregularities of terrestrial magnetism. The necessity for frequent and accurate surveys of the earth’s magnetic field is illustrated by the fact that the Carnegie has found errors of five or six degrees in the varia- tion charts of the Pacific and Indian oceans. In view of the earth’s heterogeneous structure, which is sufficiently illustrated by its topographical features, marked deviations from the uniform magnetic properties of a magnetized steel sphere are not at all surprising. The phenomenon of the secular variation, or the rota- tion of the magnetic poles about the geographical poles, is one of the peculiarities toward the solution of which both theory and experiment should be directed. Passing over other remarkable phenomena of terrestrial magnetism, Fic. 4. Direct PHOTOGRAPH OF PART OF THE SUN, APRIL 30, 1908. 110 THH POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY we come to magnetic storms and auroras, which are almost certainly of solar origin. Here is a photograph of the sun, as it appears in the telescope (Fig. 4).2 Scattered over its surface are sun-spots, which increase and decrease in number in a period of about 11.3 years. It is well known that a curve, showing the number of spots on the sun, is closely similar to a curve representing the variations of intensity of the earth’s mag- netism. ‘The time of maximum sun-spots corresponds with that of reduced intensity of the earth’s magnetism, and the parallelism of the two curves is too close to be the result of accident. We may therefore conclude that there is some connection between the spotted area of the sun and the magnetic field of the earth. We shall consider a little later the nature of sun-spots, but for the present we may regard them simply as solar storms. When spots are numerous the entire sun is disturbed, and eruptive phenomena, far transcending our most violent volcanic outbursts, are frequently visible. Tn the atmosphere of the sun, gaseous prominences rise to great heights. This one, reaching an elevation of 85,000 miles, is of the quiescent type, which changes gradually in form and is abundantly found at all phases of the sun’s activity. But such eruptions as the one of March 25, 1895, photographed with the spectrohelograph of the Kenwood Observatory, are clearly of an explosive nature. As these photographs show, it shot upward through a distance of 146,000 miles in 24 minutes, after which it faded away. When great and rapidly changing spots, usually accompanied by eruptive prominences, are observed on the sun, brilliant displays of the aurora (Fig. 5) and violent magnetic storms are often reported. The magnetic needle, which would record a smooth straight line on the photographic film if it were at rest, trembles and vibrates, drawing a broken and irregular curve. Simultaneously, the aurora flashes and pulsates, sometimes lighting up the northern sky with the most brilliant display of red and green discharges. Birkeland and Stormer have worked out a theory which accounts “in a very satisfactory way for these phenomena. They suppose that elec- trified particles, shot out from the sun with great velocity, are drawn in toward the earth’s magnetic poles along the lines of force. Striking the rarified gases of the upper atmosphere, they illuminate them, just as the electric discharge lights up a vacuum tube. There is reason to believe that the highest part of the earth’s atmosphere consists of rari- fied hydrogen, while nitrogen predominates at a lower level. Some of the electrons from the sun are absorbed in the hydrogen, above a height of 60 miles. Others reach the lower-lying nitrogen, and descend to levels from 30 to 40 miles above the earth’s surface. Certain still * Figs. 4, 6 and 7 represent the same region of the sun, photographed at successively higher levels. THE EARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS III Fic. 5. THE AURORA. more penetrating rays sometimes reach an altitude of 25 miles, the lowest hitherto found for the aurora. The passage through the at- mosphere of the electrons which cause the aurora also gives rise to the irregular disturbances of the magnetic needle observed during magnetic storms. The outflow of electrons from the sun never ceases, if we may reason from the fact that the night sky is at all times feebly illuminated by the characteristic light of the aurora. But when sun-spots are numer- ous, the discharge of electrons is most violent, thus explaining the fre- quency of brilliant auroras and intense magnetic storms during sun- spot maxima. It should be remarked that the discharge of electrons does not necessarily occur from the spots themselves, but rather from the eruptive regions surrounding them. Our acquaintance with vacuum tube discharges dates from an early period, but accurate knowledge of these phenomena may be said to begin with the work of Sir William Crookes in 1876. A glass tube, fitted with electrodes, and filled with any gas, is exhausted with a suit- able pump until the pressure within it is very low. When a high voltage discharge is passed through the tube, a stream of negatively-charged particles is shot out from the cathode, or negative pole, with great veloc- ity. These electrons, bombarding the molecules of the gas within the tube, produce a brilliant illumination, the character of which depends upon the nature of the gas. The rare hydrogen gas in the upper at- mosphere of the earth, when bombarded by electrons from the sun, glows like the hydrogen in this tube. Nitrogen, which is characteristic of a lower level, shines with the light which can be duplicated here. But it may be remarked that this explanation of the aurora is only hypothetical, in the absence of direct evidence of the emission of elec- trons by the sun. However, we do know that hot bodies emit electrons. 112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Here is a carbon filament in an exhausted bulb. When heated white hot, a stream of electrons passes off. Falling upon this electrode, the electrons discharge the electroscope with which it is connected. Every one who has to discard old incandescent lamps is familiar with the result of this outflow. The blackening of the bulbs is due to finely divided carbon carried away by the electrons, and deposited upon the glass. Now we know that great quantities of carbon in a vaporous state exist in the sun, and that many other substances, also present there, emit electrons in the same way. Hence we may infer that electrons are abundant in the solar atmosphere. The temperature of the sun is between 6,000° and 7,000° C., twice as high as we can obtain by artificial means. Under solar conditions, the velocity of the electrons emitted in regions where the pressure is not too great may be sufficient to carry them to the earth. Arrhenius holds that the electrons attach themselves to molecules or groups of molecules, and are then driven to the earth by light-pressure. In certain regions of the sun, we have strong evidence of the exist- ence of free electrons. This leads us to the question of solar magnetism and suggests a comparison of the very different conditions in the sun and earth. Much alike in chemical composition, these bodies differ principally in size, in density and in temperature. The diameter of the sun is more than one hundred times that of the earth, while its density is only one quarter as great. But the most striking point of difference is the high temperature of the sun, which is much more than sufficient to vaporize all known substances. This means that no perma- nent magnetism, such as is exhibited by a steel magnet or a lodestone, can exist in the sun. For if we bring this steel magnet to a red heat, it loses its magnetism, and drops the iron bar which it previously sup- ported. Hence, while some theories attribute terrestrial magnetism to the presence within the earth of permanent magnets, no such theory can apply to the sun. If magnetic phenomena are to be found there, they must result from other causes. The familiar case of the helix illustrates how a magnetic field is produced by an electric current flowing through a coil of wire. But according to the modern theory, an electric current is a stream of elec- trons. Thus a stream of electrons in the sun should give rise to a magnetic field. If the electrons were whirled in a powerful vortex, resembling our tornadoes or water-spouts, the analogy with the wire helix would be exact, and the magnetic field might be sufficiently intense to be detected by spectroscopic observations. A sun-spot, as seen with a telescope or photographed in the ordinary way, does not appear to be a vortex. If we examine the solar atmos- phere above and about the spots, we find extensive clouds of luminous calcium vapor, invisible to the eye, but easily photographed with the POS ETI IIT oe 0 a FS Ne al, THE HARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS 113 Fic. 6. CaLciumM (Hs) FLOCCULI PHOTOGRAPHED WITH THE SPECTROHELIOGRAPH, APRIL 30, 1908. spectroheliograph, by admitting no light to the sensitive plate except that radiated by calcium vapor. These calcium flocculi (Fig. 6), like the cumulus clouds of the earth’s atmosphere, exhibit no well-defined linear structure. But if we photograph the sun with the red light of hydrogen, we find a very different condition of affairs (Fig. 7). In this higher region of the solar atmosphere, first photographed on Mount Wilson in 1908, cyclonic whirls, centering in sun-spots, are clearly shown. The idea that sun-spots may be solar tornadoes, which was strongly < > pe 5 ¢ er Mas Fic. 7. HYDROGEN (Ha) FLOCCULI PHOTOGRAPHED WITH THE SPECTROHELIOGRAPH, APRIL 30, 1908. 114 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY suggested by such photographs, soon received striking confirmation. A great cloud of hydrogen, which had hung for several days on the edge of one of these vortex structures, was suddenly swept into the spot at a velocity of about 60 miles per second. More recently Slocum has photographed at the Yerkes Observatory a prominence at the edge of the sun, flowing into a spot with a somewhat lower velocity. Thus we were led to the hypothesis that sun-spots are closely anal- ogous to tornadoes or water-spouts in the earth’s atmosphere (Fig. 8). Fig. 8. WATER-SPOUT. If this were true, electrons, caught and whirled in the spot vortex, should produce a magnetic field. Fortunately, this could be put to a conclusive test, through the well-known influence of magnetism on light discovered by Zeeman in 1896. In Zeeman’s experiment a flame containing sodium vapor was placed between the poles of a powerful electro-magnet. The two yellow sodium lines, observed with a spectroscope of high dispersion, were seen to widen the instant a magnetic field was produced by passing a current through the coils of the magnet. It was subsequently found that most of the lines of the spectrum, which are single under ordinaiy conditions, are split into three components when the radiating source is in a sufficiently intense magnetic field. This is the case when the observation is made at right angles to the lines of force. When looking along the lines of force, the central line of such a triplet disappears (Fig. 9), and the light of the two side components is found to be circularly polarized in oppo- ee Ee THE HARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS itl Fic. 9. ZEEMAN DOUBLET PHOTOGRAPHED IN LABORATORY SPECTRUM. The middle section shows the doublet. The adjacent sections indicate the appearance of the spectrum line in the absence of a magnetic field. site directions. With suitable polarizing apparatus, either component of such a line can be cut off at will, leaving the other unchanged. Further- more, a double line having these characteristic properties can be pro- duced only by a magnetic field. Thus it becomes a simple matter to detect a magnetic field, at any distance, by observing its effect on light emitted within the field. If a sun-spot is an electric vortex, and the observer is supposed to look along the axis of the whirling vapor, which would correspond with the direction of the lines of force, he should find the spectrum lines double, and be able to cut off either component with the polarizing attachment of his spectroscope. I apphed this test to sun-spots on Mount Wilson in June, 1908, with the 60-foot tower telescope, and at once found all of the charac- teristic features of the Zeeman effect. Most of the lines of the sun- spot spectrum are merely widened by the magnetic field, but others are split into separate components (Fig. 10), which can be cut off at will by the observer. Moreover, the opportune formation of two large spots, which appeared on the spectroheliograph plates to be rotating in oppo- site directions (Fig. 11), permitted a still more exacting experiment to be tried. In the laboratory, where the polarizing apparatus is so ad- justed as to transmit one component of a line doubled by a magnetic field, this disappears and is replaced by the other component when the direction of the current is reversed. In other words, one component is visible alone when the observer looks toward the north pole of the magnet, while the other appears alone when he looks toward the south pole. If electrons of the same kind are rotating in opposite directions in two sun-spot vortices, the observer should be looking toward a north pole in one spot and toward a south pole in the other. Hence the 116 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Fre. 10. a, b, spectra of two sun-spots. The triple line indicates a magnetic field of 4,500 gausses in a, and one of 2,900 gausses in Db. opposite components of a magnetic double line should appear in two such spots. As our photographs show, the result of the test was in harmony with my anticipation. I may not pause to describe the later developments of this investiga- tion, though two or three points must be mentioned. The intensity of the magnetic field in sun-spots is sometimes as high as 4,500 gausses, or nine thousand times the intensity of the earth’s field. In passing upward from the sun’s surface, the magnetic intensity decreases very Fic. 11. RiGHT- AND LEFT-HANDED VORTICES SURROUNDING SUN-SPOTS indicated by the distribution of hydrogen (Ha) gas. Photographed with the spectroheliograph. . : THE EARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS LE7 rapidly—so rapidly, in fact, as to suggest the existence of an opposing field. It is probable that the vortex which produces the observed field is not the one that appears on our photograph, but lies at a lower level. In fact, the vortex structure shown on spectroheliograph plates may represent the effect, rather than the cause of the sun-spot field. We may have, as Brester and Deslandres suggest, a condition analogous to that illustrated in the aurora: electrons, falling in the solar atmosphere, move along the lines of force of the magnetic field into spots. In this way we may perhaps account for the structure surrounding pairs of spots, of opposite polarity, which constitute the typical sun-spot group. The resemblance of the structure near these two bipolar groups to the lines of force about a bar magnet is very striking, especially when the disturbed condition of the solar atmosphere, which tends to mask the effect, is borne in mind. It is not unlikely that the bipolar group is due to a single vortex, of the horse-shoe type, such as we may see in water after every sweep of an oar. We thus have abundant evidence of the existence on the sun of local magnetic fields of great intensity—fields so extensive that the earth is small in comparison with many of them. But how may we account for the copious supply of electrons needed to generate the powerful currents required in such enormous electro-magnets? Neutral molecules, postulated in theories of the earth’s field, will not suffice. A marked preponderance of electrons of one sign is clearly indicated. An interesting experiment, due to Harker, will help us here. Imagine a pair of carbon rods, insulated within a furnace heated to a temperature of two or three thousand degrees. The outer ends of the rods, projecting from the furnace, are connected to a galvanometer. Harker found that when one of the carbon terminals within the furnace was cooler than the other, a stream of negative electrons flowed toward it from the hotter electrode. Even at atmospheric pressure, currents of several amperes were produced in this way.® Our spectroscopic investigations, interpreted by laboratory experi- ments, are in harmony with those of Fowler in proving that sun-spots are comparatively cool regions in the solar atmosphere. They are hot enough, it is true, to volatilize such refractory elements as titanium, but cool enough to permit the formation of certain compounds not found elsewhere in the sun. Hence, from Harker’s experiment, we may expect a flow of negative electrons toward spots. These, caught and whirled in the vortex, would easily account for the observed magnetic fields. The conditions existing in sun-spots are thus without any close parallel among the natural phenomena of the earth. The sun-spot vortex is not unlike a terrestrial tornado, on a vast scale, but if the * King has recently found that the current decreases very rapidly as the pressure increases, but is still appreciable at a pressure of 20 atmospheres. 118 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY whirl of ions in a tornado produces a magnetic field, it is too feeble to be readily detected. Thus, while we have demonstrated the existence of solar magnetism, it is confined to limited areas. We must look further if we would throw new light on the theory of the magnetic properties of rotating bodies. This leads us to the question with which we started : is the sun a magnet like the earth? The structure of the corona, as revealed at total eclipses, points strongly in this direction. Remembering the lines of force of our magnetized steel sphere, we can not fail to be struck by their close resemblance to the polar streamers in these beautiful photographs of the corona (Fig. 12) taken by Lick Observatory eclipse parties, for which Fic. 12. Sonar CorRoNA, SHOWING POLAR STREAMERS. I am indebted to Professor Campbell. Bigelow, in 1889, investigated this coronal structure, and showed that it is very similar to the lines of force of a spherical magnet. Stormer, guided by his own researches on the aurora, has calculated the trajectories of electrons moving out from the sun under the influence of a general magnetic field, and compared these trajectories with the coronal streamers. The resemblance is apparently too close to be the result of chance. Finally, Deslandres has investigated the forms and motions of solar prominences, which he finds to behave as they would in a magnetic field of intensity about one millionth that of the earth. We may thus infer the existence of a gen- eral solar magnetic field. But since the sign of the charge of the out- flowing electrons is not certainly known, we can not determine the polarity of the sun in this way. Furthermore, our present uncertainty THE EARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS 11g y EAAING) tsg WAN + G aie ~ Wve TUS AS = Se : ws Fic. 13. 150-roor TowrER TELESCOPE. as to the proportion at different levels of positive and negative elec- trons, and of the perturbations due to currents in the solar atmosphere, must delay the most effective application of these methods, though they promise much future knowledge of the magnetic field at high levels in the solar atmosphere. Of the field at low levels, however, they may tell us little or nothing, for the distribution of the electrons may easily be such as to give rise to a field caused by the rotation of the solar atmosphere, which may oppose in sign the field due to the rotation of the body of the sun. To detect this latter field, the magnetic field of the sun as distinguished from that of the sun’s atmosphere, we must resort to the method employed in the case of sun-spots—the study of the Zeeman effect. If 120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ‘Fic. 14. Hap or THE 75-FOOT SPECTROGRAPH OF THE 150-roor TownR THLESCOPE. this is successful, it will not only show beyond doubt whether the sun is a magnet: it will also permit the polarity of the sun to be compared with that of the earth, give a measure of the strength of the field at different latitudes, and indicate the sign of the charge that a rotating sphere must possess if it is to produce a similar field. I first endeavored to apply this test with the 60-foot tower telescope in 1908, but the results were too uncertain to command confidence. Thanks to additional appropriations from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a new and powerful instrument was available on Mount Wilson for a continuation of the investigation in January, 1912. The new tower telescope has a focal length of 150 feet (Fig. 13). To prevent vibration in the wind, the ccelostat, second mirror and object-glass are carried by a skeleton tower, each vertical and diagonal member of which is enclosed within the corresponding member of an outer skeleton tower, which also carries a dome to shield the instruments from the weather. In the photograph, we see only the hollow members of the outer tower. But within each of them, well separated from possible contact, a sec- tional view would show the similar, but more slender members of the tower that supports the instruments. The plan has proved to be suc- cessful, permitting observations demanding the greatest steadiness of the solar image to be made. The arrangements are similar to those of the 60-foot tower. The solar image, 163 inches in diameter, falls on the slit of a spectrograph THE HEARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS 121 (Fig. 14) in the observation house at the ground level. The spectro- graph, of 75 feet focal length, enjoys the advantage of great stability and _ constancy of temperature in its subterranean vault beneath the tower. In the third order spectrum, used for this investigation, the D lines of the solar spectrum are 29 millimeters apart. The resolving power of the excellent Michelson grating is sufficient to show 75 lines of the iodine absorption spectrum in this space between the D’s. Thus the instru- ments are well suited for the exacting requirements of a difficult inves- tigation. For it must be borne in mind that the problem is very different from that of detecting the magnetic fields in sun-spots, where the separation of the lines is from fifty to one hundred times as great as we may expect to find here. Thus the sun’s general field can pro- duce no actual separation of the lines. But it may cause a very slight widening, which should appear as a displacement when suitable polar- izing apparatus is used. ‘This is so arranged as to divide the spectrum longitudinally into narrow strips. The component toward the red end of the spectrum of a line widened by magnetism should appear in one strip, the other component in the next strip. Hence, if the sun has a magnetic field of sufficient strength, the line should have a dentated appearance. ‘The small relative displacements of the lines on successive strips, when measured under a microscope, should give the strength of the magnetic field. The above remarks apply strictly to the case when the observer is looking directly along the lines of force. At other angles neither component is completely cut off, and the magnitude of the displace- ment will then depend upon two things: the strength of the magnetic field and the angle between the line of sight and the lines of force. Assuming that the lines of force of the sun correspond with those of a magnetized sphere, and also that the magnetic poles coincide with the poles of rotation, it is possible to calculate what the relative displace- ment should be at different solar latitudes. These theoretical displace- ments are shown graphically by the sine curve on the screen (Fig. 15). We see from the curve that the greatest displacements should be found at 45° north and south latitude, and that from these points they should decrease toward zero at the equator and the poles. Further- more, the curve shows that we may apply the same crucial test used in the case of sun-spots: the direction of the displacements, toward red or violet, should be reversed in the northern and southern hemispheres. I shall not trouble you with the details of the hundreds of photo- graphs and the thousands of measures which have been made by my colleagues and myself during the past year. In view of the diffuse character of the solar lines under such high dispersion, and the exceed- ingly small displacements observed, the results must be given with some reserve, though they appear to leave no doubt as to the reality of the effect. Observations in the second order spectrum failed to give VoL, LXXXIII.—9. 122 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY satisfactory indications of the field.. But with the higher dispersion of the third order eleven independent determinations, made with every possible precaution to eliminate bias, show opposite displacements in § 90° Equator N 90° Po EE Ht Geagnn Bea SEReUAGEccaser essere Litt 7 many one H.-| 4 ane fe a eee! Pty pote oases sesseeses meee Po FEES i Saaneuen SoSaseeneane ag Bisse reece: {I ee aes Fic. 15. The curve represents the theoretical variation of the displacements oi spectrum lines with the heliographic latitude. The sun is assumed to be a magnetized sphere with its magnetic poles coinciding with the poles of rotation. The points represent mean values of the observed displacements. Vertical scale: 1 square= 0.001 mm. = 0.0002 Angstrém. the northern and southern hemispheres, decreasing in magnitude from about 45° north and south latitude to the equator. Three of these determinations were pushed as close to the poles as conditions would permit, and the observed displacements may be compared with the the- oretical curve (Fig. 15). In view of the very small magnitude of the displacements, which never surpass 0.002 Angstréms, the agreement is quite as satisfactory as one could expect for a first approximation. The full details of the investigation are given in a paper recently published.* The reader will find an account of the precautions taken to eliminate error, and, I trust, no tendency to underestimate the possible adverse bearing of certain negative results. It must remain for the future to confirm or to overthrow the apparently strong evidence in favor of the existence of a true Zeeman effect, due to the general mag- netic field of the sun. If this evidence can be accepted, we may draw certain conclusions of present interest. Taking the measures at their face value, they indicate that the north magnetic pole of the sun lies at or near the north pole of rotation, while the south magnetic pole lies at or near the south pole of rotation. In other words, if a compass needle could withstand the solar tempera- ture, it would point approximately as it does on the earth, since the polarity of the two bodies appears to be the same. Thus, since the earth and sun rotate in the same direction, a negative charge distributed through their mass would account in each case for the observed mag- netic polarity. As for the strength of the sun’s field, only three preliminary deter- minations have yet been made, with as many different lines. Disre- - garding the systematic error of measurement, which is still very uncer- tain, these indicate that the field-strength at the sun’s poles is of the order of 50 gausses (about eighty times that of the earth). “Contributions from the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, No. 71. THE EARTH AND SUN AS MAGNETS 123 Schuster, assuming the magnetic fields of the earth and sun to be due to their rotation, found that the strength of the sun’s field should be 440 times that of the earth, or 264 gausses. This was on the sup- position that the field-strength of a rotating body is proportional to the product of the radius and the maximum linear velocity of rotation, but neglected the density. Before inquiring why the observed and theoret- ical values differ, we may glance at the two most promising hypotheses that have been advanced in support of the view that every large rotating body is a magnet. On account of their greater mass, the positive electrons of the neutral molecules within the earth may perhaps be more powerfully attracted by gravitation than the negative electrons. In this case the negative charge of each molecule should be a little farther from the center of the earth than the positive charge. The average linear velocity of the negative charge would thus be a little greater, and the magnetizing effect due to its motion would slightly exceed that due to the motion of the positive charge. By assuming a separation of the charges equal to about four tenths the radius of a molecule (Bauer), the symmetrical part of the earth’s magnetic field could be accounted for as the result of the axial rotation. This theory, first suggested by Thomson, has been developed by Sutherland, Schuster and Bauer. But as yet it has yielded no explana- tion of the secular variation of the earth’s magnetism, and other impor- tant objections have been urged against it. While it should not be rejected, the merits of other theories must not be overlooked. Chief among these is the theory that rests on the very probable assumption that every molecule is a magnet. If the magnetism is accounted for as the effect of the rapid revolution of electrons within the molecule, a gyrostatic action might be anticipated. That is, each molecule would tend to set itself with its axis parallel to the axis of the earth, just as the gyrostatic compass, now coming into use at sea, tends to point to the geographical pole. The host of molecular magnets, all acting together, might account for the earth’s magnetic field. This theory, in its turn, is not free from obvious points of weakness, though they may disappear as the result of more extended investiga- tion. Its chief advantage lies in the possibility that it may explain the secular variation of the earth’s magnetism by a precessional motion of the magnetic molecules. On either hypothesis, it is assumed, in the absence of knowledge to the contrary, that every molecule contributes to the production of the magnetic field. Thus the density of the rotating body may prove to be a factor. Perhaps the change of density from the surface to the center of the sun must also be taken into account. But the observational results already obtained suggest that the phenomena of ionization in the solar atmosphere may turn out to be the predominant influence. 124 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The lines which show the Zeeman effect originate at a comparatively low level in the solar atmosphere. Preliminary measures indicate that certain lines of titanium, which are widely separated by a magnetic field in the laboratory, are not appreciably affected in the sun. As these lines represent a somewhat higher level, it is probable that the strength of the sun’s field decreases very rapidly in passing upward from the surface of the photosphere—a conclusion in harmony with results obtained from the study of the corona and prominences. Thus it may be found that the distribution of the electrons is such as to give rise to the observed field or to produce a field opposing that caused by the rotation of the body of the sun. It is evident that speculation along these lines may advantageously await the accumulation of ob- servations covering a wide range of level. Beneath the photosphere, where the pressure is high, we may conclude from recent electric fur- nace experiments by King that free electrons, though relatively few, may nevertheless play some part in the production of the general mag- netic field. In this survey of magnetic phenomena, we have kept constantly in mind the hypothesis that the magnetism of the earth is due to its rota- tion. Permanent magnets, formerly supposed to account for the earth’s magnetic field, could not exist at the high temperature of the sun. Displays of the aurora, usually accompanied by magnetic storms, are plausibly attributed to electrons reaching the earth from the sun, and illuminating the rare gases of the upper atmosphere just as they affect ‘those in a vacuum tube. Definite proof of the existence of free elec- trons in the sun is afforded by the discovery of powerful local magnetic fields in sun-spots, where the magnetic intensity is sometimes as great as nine thousand times that of the earth’s field. These local fields probably result from the rapid revolution in a vortex of negative elec- trons, flowing toward the cooler spot from the hotter region outside. ‘The same method of observation now indicates that the whole sun is a magnet, of the same polarity as the earth. Because of the high solar temperature, this magnetism may be ascribed to the sun’s axial rota- tion.> It is not improbable that the earth’s magnetism also results from its rotation, and that other rotating celestial bodies, such as stars and nebule, may ultimately be found to possess magnetic properties. Thus, while the presence of free electrons in the sun prevents our acceptance of the evidence as a proof that every large rotating body is a magnet, the results of the investigation are not opposed to this hypothesis, which may be tested further by the study of other stars of known diameter and velocity of rotation. 5 The alternative hypothesis, that the sun’s magnetism is due to the com- bined effect of numberless local magnetic fields, caused by electric vortices in the solar ‘‘pores,’’? though at first sight improbable, deserves further con- sideration. L } | B 1 ‘| BGA ho Peete # HLUGENICS 125 EUGENICS: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO INTELLECT AND CHARACTER? By Proressor EDWARD L. THORNDIKE THACHHRS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY B eugenics is meant, as you all know, the improvement of mankind by breeding. It has been decided by those responsible for this lecture—Mrs. Huntington Wilson and the president and trustees of the university—that its topic shall be the intellectual and moral, rather than the physical, improvement of the human stock. Common observation teaches that individuals of the same sex and age differ widely in intellect, character and achievement. The more systematic and exact observations made by scientific students of human nature emphasize the extent of these differences. Whether we take some trivial function—such as memory for isolated words, or delicacy of discrimination of pitch—or take some broad symptom of man’s nature, such as his rate of progress through school, or ability in tests of abstract intellect, or even his general intellectual and moral repute— men differ widely. Samples of the amount and distribution of such differences are given in Charts 1, 2 and 3. Chart 1 relates that of 732 children who had studied arithmetic equally long, one could get over a hundred examples done correctly in fifteen minutes, while others could not get correct answers to five. Even if we leave out of account the top three per cent., covering all the records of 60 or over, we have some children achieving twenty-five times as many correct answers as other children. Chart 2 shows that when four hundred children who had had similar school training were given each the same amount of practise in certain work in division, some improve not at all, and others enormously. Chart 3 shows that of children in the same school all of the same year-age (thirteen), some have done the work of the eight grades of the elemen- tary school and of one or two years of the high school, while others have not completed the work of a single year. Still less competence at intellectual tasks could be found by including children from asylums for imbeciles and idiots. The differences thus found amongst individuals of the same sex and age are due in large measure to original, inborn characteristics of the intellectual and moral constitution of the individuals in question. They are, it is true, in part due to differences in maturity—one thirteen-year- old being further advanced in development than another. They are 1A lecture given at Columbia University, in March, 1913. 126 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY also due in part to differences in environment, circumstances, training —one sort of home-life being more favorable than another to progress through school, for example. Hach advance in the study of individual Co) 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Examples done correctly in 15 minutes. CHART 1. THD RELATIVE FREQUENCIDS OF DIFFERENT DHGREDS OF ABILITY IN ADDITION IN THH CASE OF FOURTH-GRADH PUPILS. differences, however, shows that differences in maturity and differences in the circumstances of nurture account for only a small fraction of the differences actually found in individuals of the same general environ- ment of an American city in 1900-1912. Long before a child begins CJ= | percent 10 10) a . 50 0 LOLs: 30 - 4 Gain made in examples done correctly in 10 minutes CHART 2. TH RBELATIVH FREQUENCINS OF DIFFERENT AMOUNTS OF GAIN FROM Firty MINUTES OF PRACTISB IN DIVISION, IN THB CASH OF PUPILS OF THH SAMB SCHOOL GRADE. his schooling, or a man his work at trade or profession, or a woman her management of a home—long indeed before they are born—their super- iority or inferiority to others of the same environmental advantages is determined by the constitution of the germs and ova whence they spring, and which, at the start of their individual lives, they are. Of the score or more of important studies of the causes of individual EUGENICS 127 differences which have been made since Francis Galton led the way, I do not find one that lends any support to the doctrine of human initial Peary =| per cent Ds w a - CHART 3. THH RELATIVE FREQUENCIDS OF DIFFHRENT AMOUNTS OF PROGRESS IN SCHOOL OF THIRTEDN-YHAR-OLD CHILDREN. equality, total or approximate. On the contrary, every one of them gives evidence that if the thousand babies born this week in New York City were given equal opportunity they would still differ in much the same way and to much the same extent as they will in fact differ. We find, for instance, that the children of certain families rank very much higher in certain psychological tests of perception, association and the like, than the children of certain other families. Now if this differ- ence were due to the difference between the two groups of families in - environment—in ideals, customs, hygienic conditions and the like—it should increase greatly with the age of the children in some rough pro- portion to the length of time that they are subject to the beneficent or unfavorable environment. It does not. One family’s product differs from another nearly as much at the age of 9 to 11 as at the age of 12 to 14. Again, if inequalities in the environment produce the greater part of these differences, equalizing opportunity and training should greatly reduce them. Such equalization is found by experiment to reduce them very little, if at all. Chart 4 shows, for example, the result of equal amounts of training applied to two groups of adults whom life in gen- eral had previously brought to the conditions shown at the left of the chart. The trait chosen was addition; from life in general one group had gained the ability to do twenty-seven more additions per minute than the other group, accuracy being equal in the two groups. At the end of the special training the superior individuals had gained on the average 28 additions per minute, while the inferior individuals gained 128 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY only 10 additions per minute. As a result of this partial equalization of opportunity, the superior individuals were farther ahead than ever! If equality of opportunity has no equalizing effect in so easily alterable a trait as rapidity in addition, surely it can have little power in such AU oll J Group! GrovpII Group] Group ; Group] GroupIl Initial Ability Gains from equal Ability after equal practice practice CuHAart 4. TH RELATION OF THD GAINS FROM EQUAL AMOUNTS OF PRACTISH IN THH CASH OF INDIVIDUALS OF HIGH AND Low INITIAL ABILITY. traits as energy, stability, general intellectual power, courage or kindliness. Men differ by original nature. With equal nurture of an inferior sort they progress unequally to low stations; with equal nurture of a superior sort they progress unequally to high stations. Their absolute achievements, the amounts of progress which they make from zero up, are due largely to the environment which excites and directs their original capacities. Their relative achievements—the amounts of progress which they make, one in comparison with another—are due largely to their variations one from another in original capacities. The man’s original nature, too, has large selective power over his environment. The thousand babies will in large measure each create his own environment by cherishing this feature and neglecting that, amongst those which the circumstances of life offer. As Dr. Woods has well argued, the power of the environment to raise or lower a man is very great only when the environment is unavoidable. We must remem- ber that one of these babies, if of mean and brutal nature, can by enough pains avoid industry, justice and honor, no matter how carefully he is brought up; and that one of them of intellectual gifts can, if he cares enough, seek out and possess adequate stimuli to achievement in art, science, or letters, no matter how poor and sordid his home may be. If, a hundred years ago, every boy in England could have had as i W EUGENICS 129 good opportunity—each of the sort fitted to his capacities—as Charles Darwin had, the gain for human welfare would probably have been great; but if every boy then could have had as good inborn capacity for science, art, invention, the management of men—or whatever his strongest capacity was—as Charles Darwin had for science, the gain for welfare would certainly have been enormous. The original differences in intellect, character, and skill which characterize men are related to the families and races whence the indi- viduals spring. Each man’s original mental constitution, which so largely determines how much more or less he will do for the world’s good than the average man of his generation, is the product of no fortuity, but of the germs of his parents and the forces which modify the body into which they grow—is the product, as we are accustomed to say, of heredity and variation. The variation within the group of offspring of the same parents is large—a very gifted thinker may have an almost feeble-minded brother—but the variation between families is real. A feeble-minded person’s brothers will be feeble-minded hun- dreds of times as often. The general average tendency of the original intellectual and moral natures of children to be like the original natures of their ancestry is guaranteed beforehand by the accepted principles of biology. Direct evidence of it is also furnished by investigations of the combination of original and acquired differences which human achievements, as they stand, display. The same studies which find differences of nurture hope- lessly inadequate to account for differences of ability and achievement, find that original capacities and interests must be invoked precisely because achievement runs in families, and in a manner or degree which likeness in home training can not explain. Galton found that the real sons of eminent men had a thousand times the ordinary man’s chance of eminence and far excelled the adopted sons of men of equal eminence. Woods has shown that, when each individual is rated for intellect or morals, the achievements of those sons of royal families who succeeded to the throne by paternal death and thus had the special attention given to crown princes and the special unearned opportunities of succession, have, in the estimation of historians, been no greater than those of their younger brothers. Children of the same parents resemble one another in every mental trait where the issue has been tested, and resemble one another nearly or quite as much in such tests as quickness in marking the A’s on a sheet of printed capitals or giving the opposites of words, to which home training has never paid any special attention, as they do in adding or multiplying, where parental ambitions, advice and rewards would be expected to have much more effect, if they have any anywhere. Mr. Courtis, who has been assiduously studying the details of ability 130 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY in arithmetic in school children, finds, as one sure principle of expla- nation, the likeness of children to parents—and this even in subtle traits and relations between traits, of whose very existence the parents were not aware, and which the parents would not have known how to nurture had they known of their existence. Dr. Keyes has recently made an elaborate study of various possible causes of the rate of progress of a child through the elementary school. He traces the effects of defective vision, of sickness, of moving from one school to another, and so on, but finds nothing of great moment until he happens to trace family relationships. Then it appears that certain families are thick with “ accelerates,” or pupils who win double promo- tions, whereas other families are thick with retarded pupils, who require two years to complete a normal year’s work. Of 168 families, only 30 contain both an “accelerated” and a “retarded” pupil, whereas 138 show either two or more accelerates or two or more retarded pupils. The differences in home training are here not allowed for, but, in view of what has been found in other cases, it appears certain that the rate at which a child will progress in school in comparison with his fellows is determined in large measure before he is born. In intellect and morals, as in bodily structure and features, men differ, differ by original nature, and differ by families. There are hereditary bonds by which one kind of intellect or character rather than another is produced. Selective breeding can alter a man’s capacity to learn, to keep sane, to cherish justice or to be happy. La Hy CuHart 5. THH IMPROVEMENT POSSIBLH By SHLECTIVH BRHEDING. The upper surface being taken to represent the existing distribution of intellect, the lower surface represents what might be expected from, say, ten or twenty generations of breeding exclusively from the apparently best tenth of human intellects. ELUGENICS 131 Let the lines Z,H, and L,H, in Chart 5 be identical scales for the original capacity for intellect, or virtue, or any desirable human trait. Let the surface above line L,H, represent the distribution of this original capacity amongst men to-day. There is every reason to believe that wise selective breeding could change the present state of affairs, at least to that shown above L,H,, within relatively few generations. Perhaps it could do even more. There is every reason also to believe that each step of improvement in the original nature of man would, in and of itself, improve the environmental conditions in which he lives and learns. So much for the general possibility of eugenics in the case of intel- lect, morals and skill—for what should soon be in every primer of psy- chology, sociology and education, and be accepted as a basis of practise by every wise family, church and state. The next question concerns the extrinsic effects of selective breeding for intellect or for morals, the possibility of injuring the race indirectly by a change in, say, intellect which in and of itself is desirable. If we breed horses for speed, they are likely to lose in strength and vigor; do we run such risks in breeding men for intellect, or for morals, or for skill? This question has been neglected by the hortatory type of enthu- siasts for eugenics. It has also not received the attention which it deserves from the real workers for racial improvement, probably because the psychological investigations which answer it are little known. They do, however, give a clear and important answer—that there is prac- tically no chance whatever of injury from selective breeding within a race for intellect, or for morality, or for mental health and balance, or for energy, or for constructive ingenuity and skill—no risk that the improvement of any one of these will cause injury to any other of them, or to physical health or happiness. The investigations have found that, within one racial group, the correlations between the divergences of an individual from the average in different desirable traits are positive, that the man who is above the average of his race in intellect is above rather than below it in decency, sanity, even in bodily health. Chart 6 shows, for example, the average intellect of each of the groups, when individuals are graded 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., up to 10 on a scale for morality, according to Woods’s measurements of royal families. I may add that the effect of chance inaccuracies in Woods’s ratings, whereby one indi- vidual is rated as 8 or 10 when he should have been rated 9, or is rated 4 or 8 when he should have been rated 6, is to make this obtained and shown relation of intellect to morals less close than it really is. Nature does not balance feeble-mindedness by great manual dexter- ity, nor semi-insane eccentricities by great courage and kindliness. OCor- relation of divergences up or down from mediocrity is the rule, not compensation. The child of good reasoning powers has better, not 132 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY worse, memory than the average; the child superior in observation is superior in inference; scholarship is prophetic of success out of school; a good mind means a better than average character. The fifty greatest warriors of the world will be above the average man as poets. The fifty greatest artists of the world will be better scientists than the average. Genius of a certain type does, via the nervous temperament, ally itself to eccentricities of a certain type; and very stupid men can not be rated as insane because they are already idiots; but on the average the most 10 9 8 iF 6 5. Intellect — Meee a ea ee ee ey ie Morality — CHART 6. THD RDLATION BETWEEN INTELLECT AND MORALITY IN EUROPHAN ROYAL FAmintigs. After Woods. intellectual tenth of the population would, under equal conditions of strain, furnish fewer lapses into insanity than its proportional quotum. Selective breeding for superior intellect and character does not then require great skill to avoid injurious by-products or correlatives of intrinsically good traits. Intrinsically good traits have also good cor- relatives. Any method of selective breeding, then, which increases the productivity of intellectually or morally good stock over that of poor stock, will improve man, with one possible added requirement—that breeding should be for fertility as well, should not be suicidal, should not make the race better, but at the same time put an end to it altogether ! It might be that there was a necessary inverse correlation in human nature between fecundity and high intellectual and moral station whereby, the better men became, the fewer offspring they would have; and whereby, at a certain limit of super-manhood, reproduction would cease. Certain changes of the birth-rate with time, and certain varia- HUGENICS 133 tions in it amongst groups, have given some students the impression that intellect, at least, is, by natural necessity, inversely correlated with fecundity. It is hard to find the facts by which to either verify or refute the notion, current in superficial discussions of human nature and insti- tutions, that such is the case. Sad testimony to man’s neglect of the question which of all questions perhaps concerns him most—the simple question of which men and women produce the men and women of the future—is given by the fact that almost no clear and reliable evidence is available concerning the relations of fecundity to intellect, morality, energy, or balance. The most significant evidence is that collected by Woods in the case of royal families. Woods gives the number of chil- dren living till 21 in the case of each individual of the royal families which he studied. From them I have made the summaries noted on Charts 7 and 8. Kach of these sets of facts is of course the + | —! w | ‘ { Number of Children Living to 2l. N tand2 3and4 5and6 7ands6 9and 10 Morality of Mother. CHART 7. THH RELATION OF MORALITY OF MOTHER TO NUMBER OF CHILDREN. result of the constitutional fecundity of the women in question plus certain very intricate cooperating circumstances; and neither can be taken at its face-value. What the birth rate would have been had the constitutional capacity of each woman worked under equal conditions, can only be dubiously inferred. My own inference from relevant facts concerning the studies of differentiated birth rates with which I am acquainted is that morality, mental health, energy, and intellect per- petuate a family, and that wherever the really better, or saner, or stronger, or more gifted, classes fail to equal the really worse, ill- balanced, feeble or stupid classes, it is a consequence of unfortunate circumstances and customs which are avoidable and which it is the business of human policy to avoid. Society may choose to breed from the bottom, but it does not have to. No great ingenuity or care then seems necessary to make fairly rapid 134 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY improvement in the human stock. The task is only the usual one of any rational idealism—to teach people to want a certain thing that they ought to want, and to change social usages so as to satisfy this new want. ‘The same sort of tuition whereby men are learning to want those 4— = Number of Children Living to 21 1,2,3, and 4 5 6and7 8,9,and 10 Intellect of Mother. CHART 8. THD RBLATION OF INTELLECT OF MOTHER TO NUMBER OF CHILDREN. who are alive with them to be healthier, nobler and more capable, will serve to teach us to want those who are to live with our children’s chil- dren to be healthier, nobler and more capable. Provided certain care is taken to favor the sane, balanced type of intellect rather than the neurotic, any selective breeding which increases the fecundity of superior compared to inferior men, and which does not produce deterioration in the physical and social conditions in which men live, will serve. The danger of deterioration in physical and social conditions from breeding for intellect and morals is trivial. The effect is almost certain to be the opposite—an improvement in physical and social conditions. The more rational the race becomes, the better roads, ships, tools, machines, foods, medicines and the like it will produce to aid itself, though it will need them less. The more sagacious and just and humane the original nature that is bred into man, the better schools, laws, churches, traditions and customs it will fortify itself by. There is no so certain and economical a way to improve man’s environment as to improve his nature. Each generation has of course to use what men it has to make the world better for them; but a better world for any future generation is best guaranteed by making better men. Certain worthy customs of present civilization may be endangered by rational control of who is to. be born, though this seems to me unlikely. In any case, we may be sure that if the better men are born they will establish better customs in place of those whose violation made their birth possible. EUGENICS 135 It is not by a timid conservatism sticking to every jot and tittle of the customs which gifted men of the past have taught the world, that we shall prevent backsliding: it is far safer to trust gifted men of the present and future to keep what is good in our traditions, and to im- prove them. ‘The only safe way to conserve the good wrought by the past is to improve on it. It is beyond the province of this lecture to devise biologically helpful and socially innocuous schemes of selective breeding, but I may be per- mitted to record my faith that if mankind to-day really wanted to improve the original nature of its grandchildren as much, say, as it wants to improve the conditions of life for itself and its children, and believed certain facts of biology and psychology as effectively, say, as it believes that wealth gives power or that disease brings misery, appro- priate schemes for selective breeding would be devised well within the span of our own lives. Any form of socially innocuous selective breeding will improve the stock by reproducing from those members of it who have shown, by ancestral and personal achievement, with due allowance for favorable or unfavorable circumstances, the superiority of the germ plasm which they bear. But some forms may be far more effective than others according to the way in which the original components of intellect, character, energy, skill, stability and the like in the germs are consti- tuted. Suppose, for example, that the original germinal basis for human intellect consisted in the presence of a certain constant some- thing, call it “J,, the determiner for intellect,’ in the germ or ovum. The fertilized ovum, which is the human life at its beginning, could then have J, double, if both the germ and ovum had it; J, single if one or the other had it; or could lack Z,, as it must if neither had it. Sup- pose that the consequences of these three conditions were that the I,J, individuals would tend, with fair conditions in life, to be specially gifted ; that the J, individuals would tend to be of “normal” intellect; that the individuals lacking I, would tend to be feeble-minded. It is then the case that of the germs produced by the individual who had I,J, at the start of his life, each contains J,, that of the germs produced by the individual who had J, at the start of his life, half have J, and half lack it, and that of the germs produced by the individual who lacked J, at the start of his life, no one has J, Consequently, by discovering the individuals who lacked J, at the start of life and preventing them from breeding, we could rapidly reduce feeble-mindedness. By discovering the individuals who had I,J, at the start of life and breeding exclusively from them, we could eradicate feeble-mindedness and ordinariness both, leaving a race of only the specially gifted. The discovery could be made in a few generations of experimental breeding; and the exclusion, of course, could be made one generation after the discovery. 136 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY This supposition will be recognized by many of you as a simplified case of Mendelian inheritance of a unit character due to the presence or absence of a single determiner which can either be or not be in a germ or ovum, and which “ segregates.” No case quite so simple as this can be true of human intellect, but something approximating it has been suggested as perhaps true. Suppose, on the other hand, that the germinal basis for intellect con- sists in the presence, in the germ or ovum, of one or more of four deter- miners—I,, J,, J, and J,—contributing amounts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of intel- lectual capacity. The fertilized ovum could then have any one of 256 different constitutions ranging from the entire absence of all these deter- miners to the presence of each one “ duplex”—+. e., in both germ and ovum. If such duplex presence meant that the two contributions com- bined additively, the original intellect of the individual could range from 0 to 20. Individuals, all of one same original intellect—10— might be of very different germinal constitutions, and so of very differ- ent possibilities in breeding. If two individuals, each of original intel- lect 10, were mated, it might be the case that their possible offspring would range in intellect from 0 to 20, or it might be that they could not go below 8 or above 12. If the number of germinal determiners of intellect is increased to five or six, the task of telling the constitution of the germs produced by any individual of known original intellectual capacity is enormously increased ; and the research needed to guide the best possible breeding of man is very, very much more laborious. Moreover, instead of hoping to bring man to the best possible status (subject to the appearance of new desirable mutations) by a few brilliant rules for marriage, we must then select indirectly and gradually by parental achievement rather than directly by known germinal constitution, just as animal and plant breeders had to do in all cases until recently, and just as they still have to do in many cases. Only after an elaborate system of infor- mation concerning family histories for many generations is at hand, can we prophesy surely and control with perfect economy the breeding for a characteristic which depends on the joint contributions of five or six determiners. For it is just as hard to “breed in” a determiner that raises intellect or morality only one per cent. as it is to “ breed in” one which raises it a hundred per cent.—provided, of course, the latter de- terminer exists. And it is thousands of times harder to discover the distribution of a determiner in the human race’s germs when it is one of ten that determine the amount of a trait, than when it is one of two. The germinal determination of intellect, morality, sanity, energy or skill is, so far as I can judge, much more like the second complex state of affairs than the first simple one. Important observations of the inheritance of feeble-mindedness and insanity have been made by Daven- EUGENICS 137 port, Goddard and Rosanoff, which they interpret as evidence that orig- inal imbecility is due to the absence of a single determiner, and that an originally neurotic, unstable mental organization is explainable almost as simply. It is with regret that I must assure you that these observations are susceptible of a very different interpretation. Much as I should like to believe that these burdens on man’s nature are each carried in heredity in a single package, which selective breeding can shuffle off in a generation or so, I can not. A eugenics that assumes that intellect, morality, sanity and energy are so many single niches in the germs which selective breeding can, by simple transfers, permanently fill, is, I fear, doomed to disappointment and reaction. I dare to believe that the time will come when a human being idiotic by germinal defect will be extinct like the dinosaur—a subject for curious fiction and for the paleontology of human nature; but I have no hope that such a change can be made with the ease with which we can change short peas to tall, curly-haired guinea pigs to sleek, or plain blossoms to mottled ones. There is another fundamental question whose answer is needed for the most economical selective breeding of human nature, a question which time permits me only to mention, not to describe clearly. Stated as a series of questions, it is this: Do the germs which a man produces —his potential halves of offspring—represent a collection peculiar to him, or only a collection peculiar to some line, or strain, or stock, or variety, of mankind of which he is one exemplar ? Suppose a hundred men and a hundred women to exist, each with identical germinal constitutions, so that, say, in every case one tenth of the germs (or ova) would be of quality 5; one fifth, of quality 6; two fifths, of quality 7; one fifth, of quality 8; and one tenth, of quality 9. Suppose that they mated and had five hundred offspring. Suppose that the best fifty of this second generation married exclusively among themselves; and similarly for the worst fifty. Would the offspring of these two groups differ, the children of the best fifty being superior to the children of the worst fifty? Or would this third generation revert absolutely to the condition of the grandparental stock whence they all came; and be alike, regardless of the great difference in their parentage? Does the selection of a superior man pay because his superiority is, in and of itself, a symptom of probable excellence in his germs; or only because his superiority is a symptom that he is probably of a superior “line” or strain? That the second answer of each pair may be the true one, is a natural, though not, I think, an inevitable, inference from the work of Johanssen, Jennings and others. They have found selective breeding within any one pure line futile, save when some peculiar and rare variations have taken place within it. Their work is of very great importance and VoL, LXxx111.—10, 138 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY forms the best introduction to the general problem of the limits to human racial improvement. I regret that time is lacking to describe these studies of heredity within one “pure line.” It is from such that eugenics may hope to learn valuable lessons in economy of effort and exactness of expectation. JI have, however, already taken too much of your time with the problems of the exact laws whereby good men have good offspring and whereby breeding for strength, wisdom and virtue may be most effective. In the few minutes that remain let me sum up what might perhaps have been entitled the A B C of eugenics in the realm of mind. I have tried to show that, in intellect and character, men differ, by original nature, in some sort of correspondence to the ancestry whence they spring, so that by selection of ancestry the intellect and character of the species may be improved; to show also that injurious by-products of such selective breeding are very easily avoided, if indeed they occur at all; and, finally, to state some of the problems whose answers will inform us of just how the original intellect and character of one man does correspond with that of his ancestors, and so of just the best ways to discover the best strains and to perpetuate them. I hope to have made it clear that we have much to learn about eugenics, and also that we already know enough to justify us in provid- ing for the original intellect and character of man in the future with a higher, purer source than the muddy streams of the past. If it is our duty to improve the face of the world and human customs and tradi- tions, so that men unborn may live in better conditions, it is doubly our duty to improve the original natures of these men themselves. For there is no surer means of improving the conditions of life. It is no part of my office to moralize on these facts. But surely it would be a pitiable thing if man should forever make inferior men as a by-product of passion, and deny good men life in mistaken devotion to palliative and remedial philanthropy. thics and religion must teach man to want the welfare of the future as well as the relief of the cripple before his eyes; and science must teach man to control his own future nature as well as the animals, plants, and physical forces amongst which he will have to live. It is a noble thing that human reason, bred of a myriad unreasoned happenings, and driven forth into life by whips made exons ago with no thought of man’s higher wants, can yet turn back to understand man’s birth, survey his journey, chart and steer his future course, and free him from barriers without and defects within. Until the last removable impediment in man’s own nature dies childless, human reason will not rest. EDUCATION THROUGH READING 139 EDUCATION THROUGH READING By Dr. BH. BENJAMIN ANDREWS LINCOLN, NHBR. HERE is a wide variety of motives any one of which may lead a person to become a reader. Sir John Herschel wrote: Were I to pray for a taste that should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, it would be a taste for reading. A Suwanee reviewer deals with reading as an elegant pastime, the mental profit yielded by it being considered incidental. The reading of books as he thinks of it is to be classed with the viewing of pictures, a sort of esthetic exercise, delightful, uplifting, cultivating and, inci- dentally, informing, not resorted to, however, for the sake of informa- tion, at least not primarily for the sake of this, but for the refined pleas- ure to be derived from the exercise. Reading for pleasure and diversion is perfectly legitimate when people have time and inclination for this; and it is well to urge those having time for it to cultivate also the inclination; but that is not the aspect of reading to which we would draw attention now. It is proposed to discuss reading as an earnest occupation, carried on with the direct purpose of drilling and storing the mind, its pleasurable and esthetic results, important as they are in themselves, being quite secondary. The theme, then, is reading as a distinct, invaluable, and too little recognized educational resource. Consider first the very great encouragements to reading which now exist, and then note certain methods for responding to these encourage- ments, for utilizing the magnificent and ever-improving opportunities to read profitably opened to all in our modern life. A cordial invitation to wide reading is extended by the presence all about us of ample literature, representing every department of thought, in forms perfectly convenient and incredibly cheap. Carlyle said: Of all things which men do make here below by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call books. And Macaulay: I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading. 140 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY “Oh for a booke and a shady nooke, Eyther in doors or out, With the green leaves whispering overhead, Or the street eryers all about. ‘¢ Where I may read all at my ease Both of the new and old, For a jolly good booke wherein to looke, Is better to me than gold.’’ Not to speak of good old books, to be had in the stalls for a song, of the newspapers, which contain not a little good reading matter, espe- cially in their Sunday editions, or of the innumerable magazines better and worse, there are editions of nearly all the world’s literary master- pieces which are low-priced enough for the poorest and at the same time elegant enough for all but the most fastidious. You can find low-cost library editions and five-cent pocket editions, well printed, on good paper, with readably large type, suitable for all the demands of any undergoing the pangs of literary thirst. Not alone the masterpieces are so represented; but thousands of less pretentious though very useful books. Good reading matter is almost thrust upon us now. This vast literary treasury contains riches from every gold-bearing region of the earth. The best specimens of antique and of foreign letters are there, having been translated into our tongue, in most cases, by capable scholars, and thus rendered accessible to such as read only in English. The best works of Plato and Aristotle, of Cicero, one of the world’s greatest literators, of Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante, of Leibnitz and Kant, Schiller and Goethe, indeed of all the mightiest German, Italian and French writers, can not only be read by us all at our leisure but can be owned by nearly all who would wish to own them. This is no argument against learning foreign languages. Not every good product of foreign pens has been Englished. ‘To become ac- quainted with the most recent best things written abroad you must read the originals. It is true, further, that no translation ever made or ever possible can carry with it across the chasm separating tongue from tongue the entire meaning, or the delicate shades of meaning, or the rich stylistic aroma, of a true literary work. It is nevertheless a bene- diction of the first order that in so many cases where we can not consult a literary original, we can possess ourselves of the author’s main thoughts. Petrarch and likewise Keats read Homer in translation. If we can not topographically survey a country, scanning intimately its by-ways, it is worth a great deal to be able to travel leisurely its highways. Besides the cheap edition and the translation, there is the free li- brary. Those who are or think they are too poor to purchase much liter- ary material, can, in any considerable center of population, find and EDUCATION THROUGH READING 141 read all that they need of it in some public library, without money and without price. The public libraries in the principal cities offer the most ample and inviting opportunities for reading, and these opportunities are growing richer every year. Public libraries are enlarging and new ones opening. In nearly every state, a Library Commission is planting libraries in small places and carrying traveling libraries to the remotest hamlets. Quite as important, librarians are mastering their trade, be- coming more and more able to make libraries available to such as use them. The opportunities for securing information and culture through reading, which are now presented by low-priced editions, good transla- tions and free libraries, constitute, together, a potent appeal to us to read. Another such appeal lies in the certainty that by properly using these privileges any one of us can become a well-informed, well-educated person. “Reading makes the full man,” says Francis Bacon. Says Lecky (“Map of Life, Conduct and Character”) : While the tastes which require physical strength decline or pass with age, that for reading steadily grows. If it is judiciously managed reading is one of the most powerful means of training character and disciplining and elevating thought. It is eminently a pleasure which is not only good in itself but enhances many others. By extending the range of our knowledge, by enlarging our powers of sympathy and appreciation, it adds incalculably to the pleasures of society, of travel, of art, to the interest we take in the vast variety of events which form the great world-drama about us. To acquire this taste in early youth is one of the best fruits of education, and it is especially useful when the taste for reading becomes a taste for knowledge, and when it is accompanied by some specializa- tion and concentration and by some exercise of the powers of observation. Mere reading by itself alone can of course never produce the ideal education. Reading can not wholly take the place of schooling. The seminary, student conferences and debates, the class, class drill, oral explanations from arousing and able instructors, the inspiration which each student derives from the student body about him, and the other thousand and one stimulating associations connected with every good school, exert an influence which books and reading are powerless to produce. One who has never been subject to these influences, be he the most omnivorous and painstaking reader in the world, is unfor- tunate. Get all the schooling you can. If possible couple it with your reading. Irregular schooling is better than none, and so is a poor teacher. None of us are too old or too learned to be benefited by a term or a course of lessons or lectures in school, college or university. However, if you have never been able to avail yourself of these excellent aids in the training of mind, and if you are now and henceforth unable to do so, do not despair. You can read, and your chances are enviable. 142 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Studious, persistent familiarity with noble letters will place you among the knowing, and it is worth all the effort it can possibly cost you. It will give you, if not the ideal education, a real education, broad, full, useful, enjoyable, a fortune which wealth could not buy. It will keep you from being a boor and make you a cultivated person instead. You may grow to be a connoisseur, a critic, an authority in some department of literature, philosophy, art or science. If you persist, though no degree ever crown your attainments, you may yet be able to instruct masters and doctors. Short of this, the possibilities of profit from reading are indefinitely rich and great. It is a sort of mental suicide if we neglect them. In these last words, to make the argument specially strong, we have been supposing the case of the people who possess little or no school training. But such as have enjoyed that training, however long, ought nevertheless to appreciate the advantages of reading. If familiarity with books can not take the place of mental drill, no more, certainly, can mental drill take the place of familiarity with books. If you already possess a good foundation laid in school build upon it by read- ing. The chances of profiting in this way ought to impress you as much as if you had been less fortunate in respect to schooling. The existence of low-cost editions and of excellent translations of good books, made accessible through free libraries and otherwise, is calculated to bring to bear upon us all a moving incentive to read. If we yield to this incentive, whoever we are and whatever mental advan- tages we may have enjoyed hitherto, the result will be invaluable mental cultivation and improvement. Some one will interpose: “I do not love to read; it is a bore. I hate books. If I am to get good from reading you must tell me how I may develop interest in them.” . How sad the confession that one does not love to read. Compare Edward Gibbon’s avowal that he would not exchange his love of reading for all the gold of the Indies. Two sorts of people avoid reading, those with very little intelligence and those possessing such unusual intelligence and originality that their minds keep busy without external stimulus. ‘The dull ones can not perhaps be helped much; the others need only proper direction in order to find good reading a perpetual delight. An intelligent person who dislikes reading is nearly sure to be deeply interested in something; in games, in hunting, in some kind of animals or sort of mechanism. Get a first-rate book discussing his hobby and see if you can not bait his taste therewith. Most likely he will read that and call for another and another. These books will suggest still others and your man is a reader. If all such traps fail, get your protégé to read a thrilling short EDUCATION THROUGH READING 143 story, or touch him with a live coal of patriotic verse like Oliver Wendell Holmes’s Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky. With this poem should always go a brief historical account of its interesting origin and effects. No matter, at first, how ill-written the novel may be, if only it is fetching. One of Conan Doyle’s “ Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” would well fulfill this office. If a man were not interested in these pieces you would be justified in giving him up. But most would be interested. The story would catch the mind and launch it, and the good work would be begun. Well begun would in this case be far more than half done. From the short story the learner would pass to higher and better story themes out into prose fiction at large and into poetry. - After a while he would need no more attention, as the novel he began with might lead to the reading of historical novels, histories and essays, placing him upon a literary life, proving independent and happy in that direction. Let us now go on to inquire how we can effectively respond to the incentives impelling us to read, how utilize the facilities for reading made available by modern conditions, how gain the mental advance- ment which reading may bring. One precept to this end is: save the scraps of your time. Diligently hoard and use those odds and ends of hours which so easily run to waste and which most people let run to waste. Five minutes once or half a dozen times a day, after rising, before retiring, waiting for meals, at recess or during some other lull in school work, now pass unim- proved, which are probably salvable by nearly every one. Such bits of time are eminently suitable for memorizing choice verse. One reader thus imbibed the following draught of nectar from an Irish poet - named Davis: Sweet thots, bright dreams my comfort be, I have no joy beside; Oh, throng around and be to me, Power, country, fame and bride! On holidays many throw away whole hours together. In most cases such lost instants make up in the course of a year several days, | perhaps weeks, which ought to be turned to profitable account. Few can afford the eyesight strain necessary to read in railway car- Tiages ; but a well-lighted railway station, if you happen to be detained in it, is an eminently fit place for reading. Against such occasions, more or less frequent in every life, always go equipped with a pocket 144 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY edition of some choice author. “A book of verses underneath the bough ” or whereever else you camp is a fitting companion. In urging this employment of spare fragments of time, we are not forgetting the need which all have of recreation. Our bodies must of course be rested when they are weary, and so must our minds. ‘Time spent in reading when you are too tired to read is not saved, but lost. The most healthy person sometimes needs the fullest possible relief from mental exercise, and that during the day. For all this it is true that change of mental activity, as from our regular work to a delightful book, affords mental rest of a most valuable order. If your dinner is ten minutes late you need not take up Euclid or the “ Principia.” Use Thackeray, or even a comic paper. A second precept toward utilizing one’s reading opportunities is: Carefully select your matter. Here comes up the very important ques- tion, what to read. Answer: In the first place, negatively, it does not pay to spend much time upon newspapers or upon ordinary magazines. . Not that one may not fish up from these great seas now and then a pearl; but that the average time and labor cost of such pearls is too great. Also eschew ordinary fiction and ordinary poetry, save now and then an hour when the mental alimentary canal, lacking tone, can keep down nothing but broth. Life is too short to read all that is truly excellent; it is certainly too short to read much of what is just passable. Read more books and less periodical literature. A bad habit has arisen in this matter. The great ability, along with the timeliness, of many magazine pieces now, has had the unfortunate effect of turning readers from board to paper covers. A new book we ignore because Book Notes or the Critic or the Dial or the Outlook or some other sheet has had a review of it. But the best possible review of a book is no substitute for the book. As well dine upon odors from a hotel kitchen. Read all the reviews that appeared upon Lecky’s “ History of England in the Eighteenth Century”; then take time and go through the work itself. You will find it a new world. Equally great is the error men make in reading so few old books. A few years ago it was found, by questioning, that only one out of a class of a hundred and ten college seniors knew anything about Milton’s prose works. Many who con- sider themselves fairly well read have never touched Bacon’s “ Essays ” or the “ Pilgrim’s Progress.” Such as do read many books, among them, too, books which came out before the Spanish War, often mis- takenly avoid the most precious works because they are bulky. To master Masson’s “ Life of Milton” or Spedding’s “ Life of Bacon” is a liberal education. It is at once a wonder and a misfortune that so few essays are read now. The rage is all for poetry instead. Colleges and universities offer a hundred lectures on poetry to one on prose belles lettres. So far as one can observe, the noble essays of Hume, ee ” EDUCATION THROUGH READING 145 Macaulay and Montaigne are nearly forgotten. Interest in this class of literature should be revived. Rarely has a busy man or woman the time to peruse the whole of an author, however famous. It would rarely be of use to read wholes, even with amplest leisure. It is the mark of a great writer to have uttered a good deal of trash; and it is almost a sure proof of a reader’s pedantry if he has read all which a given author has published, unless he has done so to hunt up errors or peculiarities. It shows that he has read not con amore, but merely that he might boast. Too many read just to be able to say they have read. The desire of reputation for attainments often outruns the desire for attainments. One young lady who said she had read Shakespeare was asked if she was familiar with Romeo and Juliet. She replied that she had often read Romeo, but that Juliet was somehow always out of the library when she called for it. As already said, we can not read all even of the best; which remark naturally forces a search for some principle or principles by which to make selection. Two principles suggest themselves, one objective, the other subjective. The objective one is that the very greatest classics in the world’s literature, Homer, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, should be more or less familiar to all. The subjective principle is: Consulting your occupation or your bent, select some specialty in letters and do your main reading with reference to that. If you are a member of a profession your stock and standard read- ing ought to be related to that profession, not narrowly, of course, but generally, in a way to give life, breadth and atmosphere to your daily toil, relieving the tedium of homely tasks and spreading a hue of intel- ligence over business which but for this might seem leaden. Every great branch of mental work by which men earn bread has, besides the technical volumes which set forth its laws, a side literature, little tech- nical, which connects it by a seamless web with polite letters. This is the library where a professional man should do his main reading. A teacher, for instance, who has to teach literature or history should, for general reading, cultivate literature or history at large. The course to pursue in these cases is obvious. But how if chemistry or physics, or biology is your department? In such a case read the history of the science and of science in general, the biographies of great scientific discoverers and the excellent fiction and verse to which scien- tific men and scientific interest have given birth. Thus a physiographer would read, among other things, Shelley’s “ Cloud”; perhaps also his “Ode to the West Wind.” ‘There is no more interesting and there is no more valuable reading than well-written biographies of scientific men. The history of scientific discovery widens into the history of discoveries in general and this into the history of civilization. If you have no profession, being only a person of leisure, let your 146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY reading follow your bent. Deal with poetry or essays, with history or science, with philosophy or art, as may best suit your fancy. Make yourself an authority on some particular author or cluster of authors, or upon the literature of a race or of a century. In a case of this sort the cautions to be observed are: Keep your reading unitary and sys- tematic, and do not try to cover too much ground. If you have no bent, read history and biography. One means, then, to the utilizing of opportunities for reading is: Hoard, miserly, your minutes; and another is: Choose carefully your matter. We now go on to speak of a third means, and it is: Method- ically digest and conserve; methodically conserve and digest. Hither form of phrasing the rule is correct, for we conserve our mental attain- ments by digesting them and we digest them by conserving. Many people read vastly, yet never have much to show for it, be- cause they trust to interest and memory to retain what ought to stay with them, using no method for assisting memory. It is a great mis- take. Memory is invaluable, of course, and should be hard worked. The exercise of piling up in one’s memory nuggets of literary gold can not be commended too highly. Still, the reader who employs no mnemonic apparatus, no mechanism, no ways and means for supple- menting memory work, is an intellectual prodigal. What means or contrivances can be suggested for conserving and digesting the useful matter with which reading supplies the mind ? We must learn to assort as we read, to attend to what has meaning for us and pass lightly over the rest. “Some books,” says Bacon, “are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Few books are worth reading word for word. Much can be skipped without loss. Many a good book is of such a character that if you begin by carefully perusing the preface and table of contents, so as to discover the author’s train of thought, you can read the rest at the average rate of three or four pages per minute. This reading at a gallop is a knack into which one grows by long practise. You gradu- ally acquire a feeling for what you want and fix the mind on that alone. Thought is thus freer to master “for keeps” the passages deserving this, which is as important as the ignoring of the rest. The question, “ Understandest thou, then, what thou readest?” is as pertinent as it is old. Take notes in reading, partly to fix attention, helping you recall in general what you may never need or care to recall in detail, and partly to make fast for future consultation the matters which most forcibly impress you. No one can tell you, and you can not prescribe to your- self, when, upon what occasion, upon what sort of a passage to take a note. Feeling, prescience, second sight, must guide. Many data that you put down will never seem to profit you, but the note-taking may be EDUCATION THROUGH READING 147 no whit the less valuable for this. Thought going into the mind may change form, as food turns into blood, but it is never lost. However, though the jotting down of impressions against paragraphs read is never, in itself, useless, it is none the less proper to warn you against writing too many of these memoranda. Very frequent or very long pauses for that purpose not only consume time but also interrupt interest and dim the impression made on you by the author’s thought as a whole. Moreover, it is pleasant to reflect that the older you grow in the reading business the less you will need to remit reading for the sake of a note and the less likely you will be to do so unnecessarily. Take notes, then, but not too many. Notes should be written in ink, legibly, each with careful reference to book, chapter and paragraph or page. You will never know which of your many entries you may by and by wish to appeal to, and it would be a pity in time of need, to have aid near, of which, owing to negligent writing, you could not avail yourself. Use for notes very ordinary blank books, or pads, of good paper, writing on only one side of a leaf, so that each leaf may be readily detached if necessary. Take notes, not many, but few, perfectly plain, and on easily detachable leaves. We have been explaining that the reader must “take” notes: We now urge that he must “make” notes, by which is meant something ad- ditional and more important. The new point is this: that you should not be satisfied with thinking your author’s thoughts after him, but should follow out all fertile suggestions made by him, into reflections of your own. Horace Bushnell used to say that he could never possibly read a book through. If it did not “find” him he threw it away on that account. If it did “find” him he was early beguiled by it into inde- pendent cogitations, which interested him more than the author’s, so that he deserted the book on their account. These reactions of the read- ers’s own mentality are the very best fruit of reading. Encourage them: give up to them: let them divert and master you. The book which drives you from itself by rousing you to amend, refute or amplify its teaching is precisely the book you need. It is life-giving food for your mind. You here discover what was meant by the remark that we digest mental stores in conserving them and conserve them by digesting. All thought-germs of your own, no less than the plants not your own that you culled from the other man’s garden; the original matters no less than the memoranda, must be laid away, so many green flowers, for preservation in note-books. Use one and the same series of books for both sorts of products. So far as you can manage it, whether with the notes you have taken or with the notes you have made, confine each note to one subject and to one page of the book, leaving the rest of the page blank. If a note 148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY covers most of the page, leave the next page blank. If, in your hurry, you have written too much on a page, or have mixed two subjects in one note, take early opportunity to separate item from item, placing each on a page by itself. In making these adjustments and transfers, use scissors, write as little as possible, and make no fuss or parade of nicety. The entire operation of writing and registering notes—we can not too much emphasize this—should be as simple, informal and rapid as pos- sible, lest the labor of it and the time consumed by it should disgust you with the plan. Some day, after your notes have become a little voluminous, it will interest you to glance them over. You will be surprised at their rich- ness, and nearly every item will appeal to you with greater zest than when you placed it there. Hach that was more or less original at first will now sweep your thought further on, while nearly every mere reg- istry of some one else’s idea will now compel your mind to bring up ideas out of its own depths. Before you are aware you will whip out your fountain pen and begin to make additions. Your thought treasures will swell as you count the precious metal they contain; and this result will recur each time you take account of stock. You will often need to insert new pages. Just pin them in or paste them slightly at the edge, ma- king the mechanical exertion of the process from first to last as simple and little tiresome as can be. Later, you will some time be called on for an essay or a paper on some topic of which you are known to be fond. Turning through your notes you will find most that you wish to say all ready to your hand, needing only that you detach the proper leaves, bring them together in order, slightly amplified, it may be, and write neat bridges between them. Spurts of fresh and original cogitation will almost inevitably accompany this recension process, and these, of course, will not be re- jected. THE GENESIS OF PERSONAL TRAITS 149 THE GENESIS OF PERSONAL TRAITS By Prorgessor S. N. PATTEN UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA S a principle of evolutionary theory, it may be stated that the environment stands to the organisms within it in one group of relations during the long evolution of races and species. The part played by the environment in the development of an individual is equally important, but so unlike in character that it must be treated inde- pendently. Phylogeny and ontogeny are governed by their own laws; yet they are elements in one harmonious whole. If carefully studied, either will show the part objective conditions play in progress. I have already touched upon phylogenetic problems in earlier articles, where I tried to show that while the inheritance of characters follows biologic laws, the release of characters takes place under the stimulus of environ- ing conditions. The external environment is not active at conception or when characters are formed before birth. Each individual must be brought into contact with external conditions through his own experi- ence to evoke the characters heredity has given him. He recapitulates the history of his ancestors with regularity; yet the biologic effects of this race experience may lie dormant within him, if external stimuli do not evoke them at the proper time. The individual in whom they are undeveloped is retarded, and shows in his conduct defects which in the contest of life put him behind other persons of like heredity but with a more stimulating environment. The principles of ontogeny can not, however, be elucidated in this way. ‘They are to be traced in the epochs of child development rather than in those of race evolution. If the environment has no influence, such studies are a waste of time; but if environing conditions have influence their power over the successive stages of child growth may be detected. The early stages will be less under environment control. But each later state would be more subject to the retardations and accelerations imposed by objective conditions. Each environmental shortcoming would be reflected in some personal defect; and every acceleration due to favorable conditions should be measurable in in- ereased vigor. Men reflect their defects in appearance, their perfec- tions are revealed in their activity not in their bodily structure. In attempting to show the relation of environmental control to the various stages of child development I shall rely upon this principle. Biologic characters are positive and show themselves in normal persons. Defects, being negative, indicate the absence of characters or an imper- 7«“The Laws of Environmental Influence,’’ October, 1911, and ‘‘ Types of Men,’’ March, 1912. 150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY fect development of them. A defective child goes through the stages of its development more slowly than the normal child, and fails to reach the later stages. Such a child has not a different heredity from the normal child, but simply a less complete expression of it. If this is true, defects measure environmental control. Every defect has some objective cause which acts as a check on normal growth. We make progress, therefore, in the study of defects as we connect them with bad environments. We can thus detect physical defects. To ascertain and measure mental defects the needed criterion is found in the law of the associa- tion of ideas. If a mental defect has at its basis a harmful association of ideas, we may confidently affirm that its origin is environmental. All ideas are postnatal, and hence all associations must be formed after birth. We do not need a biologic character to create a new association of ideas, but only some reorganization of experience. In harmony with these facts and principles there should be four stages of child development, which appear in the following order: 1. The elementary life stage. 2. The sensory stage. 3. The stage of bone formation. 4. The motor stage. On the basis of this analysis, there should be a type of man who has the elementary vital functions, but lacks the later organic developments. That such a type exists can be shown, and its indices readily pointed out. This type has high cheek bones, a sloping forehead, a flat, broad nose, and a defective lower face and chin. The central part of the face is fully developed, while its upper and lower parts are imperfect. The people of this type are short in stature, broad at the hips, and round-headed. All the vital functions are normally developed, but the later stages of growth are defective. Such people thrive in a simple environment, especially if they have a pictorial religion and a conven- tionalized morality. A second physical type is also easily described. Here the upper part of the head is fully developed, and the central part of the face is defective; the nose is peaked and narrow at the base; the teeth are bad; the mouth is small; and the chin is pointed. This physical description has a meaning that can be readily interpreted. The retardation has taken place late in pregnancy after the brain has passed through its © initial development. A child’s face lengthens downward as the child matures. A weak, short lower-face indicates, therefore, a stoppage of growth after the middle-face and upper-face have been formed. A per- son of this type is likely to be short and thin and have a poorly devel- oped bone structure. The type is usually regarded as intellectual when contrasted with the first type, which is often designated as sexual. THE GENESIS OF PERSONAL TRAITS 151 These differences among men are too plainly marked to be over- looked. The usual judgment is, however, that they are due to heredity. This claim I will not argue; I shall merely show that the differences lend themselves to another interpretation. As the mind goes through successive stages in its development after conception, may not each stage have an environmental complement which reacts on it and helps or hinders its growth? In any case, when we examine the two con- trasted physical types from this point of view, some claims may be made as to their genetic meaning. ‘The first type has been retarded early in pregnancy ; the other at a later period. The retardation in the one case may be due to defective nutrition or excessive sex excitation; in the other it is perhaps the result of irritants in the mother’s system. Facts that make satisfactory evidence in support of these suppositions are hard to obtain, but a justifiable theoretical position is taken by assuming that, in the one case, the child is carried an abnormally long time in the womb, while in the other birth is premature. To render my classification clear it is important to contrast the stages in a child’s development that occur before and after birth. The prenatal stages are physical, and physical defects are cases either of prenatal retardation or acceleration before birth. Postnatal develop- ment, on the other hand, is mainly mental, and mental defects have their origin in the association of ideas, which comes necessarily after birth. This simple distinction students of development fail to make; consequently, they confuse relations which would otherwise be obvious. Let me carry my contrast one step further. The sensory develop- ment of a child is prenatal; the motor development is postnatal. The delay of motor development is due to the fact that bones are needed to serve as fulcrums on which the muscles act. These bones can not harden until after birth. The head is formed before birth; the bones solidify after birth. It is, of course, the difficulty of child-bearing that causes the delay of motor development. The sensory stage precedes the motor stage of growth by several years, and from this fact important consequences follow. At birth the sensory powers are fairly complete. The stomach is ready for food, and the circulatory system is active. The early impressions of the child come from these sources alone; it lacks the motor coordinations which make adjustment to the environ- ment effective. Immediately after birth, all impressions are sensory, and are bound together by mental associations in which there are no motor elements. Such associations may easily become disjustive. The mental life of a child should be pictured as arising from the activity of a number of partially organized psychic centers. Hach center has stored up some latent energy which becomes active when adjacent centers are aroused. A stimulus started by any external disturbance excites these centers to activity with the result that a mental impression is formed. A succession of these arousals fix definite grooves along 152 _ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY which mental excitation moves. Trains of sensations thus arise which can not be called either adjustive nor disjustive. They move through the brain along the line of greatest surplus energy and of themselves yield results of neither value nor detriment. The child would live, think, remember and forget; he would neither gain nor suffer by this automatic thought. Only after bones grow can it make the motor coordinations on which adjustment depends. Very different effects follow strong, vivid impressions to which the motor powers are not ready to respond. These strong stimuli passing over into action prematurely tax the motor organs and disarrange them. Such effects are permanent, and motor strains are brought on that render future development abnormal. When a child walks too soon, the strains are readily seen, and it is generally recognized that the ill effects endure. If this is true of a child a year old, would not strong mental excitement in a child four weeks old produce even greater disorders, disturb motor development, and, reacting on the mental life, make it abnormal? Mental disorders are usually interpreted as wrong associa- tion of ideas bound together by strong sensory connections. The de- rangement is thought to be confined to the sensory system. The dis- orders are, however, not sensory, but motor. The premature activity of motor powers caused by sensory excitement produces strains that persist. The abnormal parts when excited arouse trains of thought that are dis- justive. A strong person can repress them; he can even exclude them from consciousness ; but when he sleeps or is weakened in any way, they intrude into his consciousness and disturb the normal flow of ideas. Another way of presenting this thought is to contrast it with the theory of a subconscious mind. Here it is assumed that a sensory underworld exists in which ideas are stored. From this mental cavern, they break forth to disturb the normal consciousness on which adjust- ment depends. The connection between thoughts should not be associa- tions, but movements. Subconscious trains of thought are in reality movements. They are, however, morbid disjustive movements, per- formed beyond the realm of consciousness. Could we really see what takes place, their motor origin would become apparent. ‘The subcon- scious is a disjustive motor realm deprived of normal external con- nections. Sensory excitement in an infant starts premature motor reactions which strains the unformed parts. It thus leaves permanent effects that appear in consciousness as disjustive trains of thought. There is thus a disjustive world in the background of every individual who has experi- enced sensory storms in infancy. The shock he then felt was not a shock to his mental associations, but to his motor coordinations. The child should live in his present sense impressions, and forget them when other agencies start new trains of thought. The lasting impressions have another origin. Strong stimuli, whether coming from the external THE GENESIS OF PERSONAL TRAITS 153 world or from internal disorders, arouse the partly formed motor centers and create in them an abnormal activity. Motor strains, bone displace- ments, muscular irregularities and undue local sensitiveness are thus caused, which force disjustive trains of thought into consciousness with each renewed activity. All such thinking must be suppressed before adjustment is effected. Motor domination begins about the fourth year and ends ten years later. It is the means by which adjustment is secured. Sensory trains of thought are adjustive only when they help men to foresee the elements of future adjustment. Their usefulness comes after the motor adjust- ments are formed. Any reversal of this order produces a disjustment which is intensified if motor strains have been produced by the prema- ture activity. These disjustments are due to the abnormalities of the child’s environment and to wrong notions of education. Parents not only fail to guard their children against sensory storms, but they intro- duce artificial trains of thought under the mistaken notion that vivid concepts and well-organized memories are an aid in a child’s de- velopment. Environmental maladjustments thus have three leading causes: defective nutrition, poisons formed within the system, and premature motor activity. The first two are prenatal, the third is due to the later development of the motor than of the sensory powers. In their genetic manifestations these maladjustments show themselves as retardations, accelerations and motor strains. Their pathological effects become sex morbidness, senility and motor morbidness. As mental phenomena, they become egotism, dogmatism and mysticism. Symbolism is an intense form of mysticism and beyond it are visions, hallucinations, subconsciousness and finally double personality. The essence of them all is the same. Some of the motor powers do not readily come under the control of the will. The amount of this dis- ruption of personality varies, but its presence is always a manifestation of motor disorder. The important facts to be recognized are the difference between senility and morbidness and the two distinct sources of morbidness, the one in sex disorders and the other in motor strains. Senility is a sensory condition making mental associations difficult or impossible to alter. The causes of morbidness lie not in the brain but in the body. It is thus a pathological, not a mental disorder. Morbid parts are easily excited to action and act apart from, or in opposition to, the dominant person- ality as expressed in the will. To simplify this argument still more I shall divide mental reactions into three groups, visual, motor and senile. Visual reactions involve no movement of thought beyond itself. Motor reactions create thought movements which end in activity. Senile reactions create a sequence with no elements not found in antecedent mental concept. Colored VOL. LXxXxIII.—11. 154 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY areas pass before us in visual thought. Limiting sequences follow one another in senile thought. The dominance of spatial concepts indicate premature sensory associations preventing the outward movement of thought to unexplored regions. The dominance of fixed sequences in thought reveals a lack of energy and of objective adjustment. Motor thought begins not in established mental associations but in bodily movements, aroused by external contacts. If movement precedes thought, action is adjustive; when thought determines movement ab- normal mental states or senile limitations cause thought to flow on without any adjustive tests of its truth. Normally each thought should start a train of muscular activity leading to adjustment. Thought should be transformed into movement, and movement into thought. The morbid intensity of particular centers prevents this by forming a series of related ideas instead of transforming thought into movement. Visual or word repetitions are thus the marks of morbidness due to motor strains. This dance of sensory ideas with no accompanying activity is, however, regarded not as a defect but as an excellence. Such abnormalities are regarded as native powers when they should be recog- nized as acquired disjustments. Few readers will be willing to admit this. To do so would call into question conventional standards and strike at cherished literary and artistic concepts. I can make my meaning clear by example better than by argument. When the American Academy of Political and Social Science was formed, President James and I had a discussion as to the title of the organization. He contended that the title should contain an “and,” and I was equally firm in the opinion that the “and” should be omitted. He argued that without the “and” the scope of the society would not be regarded as comprehensive, while I asserted that with it the title would lack a definiteness in aim. It was a long time before I realized what was the real difference between President James and myself. I found that I, myself, was constantly tending to put “ands” in sentences and to pile adjectives on top of one another. When I made a short, crisp sentence I came back to it, thinking that I had left something out. This feeling was often so strong that I could not get away from the sentence until I had added something, or balanced it, as a rhetorician would say. I finally hit on the cause of my feeling, or at least an ex- planation that seemed satisfactory. 'The place where this tendency was strong was where the word had some closely related synonym, which, stored in my subconscious memory, strove to express itself and troubled me until I dragged it forth and made it a companion of the word I had used. If I had no double associations of words I wrote easily, but the flow of thought was checked at points where double asso- _ciations existed. There I either expressed my thought twice or under- went a mental conflict until I drove the related word out of conscious- ness. The title to which I have called attention is an illustration of THE GENESIS OF PERSONAL TRAITS 155 this. One group of our societary associations is with Greece and another with Rome. Political Science brings up the one group of associations, Social Science the other. If a writer has but one set of associations, a single word will fully express his meaning; but if he knows two lan- guages and has a double set of words, each must find expression to relieve the subconscious memory. A style of this nature is called literary. With the single set of expressions the writer seems ab- rupt. A complaint is often made that I am elliptical in expression. I doubt not that many a reader has said this already in reading this article. If, however, he will go back to the places where I seem to have left out some step in the sequence of the thought, he may find that at that point he has some double association of words that I have dis- regarded. A fluent writer says in each sentence, or at least in each paragraph, “my thought is so in Greek, it is so in Latin, and finally so and so in English.” The good writer in this sense uses all the synonyms in his own or the reader’s mind before he passes along to the next topic. He brings up the whole range of his reader’s sensory associations in- stead of calling for will power to suppress them. Concise, straightfor- ward construction demands will power to follow. Every idea is then expressed once and only once. Those who are dominated by sensory associations can not readily follow such a writer. Like birds they fly several times around a spot before lighting. This means that an ornate style is a defect and not a mark of genius. The study of languages weakens the will, or, to state the thought in another way, it prevents the growth of motor coordinations. If so, children should not be taught two languages. Moreover, they should be corrected when they use many adjectives or words of more than two syllables. Only short, concise expressions can come quickly enough to aid a child in his decisions. Any delay in the formation of trains of thought retards action and prevents the growth of will power. Only the child who thinks more quickly than he acts can develop adjustive reactions and thus escape from the domination of sex and sensory asso- ciations. The effects of these double word associations are everywhere visible. I shall offer additional illustrations from the field of art, where sex and sensory dominance also has a crushing power. Time and space can not be directly pictured in art; nor can rest and motion be por- trayed. These relations are brought into consciousness only through associations with surfaces and lines. Pictures are either color masses, or perspectives taking the thought beyond the visualized surfaces to the real world back of them. Most pictures combine these two factors, surfaces and lines. The differences among pictures is in the proportion and relation of these factors. If the color masses are in the foreground, and the lines creating the perspective in the background, the picture indicates a sensory dominance on the part of its maker. If the lines Ya eee a a 156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY are in the foreground, and the surfaces are thrown into the distance by the perspective, the picture creates a motor impression and is admired by those with a motor dominance. Colored surfaces stop the movement of the eyes and give relief to those with weak muscular adjustments. Lines keep up the muscular tension and give pleasure to those who because of strong eye muscles really enjoy eye tension. The movement and strain force the thought from the line into the indefinite background. We think of what we do not see instead of the surfaces in sight. This gives the basis of clear thought and of idealism. The love of color masses may therefore be considered like ornate word expressions, an indication of physical defect. Such people have weak eyes and a shortage, not a surplus, of character. Movement aids motor dominance. An arrest of movement divides up the attention and gives to the disjustive elements of personality a chance for expression. The repressed elements in a motor personality are sex and fear. Sur- faces are pleasurable that excite sex feelings or repress sensations of fear. The dominant surface associations are therefore related to either sex or safety. Rich, deep colors have a sex association, while regularity of outline gives a sense of security. Design might be defined as the art of making timid people feel safe. This end is accomplished by the endless repetition of some elementary figure. If on approaching a building the observer sees a mass of accurate details, he assumes that the floors have been carefully constructed and that the elevator has been recently inspected. Domes always give the same sense of relief. A building with no visible roof gives to fimid people a feeling of insta- bility. Regular fences likewise arouse a feeling of safety. Banks seem to remove the fear of their depositors by supplying a multitude of bars and posts, ostensibly to protect the deposits; but any observant person realizes that the real protection lies in the vaults and not in these shams. As I was walking by Columbia University with one of its professors, he said, “ Look at that fence. Is not it beautiful?” “Yes,” I replied, “the chickens are safe. But you should remember that farmers now guard their property from sneak thieves by barb wire. Some genera- tions hence your successor will be making the same exclamation you are making, as he gazes at the imitation barb-wire fence which will then surround Columbia.” Was he artistic, or was I? The same question of natural artistic appreciation arises when a person from a flat country compares his ideas of beauty with the in- habitant of a mountainous region. I was reared in a part of the West so flat that measurements were needed to find which way the water would run. There were no domed hills to evoke the feeling of safety, or wooded backgrounds to furnish protection from the unknown beyond. The sweep of the eye reached to eternity; parallel lines came together in the dim distance. Such a picture—all lines and no surfaces—makes THE GENESIS OF PERSONAL TRAITS 157 the beholder think not of the present reality, but of its unseen comple- ment. The sensualist of the wooded mountains divides the real into _ its parts, gets beauty out of the contrasted zones and is satisfied. The idealist blends the real into one unit and creates for himself a comple- ment out of the unseen. Beauty is thus a relation between the seen, contrasting element with element, or it is the force that drives the beholder from the seen to the hidden background. When I came into contact with conventional art, it took me a long time to see what made it attractive. I disliked the contrasted surfaces and the obtrusiveness of its sex and safety associations. New pictures gave me pleasure, because they evoked in me a realization of the beyond. Sculpture was even more satisfying, because the absence of a back- ground forces the artist to rely for his effect wholly on lines, instead of on contrasted surfaces. Furniture also has its motor and sensory effects. A chair elaborately designed makes one think of the pleasure of sitting in it; a chair with lines arouses the thought of some one you would lke to have in it. A table with surfaces makes the beholder think of gorging the richly- colored food that should be on it. A table in which lines dominate arouses the thought of company and serious conversation. Lines bring in the absent. Surfaces eject from their folds a rich content. The bareness of the one and the completeness of the other give beauty. The essence of my position is the conflict of the motor powers with the earlier formed sex and sensory centers. Adjustment at adolescence is motor; disadjustment is sexual and sensory. The normal child fights its way into motor dominance and by the struggle makes its character. The abnormal remain under sex and sensory control. This would be readily admitted in cases where the abnormalities are so marked as to unbalance the mind. The milder cases, where sex and sensory impres- sions exert a disjustive pressure, are viewed as natural traits. Those who exhibit them are often regarded as superior to those with complete motor control. The real test of a natural trait is its tendency to strengthen the personality of its possessor. Evolution creates unity of control. Mechanisms for expression are organic: mechanisms for repression are due to the association of ideas, and hence postnatal in origin. There are no organic repressions. They all have a social origin. In the case of a child all repression is bad. Conscious morality should begin with maturity, and then should be a relative pressure, not an absolute prohibition. The child should be protected by an environ- ment that prevents the formation of premature sensory associations. A man with a strong personality would result. With the change weuld come a simpler language and a morality that evokes character. The ionger childhood and the delayed education bring compensation in a longer working period and in new forms of social activity from which would come a better art, a higher morality and a purer religion. 158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY THE SEQUENCE OF SCIENCES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL By JOSIAH MAIN HAYS, KANSAS F all the questions to which educational committees and journals have been devoted, the problem of what the high school sciences shall be, and the order in which they shall be given, shows least progress toward final agreement. ‘The two phases, what they shall be, and where each shall go, are so related that they can not be considered separately, for while we are fixing the one, we find that we have forced the other out of place. The problem is complicated by the introduction of a third unknown factor of how the sciences shall be affected by the introduction into the high school of industrial subjects, such as agricul- ture, which includes many applications of science. And it should be stated that no debate of this subject can be very profitable that does not include in the premises an agreement as to what sciences should be undertaken below the high school. High school mathematics has a logical sequence that admits of little variation. History has a chronological sequence which must be ob- served, at least within its larger units; and literature has a genetic sequence which finds its counterpart in the development of the child. The science group, on the contrary, is split into distinct sciences, each of which in the hands of its specialist and advocate contends for the place of vantage in the latter part of the course, where all the others may contribute to its dignity by preparing its way and making straight its paths. Thus, for example, botany and chemistry are each politely saying to the other, “after you.” Meanwhile the result of this internal disagreement is to break the unity of science, thus greatly impairing the value of each division, while weakening the ability of the whole group to properly assert itself in the larger claims of the several groups. The “ unity of science ” implies a dependence between different sci- ences which will usually be found to be mutual and argues equally well forward or backward. One method of compromising conflicting claims for precedence is to divide a science into two portions, the elementary to be given in the first year, or earlier, as an introductory science, and the advanced phase placed in the last year of the course. This method is specially suited to such a science as physics, whose rapid growth in recent years has accumulated more subject-matter than the average high school can properly treat in a year. Such a proposition is suggested SCIENCES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 159 in the report adopted by the secondary department of the National Education Association in July, 1911, on “ The Articulation of High School and College.” In its report of 1893, the Committee of Ten suggested a similar treatment of the subject of geography, a recom- mendation that seems to have had little influence on subsequent practise. Despite the variety of opinion as to what the sequence of high Sequence of High School Sciences. Present Position and Trend. Final Position and Character. amas Botany:morphology of root,stem, i and leaf.( economic, local ) 8th. Yr ' S 1 ——— Physiology( elementary, hygienic) Physics(elementary) matter,heat, gases, liquids,mechanics. Physical Geography;land forms, earth structure, stream action weathering, topography, cl]imate Soils;texture,moisSture, tempera- ture,control ,tillage, production, Oth. Year Phys.Geog. .75 —if Physiology .94 ——® fruit,field recognition of 8 fe 12 economic hed peri eld > - Minute structure root,s Rycotany + 1.45 — and leaf ,nutrition. <~ ro) Zoology - 1.85 — Zoology; invertebrate,economic, 1ife history,control. Properties of protoplasm, type studies, parasitism, selection. Botany ;flower, fertilization, ¢ 2.5 { Chemistry;inorganic, lab.& theory Be O—| Foods,Nutrition,Fertility. - theory; laboratory, plot work. ~ = Botany ;cryptogams,economic.dis- 295- _ ease, control. Chemistry 2.95 —|—|—|—— Evolution,sex science. — Physics - 3.00 -- |--|-— °§ ——————— eee ee : Zoology; vertebrate,;comparative. = Physiology nutrition ,evolutions s eugenics. a fe) PhysieS:exact, applications. a“ 3.6 school science should be, experience has established a generally accepted order, agreeing more or less with the authoritative report of the Com- mittee of Ten. Recent high school courses of study of the twenty-one largest cities in Illinois, omitting Chicago and its environs, give inter- esting data concerning the present practise. The method of using these data was to give the value .5 to a science offered any time in the first 160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY year, 1.5 if offered in the second, 2.5 in the third and 3.5 in the fourth year. For each subject, the value was taken as determined by the printed course, and the sum of the twenty-one values divided by twenty- one to find the average. Thus should each offer a particular science in the first year, the average would be a value of .5; but should any offer it at a later date the effect would be to raise that value an amount agreeable to the year in which found, subject to the reduction due to averaging. The averages thus obtained for the six sciences susceptible to this treatment were as follows: Physical geography .... .75 MOM; asadponooadancc 1.85 Physiology ..........6+ 94 Chemistry 5.2 3. 2.95 (Botany ie creative ere 1.45 IPRYSICS Hy. ci recetoe erent 3.00 The order given in the table is the prevailing order in these schools, the chief value of the table being to show the relative, rather than the actual positions. For it is apparent that the natural tendency to vary is restricted within the limits 0 and 4, the beginning and close of the high school course, with the result that reducing a science from the high school into the grades inequitably destroys its influence on the average, and that intermediate values may result from averaging extremes as well as means, while all averages tend unduly toward the middle value. The figures should also be interpreted in the light of a statute requiring physiology to be taught in the first year of the high school, and another which requires geography and physiology of all candidates for teachers’ certificates, all the remaining sciences but chemistry being required for the first grade certificate. In an investigation of 48 high schools “principally in the Middle West,” Miss Ada L. Weckel* obtained data which give almost the same sequence, though not the same values for these subjects, the only difference being that physiology, probably because it is not so firmly bound in place by statute in other states as in Illinois, has migrated to a position between botany and zoology. Mr. EH. E, Ramsey? in a sim- ilar investigation of the high schools of Indiana and other states of the Middle West gets corroborative results. The recommendation of the Committee of Ten concerning geog- raphy was that the more elementary portions constitute the “ physical geography ” of the first year, while the more technical portions be carried over to the last of the course. Though no school was found to divide the subject for an elementary and an advanced treatment they generally agree with the recommendation by placing it in the first 1 School Science, May, 1911. 2 School Science, December, 1911. SCIENCES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 161 year, variations from which showed a tendency to carry it over to the last year. No recommendation of the committee has been more generally observed in practise than the one placing botany and zoology in the second year. However, these two subjects, at first closely associated, show an unmistakable drift from their moorings, botany moving down- ward toward the first year, as shown in Miss Weckel’s investigations, and zoology moving toward the third year or being eliminated. Botany is subjected to two opposing influences, which will probably divide it into two distinct portions.. The introduction of agriculture below the high school is already resulting in the injection of much elementary botany into the elementary grades, while the leading botanists insist on giving high school botany a character that would move it in the other direction. The migration of zoology to the third and fourth years, to be followed by physiology, as located by the Committee of Ten, would make possible an evolutionary treatment of the combined subject that is much to be desired. The recommendation of the committee regarding physics and chem- istry has not been respected. It will be recalled that the conference to whom the committee assigned those subjects recommended a placement identical with the one now prevailing; but owing to their division of physical geography into an elementary and an advanced portion, the committee reversed that order so that physics might precede and pre- pare for the advanced work in physical geography. The reason for this reversal not proving well founded, the recommendation of the confer- ence should prevail. This would agree with the present evident tend- ency to relieve the physics difficulty by putting its elementary phases into a first-year science course and leaving the more technical and quantitative treatment for the last year of the course. The proverbial inertia of school curricula makes unsafe any laissez faire method of establishing the sequence of high school sciences. But it must not be thought that the present sequence is to any considerable extent the result of neglect. What then are the influences that have established this order of treatment ? Doubtless authoritative recommendation of competent committees have been a strong influence. Also, the accrediting system of the col- leges and universities, by requiring a certain character of work offered in admission, have indirectly determined its location in the course. And an increasing complexity and supposed dependence of subjects has _ been a component of the final result. The tendency to place general and prescribed courses before special and elective courses has been a strong influence. Other temporary causes are the supply and demand of scholarship in high school teachers and their preparation for the 162 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY different sciences, and the relative expense of equipment which the different sciences demand. Jinally to be mentioned as a powerful factor is the recency of introduction of the various sciences to the course. All subjects shown in the high school course have entered it from above, having been handed down from the colleges, and tend to gravitate from the latter part of the course toward the earlier, until they find their supposed level in youthful capacity. Thus chemistry, the most recent introduction, has probably not yet exhausted its down- ward tendency. Yet the foregoing influences are all more or less superficial and transient. Deeper than them all is a rational motive that has some- times found its expression through them and should ultimately control the sequence of science in the high school. With the young the learning process involves a great deal of mus- cular reaction. This necessity of motor expression diminishes with advancing years and the accumulation of an interpretive stock of motor experience with things. The size of the muscles involved in these reactions is an index of the stage of development of the learner. And since the accuracy and promptness of every muscle seem capable of unlimited improvement by education, they, too, indicate stages of devel- opment. On final analysis, the correct gradation and sequence of all rational school subjects will probably be found to conform to muscular development. The difficulties in high school sciences mostly inhere in the formule with which the teacher short-circuits his explanations or the verbiage with which he covers his ignorance. Whatever is defi- nite is easy. Uncertain or confused things, only, are difficult and anything worth knowing may be taught the adolescent by a competent teacher. Applying this test of motor adjustments, a solution of the problem of high school science will at the same time determine the correct sequence of the different phases of agriculture in the schools. All of the subjects involve the use of both the large and the small muscles. Subjects demanding more use of the finer muscles go later in the course than those involving more use of the coarser. Those requiring skill and accuracy of the larger muscles may often have an early or late treatment, or both. First-year high school students are familiar with or may make all of the adjustments demanded by such work as geog- raphy, soils, stream action, farm machines and elementary physics. Tillage, the study of the corn plant and ear, the morphology of root, stem and leaf, and budding, grafting, pruning and spraying involve motor adjustments appropriate to the grammar grades. The examina- tion of cells, fibro-vascular bundles, and the stamens and pistils of most plants, and the making of biological drawings, work which exercises the finer muscles of accommodation, the preparation of slides and the SCIENCES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 163 adjustment of the microscope, do not belong below the second year of the high school. And correlated with the botany may appropriately be placed budding, grafting, spraying and pruning in a more rational form and demanding a higher grade of skill. School gardening, exer- cising, as the work does, the larger body muscles, is appropriate to the primary grades. Nature study may be defined as the most appropriate muscle culture known to the schools in that it automatically adjusts itself to the stage of development of the pupil. Until some one defines more definitely than has yet been done the character of animal hus- bandry best suited to the schools that subject may go anywhere in the course. When the need and the opportunity for the drawing of correct animal conformation are appreciated, it will be given an advanced posi- tion. Exercises in advanced physics demand delicate adjustments appropriate to the last year of the high school course, which position also agrees with the mathematical requirements of the subject. Accu- rate use of dissecting instruments, the fine balance, fragile glassware and ¢c.p. reagents, and the making of a pure culture and keeping it pure, demand muscular skill not to be found below the third year of the high school course. Influenced by this factor, the high school sciences will find their places, and the sequence of the different phases of, agriculture that are naturally correlated with them will, by the same process, have their positions determined. ? 164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY THE RELATION OF CULTURE TO ENVIRONMENT FROM THE STANDPOINT OF INVENTION By Dr. CLARK WISSLER AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY flies relation between man’s life and the physical make-up of the earth has always been a serious problem. In our schools we often hear the doctrine that geography is nothing more than the study of peoples .in their adjustment to the particular part of the earth they inhabit. This emanates from the teachings of the great German geog- raphers Humboldt and Ritter, to whom the physical features of the earth were the determining factors in the distribution of life. Later Ratzel took up the problem from a strictly human or anthropological point of view and gave us the term anthropo-geography. The rapid development of anthropology during the past twenty years, and especially its recent trend toward a cultural point of view, has again brought to the front this question of relationship between human activities and physical geography. To anthropology the problem becomes rather fundamental, and while not by any means so inclusive as it must be to anthropo- geography, which must depend upon the truth of the assumption for its existence, is nevertheless one whose solution is a matter of some consequence. Thus the question of culture and environment becomes the common concern of at least two sciences, geography and anthropology. A full discussion of the subject would take us over the whole field of geography and anthropology; hence, we may here consider but a few points. As a rule, those who discuss this problem know a great deal more of geography than they do of anthropology and indeed it is but recently that we had at hand anything like a complete collection of data on the culture of even one non-historic group of people. As field- anthropologists are now industriously increasing our knowledge of such peoples, it may not be out of place to discuss the general problem from the standpoint of these data. In such discussions it is convenient to make a provisional distinction between cultural phenomena and biological phenomena and the most convenient is that based upon heredity. The strictly anatomical char- acters, physiological and psychological functions are innate, while cul- ture is not innate but acquired by the individual during life by imita- tive or educative processes. We can thus set over on one side man’s biological equipment, his bodily functions, mental characters, instincts, etc., as against or in contrast to the cultural characters, or products of these activities in social life. RELATION OF CULTURE TO ENVIRONMENT 165 The biologists have given us some idea of the kind of physiological equipment man is born with and the psychologists have made some progress in the description of the psychological equipment, all of which is no doubt familiar to the well-educated. On the other hand, the development of anthropology has been so rapid and the points of view so illy formulated that a few remarks as to the character of culture seem necessary. On one point all students are agreed, viz.: that it is the functioning of the psychic part of man that produces culture. When it comes to assigning cultural phenomena to specific psychic activities there is some difference of opinion, but for the most part it is recognized that since culture is not inherited it must be a construct and as such is largely the work of the intelligence. For a long time many psychologists and sociologists have seen in this distinction one of their most important problems. To them it appears that social progress or cultural change of any kind is in last analysis the production or creation of something by the psychic activities of individuals, which process has been regarded as invention. In practical life we are accustomed to apply this term to ingenious mechanical devices, but in fact anything produced by our psychic activities, whether it be a new game, a word, a picture, a song, ete., is the same kind of thing and one to which the term may be applied. Any such invention taken up by a social group of people becomes thereby a trait of culture. Culture as anthropologists use that term is a complex of elements as varied as those making up our own lives. Most geographers, how- ever, give their attention almost exclusively to the economic aspects of culture, or to those traits listed in anthropological literature under the head of material culture. This, no doubt, comes about because it is in these phases of life that culture and geography are in most direct contact ; language, religion, literature, art, family organization, etc., are less articulated with geographical phenomena, but geographers are quite given to sweeping them all into the economic category and claiming the most intimate contact throughout. It is clear, however, that the pri- mary problem is to be found in the relation between man’s material cul- ture and the earth, which for convenience we shall designate as the environment. Our question then becomes as to what kind of a relation exists between material traits and environmental characters. Material traits, such as methods of preparing food, the manufacture and use of tools, the methods of the chase, weaving, pottery, etc., are clearly inventions, and if the environment has anything like a determin- ing or a causal réle in the making of culture, such must be manifest in the inventive processes themselves. Our problem here is complicated by the existence of two stages or steps. In the first place some indi- vidual must develop the idea and demonstrate it; then it must be taken up by others and become more or less common to the social group. The 166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY invention, however, remains such regardless of its fate at the hands of social selection. Yet we must consider several possibilities since it is conceivable that the environment might be the determining factor in the selection alone, leaving the individual free to invent as he choose. Hence, our discussion falls under two heads: (a) The relation of the environment to invention; (0b) to the selection, or socialization of in- ventions. : One of the fundamental problems in the investigation of invention has been the determination of what the process really is. It is in a way a creative process, but it must have something to work upon; it can not make something of nothing. We need not, however, distress our- selves with the puzzle as to whether there can ever be a distinctly new idea, for an invention in the cultural sense is a new relation assumed or observed between old experiences rather than an experience itself. When the geographers claim that all concrete experiences involved in such an invention must come from the environment, they are on indis- putable ground. Thus it is undoubtedly due to the presence of snow that the Eskimo invented the snow house and to experience with birch- bark that the Eastern Woodland Indians devised the bark-covered tipi. The real problem is as to whether there is anything in the very nature of birchbark as a part of the environment that necessitates the inven- tion of a certain peculiar kind of house. Unless one holds to an ancient belief, he must assuredly say that there is no such necessity. It is true that a person who never experienced birchbark directly or by hearsay could not have made the invention, and if he had, it could not have passed into practise unless the material was made available by the environment. Thus it is clear that the environment furnishes the materials from which inventions are made and which thereby enter into the so-called material cultures of peoples. But the essential thing in an invention is the relation between experiences. In the case of birch- bark the relation between bark experience and house-building experience can have no existence outside of the psychic life of man, the environ- ment can lay no claim to it. Its production must emanate from the human mind and not from the earth. It seems, therefore, that we have here an answer to our query, for by the nature of the inventive process the determining factor is found in mental activity. Environment fur- nishes the materials and in that sense only limits invention. To invent a birchbark-covered house a man must have lived among birch trees, but the mere living there does not require such an invention. We have noted that an invention becomes a cultural trait when taken up by many individuals. In this case the relation is handed on and on by education and imitation and so cultural traits are after all based upon a recognized relation between experiences. The causes that lead to the adoption or rejection of an invention must be recognized as the RELATION OF CULTURE TO ENVIRONMENT | 167 chief factors in the determination of culture, but we must note that they are selective only and not real producers of new things. As in the previous discussion our quest for the producer ends at the threshold of the inventive process. In this case, however, we start not with the un- related experiences, but with the invention already made and offered to society. Many of the factors entering into the choice of society are familiar to the general reader, for in sociological literature will be found lengthy discussions of prejudice, tradition, the function of the genius, etc. These, it will be observed, are social, or human factors, and are not due to the environment. Yet when we take material culture alone it must be recognized that with respect to it these social forces are less active. The experience of the world is that while a savage will throw away a stone knife and substitute a steel one after the first trial, he will be very slow to change a religious practise and especially a social custom. We may expect then greater opportunities for the socialization of mate- rial inventions and that industrial progress will be more rapid. But there is a fallacy here, for while it is true that a savage will quickly substitute a steel knife, it will be otherwise if one of his tribe attempts to develop the manufacture of knives, or even engages in extensive trade with knives, for then at once there will be a conflict with social customs. Nevertheless, it is probably true that most improvements in weapons, tools, etc., will, when demonstrated by the inventor, find little resistance and in most cases positive encouragement. The criterion would then be the usefulness of the new invention. Thus to a roving people a birchbark house might be an improvement, provided birchbark was readily attainable or transportable. Here the environment appears as a selective factor because the adoption of any particular set of traits appears finally as an adjustment between the community and the environment. But, as such, the environment is a passive factor, for the inventions that happen to fit sufficiently well to survive pass into the cultural complex, while the others fall by the wayside. And, after all, we must not forget that the fitness of an invention is a matter of judg- ment and that many a maladjustment to the environment passes as the superior trait because of an error in socia! judgment. It is truly sur- prising how ill-fitting the adjustments may be and still give men time and strength to maintain family, religious and political organizations of considerable complexity. We see then that while an invention must work to survive, there is no guarantee that it will be given a fair trial and be allowed to stand according to its deserts. Its fitness is chiefly a matter of social belief, and as such subject to all the ills and vagaries of folk thought. In general it seems that the tendency of some geographers is to lay very great stress on the part played by the environment in the develop- 168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ment of culture. Because they see how the environment sets limita- tions to human culture, or inventions, they sometimes assert that in it are to be found the causes producing cultures. A more acceptable view seems to be that which recognizes the province of the environment in deciding as to what may not become a part of human experience, but that among the experiences it makes possible is a wide range, in fact almost infinite range, of yet to be discovered relationships among which are many that may enter into the culture of the future, if both the man and the hour come. If in the discussion of this question we do not lose sight of the inventive nature of the processes producing material cultures and the curious psychic origin of the underlying relationship of ideas, on the one hand, and the passive limiting character of the geographical environment on the other, we shall not be led far astray. It is natural that in the study of geography emphasis should be given to the physical, faunistic and floral characters of the environment, but this should not warrant the assumption that these characters will in themselves be a sufficient explanation of the cultural differences ob- served among the peoples of the earth. It is also to be expected that anthropologists will overweight the value of the psychic factor in the formation of cultures because they deal in the main with such phe- nomena, but they in turn must not ignore the limiting character of the environment. The value of such discussions as this can only consist in holding each group of investigators to the proper recognition of the relations between their respective fields. Environment vs. culture may never cease to be the debatable ground over which the opposing parties struggle with varying fortunes, but we believe that a little analysis of the phenomena will reveal the chief factors, make evident their relative values and so lead to saner views. THE NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 169 THE FUTURE OF THE NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA By THH LATH WALTER L. HAHN, PH.D. HAT the animal life of North America is changing is a statement requiring no proof. Hvery one knows that deer, elk, moose, wolves, bison and many other animals are no longer found in places where they were once numerous. Nearly every one also knows that some pests, such as rats and mice and several noxious insects, have been brought to this country from Europe, while the potato beetle and some other species, natives of North America, have multiplied and extended their range. It is impossible, within the limits of this paper, to specify all the changes that have taken place and are now in progress. Hence it will be my aim to point out certain general tendencies, and certain general influences at work upon our fauna, the word fauna being a somewhat technical term used to designate the sum total of the animal life, great and small, in any circumscribed region. If asked why the great game animals have disappeared from certain regions, most people would doubtless say, “ Indiscriminate slaughter has exterminated them.” This answer is undoubtedly correct as far as it goes. For a full explanation of all of the changes that have taken place in our fauna we must seek deeper reasons. Why has not “ indis- eriminate slaughter ” exterminated the mice and rats and other noxious creatures against which we have waged ceaseless war for many genera- tions? In other words, what are the biological and physical conditions that determine whether an animal species shall survive or perish in modern America? A living organism, even the simplest, is a thing of vastly greater complexity than any mere chemical compound or any physical law. We know how to kill individual organisms, but frequently we do not know what will exterminate a species. If a lion and a lamb lie down together, we know which will be on the inside. But if a given number of lions and a given number of lambs inhabit a great area we can not predict the exact results; and this illustrates the futility of trying to make a definite analysis of the future of any particular species. I shall now consider the future of North American animals from the general standpoints of size, habitat, relation to man, fecundity, mental traits, and finally give a few interesting facts not comprehended in the above classification. VOL. LXXXIII.—12. 170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY SIZE Size is the most obvious characteristic possessed by an animal. Whether we are naturalists or sportsmen, or neither, we instinctively classify all animals as large or small. Likewise there is nothing about our fauna so obvious as the fact that the larger animals are disappear- ing. The bison is gone, except for a few small and protected herds. The elk, moose, caribou, mountain sheep, antelope, cougar and grizzly and black bears are gone, except in sparsely. settled regions. On the other hand, rodent pests swarm throughout every city, and the field mice, ground squirrels, cabbage butterflies, house-flies and hosts of other small insects continue to make trouble for the agriculturist. Large size increases the value of an animal whose products are use- ful and hence makes it more desirable game for the pioneer who hunts to supply his larder and also for the sportsman who hunts for the sake of trophies. Large size also makes an animal apparently more danger- ous if it has rapacious habits. I say apparently, for the microscopic bacillus tuberculosis kills more people in North America every year than all the beasts of prey have killed on the same continent since Co- lumbus first sighted San Salvador, while the house-fly, disseminating the germs of typhoid fever and kindred diseases, is more deadly than all the wolves, panthers and rattlesnakes. Sometimes we find related species having the same habits and liy- ing in the same region, but differing in size. Invariably the larger species is more sought after and diminishes more rapidly than the smaller. Squirrels illustrate this statement very well. In the north- eastern United States three species of tree squirrels were once abun- dant. All had very similar habits, and ate practically the same kind of food. The fox squirrel and the gray squirrel are now on the verge of extinction in many places, while their smaller relative, the little red squirrel, thrives. Likewise the coyote fares better in contact with civili- zation than does the wolf, and the cottontail rabbits thrive where the larger jack rabbits and snowshoe hares are being exterminated. Eight species of woodpeckers were once abundant in the forests all over the eastern states. Six of these are still common while the two largest species are extinct except in a few inaccessible swamps. Large size means great strength. In the past this has been an ad- vantage, within certain limits, by making an animal invincible to the attack of other animals. It is of no avail in stopping bullets, and hence is a disadvantage to a species that must count civilized man as one of its enemies. The animals of the future, not only in North America but the world over, will have a smaller average size, and most large species will cease to exist unless they are domesticated. Se THE NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 171 HABITAT Some animals live, either by preference or necessity, in the forest; some live in meadows or prairies; some prefer uplands and some swamps; others must live in the water. A few are adapted to life in a variety of situations. By far the greater part of North America east of the Mississippi River was at one time forest clad. The trees have been cleared away from this region until now they are limited to scattered tracts a frac- tion of a square mile in area with a few larger forests still more widely separated. The species that live chiefly in the forest include among the larger kinds elk, moose, caribou, Virginia and western black-tailed deer, and black and grizzly bears. Smaller forest-dwelling species include several kinds of lynxes, the fisher, marten, Canada porcupine, several species of squirrels, as well as many birds, snakes and lesser animals. Species that live habitually in the open include the bison, antelope, coyote, jack rabbit, prairie dog, many kinds of mice, birds, snakes and smaller creatures. Among the species that get along equally well in the forest and open country, we may notice the red fox, certain mice and birds, woodchuck and chipmunk and there are many others. It will require no argument to show that all of the forest-inhabiting species I have named are diminishing and if space permitted this could be shown for nearly every forest-loving species concerning which we have the data to form an opinion. Turning to the plains species, we find the bison and antelope have diminished because of their large size, economic value and gregarious habits. The jack rabbit is also diminishing in regions thickly settled and the prairie dog has been found so destructive that measures have been systematically undertaken to exterminate it. The animals mentioned above, although the most conspicuous ones of the prairies, comprise only a fraction of one per cent. of the fauna of that region, and when we consider the remainder we find many ani- mals that, if not everywhere increasing, are at least extending their range. There is abundant proof that the “ cotton-tail ” rabbit of the prairies, which is a different species from that of the Atlantic Coast states, has in recent times extended its range eastward to Ontario and western New York. Some of the native field mice and ground-squir- rels are working eastward. The Harris sparrow, a typical bird of the western prairies, was re- ported from Indiana a few years ago for the first time. The Dickcissel, field sparrow, chipping sparrow and many others have certainly be- come more widely distributed in the central states than they were half a century ago. Some of the meadow butterflies are becoming more 172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY numerous in the same region and there is some reason to think that certain fishes are spreading eastward across Illinois and Indiana, the border states of the prairie region. Just how general this eastward migration may be among the various classes we do not know, but a reason for it is not difficult to find. Clearing the forests has brought about conditions somewhat similar to those of the prairies, and the small species that can exist in the pastures, meadows and roadsides now find congenial surroundings farther east, and in the east competition is less severe than it was formerly because the forest fauna has diminished. In this connection it is worthy of note that there is also a slight but rather general tendency of our fauna to migrate northward. This may be the latter end of a general northward migration begun some thousands of years ago when the great ice sheet that then covered most of northeastern North America began to retreat. There were few, if any, animals in the region at that time, but, as the ice melted, and the climate became warmer, the region was again occupied by a fauna mi- grating into it from the south. At present this migration is not rapid enough to be of much importance. In my brief enumeration above I mentioned several species that seem to do equally well in wooded or treeless regions. These are the species that are fitted par excellence to survive, and, barring some that are ill adapted because of special modifications, they are the ones that are holding and will continue to hold their own in point of numbers. Animals inhabiting fresh water are beavers, muskrats, ducks, geese, snipe, frogs, fishes, mussels, crayfishes and a host of other animals, small in size but numberless in individuals. What is the tendency among these animals? ‘To answer this ques- tion we must consider the physical changes in the bodies of water. Swamps have been drained and their bottoms converted into gardens and cultivated fields. River courses are straightened and the waters confined within their banks. Sewage and refuse dumped into streams pollute their waters, and sometimes wipe out the fauna completely, and always injure the larger species. forests are cleared away, with the result that streams, once dotted with placid pools, now become raging torrents at one season and dry channels at another. Such changes can not fail to have a disastrous effect on all classes of aquatic animals. The diminution of waterfowl, food and game fishes, muskrat and beaver, which is the result, is too well known to need comment; the decrease of small animals is almost as great. It may be argued that the work of drainage is counterbalanced by the digging of canals and the building of reservoirs for irrigation. There is no question but that building great reservoirs in arid regions will somewhat increase the aquatic fauna of the surrounding districts. But the isolation of these bodies of water and the obstructions in their THE NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA | 173 outlets will preclude any general immigration to their waters; and their fauna, for the most part, will be restricted to minute animals, insects and food fishes artifically introduced. It can be asserted with certainty that there is a general tendency for aquatic animals to disappear. RELATION TO Man At first thought we might assume that useful species will survive and injurious ones will be wiped out, since man is the all-powerful lord of creation. But the most useful animals are the ones that disap- pear first. This is because of the unfortunate fact that man is a selfish being and thinks more of the satisfaction of his immediate desires than of the good of his race. Fortunately for the animals concerned, we are waking up to their value and many useful species are now reared in small numbers in a state of semi-domestication and there is a possibil- ity that deer, foxes and many other animals valuable for food or fur will some day be fully domesticated. On the other hand, it is true that injurious habits tend to bring about the extermination of a species. The venomous snakes are emi- nently fitted for protection from natural enemies. Their deadly nature has caused man to war upon them and in some localities his warfare has met with so much success that the once dreaded copperhead and rattle- snake are now extinct. The fear in which the pioneers held panthers, wolves, lynxes and other beasts of prey, played a large part in their early extermination. FECUNDITY There is another group of noxious animals against which man rages in impotent wrath. These are the mice and rats, the potato beetles, scale insects, flies and various other injurious insects. Among all of these creatures small size plays an extremely important réle in the pro- tection of the species. If a mouse weighed 100 pounds instead of less than an ounce, it would be more easily found and killed. The yet smaller size of insects makes them even more difficult to cope with. Of much greater importance than their small size is the fecundity of these pests. A female deer produces no offspring until three years old and then only one or two a year. The other large animals produce young at about the same rate. But a female rat begins to bear young when six or eight months old and may produce 50 or even more in a single year. A house-fly, under the most favorable conditions, may lay eggs within two weeks of the time the egg was laid from which she her- self hatched. A single pair of flies, warmed to activity in April, have within them- selves the potentiality of producing before October (if every egg laid 174 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY by them and their descendants should hatch into a maggot that would mature into a fly) at their normal rate of increase under favorable con- ditions, about one hundred trillions of flies, at a conservative estimate, or fifteen millions of tons, by weight. Of course many flies fail to reach maturity and only a small per- centage of the eggs laid ever hatch. This statement has been intro- duced here merely to show how ineffectual is our warfare against ani- mals procreating their kind at such a rapid rate, as contrasted with the effect of slaughtering a few slow breeding animals. Yet many of the microscopic organisms, both harmless and disease-producing kinds, multiply infinitely faster than the house-fly. Down to the present generation, a rapid rate of reproduction has been the surest means possessed by any animal species of withstanding the enmity of man. Now scientific knowledge is beginning to triumph over both fecundity and small size. Mosquitoes have been extermi- nated by the wholesale in the canal zone. Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia have been successfully ransacked to find natural enemies that will hold in check scale insects, and codling and gipsy moths. A par- tially successful attempt has been made to inoculate rats with a dis- ease that will kill them as cholera once killed men. War is being suc- cessfully waged on the germs of tuberculosis, yellow fever and many other diseases, and men best qualified to judge look confidently forward to a day when not one of these infinitesimally small but infinitely bane- ful organisms shall exist among civilized peoples. MENTAL TRAITS Under this head we may group several more or less distinct kinds of traits. First, there is the gregarious instinct, the tendency to herd together so noticeable in many animals. “In union there is strength ” seems to be a motto in the animal as well as the political world. By banding together into great herds the bison became invincible to all foes save man. But with the advent of civilized man, armed with breech- loading rifles, the herding instinct of the animal only made its slaughter the more easy. The same is true, to a greater or less extent, of many other animals. Colonel Roosevelt says that, “the elk is the most gre- garious of the deer family,” and it was also the first of its family to disappear before the advance of civilization in almost every section of the country. In the early seventies, passenger pigeons occupied a vast breeding ground in Michigan. It is said that in many square miles of this thickly wooded area, there was not a tree without a brooding pigeon on its nest at the proper season. Pot hunters found the birds, killed them with hands and sticks and guns, packed them in barrels and shipped THE NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 175 them to market by the ton. Recently, in an effort to save this fine bird from extermination, a prize of one hundred dollars has been offered for the first person reporting a pair of breeding passenger pigeons. A couple of decades before the passenger pigeon’s extermination, flocks of hundreds of Carolina paroquets used to swoop down on the apple orchards of Kentucky and southern Indiana. Naturally the farm- ers took their guns and wreaked vengeance on the birds, and to-day the Carolina paroquet is all but extinct. And it has long been driven from the region I have just mentioned. The economic factor was an important one in the extermination of these birds, but the rapidity of their extermination was due to the fact that they flocked together and were killed by the wholesale. Beasts of prey are more courageous than weaker animals and all of the larger ones are gone from thickly settled communities. The rabbit is notorious for its timidity and still abounds everywhere outside of city limits. True, fecundity and small size play an important part in the preservation of the rabbit, but suppose that possessing these char- acteristics, the instinct of self-defense were stronger than the instinct to flee? The inevitable result would be the destruction of the race. No mental trait has been of greater value to an animal species warred upon by man than timidity. The trait next in order of value is cun- ning. The fox has always been justly considered as a type of the cunning animal, but the trait has not been equally developed in all kinds of foxes. In eastern North America there are two very distinct races, the gray fox and the red, cross and silver foxes being mere varieties of the latter. It is highly probable that the American red fox is descended from animals brought from England by gentlemen emigrating from that country during the eighteenth century, although this fact has not been clearly established. I¢ is certain, at least, that it was either rare or absent in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois during the days when these states were frontier regions, and at that time the native gray species was abundant. Now the gray fox is extinct except in the rougher and more wooded districts, while his red relative is a pest in even the most densely settled valleys. The two species are nearly equal in size, fe- cundity, value of fur and destructiveness to poultry. They eat the same food, they live in the same kind of places, with the exception that the gray species seldom makes its den in the open fields, while the red often does. The vital point of difference seems to be in their cunning. The red fox, if not the sly renard of Europe, is certainly a close counterpart in cunning, while its gray cousin is lacking in this respect. In these two species, at least, the difference between survival and extermination depends upon cunning. 176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY MISCELLANEOUS PECULIARITIES There remain to be considered certain characteristics which can not be very accurately designated by any well-understood and precise term. I refer to what is sometimes called by biologists a high degree of specialization, and more particularly specialization in the direction of bizarre and conspicuous features. The porcupine is a good example. This animal is of absolutely no economic importance to civilized man. It lives in the forests and eats little save twigs and bark. Its flesh was eaten to some extent by In- dians and its quills were prized by them as ornaments, but neither flesh nor armature are valued by whites. It might be supposed that a few poreupines could find sufficient food and shelter in any small wood lot and that they would remain there unmolested because of their inoffen- sive habits. Yet few species have disappeared more rapidly before the advance of civilization. The animal had few natural enemies because of the efficient pro- tection of its spiny armature, consequently it had no fear and was a slow breeder. Its spines, however, afford no protection from man, and there can be no doubt that more porcupines have been killed from curi- osity excited by the peculiar appearance of the animals and mere wantonness than from any other reason. One species of armadillo is found in the Unites States chiefly in Texas. It is an animal with a head and body about a foot in length and a tapering tail of equal length. Its body is covered with an armor of bony plates, quite solidly joined together in most places, but with overlapping joints in the middle. When attacked it curls up, covering the poorly protected belly, throat and nose with its tail, and hence be- coming invulnerable to teeth and claws. It is harmless in habit, living - chiefly on insects. Its peculiar appearance frequently leads people to kill it from no motive except curiosity and wanton love of slaughter. Recently a tourist trade has grown up in the armor, which is made into a basket, the tip of the tail being brought forward to the neck and fastened there to form the basket handle. Thus an economic relation is growing out of the bizarre appearance of the animal and its extermina- tion seems to be only a matter of a few years, unless it receives better protection. Horned toads, lizards and, to some extent, tortoises and snakes are being slowly exterminated because their appearance arouses the desire to kill and not because of any economic motive. A few comparatively harmless species of insects, namely, the walking stick or devil’s darning needle, the praying mantis or rear-horse, and the rhinoceros beetle hava been nearly exterminated in some parts of the country merely because their unusual appearance arouses an interest in them and their life is forfeited therefor. THE NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 177 We might also include in this category the snowy heron, the roseate spoonbill and other birds that have been slaughtered for their plumage. Although the economic value is here the direct motive for the slaughter, this value grows out of unusual (and beautiful) modification of the plumage. The preceding paragraphs are necessarily sketchy, because the sub- ject is too large to treat in detail and it is now desirable to gather up the threads. Briefly, the general tendency of the North American fauna is toward mediocrity. Large species are giving way to small; bizarre species to commonplace. Marsh-loving and forest-loving animals disappear with the advance of civilization, and grass-loving species that are able to exist in fence rows and pastures survive. Animals that yield products of value vanish before the hand of man; likewise his enemies are destroyed unless protected by small size and great fecundity. Courage and the social instinct are at a discount and cunning and timidity at a premium. Finally man is beginning (and only beginning) to shape the destiny of his God-given dominion “over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air.” To make this dominion an intelligent reality is the aim of present-day biological science. 178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS AND OF THEIR CONSTITUENT PARTS IN RELATION TO LONGEVITY, SENESCENCE AND REJUVENESCENCE* By ProFgessoR EDWIN G. CONKLIN PRINCETON UNIVDRSITY I. Bopy SIzzE eee size is one of the most variable properties of organism; the smallest living things are probably invisible to the highest powers of the microscope, the largest are gigantic beasts weighing many tons. Within the same class, and in animals equally complex in structure, variations in size are enormous, as, for example, in the elephant and the mouse. Within the same species, where structural differences are insig- nificant, size differences may be very great. In some species there are great differences of size between males and females; in extreme cases males may be minute and rudimentary forms, without mouths and ali- mentary canals, and capable of living for only a few hours, as in certain rotifers, worms and arthropods, whereas the females are relatively large and perfect individuals capable of an extended existence. In Crepidula a genus of marine gasteropod which I have studied and to which I must particularly direct your attention, I have found’ gteat differences of body size in the mature individuals of different species and also in different individuals of the same species. The volume of the average adult male of C. fornicata is 125 times that of the average male of C. convera; the volume of the female of the former species in 32 times that of the latter. In these gasteropods the males are always much smaller than the females; the volume of the average female of C. plana is about 15 times that of the average male. All mature animals of this genus are sedentary, and many of them live in or on dead shells which are the homes of hermit crabs. In the species C. plana I have found an interesting class of dwarfs; the animals of usual size live in large shells inhabited by a species of large hermit crabs (Pagurus bernhardus) ; the dwarfs live in small shells occupied by a species of little hermits (Pagurus longicarpus). The dwarfs are sex- ually mature and, unless forcibly removed, live their whole life long in the small shells, where they attain an average size only one thirteenth that of the normal forms but if the dwarfs are forcibly taken out of the * Lecture before the Harvey Society, New York, March 7, 1913. + Conklin, ‘‘ Body Size and Cell Size,’’ Jowr. Morph., 12, 1912. THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS » 179 small shells and put into larger ones they may grow up to be as large as animals of typical size. These dwarfs are, therefore, only a physio- logical variety, produced by environmental conditions. What are the causes of such differences in size of animals of the same species? What explanation can be offered for the enormous dif- ference in size between an elephant and a mouse? What are the factors generally involved in determining size? 1. There is plainly an inherited factor in all specific differences of this kind. Every species of animal and plant has a more or less char- acteristic body size which may be said to constitute the norm of that species. This norm may be altered to a certain extent by environmental conditions, but such possible modifications are relatively slight; no amount of environmental influence could ever make a mouse grow to the size of an elephant. The limits of body size of a race or species are as certainly inherited as are any other characteristics; their causes, whatever they may be, are intrinsic in the constitution of the germinal protoplasm. | What is the nature of this inherited factor which determines the possible size of organisms? Undoubtedly it is found in the power of growth as contrasted with limitations to growth, with the rate and duration of assimilation as contrasted with dissimilation. Increase in size may be due to mere imbibition of water, or to an actual increase in the quantity of protoplasm, and secondarily of formed products, in the body. In this discussion the latter process alone will be termed growth. As long as assimilation exceeds dissimilation organisms grow, when the one balances the other they remain unchanged in size, when dissimila- tion exceeds assimilation they dwindle. The large-sized Crepidule continue to grow for a much longer time than the small-sized ones. A mouse achieves its full growth after 60 days and may live approximately 60 months; an elephant continues to grow for about 24 years and may live approximately 150 years. What it is which keeps up this process of growth so much longer in one species than in another we do not know—and as so often happens, it is precisely this which we most desire to know, for length of: life as well as size of body depends primarily upon the rate and duration of assimilation. It may be that there is some peculiar secretion or enzyme which stimulates growth and varying quantities of which cause one species to continue to live and grow for a much longer time than another species ; it may be that some substance is formed in the course of devel- opment which limits growth and that it appears earlier in some species than in others. Since assimilation and dissimilation are chemical pro- cesses it is very probable that the factors which determine rate and duration of growth, and consequently body size and length of life, are of a chemical nature. This is a subject upon which there has been Ags THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY much speculation and but little work and to which experimental inves- tigation might well be directed with promise of important results. 2. Another supposed factor which is not precisely hereditary nor yet strictly environmental is the size of the germ cells, of the “ Ausgangs- zellen,” from which an animal develops. Morgan? and Chambers* found that small eggs of the frog give rise to smaller tadpoles and to smaller frogs than do large eggs. Popoff* maintains that spermatozoa as well as ova vary in size, owing to slight inequalities of division during the genesis of these cells, and he supposes that when a large egg is fertilized by a large spermatozoon a large individual results, whereas if the sex cells are smaller than usual the individual developing from them will also be smaller. In favor of this hypothesis may be cited the fact that small eggs of Rotifera, Phylloxera and Dinophilus give rise to small and rudimentary males, whereas the larger eggs give rise to relatively large females. Within the same species, where the mode of development is the same for all individuals, egg size may be a factor in determining body size, but it is a relatively unimportant factor, since the size of an animal depends not merely upon its initial size, but chiefly upon the rate and duration of its growth. In many cases the smaller egg con- tinues to grow for a longer period than does the larger one and in the end gives rise to a larger adult. This is strikingly shown in different species of Crepidula, where species with small eggs give rise to large animals and those with large eggs give rise to small animals. The large eggs produce large embryos, and the small eggs small embryos, but the latter continue to grow for a much longer period than the former and in the end give rise to animals of much larger body size than those which come from the large eggs. An egg of C. fornicata is about one quarter the volume of one of C. convexa, but the adult female of the former species is about 32 times the volume of one of the latter species, while the males of the former species are 125 times the volume of those of the latter species. Other cases of a similar sort are known and they show that in different species egg size can not be correlated with body size, and even within the same species it is a relatively unimportant factor in determining size. 3. It is well known that many extrinsic factors influence the char- acter, rate and duration of metabolism, and consequently the size of organisms. Among these extrinsic factors I shall mention only a few which are known to be important, viz., (a) quantity and quality of food, (b) secretions of certain glands, particularly the sex glands, thymus, thyroid and hypophysis, (¢) various chemical substances, such * Morgan, ‘‘Relation between Normal and Abnormal Development, ete.,’’ Arch. Entw. Mech., 18, 1904. ® Chambers, ‘‘ Einfluss der Higrésse, etc.,’’ Arch. mik. Anat., 72, 1908. *Popoff, ‘‘Experimentelle Zellenstudien,’’ Arch. Zellforschung, 1, 1908. THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS 181 as ether, alcohol, tobacco, lecithin, etc., (d) temperature, (e) oxygen, (f) presence or absence of waste products, (g) conditions of normal or abnormal stimulation and irritability. These extrinsic factors which influence growth have been studied by many investigators, but owing to lack of time I shall pass over all of them except the last named. In the case of the dwarf Crepidule which are found in the small shells with the small hermit crabs there is practically no evidence that any of the other factors except the last named, are involved in this dwarfing. These animals live in open shells on sandy sea beaches along with the giant forms; so far as I can determine, the food supply is super- abundant, while the conditions of temperature, aeration and freedom from waste products are identically the same for dwarfs and giants. The only difference which I have been able to detect is the size of the shells to which the animals are attached ; those which are attached to the small shells of Nassa or Litorina live and die as dwarfs, reaching only about one thirteenth the volume of those which are attached to the larger shells of Natica; however, if they are removed from the smaller shells and placed on the larger ones they may grow to typical size. The dwarfs, however, are continually hampered by their limited quarters; they are unable fully to expand the foot or the mantle, and they are more frequently irritated by the movements of the hermit crabs than are those in the larger shells. Under these circumstances they probably take less food than those in larger quarters, and although they become perfectly differentiated and sexually mature they are dwarfed in size. Similarly I have found that Paramecwm confined in capillary tubes never grows nor divides, though it may live indefinitely, and although precautions may be taken to change the medium frequently and thus to remove waste products and to supply abundant food and oxygen. In such tubes Paramecium is continually irritated and presumably takes less food than when in unconfined spaces. II. Bopy Size, Cert S1zze anp CELL NUMBER Is the size of an organism due to the size of its constitutent parts, or to the number of those parts, or to both of these causes combined ? Evidently different organisms differ in this regard. In many plants and lower animals the number of constituent parts is directly corre- lated with the body size; branches and leaves, segments and organs may increase in number indefinitely with the growth of the organism. In tapeworms and many annelids the number of segments, with their characteristic organs, increases throughout life; but in more highly differentiated forms the number of body segments and organs is con- stant, and does not increase in number after embryonic stages. In spite of the information occasionally conveyed by examination papers, the 182 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY number of bones or other organs in the human body does not depend - upon the size of the man. In animals in which the number of organs is constant the con- stituent parts of such organs may vary in number with the size of the organs. ‘Thus in a large Crepidula plana the gill is composed of more than two hundred large filaments, in a dwarf it consists of only fifty or sixty small ones. The liver, sex glands and salivary glands are com- posed of a larger number of lobules in large animals than in small ones, and the size of each lobule is also larger. Evidently the number of such body parts, whether segments, organs, filaments or lobules, depends upon the power of growth and subdivision of each of these parts. In general the more complex any part becomes the less capable it is of sub- division, and so in all highly differentiated animals we find the body parts and organs are constant in number, though variable in size; whereas in lower animals the number of body parts as well as their individual size may vary with the size of the body as a whole. Cells are generally recognized to be the ultimate independent units of organic structure and function; the causes of growth and differentia- tion, of assimilation and dissimilation, of longevity, senescence and re- juvenescence are to be looked for in cells. What is the relation of body size to cell size and cell number? A large number of investigators have studied this problem in a wide range of animals and plants, and with apparently conflicting results; nevertheless enough is now known I think to permit a general answer to this question. Just as in the case of body parts and organs, so also with cells, complexity of differentiation and power of division are generally in inverse ratio. In many animals and plants certain types of cells continue to divide throughout life, where other types cease to divide at an early age. In both plants and animals those cells which continue to divide throughout the growing period become more numerous in large organisms than in small ones, but not individually larger; on the other hand cells which cease to divide at an early stage in the life cycle become individually larger in large animals than in small ones, though in closely related forms their number may remain the same. In short, the size of cells is directly proportional to the rate and duration of growth and inversely propor- tional to the rate of division. It is well known that muscle cells and nerve cells cease to divide at a relatively early age, whereas epithelial and gland cells, mesenchyme, blood and sex cells continue to divide for a longer period, if not throughout life; accordingly, one would expect to find that muscle cells and nerve cells are larger in giants than in dwarfs, but that the other types of cells named would differ in number but not in size—and this is the general result reached by most of the investigators who have worked on this subject (Donaldson, Levi, THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS 183 Boveri, Conklin,® e¢ al.). In the most highly differentiated cells (e. g., muscle, nerve) growth takes place independently of cell division; in less highly differentiated cells (e. g., epithelium, mesenchyme) the two processes go hand in hand. It is an important fact that growth in size and growth in complexity are separable processes, for although they are usually coincident during embryonic development they are not causally united. Just as growth in body size may, or may not, be accompanied by growth in complexity, so cell division may, or may not, be accompanied by differentiation. Cell divisions may thus be classified as differential and non-differential ; the former are associated with growth in complexity as well as in size, the latter with growth in size only; the former are relatively constant in number for a given species, the latter vary in number with the size of the individual. The earlier cleavages of the egg are more generally differential than are the later ones, and within the same genus and even in related genera and phyla the number and character of differential cleavages is very constant. Thus in all annelids and mollusks, with the exception of cephalopods, the ectoderm comes from three quartets of cells which are cut off, one after another, at the animal pole of the egg, and in all cases each of these quartets gives rise to homologous regions of the larvee of the different forms; the left posterior member of the fourth quartet (4d) is the mesentoblast and in all annelids and mollusks (except cephalopods) it gives rise to the mesodermal bands and to the posterior part of the intestine; and in general homologous portions of larval or adult animals come from homologous portions of the eggs of these animals through the medium of homologous differential cleavages. On the other hand, non-differential cleavages are relatively incon- stant in number, position and character; they vary greatly in number in different species, or even in different individuals of the same species, depending upon the size of the egg or embryo. Thus in different species of the genus Crepidula the differential cleavages are almost precisely the same in all, though the relative volumes of the eggs of different species vary from 1 to 27, but the non-differential cleavages are much more numerous in the large eggs than in the small ones. It is the fact that the earlier cleavages of eggs are so generally differential that makes possible the study of cell lineage; if such cleavages were generally non-differential they would be relatively inconstant and lack- ing in significance. In animals with determinate cleavage of the egg the number and nature of the cells at any given stage of differentiation is, under normal conditions, absolutely constant for each species, and it may be a con- stant number even for different species of a genus, especially if the eggs * Conklin, ‘‘The Organization and Cell Lineage of the Ascidian Egg,’’ Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 13, 1905. 184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY of the different species do not differ greatly in size. In various ascid- ians (Styela, Ciona, Molgula, Phallusia, Ascidia) there is a close cor- respondence in the character and number of the cleavage cells present at corresponding stages of development, even up to advanced stages. For example in all these genera there are 118 cells present when the cup- shaped gastrula is first formed and the prospective fate of each of these cells is indicated herewith: 10 will give rise to endoderm cells, 12 to muscle cells, 16 to mesenchyme cells, 8 to chorda cells, 8 to neural plate cells, 64 to ectodermal epithelium. At the stage when the gastrula begins to elongate there are 218 cells distributed as follows: 26 endoderm cells, 12 muscle cells, 20 mesen- chyme cells, 16 chorda cells, 40 neural plate cells, 104 ectodermal epithelial cells. Each of these cells is characteristic in position, structure, size and potency, and this is true of all species and genera of simple ascidians hitherto studied with respect to this matter. In a number of species of small body size Martini®”® has determined that there is a high degree of constancy in the number of cells in the adult body. In the appendicularian Fritellaria pellucida the number of cells is constant in the following organs: 28 flattened epithelial cells of body, 446 oikoplasts (columnar epithelial cells of body), 10 large gland cells in the tail, 7 flattened epithelial cells of the pharynx, 10 large cells of the endostyle, 24 small cells of the endostyle, 4 branchial gland cells, 7 branchial cells, 6 ciliated funnel cells, 19 epithelial cells in the stomach, 10 epithelial cells in the pyloris, 17 epithelial cells in the small intestine, 12 epithelial cells in the large intestine, 6 or 7 epithelial cells in the rectum, 39 cells in the brain, 25 cells in the chief caudal ganglion, 23 cells in the remaining nerve cord, 8 nuclei in heart and pericardium, 20 muscle cells, 12 large chorda cells, 4 small chorda cells. In different individuals of this species there is a high degree of con- stancy in the number of these cells, the only variation being in the occa- sional presence or absence of a single subdivision of a cell. Also in the rotifer Hydatina senta he finds that there are all together just 959 cells, or rather nuclei, in the entire body of the adult, and that each organ consists of a perfectly characteristic number of cells. Even in different species of rotifers the number of cells in many homologous organs is the same; thus there are generally 6 cells in the anterior part * Martini, ‘‘Die Konstanz histologische Elemente bei Nematoden, etc.,’’ Verh. Anat. Gesell., 22, 1908. 7™¢Darwinismus und Zellkonstanz,’’ Sitz. u. Abh. naturforsch. Gesell. Rostock, 1, 1909. °**Studien tiber die Konstanz histologischer Elemente,’’ I., II., III., Zeit. wiss. Zool., 92, 94, 1909; 102, 1912. THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS. 185 of the cesophagus, 6 pairs of cells in the excretory tubules, and 13 cells in the cingulum, one of which is on the dorsal mid line. In the nematode Ascaris megalocephala Goldschmidt? found 162 cells in the nervous system, while Martini® finds 65 muscle cells in Oxyuris, and 87 muscle cells in Sclerostoma, the latter being derived from 65 cells of an earlier stage. A similar constancy of cell number has been found by Woltereck?® in Polygordius larve, by Apathy in the central nervous system of Hirudinea, by Gaule and Donaldson" in spinal ganglia of frogs, and by many investigators in small but highly differentiated parts, such as the ommatidia of compound eyes, the lens fibers of vertebrate eyes, the nurse cells of certain arthropod and annelid ova, etc. Such cases of cell constancy are, as Martini remarks, “the crowning fact of determinate development.” In all such cases the definite number of cells in the entire body or in a particular organ must be determined by a definite number of cell divisions which proceed from the egg, or from the proto- blast of the organ, and this limitation in the number of cell divisions must in some way be determined by heredity. Since increase of differ- entiation is associated with decrease of cell division, the latter being stopped altogether when differentiation has reached a certain stage, it seems probable that all cases of cell constancy are due to constancy of differentiation. Where the number of cells in an organ or in an animal is very large it is not possible to prove that the cell number is constant, but in many cases where cell division ceases in embryonic stages the cell number is constant. In such cases cell division does not continue after differentia- tion is complete, though cell growth does. ‘To all such cases in which there is cell constancy Martini gives the name “ Eutelie.” On the other hand, there are many animals in which the number of cells in any particular organ is not constant but is proportional to the size of the organ. In Crepidula the number of egg cells within the ovary and the number laid in any season varies with the size of the animal, but the size of individual eggs remains constant for each species; the same is also true of epithelial cells, gland cells and blood cells. The divisions by which such cells are formed are in general non-differential, and since both growth and division in such cases continue throughout life the size of any given type of cell is fairly uniform whatever the body size may be. In differential cell divisions, or in highly differentiated * Goldschmidt, ‘‘Das Nervensystem von Ascaris, etc.,’’ Zeit. wiss. Zool., 90, 1908. * Woltereck, ‘‘Beitrige zur praktischen Analyse der Polygordiusentwick- lung,’’ Arch. Entw. Mech., 18, 1904. ™ Donaldson, ‘‘The Growth of the Brain,’’ Scribners, New York, 1895. VOL. LXXXIII.—13. 186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY cells which do not continue to divide throughout life, the size of cells varies directly with the body size and with the infrequency of division. III. Crit Size AnD NucLEAR S1zE In a series of recent papers Richard Hertwig’® *° and several of his pupils have maintained that there is a definite ratio between the size of the nucleus and the size of the cell; this is the “ Kernplasmarelation,” or the nucleus-plasma ratio. When this ratio is altered by the greater growth of the nucleus, Hertwig thinks that it leads to a “tension,” which brings about division, and thus the normal nucleus-plasma ratio is restored. This ratio is supposed to be a constant one under normal conditions, and if at any time it is altered it is capable of self regulation. On the other hand, I** have found that this ratio varies greatly in different cells of an animal, and indeed within the same cell at different stages of the division cycle, that it may be experimentally altered, and that it is a result, rather than a cause, of the frequency of cell division. Within the same cell the size of the nucleus varies greatly at differ- ent stages of the division cycle, while the volume of the cell as a whole remains relatively constant. The nucleus is smallest during the anaphase, or later stages of division, when it consists of a compact plate of condensed chromosomes; it is largest immediately before the nuclear membrane dissolves at the prophase of the next division. In the cleavage of the egg of Crepidula plana the nucleus-plasma ratio in identically the same cell varies from approximately 1: 6 when the nucleus is largest, to 1: 286 when it is smallest; that is, the volume of the nucleus increases nearly 50 times during the resting period between the previous anaphase and the subsequent prophase; during this same time the volume of the cell remains practically unchanged. Even when measured at the same phase of the division cycle the nucleus-plasma ratio differs greatly in different cleavage cells; at maxi- mum nuclear size the volume of the nucleus of certain cells of Crepidula (44-4C) may be 3 times that of the protoplasm, whereas in other cells (1A-1D) the volume of the protoplasm may be 14.5 times that of the nucleus. At minimum nuclear size the nucleus-plasma ratio may vary from 1:29 in the cells 1a?~—1d?, to 1: 285.5 in the cells 1A—-1D. The growth of the nucleus between successive divisions is due to the absorption from the cell body of a particular kind of cell substance, which constitutes the achromatin of the nucleus; at the beginning of this growth the nucleus is composed of compact chromosomes, at its “ Hertwig, R., ‘‘Ueber Korrelation von Zell- und Kerngrisse, etc.,’’ Biol. Centralb., 22, 1903. 2 Hertwig, R., ‘‘Ueber neue Probleme der Zellenlehre,’’ Archiv Zellfors., 1908. 4 Conklin, ‘‘Cell Size and Nuclear Size,’’ Jour. Exp. Zool., 12, 1912. THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS 187 end it consists of a large vesicle of achromatic substance in which the chromatin usually exists as scattered granules. At the next division some of these granules form chromosomes and all the rest of the nuclear content is liberated into the cell body, to be again absorbed by the daughter nuclei during the succeeding rest period. There is thus a sort of diastole and systole of the nuclear vesicle during every division cycle of a cell, achromatin being taken up by the nucleus during its growth and liberated again into the cell body during its division. In different cleavage cells of Crepidula plana, when the yolk is elimi- nated from consideration, the nucleus-plasma ratio varies from 1:0.37 to 1:14.5; that is, the volume of the actual protoplasm in certain cells may be only one third the volume of the nucleus, or in other cells it may be fourteen times that volume, depending largely upon the length of the resting period. In general the size of a nucleus is directly proportional to the volume of the general protoplasm in the cell, to the length of the resting period, and in cases of abnormal or irregular distribution of chromosomes, to the number and volume of the initial chromosomes which go to form the nucleus. The inciting cause of cell division is not to be found in departures from a normal nucleus-plasma ratio, which is a result rather than a cause of the rate of cell division, but rather in the coincidence of certain metabolic phases in nucleus, centrosome and protoplasm. If the growth period of the nucleus is very long, the greater part of the protoplasm may be taken into the nucleus, as in those cleavage cells in which the nuclear volume is about three times as great as that of the protoplasm outside of the nucleus; if the growth period of the nucleus is short, the nucleus remains correspondingly small. If nuclear division is prevented by hypertonic solutions or by decreased oxygen tension, the nuclei may grow to an enormous size until they contain the greater part of the cell protoplasm. In certain stages of the division cycle it is possible by the use of hypertonic solutions to prevent the daughter chromosomes from absorb- ing achromatin, and in such cases these chromosomes form small, ‘densely chromatic nuclei, while the achromatin may be gathered into one or many vesicles. In other cases, the chromatin may be caused to contract and to squeeze out the achromatin. The latter case is similar to that which takes place normally in the formation of a spermatozoon from a spermatid, where there is a condensation of the chromatin of the spermatid nucleus and a squeezing out of the achromatin; this diminu- tion of the nucleus is coincident with the transformation of the proto- plasm of the spermatid into differentiation products. A similar thing happens in superficial epithelial cells which are undergoing keratiniza- * Conklin, ‘‘Experimental Studies on Nuclear and Cell Division,’’ Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 15, 1912. 188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY \ tion; up to a certain stage, the nuclei of such cells shrink in size and become more densely chromatic in proportion as the cell protoplasm is converted into metaplasm. The same thing is true of gland cells, muscle cells, fiber cells and fat cells in which the general protoplasm is progressively being changed into differentiation products, and coin- cidently the individual nuclei shrink in size and become more densely chromatic. In no case do metaplasmic substances or differentiated structures of the cell enter into the nucleus during its growth, and the relative quan- tities of general protoplasm and of differentiated products in a cell can be determined by the size to which the nucleus will grow during inter- kinesis, under given conditions of time, temperature, etc. By sub- jecting eggs to centrifugal force, the quantities of protoplasm and yolk in the cleavage cells may be greatly changed, and under such circum- stances the size of a nucleus is always proportional to the volume of the protoplasm in which it lies; the heavier yolk which segregates at the peripheral pole, and the lighter watery or oily substance which gathers at the central pole of the centrifuged egg do not contribute to nuclear growth, only the clear protoplasm which lies in the middle zone enters the nucleus or contributes to its growth. In muscle cells with small nuclei, the quantity of general protoplasm (sarcoplasm) which may enter into the nucleus or contribute to its growth is small; in nerve cells, it is evidently larger, since the nuclei of such cells are relatively large, but the substance which may enter the nucleus of a nerve cell is by no means as great in quantity as in germ cells and blastomeres, thus indicating that much of the substance of a nerve cell is too highly differ- entiated to enter into the nucleus. In epithelial and gland cells, the size of nuclei is limited not only by the presence of metabolic products in the cells, but also by the occurrence of cell division and the conse- quent limitation of the growing period of the nucleus. The following table gives the cell diameter and nuclear diameter at maximum size, the corresponding nuclear volume, the cell volume less the nuclear volume, and the nucleus-cell ratio, in a number of different kinds of cells in adult individuals of Crepidula plana: The nucleus-cell ratio of these cells varies from 1:1.3 to 1: 88.6, depending primarily upon the quantity of formed substance in the cells. The nuclei are relatively largest in germ cells before the formation of yolk, and in embryonic cells in which there is relatively little formed substance; in such cases a relatively great part of the protoplasm may enter the nucleus. The nuclei are relatively smallest in those cells in which the protoplasm has been most completely transformed into pro- ducts of metabolism or differentiation, such as gland cells filled with secretion, red blood cells of mammals in which the nuclei completely disappear, egg cells filled with yolk, and spermatozoa in which most of THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS 189 the protoplasm has been transformed into the contractile substance of the flagellum. I have not been able to measure the volume of muscle cells in Crepidula, but such measurements have been made by Hycleshymer*® for the striated muscle cells of Necturus. From the measurements given by Eycleshymer, I have calculated the nucleus-plasma ratio in the usual manner, 1. e., by determining the ratio of the nuclear volume to the cell volume less the nuclear volume; and I find that in the 7 mm. and 8 mm. embryos this ratio is about 1 :11, whereas in the 23 cm. adult it is about 1:73. The increase of cell substance is therefore less than seven times, instead of twenty or thirty times, that of the nucleus, as he states. RATIO OF NUCLEAR VOLUME TO CELL YOLUME IN ADULT INDIVIDUALS OF Crepidula plana eS eae ubLees. Nucleus- Kinds of Cells = aa iceaia Nucleus os of Coll Batio 7 Be Cu. ph Cu. » Spermatocytes [................-+ 8 6 113 155 ile TS ¥/ Spermatocytes II.................. 7 5) 64.4 114.6 | 1: 1.7 Spermatids (chromatin con- leTIned))\-- docc-sea sssacesecese are 3 2 4.18 9.94] 1: 2.38 Oocytes I (before yolk forma- 727) PRS REDE S B ee a aaD e 10 6 113 407 1: 3.6 Large ganglion cells (not in- cluding any outgrowths)..... 17X17 X23 12 905 5724 ilo 88 Ectodermal epithelium (of HOOL) eiceeccccoecoswsdssnesecesccoes 6X 6X15 5 65.4 474.6 | 1: 7.1 Epithelium of mantle (near BRN) ci sy cer entsic= won enscecastes 5X 5X15 4 33 342 1:10.3 Intestinal epithelium............ 11X11X12 6 113 1339 1:11.8 Gastric epithelium............... 101036 8 268 3332 1:12.4 Branchial epithelium............ USS Uses 4 33 408 1:12.3 Liver cells (without secretion ; PMBGNEES Yc sc% 25. conde cccesnnene cc 14x14x30 9 382 5498 1:14.4 Liver cells (with secretion MO GUICES oseu ssa. esa ese< Minot, ‘‘ Ueber Vererbung und Verjtingung,’’ Biol. Centralb., 15, 1895. 7° Minot, ‘‘ Age, Growth and Death,’’? Putnams, New York, 1908. * Hertwig, R., ‘‘ Ueber die Kernkonjugation der Infusorien,’’ Abh. Bayer. Akad. Wiss., II. K1., 17, 1889. THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS 195 with a small amount of such protoplasm, while large nuclei occur only in cells with a large amount. It is not the increase in the general pro- toplasm which causes the nuclei to become relatively small, but rather the increase in the differentiation products and the corresponding de- crease in the general protoplasm. In most respects I am in hearty accord with Minoi’s latest formula- tion of the causes of senescence.?* In this work he particularly empha- sizes the effect of differentiation in causing senescence. Indeed he con- cludes, “dass die Differenzierung als die wesentliche Ursache des Alt- werdens zu betrachten ist.” Nevertheless, he still holds that the greater growth of the protoplasm, relative to the nucleus, is the essential basis of differentiation; and that we may distinguish in development an earlier and shorter period, which is characterized by the preponderating growth of the nucleus, from a second and longer one characterized by growth and differentiation of the protoplasm—the former being the period of rejuvenescence, the latter the period of senescence. In Crepidula, as I have shown,** the growth of nuclear material during early cleavage is not greater than that of the protoplasm, and in general the size of a nucleus is directly proportional to the quantity of general protoplasm and to the length of the resting period, because general protoplasm is absorbed by the nucleus during interkinesis, whereas products of differentiation do not enter the nucleus. A causal explana- tion is thus given of the relation between nuclear size and cell size at different stages of development; and in the fact that differentiation products can not enter the nucleus we have, I believe, a causal expla- nation of the relation between differentiation and senescence. The principal objection to Minot’s formulation of the cause of senescence is that it overemphasizes the antithesis between nucleus and protoplasm and does not with sufficient clearness distinguish between the general protoplasm and its differentiation products. It is undoubt- edly true that with advancing age and differentiation there is an increase of cellular as compared with nuclear substance, but the significant thing here is the fact that this cellular increase is not so much in the proto- plasm as in the products which are formed from it and which can not enter into the nucleus. By all odds the most important structural peculiarity of senescence is the increase of metaplasm or differentiation products at the expense - of the general protoplasm. This change of general protoplasm into products of differentiation and of metabolism is an essential feature of embryonic differentiation and it continues in many types of cells until the entire cell is almost filled with such products. Since nuclei depend upon the general protoplasm for their growth, they also become small in such cells. If this process of the transformation of protoplasm into 7 Minot, ‘‘ Moderne Probleme der Biologie,’’ Fischer, Jena, 1913. 196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY differentiation products continues long enough it necessarily leads to the death of the cell, since the continued life of the cell depends upon the interaction between the general protoplasm and the nucleus. In cells laden with the products of differentiation, the power of regulation is first lost, then the power of division, and finally the power of assimi- lation; and this is normally followed by the senescence and death of the cells. In some cases the progressive transformation of protoplasm into metaplasm may be reversed; in some manner the formed material is dissolved and converted into general protoplasm, the protoplasm and nuclei increase in size, the cells begin to divide and may become capable of regulation. In short, this reversal of the differentiation process leads to the rejuvenescence of senile cells. Minot?’ holds that differentiated cells do not become undifferentiated—but at least it must be admitted they may lose their products of differentiation and metabolism; gland cells lose their secretion granules, egg cells their yolk, spermatozoa within the egg their flagella, injured muscle cells their fibrille, ete. In such cases differentiation products are either eliminated from the cell or are transformed into a more labile and more general form of proto- plasm, though the latter is probably not undifferentiated. I have used the term dedifferentiation for this process. Among functional causes of senescence may be mentioned the well- known opinion of Metschnikoff, that the organism is slowly poisoned by its own waste products. Metschnikoff especially emphasizes the effects of intestinal fermentation and putrefaction in producing old age. Zoologists are familiar with the fact that, in certain Polyzoa and Tuni- cata which lack kidneys or efficient means of eliminating urea, or other nitrogenous waste, the tissues gradually become laden with such waste substances and the animal becomes senile and finally dies, but before this happens it may give off one or more buds which are relatively free from these waste products and which continue the life of the colony. It is a general phenomenon both in plants and animals that buds are composed of protoplasm which is not laden with products of differentia- tion or metabolism, and hence they exhibit youthful characteristics although the body from which they come may be senile. Another functional cause of senescence is to be found in a decrease in the power of constructive metabolism. This factor has been recently advocated by Child?® in a very valuable paper, in which he concludes that anything which decreases the rate of metabolism, such as “ decrease in permeability, increase in density, accumulation of relatively inactive substances, etc.,” will lead to senescence. On the other hand, “ Re- juvenescence consists physiologically in an increase in the rate of * Child, ‘‘A Study of Senescence and Rejuvenescence, ete.,’’ Arch. Entw. Mech., 31, 1911. THE SIZE OF ORGANISMS 197 metabolism and is brought about in nature by the removal in one way or another of structural obstacles to metabolism.” It is well known that constructive metabolism can not take place in the absence of a nucleus, and I have elsewhere** shown that the inter- change between the nucleus and the protoplasm is a condition of assimi- lation. I have likewise shown that only the general protoplasm can enter the nucleus and that the products of differentiation are excluded from it. The progressive increase of such products and corresponding decrease in the general protoplasm lessen this interchange between nucleus and cell body and thus decrease the power of constructive metabolism. In conclusion it may be said that there are several factors which produce senescence, but that the chief of these is the progressive differ- entiation of the protoplasm. As Minot has well said “Old age and death are the price which we pay for our differentiation.” If we could find means by which this progressive differentiation could be stopped or reversed when it has gone too far, we might hope to attain potential immortality. That the possibility of this is not a mere delusion is shown by the fact that there are many animals which either in whole or in part are capable of rejuvenescence. In Protozoa the dedifferentia- tion which usually precedes or accompanies division is a process of rejuvenescence, and where such dedifferentiation and division are long delayed even protozoans show signs of old age. The same is true of germ cells; the mature egg and sperm are senile cells not because the one has a very large nucleus and the other a very small one, but because both are loaded with products of differentiation which interfere with constructive metabolism. When the sperm enters the egg and either leaves behind its old cell body or dissolves it, and its nucleus gets a new protoplasmic body, it is rejuvenated; likewise when the egg begins to dissolve the yolk and other products of differentiation with which it has been loaded it begins to live anew. Similarly any adult animal or plant which is capable of dedifferen- tiation is also capable of renewing its youth. It has long been known that encystment and accompanying loss of differentiation lead to rejuvenescence. Jacobs,*° working under my direction, found that when the rotifer, Philodina, becomes senescent, it may be rejuvenated if it is completely dried up and afterwards put back into water; in this treatment it evidently undergoes dedifferentiation. Child*® found that after planarians in a condition of apparent extreme senility had been starved for some time, they afterward became young within a few hours or days. Evidently the starving served to use up a part of the structural substance which prevented rapid metabolism. * Jacobs, ‘‘The Effects of Desiccation on the Rotifer Philodina roseola, Jour. Exp. Zool., 6, 1909. 198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Similar conditions of renewed vigor are shown by many animals after long hibernation. The great breeding activity of many animals, such as frogs, so soon after their winter sleep, may find a physiological explana- tion in this using up of metabolic products during hibernation and the subsequent increase in vitality. In similar manner it is known that the new tissue which is formed in regeneration comes from undifferentiated (epithelial or lymphoid) or from dedifferentiated cells (e. g., muscle cells of amphibia, etc.). In the latter case also there is a rejuvenescence, due to the loss of differ- entiation products. In this case dedifferentiation is evidently due, in the first instance, to the injury. It is at least possible that the failure to regenerate lost parts, which many animals show, is due to the inabil- ity of the cells to undergo dedifferentiation and subsequent rejuvenation. In conclusion, we find that the life of a cell is dependent upon the continued interaction of nucleus and protoplasm; that as the proto- plasm is transformed into products of differentiation this interaction of nucleus and protoplasm is reduced and constructive metabolism is diminished; that when the quantity of protoplasm present has been reduced beyond a certain point, either by its transformation into meta- plasm, or by other means, constructive processes fail to compensate for destructive ones, and the cell grows old and finally dies. On the other hand, processes which lead to the increase of the general protoplasm in a cell, either by the growth of the protoplasm already present or by the conversion of metaplasm into protoplasm, lead also to the growth of the nucleus, to increased interchange between nucleus and protoplasm, and hence to increased powers of assimilation, cell division and regulation. Anything which decreases the interchange between nucleus and proto- plasm leads to senility; anything which decreases this interchange renews youth. THE CURVING OF A BASEBALL 199 BERNOULLI’S PRINCIPLE AND ITS APPLICATION TO EXPLAIN THE CURVING OF A BASEBALL By S. LEROY WN, Pu.D., NIVERSITY OF TEXAS HEWN a liquid or a gas is flowing through a horizontal pipe and encounters a constriction in the pipe, there is a higher velocity of the fluid and a lower pressure in the constriction than in the larger section of the pipe. At first thought, this is contrary to what one would expect, for the crowding of the fluid into a smaller section would appa- rently raise the pressure. Closer analysis, however, shows that places in the pipe where the velocity of the fluid is greater must be places of lower pressure and at places where the velocity of the fluid is less, the pressure must be greater. Consider a definite mass of water as m in Fig. 1. When this piece of water moves from position A to position B, its velocity is increased since the velocity of the water in the smaller section of the pipe must be larger than in the larger section if the same amount of water per second which flows through the larger section is to go through the smaller sec- tion. Since the velocity of this mass of water is increased (mass m is accelerated) there must be an unbalanced force acting on it. This un- balanced force is furnished by a higher pressure at position A than at position B. That is, the pressure behind the moving mass m is greater than in front of it and, consequently, the velocity is increased. As the piece of water leaves the neck in the pipe, the pressure in front of it is greater than the pressure behind it and it slows down to the lower velocity in the larger section of the pipe. The generalization of the above described phenomenon is, that places in a fluid where the velocity is relatively greater are places of lower pressure and places where the velocity of the fluid is relatively 258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY smaller are places of higher pressure. This generalization (first estab- lished by John Bernoulli) is called Bernoulli’s principle and its appli- cation to explain many paradoxical results is interesting. Fig. 2 shows how the weight of a marble may be held up by blowing through the tube. The high velocity of the air over the top of the marble causes a lower pressure than there is under the marble where the air has a comparatively low velocity and this difference in pressure exerts an upward force which is sufficient to balance the weight of the marble. ; A light ball may be held in midair by a stream of air flowing just above it, as shown in Fig. 3. Just above the ball is a region of high Fig. 2. Fig. 3. velocity and low pressure, while under the ball is a low velocity and high pressure region and therefore the force of gravity on the ball is balanced by the difference in pressure. The difference between the higher pressure in the larger section and the lower pressure (higher velocity of water) in the smaller section of a water pipe is indicated by the manometer in Fig. 4. The pressure in the larger section of the pipe is greater than the pressure in the smaller section by an amount equal to the pressure exerted by a column of mercury f# high. If the areas of the larger and smaller sections are known, the rate at which the water is flowing through the pipe (cubic feet per second or gallons per second) can be determined from the differ- ence in pressure which is indicated by the manometer. This method of measuring rates of discharge is used in the Venturi water meter, which is not essentially different from the arrangement shown in Fig. 4. *When a fluid flows from a region of low velocity to a region of high velocity the pressure decreases but the reverse, that when a fluid flows from a region of high velocity to a region of low velocity the pressure increases, is not always true. For example, the friction of the water against the sides of the tube in Fig. 1 might be sufficient to decrease the velocity of the water as it flows out of the neck without the pressure increasing. THE CURVING OF A BASEBALL 201 A baseball moving through the air is the same as air moving past _ the baseball as far as the forces which the air exert on the ball are con- cerned. A ball thrown straight (without rotating) through the air can ‘| MERCURY Fic. 4. be pictured as air moving past the ball with the same velocity on all sides of the ball which is shown by the equal density of stream lines above and below the ball in Fig. 5. According to Bernoulli’s principle, Fig. 5. there are equal pressures (equal velocities) of the air on all sides of the ball and it does not curve. If the ball is rotating as it moves through the air, its spin will increase the velocity of the air past the ball on one side and retard the velocity of the air past the ball on the opposite side as is indicated in Fig. 6 by many stream lines on one side and few on the other. The higher pressure (low velocity) on the one side pushes the ball toward the low pressure (high velocity) region and it curves as shown by the heavy arrow in Fig. 6. If the ball had been rotating in an opposite Fic. 6. 202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY direction, the low pressure region would have been on the other side of the ball and it would have curved in the opposite direction. In order to show this difference in pressure on the sides of a rotat- ing ball as it is thrown through the air, or in practise as the air is driven past the ball, the author has devised the following demonstra- tion. ‘The air is driven past the ball by a centrifugal blower and the pressures on two opposite sides of the ball are indicated by manometers as shown in Fig. 7. When the ball is not rotating, the velocity of the air on the two sides of the ball is the same (shown by equal density of stream lines in top view section of Fig. 8) and the manometers indicate equal pressures on the two sides of the ball (end view of Fig. 8). This is equivalent to the ball going through the air without rotating and without curving to either side as shown by the heavy arrow. However, the pressure on either side of the ball is less than the pressure in the still air outside the tube which directs the air past the ball; that is, the high velocity regions near the ball are low-pressure regions. When the ball is rotating as shown in Fig. 9 the friction against the surface of the ball accelerates the flow of air past it on one side and - retards the air stream on the other side; that is, the stream lines are more dense on one side (shown in top view of Fig. 9) and the man- ometers indicate unequal pressures on the two sides of the ball (shown iNwHheee ae (im. at eat a - i ; THE CURVING OF A BASEBALL 203 Rre. 2.0: in end view of Fig. 9). This is equivalent to the ball going through the air with a rotary motion and the difference in pressure on the two sides curves it as shown by the heavy arrow. If the rotation of the ball is reversed, the lower-pressure region (higher velocity region) is on the other side of the ball. This is equiv- alent to the ball going through the air with a rotary motion as shown in Fig. 10 and the difference in pressure on the two sides of it causes it to curve as shown by the heavy arrow. VIINVW LY GONGIOS JO NyaAUNG GHL WO DNIGIING NIVIN — THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 205 THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE THE BUREAU OF SCIENCE OF | THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS THE annual report of the acting | director of the Bureau of Science, maintained under the government of | the Philippine Islands, for the year | ending with July, 1912, has just | reached this country, and bears witness to the accomplishment of a consider- able amount of scientific work. It might be better if the native peoples were permitted to follow their natural lines of development, but scientific in- vestigation and the common schools are probably better for them than the rule of the Spanish friars. In any case, the serious efforts made by the Bureau of Science to investigate the natural his- tory and natural resources of the islands and the tropical diseases that occur there will be of value to the world at large. Government and in- vestigations in a tropical country, how- ever, can be carried forward only at a heavy cost, and we should probably adopt the English policy of paying large salaries and permitting early retirement on a pension. The present report gives evidence of the difficulty of maintaining a scien- tifie staff. Dr. Paul C. Freer, director of the Bureau of Science from the time of its organization as the Bureau of Government Laboratories in the year 1901, dean of the college of medicine, and professor of chemistry in the Uni- versity of the Philippines, died last year. The important work that he accomplished in advancing science and education was thus paid for at a heavy price. Several others of the most ac- tive workers in the bureau have re- turned to the United States, and just now Dr. Richard P. Strong, chief of the biological laboratory, has accepted a chair of tropical medicine in the Harvard Medical School. During the year a new wing was added to the laboratory building, as shown in the foreground of the accom- panying illustration. The division of mines, the sections of fisheries and ornithology, the entomological section and laboratories and the library were moved into it. The room in the main building vacated by the library now contains the herbarium, and _ other rooms left vacant by the readjustments are occupied by laboratories and for clerical work. The amount of research work accom- plished by the bureau is born witness to by Lhe Philippine Journal of Sci- ence, established by Dr. Freer. It is published in four sections—one devoted to the chemical and geological sciences and to the industries, one to tropical medicine, one to botany and one to general biology, ethnology and anthro- pology. During the year under review, there were published in these sections of the journal about one hundred ar- ticles, most of them by members of the staff of the Bureau of Science. Among the work published or to be published in the Journal may be noted the proceedings of the International Plague Conference at Mukden in 1911, of which Dr. Strong and Dr. Teague were members. Experiments have been carried on in several directions, in- eluding work on beri-beri, surra and entamebie dysentery. In the botanical section additions have been made to the herbarium which now numbers over 100,000 specimens, but apparently no very great amount of field work has been done. The division of entomol- ogy has done economic work in pro- moting silk culture and has carried on campaigns to exterminate the mosquito and other disease-bearing insects. The section of fisheries has studied shells used in the manufacture of buttons, tortoise shells, the shark-fin industry and the manufacture of leather from the skins of marine animals. Some- thing, but apparently not much, has been accomplished in stocking the streams with game fish and in the 206 THE POPULAR SCLENCE MONTHLY Sir JONATHAN HUTCHINSON, the distinguished London surgeon and author who has died at the age of eighty-five years. study of the deep-sea fisheries. An aquarium has been built in the bastion in front of the Real Gate of the city. The chemical laboratory like the bio- logical laboratory is largely occupied with routine work, there having been made last year over 10,000 analyses and tests. The investigations include the study of Philippine soils, coal and Portland cement. A sugar laboratory has been opened at Iloilo, and it is recommended that there be established an experiment station in that region, where sugar cane of various kinds can be tested. The division of mines has, like the other departments, been largely occupied with routine work. Investi- gations have been made of the black sands, of the ore deposits, including gold veins, and of the raw materials for cement. The division of ethnology has continued the study of the Iloco people and the museum has been de- veloped. It is three years since the bureau has had an increase in appropriations in spite of the fact that demands upon it have increased in every direction. The need is urged of a new testing laboratory, of enlarging the soil sur- veys, of the study of animal diseases and of insects injurious to agricul- tural products, of enlarging the library and of developing the scope of the work on the fish and fisheries of the islands. THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE DISTRIBUTION AND CAUSE OF PELLAGRA Dr. Louis W. SAMBON, of the Lon- don School of Tropical Medicine, who is about to visit the United States in response to an invitation to join the Pellagra Commission which is working in South Carolina, contributes to the last number of The British Medical Journal an article giving an account of several cases in Great Britain and of his theory of the natural history of the disease. Pellagra has been recog- nized for two centuries, but until re- cently was supposed to be confined to the peasantry in parts of Italy and 207 other regions adjacent to the Mediter- ranean. The symptoms are first a red smarting rash—whence the name of the disease—headache, giddiness and diar- rhea. It appears in the spring, de- clining towards autumn, and is likely to recur with increased intensity the following spring. Death frequently follows, or a complete disorganization of the nervous system, leading to im- becility and a mummified condition of body. The theory of Lombroso that pel- lagra is caused by eating moldy maize was widely accepted, until Dr. Sambon at a meeting of the British Association PROFESSOR WILLIAM MoRRIS FONTAINE, for thirty-one years professor of natural history and geology in the University of Virginia, who has died at the age of seventy-eight years. 208 in 1905 suggested that it was probably of protozoal origin, and was communi- cated by sand flies, as sleeping-sickness is by the tsetse fly or malaria and yellow fever by mosquitoes. Since that time Dr. Sambon has made careful studies in Italy and elsewhere, and his | views are accepted by a number of leading authorities. He calls attention to the analogy with malaria, especially in its seasonal occurrence. While Dr. Sambon has been able to produce no experimental evidence of the causes of the disease, Dr. W. H. Harris, of Tulane University, has recently pub- lished in The Journal of the American Medical Association a note on experi- mental production of pellagra in mon- keys. These monkeys were injected with filtrates, made through a Berke- feld filter, obtained from cases of pel- lagra shortly after death, and all showed the typical symptoms of the disease. As recently as 1906 Sir William Osler in the sixth edition of his ‘‘ Prin- ciples of Medicine’’ stated that the disease has not been observed in the United States. In the following year, Dr. G. H. Searey in Alabama and Dr. J. W. Babcock and J. J. Watson in South Carolina recognized the disease. Their reports were received with skep- ticism and even with ridicule, but now pellagra is known to exist in no fewer than thirty-three states and there are probably at present 30,000 cases. It is strange that pellagra and the hook- worm disease, both of which are so prevalent and so disastrous in our southern states, should have remained eases are preventable, and we may look and social efficiency when they have been brought under control in the south. We should be grateful to the General Education Board for the work | ! uches 1 | ical or mental trait with which we have that it has accomplished in this direc- tion, but the national government, the states and the municipalities should now take up the suppression of pre- ventable diseases with all the resources at their command. | | Stara ee ee bi THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY SCIENTIFIC ITEMS WE record with regret the death of Dr Horace Jayne, formerly professor of vertebrate morphology in the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania; of Professor N. H. Alcock, professor of physiology in McGill University, and of Dr. Philip Lutley Sclater, from 1859 to 1902 sec- retary to the Zoological Society of London, distinguished for his work on systematic zoology. Dr. JOSEPH SWAIN, president of Swarthmore College, has been elected president of the National Educational Association; Dean Gardner C. Anthony, of Tufts College, president of the So- ciety for the Promotion of Engineer- ing Education, and Dean Victor C. Vaughan, of the University of Mich- ‘igan, president of the American Med- ical Association. IN the article on ‘‘ Ancient Man, his Environment and his Art,’’ which ap- peared in the July number of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, Fig. 4 is from a photograph by Professor V. Commont, and Figs. 7-10 are from photographs by Count Bégouen. THE editor has received a letter from Professor Karl Pearson, the Francis Galton Eugenics Laboratory, Univer- sity of London, under date of June 9, in which he says: The following paragraph occurs in your June issue in a paper by Pro- fessor H. EH. Jordan: ‘‘ We are now in | possession of facts, thanks mainly to the labors of Professor Karl Pearson and his collaborators at the Galton Eugenics Laboratory, and to Professor Davenport and his staff of assistants | ; ra 5 until recently unrecognized. Both dis- | atthe Busoni: ete Sea me that the inheritance of several scores of human physical and mental traits forward to a great advance in health | are in close conformity with Mendelian formule’’ (p. 580). Such a statement will astonish those who are acquainted with the work done here, and I feel bound at once to state that, as far as my experience reaches, I find no phys- dealt here to be ‘‘in close accordance with Mendelian formule.’’ The almost amusing aspect of the matter is, that the one paper in which I have dealt with the mulatto was an endeavor to show that Mendelian formule did not hold for him. e Peoular Science Monthly adhred in the Post Office in Lancaster, Pa., as second-class matter. CONTENTS OF THE JUNE NUMBER a Some Further Applications of the Method of Posi- CONTENTS GF THE JULY NUMBER Sir J. J. Thomson. Ancient Man, his Environment and his Art.. Pro- Professor Charles fessor George Grant MaeCuray. Suspended Changes in Nature. Professor James H. Walton, C: resident of the Ninth International Congress % F k : See P 2 i a Poeun gs Bry Geomer Frederic Heredity, Culpability, Praiseworthiness, Punishment 2 American College as it looks from the Inside, and Reward. Dr. C. B. Davenport. feasor Charles Hart Handschin. Gustav Theodore Fechner. Professor Frank Angell. me of the Heroic Age. The Intellectual and the Physical Life. Dr. _ James Frederick Rogers. ] Women Teachers and Equal Pay. Mrs, Elfrieda ological Status and Social Worth of the Hochbaum Pope. ulatto. Professor H. E. Jordan. The Business Man and the High School Graduate. peedence of Inorganic Evolution. Sidney James P. Muuroe. vitz z ae stical Study of Eminent Women. Cora Sutton SE Specie and Therapeutic Superstitions. Dr. PI ogress of Science:- Lester F. Ward as Sociologist. Professor A. E. Ross. “fhe Anniversary Meeting of the National The Progress of Science: ademy of Sciences; The History of the National The Passing of the Victorian Era; Vital Statistics emy; Scientific Items, and the Marriage Rate; Scientific Items. to Volume LXXXII The MONTHLY wiil be sent to new subscribers for six months for One Dollar. SUBSCRIPTION ORDER Publishers of THE POP ULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, ee rion 8&4, New York City. 7 to THE POPULAR oo CE MONTHEY for one year, beginning gust, 1913. Name---— Yearly Subscription, $3.00 THE SCIENCE PRESS 41 North Queen St., Lancaster, Pa. Sub-Station 84; NEW YORK PRESS OF THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY All-Round Adaptsbiliy is the essential requirement in the projection instrument intended for the use of the teacher, lecturer or general entertainer. \ on and 3 Bausch lomb Balopticon The Perfect Stereopticon isthe popular choice in colleges and schools generally and is widely used by lecturers and other entertainers, as well asin the home. This perfect stereopticon projects sharply-defined brilliant screen images from ordinary lantern slides. scientific instrument—oplically and mechanically ac- curate—durable in construction and extremely simple in operation. e Balopticon may arranged for the projection of photos, postcards, sketches, etc, Model C Balopticon $25 and up Opaque Attachment $30 and up Write Today for Descriptive Circular Bausch £7 lomb Optical G. 550 ST. PAUL STREET ROCHESTER, N.¥% New York Washington Chicago San Francisco Illustri:tion shows 5-in. with pneumatic clock. _ DR. F. R. MOULTON CANDIES OF RARE QUALITY. “My FAVORITES” |] NOUTTED CHOCOLATES ONLY Highest Grades Candy Depends Scientifically .. its Fitness = Blended are Used for Gift Making | Sold by our Sales Agents Everywhere } in Three Sizes $100-50¢25¢ Refracting and Reflecting | Astronomical Telescopes : Standard and Portable Visual and Photographic OBJECTIVES Computed by our associate (Chicago University) OBSERVATORIES Specula, Planes, Eyepieces, etc. Photographs and Circulars on request |} LOHMANN BROS. it @REENVILLE, OHIO zz “U, 8. fe Tt ee Thee cep: + ae dee ek SAR ees SS Sta % | cy Rn as ee ey PabteD Boe ere RE he & aa ii Pires x sy e a 3 2 F . . ; eR TA. « 7 3 2 ‘XII, No. 3 eee) 20% SBPTEMBER 1913 THE MONTHLY - EDITED BY J. MeKEEN CATTELL MS in eee CONTENTS Nitrate Fields of Chile. Dr, WaterS.TowrR .. . . °° . 209 i ower of Growth i in Plants. Guroree EK. STone _. : : . 231 ‘ Pe ereron and Emission Centers of Light and Heat. Dr. W. W. §rrone . : : ; . 240 Quest of the Alcohol Wotive? ae @. fs W. Panion ae yey) Next College President. A Near Proressor . ; : : . 265 Matter of College Entrance Requirements. President Frank L. h : a Bi E ; aot : : : . 286 ological Forecast. Professor G. H. PARKER . 3 ; ; . 300 oa THE SCIENCE PRESS “LANCASTER, PA. GARRISON, N. ¥. en é > EW YORK: Sup-Station 84 BER, (80 Cents | ‘ as | Yeaniy ees. =e f 8 "CoPyaica7, 1912, By THE SCIENCE ee Sos see avr. ¥ ass: : ie . non th hy esson of Canal Zone Sanitation. Dr. eB. ee ; : . 294 Walker Prizes in Natural. By the provisions of the will of the late Dr. William Johnson Walker two prizes are offered by the Boston SociETY or NaTuRAL History for the best memoirs written language, on subjects proposed by a Committee appointed by the Council. For the best memoir presented a prize of sixty dollars may be awarded; if, however be one of marked merit, the amount may be increased to one hundred dollars, at the discretion _ Committee. ; For the next best memoir a prize not exceeding fifty dollars may be awarded. Prizes will not be awarded unless the memoirs presented are of adequate merit. The competition for these prizes ts not restricted, but ts open to all. Attention is especial. ly called to the following points :— 1. Inall cases the memoirs are to be based on a considerable body of original and uw work, accompanied by a general review of the literature of the subject. sidered as debarring the essay from competition. 3. Although the awards will be based on their intrinsic merits, preference may memoirs bearing evidence of having been DEE pares with special reference to bea prizes. superscribed with a motto sean to one borne by the manuscript, and must be of the Secretary on or before April 1st of the year for which the prize is offered. 5. The Society assumes no responsibility for publication of manuscripts submitted, a tion should not be made before the Annual Meeting of the Society in May. Subjects for 1913 and 1914:— Auy biolegical or geological subject. re GLOVER M. ALLE: Boston Society of Natural History, Boston, ee ai UO = A. Sa ; . “ Univecnies: ‘ont By J. MoKzen Carret, Professor of Psychology in Columbia Unive Together with a series of Two Hundred and Ninety-nine Unsigned Letters by Leading Monros and Jacos Gou.tp ScHuURMAN. A great variety of questions concerning general university administration are dealt with i in | helpful way.—Nature. These quotations and examples are taken from Professor Cattell’s informed and thorough discus subject of university control, a subject upon which he has had much to say of late, finding occasion eriticism of existing American conditions, and standing as the champion of an academic democrac ing profession upon which a man may enter without forfeiting his self-respect.—The Dial Sentences and paragraphs that betoken the expert, highly-trained mind, the aupeectene that fresh a d tell us that a new day is about to dawn in educational writing.—The Boston Evening Tra: SCIENCE AND BEDUCATION) A series of volumes for the promotion of scientific research and education VOLUME I. The Foundations of Science. By H. Porncarf. Containing the authorized Englis! i by Gsorap Brauca Haustap of “ Science and} Hypothesis,", ‘‘The Value of Beience,"! and Method.”: In Press. VOLUME II. Medical Research and Education. By Ricuanp M. Paarcs, Wituiam H. SON, Cuaiana x HorrTmEr, cae Henry P ‘Rognee In Press. VOLUME III. University Control. Now Ready. Pagesz+484. Price, $3.00 net. GARRISON, N. Y. THE SCIENCE PRESS SUB-STATION 84, NEW YORK CITY f tes 3 POLST LAR SC Lage h PONT FEY: SEPTEMBER, 1913 THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE By Dr. WALTER S. TOWER DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO $ Wires importance of Chilean nitrate depends on a curious whim of na- ture. Nitrogen is needed by all plants and animals, and though the atmosphere is nearly four-fifths nitrogen, few plants and no animals can draw directly on that universal supply. Animals secure their nitro- gen through the medium of plants, and most plants must get it from the soil. Some cultivated crops rapidly use up the soil nitrogen and in such cases the easiest way to maintain productivity is by applying fertilizers. Nitrogenous fertilizers once were made largely from guano, fish scrap, slaughter-house refuse, etc., but their manufacture now depends mainly on natural nitrates. These occur in many parts of the wor!d, but they ‘have been found in large amounts only in the northern provinces of Chile. For Chile itself no other thing has been more important than nitrate in affecting national progress. By some, nitrate has been regarded as a curse ; by others, as a national blessing; and spirited arguments over its political aspects may be heard in all parts of Chile, for the question is one of those which time does not settle. Nitrate has led to costly wars which established the prestige of Chile as the leading nation on the west coast of South America. It has lured tens of thousands of people into dreary deserts, and caused busy ports to develop where harbors are such only in name. It has created a great commerce for the country, made fortunes for the people, and provided great revenues for the nation to spend for army, navy and the general welfare. But along with these things, it has turned men and money from more stable forms of industry, and laid the country open to criticism, perhaps unjustly, for its ex- travagance. Chile saltpeter, nitrate, or salitre as it is called, is when pure a glis- VoL LXXXIII.—15. 210 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Sketch map of northern Chile, showing approximate location of nitrate lands (black areas). Cross-lined area on small map of South America shows location of nitrates province. tening white compound, salty and bitter to the taste, like some sea plants, and capable of absorbing a great amount of moisture. Chem- ically the substance is sodium nitrate (NaNo,). Pure nitrate is foun1 only in small quantities or “pockets.” Commonly it is mixed with earthy materials and various saline compounds, as common salt, Glauber’s salt and borax. A small amount of iodine compounds also are present in most cases. This impure raw material is known as caliche to the nitrate miner. Caliche, unlike many raw forms of minerals, is easy to get at, for it lies on or near the surface. In some places, the caliche is covered with 25 or 30 feet of fine dust (chuca) and coarser rock waste (costra) which must be thrown aside by the miner. In such places, an area which » OE eer va ii i THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE ane has been worked looks as though it had been badly furrowed by gigantic ploughshares. In other places, there is almost no overlying material to remove. The layer of caliche may be as much as six feet thick, but for the most part it varies between one and three feet. The beds in some sections are fairly continuous over large areas; in others they are of very limited extent. Some caliche contains more than 70 per cent. of nitrate, but 50 to 60 per cent. is considered high; the average is nearer 20 to 30 per cent., and even as low as 15 per cent. is worked profitably. Hence the conditions of production, costs of operation and profits to be made vary widely from place to place. With few exceptions, however, it is true that the costs of operation are low as compared with many other mining industries, while the profits are large. The main nitrate fields lie in two provinces, Tarapaca and Anto- fagasta, between latitudes 19° S.and 27° S. Other deposits doubtless will be found farther south in Atacama, and there are said to be small nitrate areas in Tacna, the most northerly province of Chile. The total area of these four provinces (105,000 square miles) is about equal to that of Colorado and its population (316,000) gives about two per square mile. Most of the people depend directly or indirectly on the nitrate industry. Chileans are the most numerous, but there are also many Bolivians and Peruvians, with smaller numbers of people from half the nations of the world. Only small parts, probably much less than 10 per cent., of the provinces named are workable nitrate lands. These limited areas, to- gether with the seaport cities, contain the mass of the population, while many thousands of square miles contain not a living soul nor any other living thing. The nitrate beds le in a belt, commonly less than ten miles wide, about 500 miles long north and south, and 15 to 100 or more miles back from the coast. This short distance from the coast is important in ma- king shipment cheap. Along the coast there is a range of low moun- tains through which a few ravines offer routes for railroads into the in- terior. Between the Coast Mountains and the base of the towering Andes lies lower land, known as the pampa, which slopes westward from the Andes to the Coast Ranges. The nitrate deposits lie along the west- ern side of the pampa, its lowest part, associated with what were once the bottoms of water-filled basins, either lakes or arms of the sea. Lines of flats, covered with dazzling white salt beds, or salares, extend over many square miles. Thus one salt field in Tarapaca covers an area of more than 100 square miles, and salt of remarkable purity (over 99 per cent. pure) is said to extend to depths of scores of feet. Round about these salares are the nitrate lands or salitreras. In many parts of the region there is a saying: “ Where there is salt there is no caliche.” Though this saying holds true generally, there are some places where the two deposits occur together. The presence of nitrate, however, is easily determined. In a manner much like that of using flint and steel ee THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Crossing one of the great salares in the province of Antofagasta. on tinder, particles of any supposed caliche are brought in contact with a strip of burning cotton wicking, or mecha. If nitrate is present, the particles ignite sharply, and with no further test an expert can tell ap- proximately the percentage of nitrate present. The nitrate is so readily soluble that the deposits could not exist even in a moderately rainy. region, but there is little trouble on that score in northern Chile. The high Andes on one side and the cold Hum- boldt or Peruvian current on the other make Chile north of the 30th parallel one of the driest regions in the world. Some places have passed more than a decade without a drop of rain. Other places have a few minutes of scattering sprinkles almost every year. This is said to have been the case in parts of Antofagasta for many years prior to 1910, when there was a heavy shower, followed in 1911 by two days of steady downpour. These occurrences, with rain again in 1912, and, more wonderful still, snow where people living in the region for a generation never had seen snow, have led many residents to believe that “the cli- mate is changing since Halley’s comet went past.” That water has flowed here at times in the past is shown by the dry gullies and chan- nels. Numerous snow-fed rivers descend the western slopes of the Andes, but their waters soon are evaporated or lost in the dry sands of the pampa. For hundreds of miles along this coast not a perennial stream enters the ocean. If absolute desert exists in the world, it lies in the nitrate pampa. In crossing this region one can not help feeling the utter helplessness of man in the face of such great expanses of waterless and lifeless wastes. Al] directions lead to sand, more sand, even to the border of the ocean itself. One fails at first to understand how men are willing to live there year after year; why those who go away generally come back again THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 23 A Rio seco, or ‘‘ Dry River,” in a salar. to this apparently limitless desolation. But almost the first day’s stay reveals part of the reason. The day is not unpleasant despite the heat and the intensity of the sunlight, for the extreme dryness makes tem- peratures of 90° or more quite comfortable, and the colors—the grays, yellows, violet—playing over the sands, help make up for the lack of living green. The nights are wonderful—cool, crisp, refreshing, with the brilliancy of sky that only deserts can have; while the moonlight gleaming from millions of salt crystals lights up the land with an effect of half day and renders into attractive forms the most prosaic objects. Presumably dryness also was a factor in the formation of the nitrate beds. It seems certain from the kinds of rocks found there that the area between the Coast Ranges and the Andes once was occupied by a bay or long arm of the sea. Then the land began to rise, cutting off the bay and converting it into a lagoon, entered perhaps by every high tide. About its borders great flocks of birds congregated—as they do now along the neighboring ocean—to feed on the prolific life in the shallow, warm waters. Enormous deposits of bird guano accumulated about its shores as the years went on. Meanwhile, however, the land was rising higher and higher, water came into the lagoon only from the land, bring- ing with it soluble nitrates from the guano. But this supply of water was too small to keep up the level; and as the region became drier and drier, evaporation reduced the original sea to a string of lakes occupying iso- lated basins in the lower parts of the pampa. As evaporation went on, these waters became too salty for life to endure. With their food supply gone, the birds were forced to seek other haunts and the accumulation of guano stopped. Streams and occasional rains, perhaps more frequent then than now, washing away the guano, brought together in the lakes compounds of nitrogen and soda, and the formation of nitrate of soda was the result. Eventually these waters became saturated with the differ- 214 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY A typical sandy waste. The cross and arrow indicate one of the pipe-lines which carry water to the coast from the Andine streams. ent salty compounds, and as evaporation still continued, the different salts began to deposit on the pampa, in the salitreras and salares, much as they are to-day. Then as a final step sand and rock fragments from neighboring hills covered the beds with their present capping of loose waste. Other explanations of the origin of the nitrate have been advanced. One ascribes it to natural chemical processes accompanying decompo- sition of different minerals. Another suggests that the wonderful elec- trical discharges in the Andes are responsible, for the odor of nitric acid in the air is not uhcommon after severe electrical storms, and electricity even now is being used to extract nitrogen from the air. But the enor- mous amounts of nitrate in Chile and the geological conditions of its occurrence fit in best with the idea of origin from guano, as stated above. The fertilizing value of these nitrates is supposed to have been known to the Peruvian Incas, but not generally to have been taken advantage of by them. Tradition also says that Bolivian Indians at an early date came down from the plateau after nitrate to use on their crops, and it credits them, rather doubtfully, with having developed a primitive form of refining. Rich pieces of caliche, so the story runs, were boiled with water in great earthen pots, called cachuchos, after which the solution was allowed to cool and evaporate until crystallization of nitrate re- sulted. Fairly pure nitrate can be secured in this way. Some of the earliest manufacturers for commercial purposes are said to have fol- lowed almost the same method, and the principle is exactly like that of the modern process. Even the name “ cachuchos” still persists, though the great steel or iron boiling tanks of to-day scarcely suggest “earthen pots.” Prior to the nineteenth century the outside world knew little or noth- / THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 205 In a cutting which shows the layer of caliche with almost no overlying material. The tools shown are the only ones needed in mining caliche. ing of these nitrates. Fertilizers were then quite unheard of in most places; industrial uses of nitric acid and its compounds were few; and for making explosives—then gunpowder was the only one—small, scat- tered deposits of true saltpeter provided the raw material. Nearly a hundred years ago, it is said, a Scotchman living near Tquique spread over part of his garden some soil containing white crys- tals. That part of his garden flourished much more than the rest. Thereupon samples of the soil were sent to Scotland for experiments which revealed the nature of the substance and its fertilizing value; and thus, so the story goes, the foundation was laid for the great nitrate in- dustry. A decade later, or about 1826, a Frenchman is credited with having established the first real nitrate works in the pampa back of ‘Iquique. Soon after that an Englishman, a German and a Chilean are supposed to have followed suit, and the business began to grow slowly. A little more than 8,300 tons of nitrate are said to have been exported in 1830. The nitrate fields then were divided among three countries. Peru owned Tacna and Tarapacd. Bolivia owned most of what is now Anto- fagasta, while Chile owned from Atacama southward. This last region was then not known to contain nitrate, and still is the least important part of the fields. Peruvians and Chileans became most active in the industry, perhaps because the fields were more easily reached from Peru and Chile than from the highlands of Bolivia. The Chileans turned their attention largely to the Bolivian province of Antofagasta, where their influence became so marked that it is said not more than one per- son in twenty was a Bolivian, and that one probably an officer in the army. Important concessions were granted by Bolivia to Chilean inter- 216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY General view of an oficina and its surroundings. In the foreground is rich nitrate land. The white in the distance is a salar, where no caliche has been found. ests, and in 1874, in return for the cancellation of a debt owed Chile, Bolivia agreed not to impose any export tax on nitrate for twenty-five years. Four years later, however, attempts were made to levy a tax of ten cents per 100 pounds on all nitrate exported. When the Chilean companies refused to pay the tax, the Bolivian authorities seized their property and declared that it would be sold. Chile was forced to step in to protect the interests of her citizens. Since Bolivia had entered some years earlier into a treaty with Peru against Chile, Peru also was dragged into the quarrel, the result of which was the beginning of war by Chile against both Peru and Bolivia in 1879. It was an epoch-making conflict in which Chilean naval successes against Peru were largely responsible for the outcome. The treaty of peace, signed in 1883 found Bolivia driven out of her seacoast province, Peru deprived of her nitrate lands, and the Chilean boundary pushed more than four hundred miles northward. In some quarters the im- pression is common that the treaty provided for a return of the nitrate areas to Peru, if after ten years the people of the region should so vote. Such a provision was applied to the province of Tacna, and has been ig- nored by Chile, but Tarapaca, with its great nitrate resources, was handed over “forever and unconditionally” (perpetua é incondicional- mente). It was predicted then that possession of the nitrate lands would ruin Chile, as guano and nitrate were believed to have ruined Peru, but this gloomy forecast has not been verified. Since the war, and especially in the last fifteen years, a number of things have led to great progress in the nitrate industry. Foreign cap- ital, English, German, Belgian, French, Austrian, and some from this country, has been added to the large investments made by Chileans. Thus more than £20,000,000 of English capital alone. is tied up in THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 217 Loading caliche to be taken to the maquina. Piles of caliche at the left. The “ camp,” or laborers’ quarters, of a neighboring oficina lies in the right background. this business. Methods of manufacture have been improved, and the scale of operations has been increased greatly. New railroads have been built and old ones extended, until now there are about 2,000 miles of railroads, most of which have no other use than to serve the nitrate trade. But perhaps most important of all has been the vigorous campaign to ad- vertise the merits of nitrate as a fertilizer. Tests have proved that ni- trates are about the most effective fertilizer known for such crops as veg- etables, sugar beets, and some of the cereals. To help increase the de- mand for this use particularly, representatives are maintained in every important agricultural region by the Chilean Nitrate Committee, and advertisements which are a part of this propaganda appear in agricul- tural journals in all parts of the world. Importations by the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States have been and still are in- creasing rapidly, while smaller amounts go to widely scattered markets. The exports of nitrates in 1830 are said to have been about 8,300 tons. At the time of the Peruvian War, fifty years later, the amount had increased to 226,000 tons yearly—or less than the amount that two estab- lishments might turn out now. Since 1880 the exports have reached enormous proportions. The million-ton mark was passed in 1890; almost a million and a half tons were shipped in 1900; and in 1911 the exports were but little short of two and a half million tons. To take care of this greatly increased demand, plant after plant has been built, until now more than 100 are in operation, several of which can produce in a month more than the whole exportation amounted to in 1830. Lands which were offered for sale a dozen years ago could not now be bought for ten times the figure quoted then. Shares of stock Dumping the caliche into the hoppers of the crushing machinery. Capacity of each car is about three tons. of a par value of 25 pesos' not infrequently have paid annual dividends of 20 pesos, and stock dividends of 100 to 200 per cent. are not un- known. Under such conditions it is not strange that plants costing 5,000,000 pesos or more have paid for themselves in two or three years, and that nitrate shares are quoted at many times the amounts of paid-in capital which they represent. Thus in May, 1912, some quotations in Valparaiso were as follows: Name of Company : Capital Paid in Per Share Sales at ALO UOMS cn Gai eioley Sans se des atk Aes ear aa tae 10 pesos 340 pesos AMHOEAG ASH AM ate oak eat eek Geen eos ee sg WO SOMES IEXOKOROCTREN koe anion cM OSS a Ba Ooo Ho tases iS. Oa TO BY cise oe cite canted aceprenst ak Meee wie tledor wekeah, Sere Ay Ge Tima Yet with all this enormous growth and prosperity, the process of production still is almost as simple as when the industry began. The first step is to make a hole about six to ten inches in diameter through the layer of caliche. Generally this is done with a chisel-edged, steel- pointed crowbar, or barra, the débris being removed from the hole with a home-made spoon-like affair, the cuchara. The bottom of the hole is enlarged so that a charge of powder may be put under the caliche. Most of the powder is made locally from nitrate, charcoal or coal dust and sulphur, for here it is so dry that the nitrate can not absorb enough water to make it unfit for powder. The explosion of the charge, the tiro, heaves up the caliche, commonly in blocks which must be broken 1Unless stated otherwise all money values are expressed in Chilean pesos, paper currency, at the rate of 1 peso equals about 21 cents in United States money. THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 219 Cars of caliche, after crushing, going up the inclined planes to the maquina. Empty car.comes down as full car goes up. into smaller pieces with a heavy hammer. This is the process of nitrate mining. No operation could be simpler. If the miner works by the day, he is known as a barretero, literally a “crowbar man.” If he is paid according to the amount of caliche mined, as the most energetic prefer to do, he is a particular, or private worker. The former earns about 6 pesos to 7 pesos a day, while the latter, under favorable conditions, often makes 9 pesos to 12 pesos aday. A group of particulares, working early and late, quickly dispels any idea that no people of that part of the world will work hard. Carts or trains of small dumping cars carry the caliche to the maquina, as the refining plant is called. Here it is first crushed into pieces no larger than a man’s fist. From the crushers it goes up in- clined planes to the boiling tanks, or cachuchos as they are still known, though earthen pots have been replaced by great iron affairs 32 feet long, 9 feet wide and 8 feet deep, capable of holding 70 tons. The newest maquinas have twenty to thirty of these tanks. When the charge of caliche is in, water is added, steam is turned into a coil of pipes which runs around inside the tanks, and the boiling process begins to dissolve out the soluble nitrates from the insoluble and worth- less earthy substances. Thus the industry, which in one respect owes its existence to absence of water, must have water in order to operate, for nowhere are there large amounts of caliche rich enough to ship without refining, and the process of leaching is the only economical method of refining. Much Australian and English coal, costing 35 pesos to 50 pesos or more per ton, is used to generate the steam. About half a million tons of coal have been imported for this purpose in recent years; but the 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY The maquina, showing the ends of the cachuchos, at the left of the ladder; the tanks for water; and at the right a mule car carrying away the ripio. possibility of substituting California petroleum, already used to some extent, is being considered seriously by many operators. To get water for the maquinas is not everywhere easy, for the water supply always has been the chief problem in this region. Seacoast towns for a long time depended on supples brought by vessels from four or five hundred miles farther south. It is interesting to note here that one of the prominent figures in the development of the industry after 1880 was an English iron worker, who is said to have come out to Chile to work on the tanks or boilers of some of these water-carrying vessels, and who later went home a “nitrate millionaire.” The first railroads had trouble getting water for their engines, some resorting to the distillation of salt water, but now, for the railroads and the chief cities and towns, piping of water 100 to 200 miles from the Andine streams has relieved the situation greatly. Water, however, still must be used sparingly and almost everywhere the poorer people buy it by the pailful, a discarded kerosene tin generally serving as a pail. A common price is 10 centavos (= 2 cents) for five gallons. In the pampa, wells yield a good deal of water, commonly more or less salty, but this source can not be counted on everywhere. Thus in central Antofagasta one plant secures more than 35,000 gallons of water daily from three wells, the deepest of which is less than 100 feet, but another plant, less than a mile away, found no underground water after spending 250,000 pesos in the attempt. After the water in the cachuchos has boiled for several hours, it is passed to another tank where it encounters fresh caliche, and so on, until a saturated solution known as caldo, or broth, eventually is se- cured. When this point is reached the water is run off to a series of THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 221 The crystallizing tanks. Refined nitrate in the tanks in the foreground; tanks recently filled with caldo in the background. tanks, known as chulladores, where the use of wheat flour, stable manure, or other substances, causes the precipitation of the miscellaneous soluble impurities, except ordinary salt, which have been dissolved out with the nitrate. From this purification process the solution goes to the crys- tallizing tanks, or bateas, which are placed ten or twelve feet above the ground to permit free circulation of air and promote cooling and evapo- ration. ‘Thus dryness which figures in the origin and preservation of the caliche also has an equally great value in the process of manufac- ture. As the solution cools and the water evaporates, the nitrate begins to erystallize on the surface, so a “stirring boy,” or rayandero, is employed to break up the film and make it settle. Five or six days are necessary to complete the crystallizing process. A large plant may have 300 or more bateas, capable of holding more than 1,000,000 gallons of caldo, and yielding at each full charge as much as 2,500 tons of nitrate. When crystallization has gone as far as it will, a valve in the bottom of the batea is opened and the liquid is drawn off, leaving behind a thick layer of glistening white crystals. This is the nitrate or salitre of commerce, being 95 per cent. or more of pure nitrate of soda; the remainder is largely water and salt. The liquid which is drawn off, known as agua vieja, or mother liquor, still contains a large amount of nitrate in solution, and is used over and over again in the boiling tanks. In fact, no water is ever thrown away, the only loss being that which passes into steam from the boiling tanks and evaporates from the crys- 222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Photograph loaned by Mr. C. E. Atwood, Antofagasta, Chile. Nitrate in the cancha, being bagged and put on cars for shipment. In the left background, a big accumulation of ripio. tallizing pans. The finished nitrate is shoveled from the bateas into cars, drawn to the deposit, or cancha, and there after drying for several days is bagged ready for shipment. Shipment in bulk is impracticable because the nitrate so readily absorbs water. Even when shipped in sacks it sometimes becomes caked in the holds of ships and has to be taken out with picks. From the agua vieja, iodine is extracted by a simple process of pre- cipitation with chemicals (mainly sodium sulphites). It figures only as an important by-product of the industry, for the “iodine trust” makes an annual allotment to each establishment, commonly less than what could be made in a month, if there were no restrictions on production. The only other important step in the refining of nitrate is the clear- ing and recharging of the boiling tanks. First, fresh water is run through to take out what it will of the remaining nitrate, this water being used subsequently, with aqua vieja, in the boiling process, for the more nitrate in solution at the outset the easier it is to get a saturated caldo. After the washing is over, a trap in the bottom of the tank is opened and the waste, or ripio, is removed. This process is the most bothersome in the industry, because for each charge of 70 tons of caliche, 50 tons or more of ripio must be removed. It is very hard on the men who work in the steaming hot tanks, and the disposal of the waste after it is removed, not uncommonly 1,000 to 2,000 tons a day, soon comes to be a problem. None of the operators succeed in getting much more than 75 per cent. of the nitrate originally in the caliche, hence ripio commonly contains 4 to 10 per cent. of nitrate, and the great piles con- , t i org aa | ZO PT ee —a THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 223 Residences of the manager and his assistants, from the “ plaza.” taining millions of tons of waste some time may be reworked if condi- tions in the industry should make economies necessary. A good deal of capital is needed now to start the nitrate business on a large scale. Many of the older oficinas, as the establishments are called, are small, representing an investment of not more than 25,000 pesos to 50,000 pesos. But a large modern plant may cost 6,000,000 pesos or more. For this reason the industry tends to remain in the hands of companies, about 80 in number, of which a few large ones really dominate the industry. In all there are about 160 oficinas in existence, English, Chilean, Austrian, German, etc., but for one reason or another not all of them are being operated. Exhaustion of the sup- ply of caliche is the most common reason, for as a general rule an oficina is built for a given tract of nitrate land, with the idea of aban- doning the oficina when that supply is exhausted. It does not pay to haul caliche any considerable distance, for a ton of average caliche will yield only about 30 pesos’ worth of nitrate, on which the profits may be 10 pesos. There are only one or two “ Yanqui” oficinas, the “ powder trust ” being interested in at least one of these. United States capital invested in western South America seems to have been attracted more strongly by other kinds of mining. A modern oficina, like the Anibal Pinto, in central Antofagasta, tunning twenty-four hours at full capacity, may have a daily output of 5,000 Spanish quintals (quintal—101 pounds) of nitrate. The cost of production in May, 1912, at this plant, was stated to be about 2.50 pesos per quintal, covering everything up to the time of shipment: To this figure must be added the transportation charges to the vessel in Antofagasta harbor, about 1 peso per quintal, and the export duty of 2.50 pesos per quintal, making total costs on board vessel 6 pesos per 224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Part of Taltal harbor and city, with typical appearance of Coast Mountains. quintal. At that time the selling price, on board ship, was 7.50 pesos to 8 pesos per quintal. Under favorable conditions, therefore, this oficina could market about 2,000,000 quintals a year, with profits amounting to 4,000,000 pesos. This particular oficina cost more than 6,000,000 pesos, but with the trade good, it would pay for itself in two years and give annual dividends of 10 per cent. at the same time. About five and a half square miles of nitrate lands have been set aside for the Pinto, a supply calculated to keep it going for twenty years, in most of which time the plant has nothing to do except pay dividends. The making of nitrate millionaires, therefore, is easy to understand. The construction of a modern oficina uses supplies from widely separated places. Most of the buildings are of corrugated iron, for it withstands the intense dryness better than wood does. It commonly comes from Europe. ‘The timber which is used is likely to be Oregon pine, for it is strong, durable and about as cheap as the Chilean product. German steel for tanks, cement from the United States, boilers from England, Belgian locomotives to haul the tiny cars and United States electrical equipment are found at one oficina. Most of the laborers are Chileans, Peruvians and Bolivians, at- tracted there by the higher wages than are to be had elsewhere in most other pursuits. In fact, the complaint is often made that the nitrate industry has retarded development of other activities in Chile, espe- cially greater agricultural progress in the south, by absorbing not only the capital, but the labor aswell. About 40,000 personsare said to be employed directly in the oficinas, some of the larger of which have more than 1,000 hands each. Wages run from about 3 pesos to 4 pesos per day for boys and 6 pesos per day for the poorest paid men, up to as high as 15 pesos for some of the men working in the maquina. Per- rei THH NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 225 Shipping in the harbor at Antofagasta. Note the line of surf. haps 10 pesos is a fair average for the majority. Houses are provided by the company, but heat, light and water must be paid for by all except salaried employes. This latter class, including the manager, or administrador, and his subordinates, the engineer, bookkeeper, chemist, electrical expert, etc., are given their quarters, heat, light and water, in addition to salaries that range from 1,000 pesos up to 4,000 pesos a month. . Though wages and salaries appear high in units of currency, the prices of food stuffs also are necessarily high, since next to nothing can be raised anywhere in the nitrate region. Some prices charged in com- pany stores are as follows: flour, 20 pesos per quintal; beans, 30 pesos per sack of about one bushel; eggs, 6 pesos a dozen; coal, 6 pesos for about 100 pounds. Only canned milk can be had, for there is no way of keeping cattle in this barren land. All cuts of meat are 50 cents per pound, and the rule of “first come, first choice” results in the forma- tion of a “ meat line” early every morning. A good many of the cattle used here come overland from Argentina. Kerosene from the United States costs about 1 peso a gallon, but the tin in which it comes also must be considered, since it serves a multitude of uses from waterpail to roof- ing material and baking oven. Potatoes are commonly sold by the half robo, which equals about a half bushel, but the natives are fond of explaining, with a significant gesture, that robo also means robbery. The laborers generally are paid not in money, but in features, discs resembling poker chips and bearing the company name, together with the equivalent value in actual currency. These features are used almost solely at the company stores, but if any workman desires his wages in money he may draw at any time all that is due him. For the salaried VOL. LXXxIII.—16. 226 THE POPULAR. SCIENCE MONTHLY The plaza of Antofagasta, with the barren Coast Mountains in the distance. The clock tower was the gift of English residents on the centenary of Chilean independence. employees, the pampa looks like a good place to save money, since food is about the only thing he cares to buy in the local stores. Some of the larger coast towns have fairly good stores, but Valparaiso is the nearest real “ spending place,” and to get there takes four days to a week. The mail-order business, however, is said to thrive here mainly because of these very conditions, with disastrous results to the saving habit. Large oficinas, with their many hands and the families, may make communities of 2,000 to 3,000 persons. Schools are provided by the government, the teachers getting 150 pesos to 200 pesos per month, to which some companies add 100 pesos or more, in addition to the cus- tomary free quarters, heat and water. Priests and physicians make regular visits. Musical and social clubs are organized; bands give open-air concerts two or three times a week, and worse music may be heard in many more favored parts of the world. Football is a favorite sport and there is keen rivalry between teams representing neighboring oficinas. There is the inevitable biograph, a dance hall, annual visits by a circus, a saloon and even a gambling house, for since the men will gamble anyway, it is deemed best to have it done where some control may be exerted over it. Little trouble ever arises, for the resident man- ager is In some ways a local czar, with the very efficient mounted police of the pampa to assist in keeping order. It is sometimes claimed that the laborers are exploited outrageously by the companies; that two prices are the rule in the company stores, the higher price always being for the laborers; that buying outside is almost or quite impossible; that they are assessed for medical service which they never need, and so on. It is also pointed out that although provided with houses, the living conditions among the laborers are THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 227 The main street of Antofagasta, from the corner of the plaza. decidedly primitive, especially as regards sanitary arrangements. It is quite true that the camp commonly is placed where the wind will not carry the odors to the houses Occupied by the manager and his sub- ordinates. But in the bright sun and dry air of the desert, most dis- ease germs do not thrive, and there filth, unpleasant as it may be, does not lead to the sickness which it might cause elsewhere. In order to get some return from the monthly assessment of a peso for doctor’s services, so it is said, the people commonly feign illness, until the free medicine is received, whereupon the medicine promptly is thrown away. There probably is some truth in all the claims that the lot of the nitrate workers is not everything which could be desired, yet it is undeniable that they are better off than a good many of their own countrymen who are working elsewhere. Living in the nitrate pampa has some compensations, as in the feel- ings inspired by the desert and especially in the beauty of its nights, but not even the mighty Pacific can lend charm to the seaports which act as middlemen between the oficinas and the outside world. Iaquique, _ Antofagasta, Taltal, Chafaral, Mejillones, Pisagua and Tocopilla, ranging in population from 50,000 down to 5,000, suggest mining towns of our far west in varying early stages of evolution. Some of the foreign residents profess to find enjoyment there, as in a morning _ plunge in the ocean and a brisk canter along the beach, and with the clubs later in the day, but all too commonly the pleasures take the form of hard drinking as the only way of varying the painful monotony of existence. Iquique, the largest, generally is regarded as somewhat better than the others, but one who visits the others first is comforted mainly by the feeling that it must be hard to find anything worse. A picture of one of these ports does almost equally well for all the 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY others. A crescentic indentation in the coast is called the harbor, for want of any other name. All vessels must anchor far out, owing to shallow water, the presence of reefs, or entire lack of docks. Cargoes are lightered to and from shore, while passengers run the gauntlet of the boatmen, or fleteros, and the surf, both of which at times are rather unpleasant. Protection for the vessels is poor in most cases, but for- tunately storms are not frequent along this coast. Around the harbor, barren, colorless mountains rise to heights of 2,000 feet or more, and at their base hes a featureless town sprawled over a narrow, flat or sloping shelf. Within the town, wide, unpaved, dusty streets are lined with frame houses in varying degrees of dilapidation. Here and there one may catch a glimpse of some carefully watered plants or even a tiny patch of grass in a private “ garden,” and the main plaza of the town is sure to have some highly prized and proudly exhibited palms and other plants. But for the most part there is nothing to relieve the impression of dinginess and dejectedness that hovers over the place. Dirty hotels are crowded with patrons of a dozen nationalities, for all who come and go must use the only accommodations offered. For a time, the busy waterfront, and perhaps seals in the harbor, prove inter- esting, but even these quickly prove boresome, since every lighter piled with sacks of nitrate is like every other lighter, and after the seals have bobbed up a few hundred times, only to disappear as often, it ceases to be a novelty. Waiting for a steamer, the only means of escape from these ports makes one wish he had staid in the pampa, where the world seems big and less forlorn. Ships of many nations come to carry away the nitrate, while many coastwise vessels bring supplies from the fertile valleys farther south. Nearly half the oficinas operating in 1912 shipped their product through Iquique, giving this port more nitrate traffic than is carried on by any other two ports combined. Antofagasta and Tocopilla are next in order. The value of nitrate exports is more than 70 per cent. of the total value of Chilean exports, and its tonnage is as great as that of any other South American export. As the nitrate goes out, the Chilean government levies an export duty, just as Bolivia tried to do when Chile took up arms on that account. The export duty sometimes is regarded as a device for checking overproduction, whereas it is simply an effective means of raising revenue for the national treasury. For a long time nitrate duties and proceeds of sales of nitrate lands have amounted to more than half, and in some years to not less than 85 per cent., of the total national income. These revenues alone represent more than ten dollars per capita or as much as the United States gov- ernment spends from all sources of income. It is easy to see, therefore, why Chile often is charged with extravagance. Yet large sums have been employed wisely in the building of state railroads; something has THE NITRATE FIELDS OF CHILE 229 been done, and much more is now being undertaken, to improve port facilities, especially at Valparaiso; and much of the money has been used in building up an army and navy to insure Chilean leadership and prestige among the West Coast countries. It is estimated that in the thirty years following 1880 the total revenue from nitrate duties has been more than $300,000,000 (United States gold), while with the present rate of production and the same tax continued, the next twenty-five years will give Chile nearly $750,000,000 (United States gold) more. One check on overproduction may be exerted through a law pro- viding that government nitrate lands are open to exploitation only after such lands have been disposed of at public auction. But, at the same time, this law has tended to check individual effort in exploring thor- oughly the limits of the nitrate deposits. Another check on overpro- duction has been the “nitrate trust,” or Combinacion Salitrera, an agree- ment, entered into in 1901 by the larger companies, concerning the limitation of annual output and its allotment among the different oficinas. For a number of years prior to 1909 the trust worked well, but since then, despite all efforts to keep them in line, a good many companies have limited their output only by the maximum capacity of their oficinas. As an official of one of the largest Chilean companies aptly said: “There is no need for.agreements when the demand is so heavy and the prices so good. If the price goes down—well, perhaps agreements can be revived then.” The nitrate business is so vital to the northern provinces of Chile, and even to the whole country as it is now organized, that the future of the industry has been a question of much concern. Some believe that the opening of the Panama Canal, with the resulting shortening of voyages from Iquique and Antofagasta to the United States, United Kingdom and Germany, will stimulate the commerce in nitrate very materially, for those three countries now take about 80 per cent. of the exports. Optimistic prophets, noting also the increasing popularity of nitrates, forecast a new era of greater prosperity than ever before. The more pessimistic, on the contrary, foresee the speedy exhaustion of the nitrate supplies and a crisis for Chile unless adequate preparation is made for the inevitable readjustment. Most estimates of the available supplies of nitrate range between about 70,000,000 and 100,000,000 tons, which at the present rate of production would insure the life of the industry for thirty-five to forty years. Some estimates, however, place the amount as high as 200,000,- 000tons. The totals given are about equally divided between Tarapaca and Tacna on the one hand, and Antofagasta and Atacama on the other. Private lands, however, are estimated as covering more than half the total, though it must be remembered that the state lands are less well 230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY known. The smaller estimates make little or no allowance for discoveries of new nitrate deposits, which is quite likely to happen, nor do they count on any improvements in processes of manufacture, which very readily might prolong by many years the duration of supplies now known. It also is possible that ripio, nitrate-bearing costra and low- grade caliche, thrown aside in the past, may be worked profitably in the future. Should all these things develop favorably, the nitrate industry could thrive for a good many decades to come. Otherwise its span of existence is not likely to extend much beyond the middle of the cen- tury, for increased production, which is entirely probable, must hasten the end. Another possible “ rock ahead” for the business has been found by some people in the production of nitrates from atmospheric nitrogen by an electrical process. Where water power is abundant and cheap, nitrates from this process can be made to compete with the Chilean product. It is being done now in Norway. But for most parts of the world which have large water-power resources the use of this power will be more valuable for other purposes as long as Chilean nitrates continue to be abundant and reasonably cheap. It has been suggested that when the nitrate is exhausted irrigation may turn the pampa into a highly productive farming region. This may be possible for limited areas, but from what is known of the water supplies available it seems unsafe to look for any extensive agricultural development. Exhaustion of the nitrate apparently means a general decay of the region unless other mineral resources are discovered and developed. It means for Chile the loss of $100,000,000 (United. States gold) in annual exports and $30,000,000 (United States gold) of gov- ernment revenue. For the world it means turning to some other source of nitrogen for supplies to fertilize its crops. Happily the way already is open for the latter change. THE POWER OF GROWTH IN PLANTS Bae THE POWER OF GROWTH IN PLANTS By GEORGE E. STONE BOTANIST, MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE T has been a matter of more or less common observation from time immemorial that plants possess the power to overcome obstacles. Some species of trees are not particular where they grow if there is enough soil and moisture, their roots often seeking places where appar- ently insurmountable obstacles must be overcome. In spite of the doubt often expressed, there are on record many cases of trees lifting large weights; and in mountainous regions large boulders are often found displaced by roots growing among them. Some trees even lift them- selves slightly from their original positions into the air, as is evident from the location of the root buttresses, which are often found exposed above the surface, sometimes for a considerable distance. An instance is known of a tree growing in the center of a millstone, which later completely filled the hole and actually raised the stone from the ground. Brick and concrete sidewalks are often ruptured and curbings dis- placed by roots, due to their growth in diameter, and perhaps in some cases to the actual uplift of the tree trunk and roots. The writer has had under observation for many years a black birch (Betula lenta L.), one root of which has entered a fissure in a large boulder and is slowly but constantly lifting this enormous weight. The fissure is at an Fic. 1. Showing large black birch (Betula lenta L.), one of whose roots is lifting an 18-ton boulder. 232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY angle of about 15 degrees. The vertical diameter of the root where it enters is only 4 or 5 inches, while its lateral diameter, owing to com- pression, is 18 or 20 inches, or more. Careful measurements and specific gravity determinations would indicate that the weight of the boulder is about 18 tons, and this is annually being lifted higher and higher by the root growing in the crack. The roots of trees often penetrate, and, as they grow, displace the foundation walls of buildings. We recall an old, heavy-timbered Fic. 2. Showing mushroom rupturing concrete. colonial house which had one corner thrown considerably out of the vertical by the growth of tree roots under the foundation. In this case the roots must have lifted many tons in weight. In another instance a gentleman noticed that the stone in a walk leading to his residence had been displaced. He became alarmed and sent for the police, labor- ing under the impression that burglars were responsible for the dis- placement and were planning some deep plot against him. But on moving the stone, which weighed 80 pounds, three large mushrooms were discovered and the mischief was explained. Instances are known of mushrooms pushing up through hard tar walks two or three inches thick without the slightest difficulty or evidence of injury to their deli- THE POWER OF GROWTH IN PLANTS 233 cate tissues; and even seedlings often displace comparatively large masses of soil in pushing up through. For several years we have been observing the rupturing of very hard concrete by ostrich ferns (Onoclea Struthiopteris L.). The con- erete, which is two and a half to three inches thick and composed of sand, tar and coarse gravel, acts as a watershed next a dwelling house. Along the edge ostrich ferns were some time ago planted in loam rich in organic matter, and have since been growing most luxuriantly, the stalks often reaching a height of six feet or more. Like most ferns, the underground stem or rhizome spreads out in all directions each year and thrusts up new fronds; and quite regardless of the ap- parently impenetrable covering, the rhizomes work their way under it and attempt to throw up new BCG shoots. And not in vain, for the ferns appear Fic. 3. Showing epi- to break through the concrete as easily as though epee ee it were so much putty. This rupturing occurs almost every spring when growth is active and the fronds unfolding. Sometimes the concrete is broken up where it joins the underpinning of the house and where it is more easily dislocated, and again the ferns come up through the middle. Fic. 4. Showing young fronds of ostrich ferns (Onoclea Struthiopteris L.) rupturing concrete. The fronds which push themselves up through the concrete are necessarily more backward in unfolding than the unobstructed ones, although as a rule it requires only a week or ten days for them to break through. It required two years for one group of fronds to come through, though, as was evident from the constant upheaval of a part of the concrete one spring; but the next spring they succeeded in their attempt. The ease with which this breaking through is accomplished and the freedom of the ferns from scars and injuries are remarkable 234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY when the solidity of the concrete and the force needed to rupture it are taken into consideration. 3 Being interested in this phenomenon, we endeavored to learn ap- proximately the power required by the ferns to rupture the concrete. In the experiment, some of the soil underneath was first excavated and a lever arranged in such a way that force could be applied in practically the same manner as was done by the ferns, 7. e., a round piece of wood was placed on the end of the lever of the same dimensions as the unde- veloped cluster of fern fronds. The fulcrum of the lever was one foot Fic. 5. Showing method of demonstrating power of growth. Growing flower stalk of tulip placed in 10 per cent. solution of potassium nitrate, which causes the stalk to shorten. The stalk is then stretched to its original length and the power of growth determined. from the point of contact with the concrete, and weights were placed on the other end of the lever at different distances, as the case required. Our object in this test was to ascertain how long it would take to rup- ture the concrete and to determine the amount of weight necessary to do it. It was not intended to apply force enough to cause an imme- diate rupturing of the concrete, or even in a few hours, but in perhaps ten or fifteen days—the same length of time usually required by the ferns. A number of tests were made, care being taken to have all the conditions as nearly like those under which the concrete was broken by the ferns as possible. A weight of 699 pounds broke the concrete in a few hours. Next a weight of 262 pounds was applied, which required ten days, while in still another test a weight of 189 pounds broke through in thirteen days. Other tests were made, but it is not neces- sary to give them here. A weight of 189 pounds, therefore, seemed to rupture the concrete in about the same time as was done by the ferns; and in our estimation this test represents a fairly good duplication of the fern phenomenon. If we consider the average cross section area of the six fern fronds and divide this by the total weight lifted, we find that the cells of the young fronds exerted about 35 atmospheres to over- THE POWER OF GROWTH IN PLANTS 235 come the resistance offered by the concrete. This we consider a very fair estimate, although from our other experiments we are led to believe that as high as 50 atmospheres are sometimes required to accomplish the work with the conditions under which the ferns were growing. The concrete was so hard that after it had been ruptured it was impos- sible to make any impression.on the ragged edges except by the use of tools. The work was done by a slow and constantly increasing pres- sure on the under surface of the concrete, the principle being somewhat the same as in the straightening of teeth and bones, although in such cases the pressure is not increased. Fic. 6. Method of determining the longitudinal power of growth in roots. The roots are held firmly in two plaster of Paris casts, and the amount of pressure indi- eated by the spring. (After Pfeffer.) At this point we might consider what growth is and how it is ac- complished in a plant. Growth is defined as a stretching and fixation of the cell walls, accomplished by osmotic pressure characteristic of the solutions contained in the cell vacuole. In ordinary growth there is a pressure of 1 to 3 atmospheres on the cell walls—a fact which can be determined experimentally with some degree of accuracy. It is this pressure which gives plants their rigidity and freshness, and anything which destroys it, such as lack of water, causes the plant to wilt. Rapidly growing organisms—annuals and herbaceous plants, for in- stance—contain little mechanical or supportive tissue, and it is owing to the turgidity of the cells derived from osmotic pressure that they 236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY are able to hold their leaves and other organs in position. This could not be done without the exertion of considerable pressure, for their delicately constructed leaves and other organs often assume positions requiring a great deal of support. In trees and shrubs there is a large amount of mechanical tissue which supplies the necessary means for supporting the various members. What is termed the “ power of growth ” can be determined by learn- ing the amount of weight required to stretch a rapidly growing stem to its original length after the turgidity of the cells has been destroyed by placing them in plasmolyzing solutions, such as a 10 per cent. solution of potassium nitrate. The mean area of a cross section of a stem in millimeters, divided by the amount of weight obtained in grams, gives the number of grams per square millimeter of surface, and, as previously stated, there is usually obtained by this method a pressure of one to three atmospheres or more in the cell for ordinary growth. Fic. 7. Method of determining radial pressure of growing roots. (After Pfeffer.) While this osmotic pressure is common in ordinary growing organs, it does not necessarily follow that it constitutes the limit, since in the case of the ostrich fern previously referred to it was much higher. When growth is mechanically restricted or the organism has obstacles to overcome, the cell turgescence or osmotic pressure may be greatly increased owing to the resulting stimulus, and this is what occurred in the case of the ferns. If a cross section of a stem is made and the bark split vertically, a noticeable shrinkage of the bark takes place, demonstrating a difference in tension between the outer and inner tissues. On the other hand, if longitudinal slices are taken from the outside of a common sunflower stem, they will shorten from 1 to 4 per cent. of their length, while the tissues from the center of the stem (pith) will lengthen from 1 to 6 per cent. when removed. It is clear from these observations that the THE POWER OF GROWTH IN PLANTS 237 various tissues of the plant are under tensions which may exhibit dif- ferences equal to 12 atmospheres or more. What is termed the “ shear- ing stress” often becomes so great that the resistant cell walls are ruptured, a condition associated with great pressure in living cells. The injection of poisons into trees may likewise cause a rupturing of Fic, 8. Showing squash in harness. A weight of 5,000 pounds was lifted. (After Clark.) the tissues owing to changes in the turgescence of the cells, and the splitting of melons in the field sometimes occurs from the absorption of an excessive amount of water into the inner cavity of the fruit. This increases the turgescence of the cells lining the cavity, and modifies the existing tissue tensions. ‘The skin of the grape often cracks, pos- sibly from the same cause. It has been shown that the mechanical restriction of growth acts as a stimulus, inducing an increase in the osmotic pressure of the living cells, and in like manner, increased tensions may result in a much greater strength of the organism. It has been observed, for example, by Hegler, that a young sunflower seedling having an original breaking stress of 160 grams was able to maintain 250 grams after it had been stretched by a weight of 150 grams for two days, and later stretching of the stem by means of suspended weights over a pulley demonstrated that in a few days more its tensile strength was increased to 400 grams. This increase is correlated with thickness of the cell walls, a greater elasticity and the development of mechanical tissue. The stimulation induced by the contact of tendrils and hook plants with objects is similar to that caused by stretching by weights. Experiments with the roots of various plants enclosed in plaster casts have shown large pressures. Pfeffer obtained osmotic pressures in the toot cells of a common horse bean ranging from 5 to 19 atmospheres when the growth of the roots in length (longitudinal pressure) was 238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY mechanically restrained by the use of plaster-of-Paris casts, and from 2 to 6 atmospheres for the radial pressure of roots. The geotropically sensitive nodes of the wheat stem gave a pressure equal to 15 atmos- pheres when mechanically restricted. ‘The maximum osmotic pressure in these cases would be obtained by a solution of potassium nitrate equal to about 5 per cent. Colonel W. 8S. Clark’s experiment with the lifting power of a squash, made in 1874 at Amherst, was one of the first attempts to learn the growing power of plants. This experiment attracted quite a little Fic. 9. Method of demonstrating clasping power of tendrils. attention at the time. One highly respected minister of the gospel had a drawing of the harnessed squash distributed among his congregation in tract form to illustrate the great moral principle that “If God in his providence has given such enormous power to growing vegetation to overcome difficulties, how much more will he give to you power to overcome the difficulties that may be in the way of your reaching the true end of all living.” This experiment was carried on in a greenhouse under the most favorable conditions, and by arranging an iron harness provided with a lever attachment the squash was found to raise 5,000 pounds. The squash was horticulturally known as the Mammoth Yellow Chile variety, and at the close of the experiment weighed 473 pounds. It is estimated that the squash developed over 80,000 feet, or about 15 miles of roots, an average of about 1,000 feet daily. From the data given in this experiment we have been able to estimate roughly the osmotic pressure of the cells, which might be supposed to be most active, oS THE POWER OF GROWTH IN PLANTS 239 but we have been unable to find that more than 24 atmospheres were involved. Professor Sachs, with the same data, estimated that the cell pressure developed was equivalent to a little more than one atmosphere. Climbing and tendril-bearing plants, of which there are almost countless varieties, react to what is termed contact stimulation. Besides the many varieties which decorate our verandas and which are culti- vated in our gardens for food, there are others with sensitive petioles (clematis and hook plant—Uncaria) which assist In anchoring the plant to supports. We have collected considerable data on the power displayed by tendrils and twining stems in clasping a support. Notwithstanding that the clasping results from the stimulation of the tendril, brought about by prolonged contact, the osmotic pressure does not ever appear to exceed the normal, only one to three atmos- pheres being found in these experiments. On the other hand, the effect of stimulation by contact in this case is to transmit the stimulus along the tendril, resulting in the formation of a spiral, and in most cases, if not all, the plant energy induced by the stimulus is directed towards the formation and modification of yy¢.40, showing growth mechanical tissue, to render the union of the of tissue over street sign e placed on tree. The growth plant with the support more firm. nieccaricted univ fat, ond The formation of mechanical tissue in a ten- point. The sign acts as a dril is well illustrated in the tendril of the com- a a fe eee mon grapevine, and in various hook climbers. At first the tendrils of the grapevine are quite delicate and even edible, but later they become extremely hard and wiry. It would manifestly be a waste of energy from the economic point of view for tendrils to develop excessive clasping strength by means of an increased cell turges- cence or osmotic pressure, since the clasping strength resulting from the normal turgidity or osmotic pressure of the cells is sufficient to answer all requirements. On the other hand, the increased production of mechanical tissue or a modification in the elasticity of the tendril is obviously of great advantage to it from the biological point of view. What is true for tendril plants appears to be true for climbing plants, such as the bean, as well as of plants with sensitive petioles, since there is no loss of energy displayed in the development of a superfluous osmotic presure in the cells for the mere purpose of increasing its clasp- ing powers. 240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY THE ABSORPTION AND EMISSION CENTERS OF LIGHT AND HEAT. By Dr. W. W. STRONG UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH HE mechanical motions of nature are transmitted by solids and fluids from sources that consist of more or less well known me- chanical systems. Waves on a pond may be due to a boat moving over the surface of the water. Sound waves in air may be due to the vibra- tions of a tuning fork. Wireless telegraph waves may be due to high frequency electromotive force and current waves in electrical circuits. In general the source of the above type of wave motion is a kind of mechanism that can be made in the laboratory or in the shop—a mechan- ism that is man-made and whose operation is quite obvious to us. The phenomena of light and radiant heat introduce to us a type of wave motion that is altogether different. Not only may the medium that transmits this wave motion possess entirely different properties from that of matter, but the mechanisms that take part in the emission and the absorption of the wave motion are altogether different from any that we have been able to make in our laboratories. No one has suc- ceeded in producing radiant heat, much less visible light and ultraviolet radiations by means of electromagnetic oscillators, although such a feat may be possible. Inasmuch as matter is the source of all heat and light radiations, the mechanism responsible for the emission and absorption of these radiations must be intimately related to the nature and constitution of matter itself and therefore theories of emission and absorption systems depend to a large extent upon our theories of the nature of atoms and molecules. It must be remembered, however, that the nature and con- stitution of atoms and molecules that explain chemical and many other phenomena need not necessarily be at all related to the systems taking part in heat and light radiations. In the past many different hypotheses have been advanced to extend the atomic and molecular conceptions of Dalton, Clausius, Maxwell and others. As long as the elastic solid theory of the ether prevailed, it was frequently assumed that the vibrating systems emitting light and radiant heat were of a mechanical nature due to the development of stresses and strains. The electromagnetic theory of Maxwell, while not even suggesting the nature of the mechanism, metamorphosed our views of radiant energy and indicated the whole phenomenon to be an electromagnetic one. LIGHT AND HEAT 241 Biack Bopy RADIATIONS AND ELECTRON ATMOSPHERES Since the advent of the theories of liquid and gaseous ionization, many attempts have been made to construct a system composed of ions and electrons of various kinds that would be capable of explaining the phenomena of optics and radiant heat. In the case of black body or pure temperature radiations, the theory has been quite successful and seems to correctly describe the actual conditions. Solids or liquids are known to contain large numbers of electrons and when these bodies conduct metallically there is good reason to believe that the electrons move about in these bodies like gaseous molecules in a gas, the law of the equipartition of energy applying to an electron “gas” in a metal in the same way as it does to gases outside the metal. The emission of light and heat under these conditions is presumably due to the produc- tion of electromagnetic waves when the electrons are greatly accelerated or retarded in their motion. Laws of radiation like those of Wien and Planck can be derived from the conditions that would be expected to hold in an electron atmosphere. In this type of radiation the distri- bution of energy throughout the various wave lengths is practically independent of the kind of matter, but depends only upon the tempera- ture and the nature of the electron atmosphere. Thus the radiation constants are universal constants depending upon one kind of radiating and absorbing system, the electron. SELECTIVE RADIATION AND ABSORPTION Many sources of light and radiant heat emit radiations whose energy distribution over the various wave lengths is very different from that of a black body radiation. These radiations are selective and depend upon the nature of the body that is emitting or absorbing. Emission spectra illustrating this selective radiation are spark, arc, band and other spectra. Colored objects all show selective absorption. The problem of unraveling the constitution of the centers of selective radi- ation and absorption is a very difficult one and at present many efforts are being made to correlate the possible constitution of such centers with the ordinary molecular, atomic and ionic theories of matter. During recent years the trend of theory has been largely directed towards the view that emission and absorption spectra originate in systems that have a more or less momentary existence, owing to the fact that such optical systems are essentially dynamic in nature. It is very natural, therefore, that especial efforts should be made to find the existence of these momentary systems during periods of ionization and recombination of atoms, molecules, ions and electrons. AN IDEAL OF THE ILLUMINATING ENGINEER The subject of selective emission and absorption is one of prime importance to the illuminating engineer. The rods and cones of the VoL. LXxXxIlI.—17. 242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY retina are selective absorbers of light. Any illumination should, there- fore, be tuned to this selective absorbing mechanism of the eye. Under these conditions the illumination will be most pleasing and there will be a minimum amount of energy used in the emission of the radiation used for illumination. Naturally this kind of radiation will be a “cold” radiation and not a temperature one. It is represented in nature by the light from glow worms and fireflies and in laboratories, approximately, by various kinds of phosphorescent materials, the source of such radiation being at room temperature. DEFINITION OF EMISSION AND ABSORPTION CENTERS The problem of finding the constitution of the emission and absorp- tion centers of selective types of spectra such as those of phosphorescent substances, sparks, arcs, flames, etc., is a very difficult one, and at present many efforts are being made to correlate the possible constitu- tion of such centers with the various molecular, atomic, ionic and elec- tronic theories of matter. Emission and absorption centers of light and heat are the smallest particles or entities from which one can obtain any given characteristic emission or absorption spectrum. A further division or change of the centers will result in making it impos- sible for the given spectrum to be emitted or absorbed although the resultant particles or entities may possess a characteristic spectrum of their own. From the definition it is to be noticed that the centers need not necessarily be matter, 7. e., possess mass. When the centers move with reference to the observer, their spectral lines and bands will show the Doppler effect. Light centers seem to be very complex in their nature. Professor Rowland used to compare them to a piano and the work of Professor Wood upon resonance and fluorescent spectra indicate that the analogy is quite an appropriate one. Strike a key, 1. e., excite a vapor like that of sodium with monochromatic light and a whole set of harmonics will be set into vibration. In the case of sodium vapor, each series of lines or bands seem to be due to vibrations of systems that may be quite inde- pendent of each other. Apparently there are a large number of these vibrating systems in the light centers of the fluorescent spectra of sodium. The center itself may correspond to the atom of sodium, though at the present time no definite evidence has been brought for- ward to prove that the center is even of atomic magnitude. THE PROBLEM OF LIGHT AND HEAT CENTERS In the study of light centers, attention must be directed for a moment to the many and serious difficulties connected with the problem of determining the nature and constitution of these particles or entities. The conditions under which they exist are very different from the con- ditions under which we study the other physical and chemical units of matter. Then again, it seems that light centers have a comparatively LIGHT AND HEAT 243 enormous absorbing or emitting power, so that only a small part of the matter in a given region is concerned with the light and heat emitted or absorbed in the region. Light beams that are sufficiently intense to study are apparently emitted by a very large number of light centers and for this reason it has been found impossible to isolate individual centers; and even if this were possible it may be that the life of these centers is so short that even the isolation of centers would not permit their being studied. Then again, light emission is usually accompanied by many intricate phenomena such as ionization and chemical reactions and this adds to the complexity of the problem. When we consider our profound ignorance respecting even the nature of chemical forces, the constitution of the molecule and atom, the nature of the electric and magnetic fields and even the nature of light itself, it is not at all remarkable that little definite and certain knowledge has been obtained concerning the nature of light centers. Some MerHops oF APPROACHING THE PROBLEM There are several avenues of approaching the problem of the nature and constitution of light centers that seem to be extremely inviting. 1. At the present time a wonderful field is being opened concerning the dynamics of chemical reactions. As chemical reactions are inti- mately related to heat and light effects, the discoveries in this field are bound to give a great deal of information concerning light centers. 2. A study of the far infrared promises to break the gap between electromagnetic waves and radiant heat and light centers will probably be found to consist of molecular systems vibrating in a way similar to that of the sources of electromagnetic waves. At the present time we can compare light and heat centers with more or less well-known aggre- gates of matter and make as many identifications as possible. 3. The separation of complex line and band spectra into series of related lines or bands promises to give us a great deal of information ultimately as to the nature of the vibrating centers, although at present the problem is so complex that no one has been able to devise any mechanism or structure that is adequate to explain the known phe- nomena. ‘The theory of Ritz has been one of the most successful so far advanced. 4, The Zeeman effect obtained by placing the heat and light centers in a magnetic field is important. This effect indicates that many of the centers of spectral lines consists of negative electrons. 5. The Humphreys-Mohler pressure shift of spectrum lines, the Doppler shift of lines and bands emitted by moving centers as studied by Stark and others, are also very important. PossIBLE STRUCTURE OF LIGHT AND HEAT CENTERS One may picture light and heat centers as consisting in part as follows: 244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 1. Neutral “ aggregates ” of charged particles possessing, in general, translatory and rotatory energy. When undisturbed from without these aggregates would have little if any external electric field. When the equilibrium of such a system is disturbed by collisions or by electro- magnetic waves, it may possess temporary fields that will serve as the source of heat and light radiation. This radiation may be due to a rapid oscillatory motion that may be radial, transverse or tangential and would probably be characterized by a definite period. On account of the magnitude of the forces necessary for stable equilibrium, the period of the radiation would probably be small. The spectroscopic models of Thomson, Nagaoka and others are of this type. 2. “ Agoregates” may possess charged parts; these may be so far apart from each other that local fields of considerable intensity may exist. If such an aggregate were to rotate, an alternating electric field would result and radiations would be emitted. This radiation, depending on a central acceleration, would vary in period with each impact, so that the various periods emitted would vary about a mean, which would depend on the average rotational energy before impact and the nature of the impact. 3. Freely charged particles torn from neutral “aggregates” will radiate energy when their velocity is changed. The quantity of this radiation will vary with the velocity and the acceleration. The break- ing up of the neutral “aggregates” may be called ionization if the resulting parts are charged. Jonization processes may take place within molecules and this is believed to be the condition existing in many kinds of organic compounds when they absorb light or heat. The relation between ionization and luminosity is not yet clear. Some physicists believe that the two are related to each other and that luminosity becomes perceptible when the intensity of ionization is suffi- ciently great. It has been stated that a gas may become luminous when one molecule in every (10)* is ionized. This would mean that the expenditure of about (10)-° ergs is necessary to excite luminosity. IONIZATION AND LIGHT EMISSION AND ABSORPTION There appears to be considerable evidence supporting the view that some band spectra such as those of bromine and iodine may be due to the dissociation of molecular systems or to a recombination of the disso- ciated parts. Ladenburg has found that luminous hydrogen gives an anomalous dispersion in the neighborhood of H., while this kind of dis- persion is absent in ordinary hydrogen. The phenomena of dispersion indicate that different series of lines in a spectrum may be emitted by very different kinds of vibrating centers, while a particular center may emit only a single line of a series, depending on the manner of its excitation. Faintness in the intensity of lines may be due to the fact that there are very few light centers emitting the given line, or that the LIGHT AND HEAT 245 vibrations have only a very small amplitude. Koenigsberger and Kiipfur and others consider that the band spectra of iodine, bromine, nitrogen peroxide (N,O,), sulphur, iodine trichloride, nitrogen, etc., are due to a dissociation or recombination of the respective molecules, atoms or ions. In the case of iodine this change might be represented by the equation ILeaI+l. At about 800° C. this reaction is about complete and the fine-banded absorption spectra should therefore disappear. Galitzin, Wilip, Evans and others have shown that the bromine absorption spectrum disappears as dissociation becomes more and more complete. CANAL Rays Canal rays have their source in positive ions that start in front of the cathode, move towards the cathode and pass through any openings in it with a velocity of about (10)® cms. per sec. After passing the cathode the canal ray particles may lose their charge or even become negatively charged. The spectrum lines of hydrogen, nitrogen, mer- cury, sodium, potassium, ete., emitted by canal rays show the Doppler effect when they are viewed in the direction in which the canal ray particles are moving. Accompanying the shifted lines are lines show- ing no displacement, “rest” lines due to centers that are comparatively at rest. The “rest” line is usually narrow while the shifted line, due to rapidly moving centers, is rather wide, the violet side of the line often being the sharpest. The width of the line indicates the range of velocity of the canal-ray emitting centers. Making certain assumptions as to the potential gradient through which the centers have passed, Stark has calculated the charge carried by centers emitting the various lines. Since the “rest” and “shifted” lines are separated by a dark region, Stark concluded that canal-ray centers can only radiate line ‘spectra when their velocity exceeds a certain critical value, this critical velocity increasing as the wave-length decreases. Increasing the purity of the gas increases the relative intensity of the “shifted” lines. Strosser has caused a stream of canal-ray centers to impinge into a, cur- rent of a foreign gas. The lines of the foreign gas were found to increase in intensity on leaving the cathode, pass through a maximum and then decrease in intensity. The intensity of the lines of the canal- ray centers decreased in intensity as the distance from the cathode increased. CARRIERS OF SPARK SPECTRA Spark spectra have been photographed on rapidly-moving films by Schuster, Hemsalech, Schenck and others. The length of time the metallic vapor continued to emit line spectra was found to vary from 246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 10 to 45(10)-® secs., depending on the line. The velocity of the cen- ters of Mg » 4481 was found to be about 2.5(10)° cm. per sec. near the electrodes, dropping to 1.7(10)° cm. about a millimeter from the electrodes. Air line centers have an existence of about 7(10)~" sec. The emission centers in flames and arcs have been studied by Lenard and others. The results obtained do not agree with those found by Stark working with canal rays. NEGATIVE ELECTRONS AS EMISSION AND ABSORPTION CENTERS The Zeeman effect produced by the action of a magnetic field upon the emission or absorption light centers shows that for many spectrum lines of gases and vapors the light center consists of a negative electron and the ratio of the charge to the mass of the electron obtained in this way agrees very well with the value obtained by other methods. The more accurate experiments give e/m==1.775 while direct experiments give 1.772. THE POSITIVE ELECTRON The positive electron has never been isolated in any experiment with vacuum-tube discharges, radiations from radioactive materials, etc. The Zeeman effect of certain band spectra of chlorides and fluorides of some of the alkaline earth elements studied by Dufour and of the absorption spectra of neodymium and erbium compounds as studied by Becquerel indicate the existence of positive electrons. These Zeeman effects may be explained, however, as being due to induced magnetic fields being set up in the region of the light centers, magnetic fields whose intensities are very different from the field impressed from without. ABSORPTION CENTERS OF SOLUTIONS OF THE RARE ELEMENTS Many solutions of salts of elements such as uranium, neodymium, erbium, somarium, etc., show a banded absorption spectrum. Many of these bands are very narrow. Jones, Anderson and the writer have found that the absorption centers of many of these salts (e. g., uranous chloride) consist of centers containing the salt and an “ atmosphere ” of the solvent, the whole center apparently acting as a compound. Thus in the above case it is possible to have “water and alcohol centers” of uranous chloride in a solution of uranous chloride in water and alcohol. Increasing the amount of one solvent appears to increase the relative number of the centers of that solvent without apparently changing their composition. The different solvent centers have different degrees of persistency. The water and alcohol bands of neodymium chloride are of about equal intensity when the salt is dissolved in a solution con- taining about 3 per cent. water and 97 per cent. alcohol. Changes of temperature change the relative persistency of the light centers. In the case of some uranyl salts the addition of free acid of the salt causes a shift of the bands. This has been explained by the writer as being due to the fact that the light centers consisted of “aggregates ” of LIGHT AND HEAT 247 salt and acid. Evidences of series of “aggregates” were obtained by spectrophotographs of chemical reactions, spectrograms of the absorp- tion spectra of a solution of a given salt being taken as increasing amounts of some other kind of acid was added to the solution. CENTERS OF PHOSPHORESCENT SPECTRA Lenard, Klatt, Urbain and others have studied the phosphorescence of various calcium phosphates of bismuth, manganese, nickel, ete. Le- nard and Klatt have proposed the view that these light centers or “ dynamids ” store electrons, the state of motion of the electrons depend- ing upon the temperature. At high temperatures the electrons possess a much greater freedom of motion than at low temperatures. They visual- ize the states of motion as being “ gaseous,” “ liquid” and “solid.” In the “ gaseous ” state the electrons can occasion the conduction of electri- city between the atoms if the latter exist in the same way as they do in metals. In the “liquid” state the electrons are in a state of motion sen- sitive to light vibrations and therefore they take part in light absorption. In the “solid ” state the electrons take part neither in conduction nor in absorption. At low temperatures the spheres of action of the “dyna- mids” are considered to extend to greater distances than at high tem- peratures and the free paths of the electrons are therefore greatly reduced. To each phosphorescent band Lenard and Klatt assign three phases: An upper momentary or heat phase; a permanennt phase possessing quite definite temperature limits; and a lower momentary or cold phase. These phases succeed each other as the temperature falls. The upper momentary phase results when the dynamids do not store electrons. Whenever electrons are stored these return afterwards to the atom from which they were expelled by the light-wave, thus producing the perma- nent phase of the phosphorescent band. At low temperatures a few electrons return to the atoms from which they were expelled and these cause the lower momentary phase. The phenomena of phosphorescence are generally conceded to be due to some kind of electrolytic dissociation or ionization of the dissolved substance in the medium about it. Among the first to hold this view _ were Wiedeman and Schmidt. The theory explains the law of Stokes and many of the other phenomena of phosphorescence. THE LigHT CENTERS OF ORGANIC CoMPOUNDS During recent years a very large number of investigations have been earried out concerning the nature of the absorption light centers of organic compounds, both pure and in a state of solution. These centers have been roughly defined as chromophores, the chromophores consisting of radicles of the given compounds that are found necessary and suffi- cient to produce the given absorption. Among the chromophores that 248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY might be cited are >C==C<; =CO; >C=NH, —N=0; -=N=0;—=C=S§, ete. A bathochrome introduced into an organic compound causes the absorption band to become wider. An auxo- chrome causes the intensity of the absorption to be greater. Dynamic ISOMERISM Baly and many others have supported the view that the absorption of many organic compounds is due to a change in the valency linking of a compound. This dynamic isomerism is known to take place in many chemical compounds in the presence of a catalytic agent or at high temperatures. Take the case of acetylacetone and ethyl aceto- acetate. The absorption in this case may be due to a reaction changing the ketonic (1) into the enolic (2) form and some experimental evi- dence favors this view. , Onna) oF (2) RESUME From the above brief account of our knowledge concerning the nature of the absorption and emission centers of light and heat radia- tions it will be noted that many advances have been made toward the solution of this problem in recent years. The existence of “electron” atmospheres in many solids, liquids and gases has explained the emission and absorption of spectra that are ordinarily described as continuous; the existence of negative electrons serves to explain many phenomena such as those of the Zeeman effect, etc.; models containing elementary magnets arranged in various ways have been used by Ritz to explain the series classification of spectrum lines; the various phenomena of ioniza- tion are being found to be intimately correlated with the phenomena of light emission and much evidence is being accumulated to show that light and heat centers may ultimately be identified as consisting of cer- tain kinds of ions; a very large amount of experimental data has been accumulated concerning absorption spectra of solutions of organic and inorganic compounds and the centers of this absorption seem to consist in certain “aggregates,” “chromophores,” etc., which can be studied from other points of view; much evidence is found to point to the view that light and heat centers depend upon certain dynamic conditions and are not stable systems such as we usually conceive atoms and molecules to be. THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 249 IN QUEST OF THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE By Proressor G. T. W. PATRICK STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA NE of the problems which has been definitely set for psychologists to solve during the twentieth century is the cause of the almost universal desire for alcohol. It is a curious fact that in the thousands and hundreds of thousands of books, articles and writings of every description relating to the many phases of the alcohol problem, this simple and fundamental question—Why do men desire alcohol ?—has until recently never been carefully considered at all and even now has not been answered. The belief that the desire for alcohol is due to total depravity or original sin seems to be about as far as we have got in answering this question. One author wrote a serious article not long ago to show that the cause of drinking is to be attributed to bad cook- ing in the home! He evidently did not appreciate the fact that the desire for alcohol, as well as its use, is at least as old as the lake- dwellers of the neolithic age. Few if any savage tribes known to anthropologists, whether in ancient or in modern times, except certain tribes of Eskimos who have no fruit or grain from which alcohol can be prepared, have been without this drug or some other having similar properties. The discovery and use of alcohol have not spread from tribe to tribe, but have been autochthonic, arising independently in all parts of the world. So keen has been the desire for alcohol and so eager the quest for it, that always and everywhere some means have been discovered by which this water of life could be expressed from fruit, or grain, or vegetable. And yet we do not even know why it is desired. The whole vast machinery of the temperance movement, employing thousands of skilled and zealous workers, controlling large sums of money, and making use of wise educational, social and legislative methods, seems to have accomplished little or nothing in reducing the consumption of alcohol. At the very time that legislative and social control of the manufacture, sale and use of alcoholic liquors is extended over larger and larger portions of our country, the relentless figures of the U. S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue show that year by year with almost fateful regularity the per capita consumption of these liquors is increasing instead of decreasing. The following table shows the per capita consumption of all liquors in the United States from the year 1850 to the year 1911, inclusive: 250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION OF ALL WINES AND LIQUORS Period Gallons Period Gallons LBS O! ee uae ahaa peta 4.08 DB GO iis see rehs remanent, cmeitae 16.82 TESCO) ie emcee tetete 6.43 NOOO. eel Aave tained eraleercrate es 17.76 DSTO} kee veteenctrcts hops aietoneieatone 7.70 TQ OM es ea a eae oletevevetanevs 17.65 USTI—SO We fear eoeaeisaeere 8.79 QOD) ..:(Aeyeiecomtersvercrstelstanane 19.14 PES1— OOo ea roneataner ieee 13.21 DO OBI eile ie cue) Serene 19.57 DSO oy epee Mare opeqursucreveparee 16.72 VQOA: ee Meas crave ecsas cote 19.87 DS OD is Ciataavecalshotepenaheseteionete 17.13 LG OS oiieie acer cee ones coterie 19.85 SOB Nae cp sucesiets alah belo rereiate 18.20 GO. Giraeaate eae poretsrare oi aieve caats 21.55 SOA vid claire sewer arama 16.98 DOOM siacyeieeeitais aieuersateens 22.79 De ot Po man eaten A bay cit See 16.57 TOO Sr? heel rep ee ane epee 22.22 USO Gere eee eaeaan 17.12 OO ira toue, airenonaweVetepevs corcne eens 21.06 USOT qatar eens cos arate eee 16.50 TOO AIR iis elevate neat ates, ele nets 21.86 TSE OSi 0 Retaianarrccey eastern Wea a be noe eran aiclirece ees o 22.79 These figures should not be interpreted as showing the failure of the various means used for the limitation of the sale of intoxicating drinks. There is every reason for believing that these means are in a high degree effective and that without them the increase in the use of alcohol would have been much greater than it has been. The true meaning of the figures is, rather, to show the increasing force of this desire in modern society. There are, of course, other great human desires besides the desire for alcohol, but in respect to these other desires it seems less difficult to explain the cause. It is not difficult to explain the desire for bread, nor the keen interest in all matters relating to the means of acquiring it. Problems of labor and capital, problems of high prices, problems of production and distribution of food, relate more or less directly to the bread question and become thus wholly intelligible, because bread is necessary to life. Neither is it difficult to understand another pro- found human desire, which involves serious social problems, the desire . of the sexes for each other. Difficult as these social problems may be, the psychologist’s part presents here less difficulty, for the place of this great passion in human economy is clear. The desire for alcohol approaches the above desires as regards both its force and its universality, but its place in human economy is not thus far clear. The following familiar statistics are not cited in this case to show the extent of “human depravity,” nor to point out an “evil” to be suppressed, but rather to indicate the force of a human desire whose cause we seek to determine. The people of the United States are now consuming annually about 2,000 million gallons of malt liquors, nearly 64 million gallons of wine and more than 138 million gallons of distilled liquors. In Germany the per capita consumption of distilled liquors is about the same as in this country, while their consumption of malt liquors is, per capita, about one third larger than ours and of wine about twice as large. THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 251 In England the per capita consumption of malt liquors is still greater than it is in Germany, while the consumption of wine and distilled liquors is somewhat less than in Germany or in the United States. It is little to the point to call attention to the fact, as has often been done, that the cost of alcoholic drinks to the German people, which is about 3,000 million Marks per year, is nearly three and one quarter times the total cost of their army and navy combined; the cost should rather be compared with other “ necessities ” of life, such as bread and meat. The force of the desire for alcohol is better shown by noting that its cost to the German people is about the same in amount as their total expenditures for meat, fish and fowl combined, and only one eighth less than their total expenditures for bread, meal, bakery goods and potatoes combined. In this country we have no means of determining accurately the outlay of the people for alcoholic liquors, but we know that the wholesale value of the malt, vinous and distilled liquors pro- duced annually in the United States is approximately six hundred million dollars, almost the same as the total value of our wheat crop. These figures do not take into account the value of wines and liquors imported, nor the output of illicit distilleries. Of these illicit stills, according to the last report of the U. 8. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 2,466 were seized and destroyed during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1912. An intense human interest clusters around everything connected with alcohol. The very names of the countless forms of beverages, as well as their odors, tastes and colors are all interesting. Language itself reflects the depth of this interest, particularly in the many synonyms for intoxication. Partridge, in his book on “The Psychology of Intemperance,” gives a list of about 370 words and phrases in English expressive of intoxication, and he says that a list of more than 600 words in German has been collectéd. In his opinion nothing except the sexual relation has made a stronger impression upon popular language. The praise of wine has been celebrated in the poetry of every age. Drinking songs have a peculiar charm. In the history both of religion and of medicine, alcohol has occupied a prominent place and in some form it has been regarded as a cure for every ill. Huge volumes could be filled with the legislative acts of civilized people in their efforts to regulate its sale and use. In recent years an almost incredible number of books and articles has appeared relating to some phase or other of this subject. It is evident, then that there exists in the human mind, for some reason or other, a profound, persistent and intense desire for alcohol. The psychologist is interested in discovering the cause of this desire and the sociologist well knows that it will not be until this cause has 5 252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY been determined that any real progress will be made in solving the social problem of alcohol. How, then, shall the cause of the desire for alcohol be determined ? It would seem a priori improbable that anything so profoundly and universally desired should not answer to some real need of the human organism. It is clear, therefore, that the first thing to do is to make a scientific study of alcohol and its relation to the body and mind. It is only in recent years that any real attempt has been made to carry out such studies, but they have already cast a flood of light upon the subject. Physiological, psychological and sociological laboratories, hos- pitals and asylums, medical records and the reports of life insurance companies have all contributed to give us a more accurate knowledge of the action of alcohol on the human body and the human mind and to pave the way for a scientific theory of the alcohol motive. These researches are particularly instructive for the reason that they deal with the real question, 7. e., with the effects of alcohol in moderate doses, not with its excessive use. The literature on inebriety, alcoholism and intemperance has always been sufficiently abundant. It would be impossible in an article of this length to attempt even the briefest summary of these researches. It will be sufficient simply to recall the more important conclusions. 1. The desire for alcoholic drinks is due to the presence of ethyl alcohol, C,H,O. Beer, ale, wine, and even whiskey and brandy, have characteristic odors, pleasant to many people and ravishing to some, but it is not on this account that they are desired. The pleasantness of the tastes and odor are largely if not wholly due to association with ethyl alcohol. 2. It is not on account of its food value that alcohol is desired. 'The researches of Atwater and others have seemed to show rather conclu- sively that a certain amount of alcohol, say two and one half ounces per day, may under favorable circumstances be oxidized in the body and so act as a substitute for other food by furnishing heat and possibly energy. It is not claimed, however, by those who hold that alcohol may in some cases act as a food that it is on this account that it is desired. The history of drinking, which shows that it has been wholly convivial among primitive people and that it is still largely so, precludes. this view. It is only in modern industrial drinking that any attempt has been made to work on alcohol or to live on it, and here the attempt has not been successful, as Sullivan has shown in his careful and pains- taking work on “ Alcoholism.” 3. It has now been pretty definitely shown that alcohol is not a stimulant, and thus there is overthrown at once the most commonly accepted theory as to the cause of the desire for it. Alcohol acts as a depressant upon all forms of life from the simplest micro-organism to the most complex nervous structures in the human brain. It is inter- =3 THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 253 esting, however, to call attention to the fact, especially since a few physiologists still claim that under some circumstances it may act as a stimulant to certain bodily organs, that if alcohol were a stimulant, this would not, after all, afford any evidence that it plays a useful part in human economy. A stimulant as such adds nothing to human economy, whether such economy is considered from the standpoint of the race or of the individual. It offers no gain in the long run and could be of no real advantage in the struggle for existence. A stim- ulant can be serviceable only in emergency cases and under abnormal conditions and as such can not serve as an explanation for a desire extending to nearly all people in all periods of history. 4, The supposition may be made that alcohol increases muscular efficiency, at least temporarily, and that the desire for it may be explained in this way, but the experimental evidence forbids this view. Many series of experiments have been made by Warren, Frey, Schnyder, Destrée, Tavernari, Kraepelin, Féré, Partridge, Rivers and others, using the ergograph and other forms of dynamometer, to determine the effect of small doses of alcohol upon muscular power and efficiency. These experiments have shown that, as the result of small, or so-called normal doses of alcohol, there is a slight initial increase of muscular power followed by a decrease, so that on the whole the results reveal a loss rather than a gain in efficiency. With an increase in the size of the doses, the decrease in efficiency is greater. Later experiments carried out by Rivers and Webber, using a control drink so that the subjects did not know when alcohol had been administered, showed no initial increase of power whatever, Rivers believing that the increase shown in other experiments was due to suggestion. There seems some ground for believing that alcohol, while it does not increase muscular efficiency, shortens reaction-time at first and facilitates the liberation of energy. This may account to some extent for the feeling of in- creased efficiency which follows the ingestion of alcohol. If it be true that it shortens reaction-time and facilitates the liberation of energy, it still does not appear that this would offer any explanation for the world-wide desire for it. It has not been shown that any decided advantage accrues from the shortening of reaction-time or the quicker liberation of energy. The normal reaction-time and the normal lib- eration of energy would seem in the long run to be more advantageous. Kraepelin’s conclusion is that the laborer who gains his livelihood by the strength of his arm destroys by the use of alcohol the very founda- tion of his efficiency. The experiments of Hodge, with retrieving dogs showed that the dogs given alcohol did about half as much work as the normal animals. The experiments of Durig in mountain climbing, with and without alcohol, showed that moderate doses of alcohol resulted in a loss of about 20 per cent. in efficiency. 5. Alcohol, again, does not increase mental efficiency. The experi- 254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ments of Kraepelin and his associates show that moderate doses of alcohol exert a deadening influence on all mental processes. Appre- hension is slower, accuracy is lessened, errors are increased, and mem- ory is impaired. The character of associations is also unfavorably affected, the number of higher logical associations being decreased while associations depending upon similarity and contiguity in time and space are increased. Schnidman made experiments on the effect of alcohol in the work of translating from one language to another, with the result that under the influence of small doses of alcohol there was an increase of errors and a decrease of rapidity. The experiments of Lieutenant Boy upon Swedish soldiers in revolver and rifle shooting with and without alcohol showed that accuracy was affected unfavorably by the drug. Mayer found that the speed of writing was lessened by alcohol. In Dr. Aschaffenburg’s experiments with typesetters, he found that there was an average impairment of efficiency amounting to about 9 per cent. as the result of small doses of alcohol. Smith experi- mented on the effect of small doses of alcohol upon memory processes when the drug was administered for successive days. The alcohol in these experiments was administered in the evening and was found to exert a damaging effect upon the memory processes to a very marked degree, the effect increasing from day to day. Fiirer found that 80 c.c. of alcohol taken in the evening was followed by increased errors in choice-reactions during the whole of the following day. Experiments such as the above are difficult to carry out and possible sources of error may enter. It is highly desirable that still further researches should be made in this direction, eliminating every possible source of error. ‘The work to be undertaken in this field by the Car- negie Institution under the direction of Dr. Benedict and Dr. Raymond Dodge will be awaited with great interest. It may safely be said, however, that the experimental evidence is already sufficient to show that it is not on account of any increased mental efficiency due to alcohol that the world-wide desire for it is to be explained. The testimony of Helm- holtz in his speech at Berlin on the occasion of his seventieth birthday is significant in this connection. Speaking of the conditions under which he had had his most brilliant intuitions, he said that the smallest amount of alcohol seemed to frighten them away. The experimental evidence of the damaging effect of alcohol on physical and mental efficiency is confirmed by the practical experience of railroads, steamship companies, shops, manufacturing establishments, contractors, surveying and exploring parties, athletic teams, etc. An increasingly large number of railroads forbid the use of alcoholic liquors to their employees, in some cases even when off duty, while in shops and in mercantile establishments of all kinds statistics show a significant increase of accidents and decrease of efficiency immediately following Sundays and holidays. THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 255 Tf next we consider the contributions of recent science to the use of alcohol in its relation to human health and longevity, we are again met with disappointment in our quest for the explanation of its use. Alcohol was formerly very freely used by physicans in both surgery and medicine, but faith in its therapeutic powers has now been almost wholly lost. The figures given by Horsley showing the decrease in the use of alcohol in English hospitals and asylums during the last twenty years are exceedingly striking. In surgery alcohol has been replaced by antiseptics and in medicine by milk and eggs. Alcohol has now come to be regarded by physicians not as a cure for disease, but as a prolific cause of it. Asan excretory product of the yeast plant, its action upon higher organisms is that of a toxin. Its regular moderate use renders the individual less resistant to disease and its excessive use brings a long list of diseases in its train. The influence of alcohol upon longevity has now been studied with some thoroughness by physicians and actuaries and some definite results have been gained, although here much work needs to be done. The results show at any rate that alcohol does not increase longevity and hence we have here again no clue to the world-wide desire for it. Robert Mackenzie Moore, actuary of the United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institute, in a recent report based upon sixty years’ experience of that company in the insurance of the lives of abstainers and non-abstainers (the latter being moderate drinkers and good risks and belonging to the same class and following the same occupations as the former), found that in respect to longevity the abstainers showed a marked superiority over the non-abstainers through- out the whole period of life for every class of policies and for both sexes, however tested. For instance, at the age of 30 the expectation of life for the non-abstainers is 35.1 years; for the abstainers, 38.8 years, a difference of nearly 11 per cent. At the age of 40, the percentage of difference is the same. Another very thorough and impartial investi- gation has been made by Mr. Edward B. Phelps on the mortality due to alcohol. It is based on the testimony of the medical directors of three prominent life-insurance companies of America. Mr. Phelps’s conclusion is that 8 per cent. of all deaths of adults in the United States are due to alcohol. If we turn finally to the social relations of men in our search for an explanation for the universal desire for alcohol, our reward is even less. Alcohol indeed encourages sociability, but it would be hard to show that this in itself is a benefit proportional to the desire for it, and we find in connection with its use a long list of social evils, such as poverty, crime and racial degeneracy. These evils are connected for the most part with the excessive use of alcohol and consequently they interest us only indirectly here; but it would appear to be one more disadvantage to be attributed to alcohol that its moderate use is apt to 256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY issue in excessive use and so lead to many unhappy and disagreeable consequences, such as drunkenness, disability for work, domestic trouble, poverty, crime and degeneracy of offspring. We are thus brought finally face to face with the question, Why do men desire alcohol? ‘The theories hitherto advanced in explanation of the alcohol motive have failed to take into account certain essential facts in regard to the problem and have therefore been incomplete. Among these facts are the following: The desire for alcohol is common both to civilized and uncivilized man. I¢ tends to increase rather than to decrease with the advance of civilization in spite of vigorous and to some extent successful efforts to restrain it. It has reached an unpar- alleled degree of intensity at the present time in prosperous communi- ties relatively rich in comforts and luxuries. It is strong, again, in industrial and manufacturing centers among plodding and underpaid laborers. It is somewhat stronger in northern progressive races than among the less progressive southern people. It is particularly charac- teristic of the adult male individual, the desire being decidedly less strong in women and children. It is not an appetite in the ordinary sense of the word, as it answers to no inner need of the body so far as is known. ‘To these facts should be added those specially noted above, namely, that alcohol apparently adds nothing to either physical or mental efficiency, that it contributes nothing to health or longevity, and does not enhance social well-being. Is it possible to explain the desire for alcohol on the ground of its immediate pleasurable mental effects? It deadens pain to some extent and drives away care. It produces a feeling of euphoria, of well-being, comfort, contentment, ease and inner harmony. Under the influence of alcohol many of the unpleasant feelings accompanying the daily drudgery of life temporarily disappear or are at least alleviated, such, for instance, as fatigue, apprehension, fear, worry, anxiety and to some extent physical pain. Selecting one from any number of illustrations which might be drawn from literature, we read in Gosta Berling: The year had dragged itself out in heavy gloom. Peasant and master had passed their days with thoughts on the soil, but at even their spirits cast off their yoke, freed by brandy. Inspiration came, the heart grew warm, life became glowing, the song rang out, roses shed their perfume. The public house bar-room seemed to him a tropical garden, grapes and olives hung down over his head, marble statues shone among dark leaves, songsters and poets wandered under the palms and plane trees. Another author, picturing the hopeless grinding toil of the coal miner, his monotonous and unillumined life, his long work day, his hasty and insufficient supper and his hard bed, says that at the end of the week when a little respite comes, the “ demand for joy ” drives this coal miner to the saloon. But this explanation, at first sight partially adequate, when more THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 257 carefully considered, encounters serious difficulties and only adds to the obscurity of the subject. Are we to understand that the desire for alcohol is due to the “ demand for joy”? There never was a time in the history of the world when, quite apart from alcohol, joys were so abundant as they are in America at the present day. The rich have every comfort and luxury and the poor have every humane considera- tion, while laborers have shorter hours, better pay, better food and better clothes and more books, papers and other forms of entertainment than ever before in the world’s history. We are comparatively pros- perous, happy and well fed, have abundant leisure and countless com- forts, yet it appears that we need 2,000 million gallons of alcoholic liquors yearly to complete our “joy.” Furthermore, if this were the correct theory, it would be impossible to explain the lesser desire for alcohol among women, for although at present in America the lot of woman is a relatively happy one, this has not been the case among primitive people, nor in historic times, nor even in other countries at the present time. Her life has been relatively monotonous and labori- ous and her joys and amusements have been fewer. But serious psychological objections to this theory appear also. Joy and pleasure are the mental accompaniments of physical well- being, of mental and physical health, while alcohol acts as a poison in the presence of all forms of life. Against this apparent contradiction little is gained by saying that the joy of alcohol is an abnormal joy answering to an abnormal or diseased condition. The desire is too universal, too fundamental, so to speak, for that. Or if we say that aleohol brings an immediate and temporary joy, while its poisonous effects are delayed, we encounter two difficulties, first the difficulty of showing what particular kind of benefit corresponds to the immediate and temporary joy, and second the difficulty of explaining on any principles of evolution the desire for a drug whose effects are on the whole injurious—a desire which is so strong and so universal as almost to merit the name of an instinct. This seems to be a kind of dead- lock to any further progress in arriving at a theory of alcohol. But the joys of alcohol are evident and its injurious effects are equally evi- dent. It is clear, therefore, that the “ demand for joy” theory is only a superficial statement of a certain truth whose explanation lies deeper. But leaving for the moment the “demand for joy” theory, let us consider the view that alcohol banishes care and drives away sorrow and pain, in other words, that it is narcotic in its action, a kind of sedative or anesthetic. This theory seems at first sight to account for some of the facts. It is now generally, though not quite universally, admitted by physiologists that alcohol is not a stimulant but a narcotic. It apparently paralyzes the higher brain centers and in thus inhibiting the inhibitory centers produces effects resembling stimulation. Fur- VoL, LXxx11,.—18. 258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY thermore, pain, sorrow and care are ever present in human life, making the universality of the desire thus far intelligible. But clearly the narcotic theory encounters difficulties from the same sources as the “ demand for joy” theory. It fails first to account for the lesser desire among women, who have certainly at all times had their share of sorrow, pain and care. It fails likewise to account for the increase of the desire in times of prosperity and activity, or in times like the present of improved hygiene, increased longevity and multiplhed pleasures and comforts. Finally, the narcotic theory, if it were true, would seem to be nature’s checkmate upon itself, for pain in all its forms is evidently purposive. Are we to suppose that nature has discovered a way to tear down its own danger signals? ‘The nar- cotic theory would be available only in respect to times of degeneration and national decay. Nordau, who explains the desire for alcohol in this way, regards the present as such a time of degeneration, and Part- ridge, who recognizes the narcotic motive as one of the elements in the desire, seems to think that so far as it is present it betokens “ old age and disease in a nation.” But since the desire flourishes most strongly, as we have seen, in times of great national vigor, such for instance as prevail at the present time in Germany, England and America, the narcotic theory seems to fail. Nevertheless, it may appear below that the narcotic motive is present, after all, only not in the form hitherto recognized. Another writer, Reid, has broached the theory that the desire for alcohol is a by-product of evolution, a specific craving which nothing but alcohol will satisfy. It is coextensive with the human race and harmful in its results, and is to be met in only one way, namely, by the automatic action of “evolution against alcohol,” by the action of natural selection in gradually eliminating those not immune to the desire. It is part of Reid’s theory to maintain that the people of — southern Europe have become partly immune to alcohol, owing to its abundant supply, and are therefore more temperate. Almost all the facts upon which this theory is based are open to doubt. Partridge, while recognizing the narcotic motive in the desire for alcohol, “the longing to escape from pain, to seek relief in inactivity and rest, a turning backward from the strenuous life,” apparently believes that the so-called “intoxication motive” is more important. It springs from the desire for states of consciousness of higher in- tensity, for feelings of exaltation, for life and life more abundant, for freedom and expansion, for states of higher tension. It is the erethic impulse, a craving for excitement. But the evidence is overwhelming, as we have seen, that alcohol, so far from contributing to the more abundant life, contributes from every point of view to the less abundant life, and as for the desire for states of higher tension, there is every reason to believe, as will be shown in what follows, that alcohol pro- duces states of lower tension and is desired for precisely this reason. THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 259 And if the desire for alcohol were due to a longing for excitement, life, tension, movement, this longing would seem to be well satisfied by the conditions in modern American cities without recourse to 2,000 million gallons of alcoholic liquors yearly. Any satisfactory theory of the alcohol impulse must not only take account of the facts to be explained, some of which we have mentioned above, but it must also be grounded on an accurate knowledge of the whole life history of man, particularly his mental development and the corresponding development of the brain. It would be necessary, furthermore, for such a theory that we should have an accurate know]l- edge of the action of alcohol on the human brain. Neither psychology nor physiology is able as yet to furnish this knowledge completely, so that any theory of the alcohol motive must be tentative, awaiting further scientific advance. The following observations, therefore, although for brevity’s sake put in somewhat dogmatic form, may be considered as suggestions toward such a theory. Human progress seems to be in a certain definite direction and to involve the development of certain definite mental powers and of the corresponding higher cerebral centers. The chief of these powers is that of voluntary, sustained attention, which differentiates man sharply from the lower animals and likewise distinguishes civilized man from the savage. Progress has been possible because man has been able to narrow the field of attention, to concentrate or focus his powers, to live under mental stress, strain and effort and to hold his attention on a definite object. The word “tension” may perhaps express both psy- chologically and physiologically the subjective correlate of progress. Jt is characteristic of the savage as compared with the lower animals, of civilized man as compared with the savage, of northern races as compared with southern, and of the male as compared with the female. As concentration, sustained attention and abstraction, it issues among civilized man in science and invention. Whether the product be New- ton’s Principia or Edison’s talking machine, or even the long-sustained working-day of the common laborer, it presupposes the above-mentioned powers and involves the constant enlargement of the higher cortical centers of the brain. There is something, whether it be the “ will to live,” or a “ vital impulse,” or the cosmic consciousness, or only natural selection, that is eternally driving us on in this direction. Now the higher and newer the brain centers, the more subject they are to fatigue and the greater is their need of rest. During sleep these centers enjoy almost perfect rest, our dream activity taking the form of passive revery. But eight hours of sleep are not sufficient for this part of the brain. Sixteen hours of sustained attention would probably result in immediate insanity, if such an act were possible. Nature seems to demand some form of activity which shall allow the higher brain centers to rest while providing employment for the lower ones. To such a condition of mind and body we apply the name relaxation 260 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY and it embraces a considerable portion of our daily activity. It is most perfectly typified in play and sport, but includes many other forms of human interest and activity, such, for instance, as the enjoyment of music, of the drama and of other forms of fine art, the reading of fiction, and countless other kinds of amusement and entertainment not commonly included under the terms play or sport. But it is in children’s play and in adult sport that we find the principles of relaxation best exhibited as they will be found presently to bear upon our problem. ‘The active life of the child is almost wholly a life of play. ‘The brain centers developed late in the history of the race come to maturity late in the life of the child. Hence he rebels instinctively against work, for it involves yet undeveloped centers, those connected with spontaneous and sustained attention. Play is self-developing and supplies its own interest. Furthermore, a study of children’s plays shows that they are largely reversionary in form, fol- lowing the old racial activities of our remote ancestors. The boy, therefore, runs, races, rolls, wrestles, wades, swims, climbs trees, shoots with sling or with bow and arrow, goes hunting, fishing, canoeing, camping, builds tree houses, cave houses, wigwams and pursues a hun- dred occupations recalling the life of primitive man and far removed from the serious life of modern man, the life of the farm, the shop, the office, the factory, the bank or the schoolroom. The brain paths involved in children’s play are the old time-worn easy paths requiring no new associations, no abstractions, no strong and sustained effort of will or attention. In adult sport we have a still better illustration of the principles of relaxation. If we recall those forms of sport which afford the most perfect rest and relaxation, we shall see how true it is that they are of a character to use the old racial brain paths and rest the higher and | newer centers. The tired teacher, lawyer, doctor, preacher or business man, when his vacation comes, reverts to the habits of primitive man. He takes his tent, rod, gun or canoe and goes to forest, lake or moun- tain, wears more primitive clothes, sleeps on the ground and cooks over a camp fire. Hunting, swimming, yachting, dancing, wrestling, prize-fighting, horse racing—all these are illustrations of the rest af- forded by primitive activities. As forms of relaxation they seem so natural to us that often we do not realize how primitive they are and how far removed from the real work-a-day world of modern life, the world of mental concentration, of pen and ink and books, of clerks and stenographers, of office and court room, of flats and congested cities, of business and finance. A football game, which resembles the rough and tumble physical contests of former days, brings together fifty thousand wildly enthusiastic spectators, while an intercollegiate debate com- mands at most only a handful of hearers with mild enthusiasm, so great is the need of some form of relaxation that shall completely re- lieve the tension of modern life. The gladiatorial exhibitions of old OO THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 261 Rome attracted enormous crowds of eager spectators because of the primitive character of the spectacles. The direct physical contact of man with man or man with beast intoxicated the Romans, whose work- a-day world was not unlike our own and far removed from the life of the arena. Such spectacles awoke the echoes of the past, revived prim- itive instincts and afforded perfect rest and relaxation. The behavior of the spectators at a football game is an illustration of perfect relaxa- tion. They act for a time like children or savages and return to their work rested and purified. Mankind appears to be under the domi- nance of two opposing forces. On the one hand we are driven on by the relentless whip of progress, which demands ever greater and greater specialization, application, concentration and powers of conceptual analysis. On the other hand the tired brain rebels against this cease- less urging and seeks rest and relaxation. But, now, even in the early history of the race, there was discovered another means of relaxation, artificial to be sure, but quick, easy and convenient. Drugs of various kinds, owing to their peculiar action upon the brain, produce a kind of artificial relaxation. Ethyl alcohol, produced everywhere whenever the ever-present yeast cells come in con- tact with the sugar of crushed fruit or fermented grain, has the pe- culiar property of paralyzing to a greater or less extent the higher and later developed brain tracts which are associated with those peculiar forms of mental activity accompanying work and the strenuous life. The later developed and more delicate centers of the nervous system are more susceptible to the attacks of an intruding destructive agency, such as alcohol. Thus it comes about that alcohol answers the demand of the body and mind for relaxation and accomplishes in an artificial way what is effected in a natural way by sport and play and other forms of relaxation. The latter effect this end by turning the energy of the brain into lower and older channels, leaving the higher centers to rest; the former, by directly narcotizing the higher centers and thus libera- ting the older, freer life of the emotions and the more primitive im- pulses. It should not be understood that alcohol has any “selective affinity ” for any part of the nervous system. Its action, like that of other tox- ins, is no doubt diffusive, but affects most seriously those parts of the brain having less power of resistance, particularly the centers late in the order of development. Its depressive effect is felt to some extent, however, upon the lower reflex centers and as such results again in physiological relaxation. This is owing to the fact that its depressive action raises the threshold value of the reflex arc and so diminishes reflex excitability. From this point of view, therefore, we see that while the action of *For a fuller account of the anthropological theory of sport and play, see the article by the present writer on ‘‘The Psychology of Foot-ball,’’ in the American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XIV., pp. 104-117. 262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY alcohol is narcotic, nevertheless the narcotic theory, as it has hitherto been presented, is very one-sided, and the truth in the narcotic theory as well as in the stimulation or intoxication theory is now brought into proper relief. One would not say that play and sport are narcotics. They seem to be very refreshing and stimulating. In the same way alcohol is stimulating, not directly, for its physiological action is wholly depressive, but indirectly by inhibiting the higher brain centers and setting free the older and more primitive psychoses. Thus it appears as a depressant of voluntary attention and effort, of logical associations and abstract reasoning, of foresight and prudence, of anxiety and worry, of modesty and reserve and the higher sentiments in general, while, on the other hand, it acts indirectly as an excitant of speech, laughter and song, of emotional feeling and expression, of sentimental- ity, and in increased doses, of still older and more basic impulses, such as garrulity, quarrelsomeness, recklessness, immodesty and, finally, of coarseness and criminal tendencies. Thus under the progressive influ- ence of alcohol we see the whole life history of the race traversed in re- verse direction, for the criminal life of to-day represents the normal life of primitive man. We thus trace the desire for alcohol to the inherent need of mind and body for relaxation, a need normally supplied by all the varied forms of play and sport. Physiologically it is expressed by the need of rest felt by the higher brain centers upon which conditions of civiliza- tion bring so severe a strain. Psychologically it is the expression of the desire for release from the tension of the strenuous life. In a sense, therefore, it is the strenuous life which is responsible for the alcohol ampulse, but it should be noted that the word “strenuous” is here used ‘in a broad sense. It does not refer necessarily to an exciting, active, ‘high-pressure life, but refers rather to any condition of unrelieved ten- ‘sion, where sustained effort is demanded with little opportunity for complete rest and relaxation. While these conditions are perhaps best encouraged by the high-pressure life of our cities, they are also present in the unrelieved toil of the industrial worker. We are in this way able to understand some of the facts which, as we have shown, must be considered in any theory of the alcohol motive. We may understand not only the increased desire for alcohol in mod- ern life, but also the lesser need for it on the part of woman. Woman is less modified than man and presents less variation. Her life is calmer and more even. She is more conservative, representing the child type, which is the race type. Her life is less strenuous. She is not keyed up to so high a pitch and hence has less need of relaxation and feels less demand for play and sport. Man, on the other hand, represents variation. The mental powers peculiar to advancing civili- zation are more developed in him. He has to be in the vanguard of progress. With him, therefore, the stress of life, the tension, the ex- THE ALCOHOL MOTIVE 263 citement, are greater and he feels more the need of the harmonizing action of alcohol. Again, we can understand why even the primitive man finds alcohol a relief, for the tension of his life is great as compared with the lower animals and we can understand why the desire increases with the prog- ress of civilization and the corresponding increase of tension. The stress of life is greatest among the Anglo-Saxon people and greatest of all perhaps in American cities at the present time. In this country especially, the intense life of concentration, of effort, of endeavor, of struggle, of rapid development, has for its correlate an intense longing, not for stimulants,—for our life, our climate, our environment are surely stimulating enough,—but for rest, for relaxation, for harmony, for something to still temporarily the eternal turmoil. Does the fact that the desire for alcohol is increased by the indulg- ence in it and the apparent fact that those who fall victims to its exces- sive use are not always those most in need of its harmonizing action present any difficulty in this theory? Probably not. The desire for relaxation is not necessarily increased by the use of alcohol but only the ever renewed demand for that which produces the longed for effect, and, again, it is not certain that those who fall victims to its excessive use are not those most in need of its harmonizing action. Here the element of prudence and self-control must be taken into account. Excessive users may be those having lesser control or greater opportunity, not those experiencing stronger desire. While the desire for alcohol is increasing with the complexity of society, it is actually true that drunk- enness is decreasing and it is possibly true that the number of total ab- stainers is increasing. These things are determined by custom, by in- dividual environment and education and by the power of self control. But the steady increase in the desire for alcohol is shown not merely in the steady increase in its consumption but still more in the fact that it increases in the face of public and private sentiment, legal statute and social effort. We see also why the use of alcohol has commonly followed the law of rhythm. Among primitive tribes drinking was periodic, wild orgies of intoxication following considerable periods of the plodding life. This periodicity is seen in convivial drinking of all times and is a fa- miliar fact in every community at the present. The power of self-re- straint, strengthened by public sentiment and private prudence, deters from the use of alcohol up to a certain point, when the cumulative force of the desire, which is the cumulative need of release from painful tension, overthrows all barriers and excess and complete relaxation fol- low for a season. So it appears that the effect of alcohol is a kind of “catharsis.” We recall Aristotle’s theory of the drama, which, he says, purifies the mind by giving free expression to certain of the emotions. In a way, therefore, the significance of alcohol is that it is an escape. It is not 264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY in itself desired; often enough it is hated. But the user finds himself under the rule of an imperative, an insistent idea, a tormenting pres- ence, and this presence is his whole deep human personality crying out against the eternal urge of the “will to live.” The spirit of the age proclaims that we must be efficient. Hfficiency, and ever more effi- ciency, is demanded and the desire for alcohol is the desire for rest, for release from the tension, for freedom and abandonment. Nietzsche, crying out against this spirit of progress, says: Why does precisely this gloomy and vehement oppressor pursue me? I long for rest but it will not let me. The relation between the effect of alcohol and that of the drama is again clearly expressed by Benjamin Ide Wheeler, when he says: That which was at the beginning the charm of the drama, and has been, so far as it is true to itself, ever since, is its power to release those who behold it for a little while from the burden and enthrallment of the commonplace work- aday life, and bathe their wearied souls in dreams. This is the very heart of Dionysus, and this too is his claim to control the fruit of the vine. But now, if this theory is correct, what is the conclusion? Is alco- hol a means of purification through relaxation? Just so far as it af- fords rest to the wearied higher brain centers and relief from the tyranny of the will, it is a means of purification, but unfortunately it is at the same time a poison, bringing in its train a heavy residuum of damage not only to society, but to the individual. The imperative need of relaxation is apparent, but, while play and sport are relaxing and recreative, alcohol is relaxing and destructive. The colossal evil of its excessive use is evident to every one, but there is reason to believe that even its moderate use detracts from the sum-total of well-being of the individual in exact proportion to the amount used. , It is possible, however, that the case is still worse. Let us suppose that alcohol were not a poison, that it had no effect beyond a slight paralysis of the higher brain centers. What will be the cumulative effects of such action upon the individual and the race? This question can not at present be answered. It seems probable that this constant doping of the highest and most delicate nervous centers, while it affords the needed relaxation, may work havoc with the delicate organization of the brain. Possibly alcohol represents a factor of maladaptation in the evolution of man and will prevent the realization of his highest destiny. If we consider the degree of civilization attained by the an- cient Greeks, several stages above our own in art, and on an equal plane at least in poetry, in eloquence, and in philosophy, we are impressed with the slight progress we have made, when measured by a reasonable expectation based on the time which has elapsed and our rich intellec- tual inheritance. Gladstone bemoaned the lack of progress in intellec- tual power made by man in recent centuries. Is any one in position to say that this has not, in part at least, come about from meddling with ethyl alcohol? THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 265 THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT Bry A NEAR-PROFESSOR T was in the autumn of 1911 that the press gave wide publicity to a meeting of college presidents, deans and professors convened in honor of the installation of the chancellor of a metropolitan university. At the dinner that closed the ceremonies one of the speakers, himself the president of another great university, assured the audience that being a university president was great fun since among other perquisites of the position was that of being able to dine on college professors. The press reports of the dinner were read by a near-professor as he sat in his modest study in a distant college town. The phrase used by the distinguished university president seemed strangely familiar, and turning to a package of notes in his desk he found among them the record of a conversation with a former colleague and read in the words of his friend, “Sometimes the board of trustees eats the president, sometimes the president eats the board of trustees, but both always eat the faculty.” It was indeed passing strange, the near-professor pondered, to find such unanimity of opinion between a great university president and a humble college professor as to the part in the educational system played by the college faculty, and henceforth he felt his own course was clear ; if the high cost of living restricted his own daily menu, he could at least serve the cause of education by cheerfully recognizing his place and be- coming the baked meats for the table of his academic superior. But before consciously laying his head on the president’s dinner platter, it seemed wise to the near-professor to turn again to his bulky package of notes. They were the accumulations of several years and they represented the reports of presidents of colleges in nearly every state in the union, anonymous articles by college professors that had appeared in all of the leading reviews of the country, anonymous letters on educational organization written to the press and turned over to him by a journalist brother, memoranda of conversation that he had had with professors from other colleges when they were separated by the Atlantic from their academic dinner tables, descriptions of the organiza- tion of education in nearly every country in Europe, private letters from personal friends whose official heads had yielded a Barmecide feast to various college presidents, and fragments from his own observation and experience. As he examined the mass of material he was conscious of a secret 266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY fear lest its very presence in his desk should betray him into the hands of his official superiors. He could indeed justify its presence there on the ground that the accumulation was in large part accidental, that “ he had not meant to do it,” that the small field of knowledge in which he had been permitted to work had been so intimately connected with all questions of organization that he could not well avoid an interest in the by-product of educational organization—still and all, he had to admit that he was a victim of abject, craven fear. Yet in his early youth he had fortified himself against the oncoming of age by com- mitting to memory Longfellow’s “ Morituri Salutamus,” and now its appeal to banish fear, doubt and indecision stood him in good stead, not so much against old age, for that seemed farther away than it had at twenty, as against the spectre of a frowning chief and a possible official decapitation. The material in his desk, he reasoned, might be of some slight service in the discussion of a question that was filling every year a larger and ever increasingly larger place in the minds of all engaged in educational work, whether as college professors or as teachers in the public schools. He was as much in honor bound, he reasoned again, to make his contribution to the cause of education as he was to pay his pew rent in church and to give of his wife’s substance to the foreign missionary cause. Turning his attention first to the organization of the so-called “higher institutions of learning,” the near-professor found that the factors directly and indirectly concerned are eight. The factor least immediately involved is the public at large and it may be called collectively the state. It has no direct part in the gov- ernment of higher educational institutions except in those states where members of the boards of regents are elected by popular vote. The state has, however, a direct financial interest in the subject since the property of educational institutions on private foundations is exempt from taxation, and on the other hand public educational institutions are supported by state taxation. The parents of students have as such no part either direct or indirect in the management of a college, nor do they consciously to themselves exert the most remote influence on the conduct of its affairs. Never- theless, the parent is a potent factor in shaping the policy of a college, through serving as a foil against proposed innovations. Do the students desire a larger measure of self government, the parent “who would not approve ” prevents its realization. Do the alumni favor a radical depar- ture from the curriculum that has been in force, the parent “ likes what we have and sends his son here to get it,” and hence no change is made. Does some one suggest dropping the Latin salutatory and the valedictory from the commencement exercises, the parent “likes the present plan” and therefore the Latin salutatory and the valedictory are retained. If THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 267 the college authorities believe that they stand in loco parentis, they are certainly right in governing their action by the supposed wishes of parents. Yet it is not known that a poll of the parents has ever been taken on any subject of college policy, it is quite possible that the expressions of approval or disapproval of proposed changes are purely individual, it is even probable that the opinions expressed are such as are felt to be in harmony with the wishes of the administration, and it is altogether credible that the shade of the absent parent has been evoked to give countenance to policies of the administration as unalter- able as were the laws of the Medes and Persians. The benefactor has long been recognized as a powenhal, although unacknowledged, influence in the administration of the college on a private foundation. He is a member of the board of trustees and as such wields great authority. He is consulted on all matters of college policy, his wishes are deferred to whenever a difference of opinion arises between him and his colleagues, and he is the power behind the throne on which sits the college president. To him more than to any other giver is applied the adage that one must not look a gift horse in the mouth. If the benefactor is interested in science and wishes to give the college a physical laboratory, the college accepts it without question although its greatest need may be for a new library building. If the benefactor thinks “the boys” need more athletics, he spends a fortune on a stadium even though the college may be in crying need of funds to pay the salaries of its professors. Ifthe benefactor thinks a building would adorn a sightly part of the campus, he puts one there, even though the college may not have sufficient funds to keep it adequately cleaned, warmed and lighted. “I would a thousand times rather have dealings with a state legislature than with the private benefactor on whose will or whims the welfare of a university depends,” said a president who had had experience as the head of a state university and of one controlled by “the munificent benefactor.” It is possible to meet political influence fairly, squarely and openly, but it is impossible to meet the undue personal influence of the private benefactor who may be giving to the college his time and his energies, as well as his funds, but is practically irresponsible. The zeal of the benefactor is appreciated, yet it often is an illustration of misdirected energy since the educational interest realized on the capitalistic benefaction is sometimes in inverse propor- tion to the amount invested. The student body is as yet a somewhat inert mass as regards its attitude toward educational policies. The force of tradition is strong and tradition makes the student, at least in theory, passive and receptive rather than active and creative; it teaches him unquestioning obedience to authority ; it scoffs at his desire to know the meaning of what he does; it mocks his wish to have a part in deciding the policy that controls his 268 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY daily actions. Even the community in which he lives is prone to scorn his efforts to play a part in the settlement of the questions that inti- mately concern him. A few years ago internal troubles in one of our universities led to a rumor that the president had asked for the resignation of every member of the faculty. In consequence of this a mass meeting of the students was called, but before the students assembled a message was sent them by the president saying that no meeting would be permitted unless the students agreed to act in accordance with his wishes. A few days later one of the city papers in discussing the situation said editorially, First of all a warning should be given to the students. They should be politely, but firmly, ordered off the stage. They are not in the remotest degree a factor in the present affair. The factors are the president, the directors and the taxpayers as a body. The students, who contribute next to nothing to the finances of the university, represent only 400 or 500 taxpayers. The student body of the university represents an insignificant fraction of one of the three factors of the present issue, and, therefore, should have so small a voice in the affair that it is not worth considering. And they should remember that what voice they have is as taxpayers, not as students. Nevertheless, tradition does not always remain impregnable and there are signs of weakness in some of its strongholds. The college student may have come from a school city where in a public high school he has had some small share in educational legislation and administra- tion. He may have entered from a private secondary school where self- government has attained a vigorous growth. If in college his abilities lead him into the field of science, the spirit of investigation he meets there turns his questioning mind to the investigation of education; if his interests lie in political science the organization of the state directs his thoughts to the organization of education; if he is absorbed in economics, the question of the mutual relations of capital and labor, of employer and employee, of the individual and the state lead to questions of the mutual relationship of all parties concerned in education; the very process of education trains him in mental activity and he is quick to apply this activity to the study of the conditions in which he is placed. Again, he can not escape the discussion of all phases of the question as it is presented in the daily press and in current periodicals. The spirit of research, of investigation and of inquiry in every form is abroad in every land, and it has its influence on the college student. Democracy in the state, in society, in industry, is taking on new mean- ings and is making new applications. Experiments in self-government are being tried in reformatory, corrective and penal institutions, and even hospitals for the feeble-minded and for the insane are turning to the same plan as part of their remedial treatment. THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 269 Even the college student himself has often had personal experience in matters of government. The average age of the college man at graduation is about twenty-three and he has been a possible voter for two years. If he has sufficient maturity to have a voice in the decisions of affairs of state, is it not reasonable to suppose, he asks, that he can be given some small share in the decision of educational matters that immediately affect him? That the college undergraduate has had as yet so small a share in the conduct and policy of the institution with which he is temporarily connected by no means augurs that his share will continue permanently negligible. The alumni of a college have but recently been given a representa- tion on boards of trustees. This representation has not always been warmly welcomed by the boards as previously organized, and it has been granted only through the persistent efforts of alumni organizations. These efforts have been made because of a growing feeling that some official medium of communication is necessary between a board of trustees and the undergraduate body. The college has, moreover, been enlarging its activities along lines not strictly academic, and with the increasing interest in college athletics, college dramatics and college musical clubs, appeals have been made to the alumni to assist in financ- ing these enterprises. These appeals have usually been made through class organizations, alumni associations, and the graduate and under- graduate college press, and the very appeals themselves have stimulated interest in general college affairs. One result has therefore apparently been to increase the general contributions of the alumni to their alma mater and this fact has furnished another and perhaps more valid reason for the election of a limited number of trustees by and from the alumni themselves. Just how effective this representation is in influencing the policy of boards of control is at least a question. The alumni trustees are always in a minority, they hold office for a limited term while their colleagues on the board usually are elected for life, their point of view may not always be that of the other members of the board, yet they are often cautious, if not in reality timid, in expressing views divergent from those of the majority, they represent a body having no legal but only a senti- mental relationship to the institution, and they are as a rule only con- tributors of ideas not signers of checks. But if the direct results of alumni representation seem somewhat negligible, the indirect results of such representation have been most wholesome. It has stimulated the loyalty and the enthusiasm of college graduates in behalf of their own college, it has led to acquaintance among the alumni representatives of different colleges and thus to the exchange of facts, opinions and experi- ences to the profit of all concerned, it has resulted in a more intelligent Dae THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY appreciation of what the great educational problems of the day really are, and it has aroused a desire to have these problems investigated by experts in order that the layman may have put before him authoritative data as a basis for discussion. If we have everywhere to-day a passion for education that partakes of the religious fervor of an earlier time it may in large part be explained by this thin entering wedge of alumni representation on boards of college trustees. The part taken by the state, the parent, the benefactor, the under- graduate body and the alumni is either too slight to have an appreciable effect in formulating educational policy, or it is too irresponsible to be met and discussed in the open, or it is prophetic of future opportunities rather than a chronicle of past achievement. In the eye of the law the only authority responsible for the conduct of the affairs of a college is that vested in the board of control, usually denominated a board of regents or a board of trustees. The nature and the measure of this responsibility is largely determined by the source of the financial support of the institutions concerned. Higher institutions of learning are of two general types as regards this support. In universities supported by the state, the members of the board of regents may be appointed by the governor of the state or elected by the qualified voters of the state; in either of these cases, the members of the board hold office for a limited term of years. Colleges on a private foundation are controlled by a board of trustees whose members form a close corporation. They are self-perpetuating and are elected for life, although a recent modification of this plan provides that members of the board are to hold office for a limited term and member- ship may be automatically changed at the end of a definite period. But irrespective of number of members, term of office, and method of ap- pointment or election, the result is the anomalous one of placing in control of nearly every great and every small institution of higher learn- ing in America a body of men that have no connection with the educa-| tional work of the institution, that are not members of its faculties, that are not necessarily numbered among its graduates or its former students, or indeed among those of any other college or university. Yet the control of these external bodies over our educational institutions is absolute in that both the financial and the educational policy come within their jurisdiction, and their control is irresponsible in that they render no account of their stewardship and as a rule they hold office for life, not during good behavior. Technically and legally all-powerful, these external boards of control do not exercise their authority directly, but they delegate it to their appointee, the college president. He thus in his turn becomes all-powerful, not by virtue of original and vested authority but through authority delegated to him by these boards. It is thus seen that the most important function of this external THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 271 board of control is to-day that of appointing the college president, and that the great power in the educational world thereby becomes the college or university president. The position of the American college president is absolutely unique in the educational world, yet the evolution of the office has been a simple one and it is easily traced. The great majority of the older colleges in America were founded either by ecclesiastical organizations or, in com- munities where the civil and the ecclesiastical power, were identical, by the state, and the function of its college was to educate young men for the ministry. Thus it followed that at first the college president sustained much the same relation to the student body that the pastor of a church sustained to the members of his congregation—he was the spiritual teacher and adviser, the religious head of an institution founded for religious purposes. The first and the final test of his qualification for the position was that of orthodoxy, and when this was called in question his position as president of a college was no longer tenable. But as the ecclesiastical rigor that bound both church and state grad- ually relaxed, a change took place in the qualifications demanded of a college president. Education as a process came to be more emphasized and it became necessary for the college president to be not only a clergy- man, but also to have a strong and commanding personality. The col- lege president became the great teacher—a class of which Mark Hopkins will always stand as the type—and his chief financial duty was to raise funds for scholarships for the education of “ worthy young men.” The next step in the evolution of the college president came when the college was frequented by young men whose career in life was to be, not the ministry, but one of the other learned professions, or business, or some branch of applied science. This necessitated the development of the secular side of education, and with this development came the demand for increased appliances, for laboratories, for large additions to libraries and museums, for the enlargement in every direction of the educational plant. Funds must be raised to provide this equipment and on the shoulders of the college president was laid the burden of securing them. Thus the college president became not only the religious head and the educational head of the institution, but its financial agent. But it followed naturally that if large endowments were to be secured by the college president, he must be “a good mixer” with those who might be persuaded to contribute to the college. A clergyman, a scholar, a recluse, might possibly teach, but other qualifications for raising funds were imperative. He must be a man of fine presence, genial manner, consummate tact, a ready and acceptable public speaker —he must be in the best sense of the work, “aman of the world.” The college president thus added to his previous qualifications of clergyman, 272 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY teacher, and financial agent that of a fitting social representative of the institution. ; But increased and increasing endowments entailed the burden of organizing and administering them. 'The funds secured must be wisely used and no one could hope to be successful as the head of an educa- tional institution who did not unite with the ability to raise funds that of a wise administrator. But wise administration is a complex term. It implies the organi- zation not only of the internal but of the external affairs of an institu- tion—the care of buildings and of grounds, and even familiarity with a species of hotel-keeping if the college has dormitories or residence halls. Thus by an accumulation of duties that have been added as the scope of the college has broadened, the college president has added to his primary qualification of religious head that of educational head, finan- cial head, social head and administrative head, including the duties of superintendent of buildings and grounds and even those of hotel pro- prietor. It has been a veritable piling of Ossa on Pelion and the office has become so burdened with duties and responsibilities that it seems as if it must break down of its own weight. A person unfamiliar with the situation might reasonably conclude that all of our colleges and universities were threatened with bank- ruptcy and had been placed in the hands of a receiver so unlimited are the powers that have been conferred on their presidents. But those whose acquaintance with present conditions makes it possible for them to understand the steps by which this present development has been reached know that the powers now placed in the hands of the president have been cumulative and in a measure accidental rather than the result of fixed plan. Of the eight factors concerned in college legislation and administra- tion, seven have been considered. It remains only to examine the part taken by the faculty in the government of the colleges with which they are associated. Singularly enough this part seems entirely negligible. The faculty of a college has no voice in the election of a president who is to rule over them by appointive if not by divine right, nor are its members, as far as known, ever consulted when a choice of president is to be made, nor are even expressions of opinion sought from them. It is also true that no college professor is ever a member of the board of trustees that governs the institution with which he is connected, and that he is even in some cases expressly prohibited from ever becom- ing a member of the governing body. The corporate state may be rep- resented by its governor who may be ez officio a member of the board of trustees of a college within the state; the state at large may through the votes of its citizens choose the boards of regents who control the policy Se THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 273 of the state university; the educational system of the state may be rep- resented by the state superintendent of the public instruction who may also be an ea officio member of a board of trustees; ecclesiastical bodies are as such sometimes represented on boards of trustees; the alumni now have representatives elected by and from their own number on many boards of trustees. But members of a college faculty have no voice whatever in the election of boards of trustees who control the policy of a college, nor have they any representation on the board of trustees. It is indeed sometimes said they are so represented by the president of the college, but since the president is elected by the trustees, not by the faculty, such a statement seems to be a mere juggling with words. The question therefore of who is in actual control of our colleges and universities can be answered clearly, authoritatively and emphat- ically—it is the college president and the university president. The answer does not follow as a result of eliminating from the eight factors concerned in the problem all of the other seven whose authority has been shown to be either negligible or negative—it has been given in unmis- takable terms on more than one occasion when a new college president has been elected or inaugurated, as also at other times and in other places. The theory of the presidency is definitely stated in a series of statutes defining the powers and duties of the president that were drawn up a few years ago when a president was sought for an important uni- versity. They were formulated by the trustees after consultation with the leading candidate for the position, and they are given in full as being probably the most explicit statement as yet made concerning the office. First. The president shall be ex-officio a member of each faculty, and it shall be his right and duty to preside at every meeting thereof. Second. The president shall have the power of nominating the dean of each faculty, subject to the approval of the board of trustees. Third. The president shall have the right to attend all meetings of the board and to address the board upon all subjects connected with the university. He shall be ex-officio a member of all standing committees of the board. Fourth. The president shall have the exclusive right to transmit all com- munications from each faculty and from each member thereof, to the board. Fifth. The president shall have the right to recommend to the board the vacation of professorships and’ other positions in all departments. Sixth. The president shall have the exclusive right to nominate professors in all departments except in so far as this may be inconsistent with the contracts under which certain of the departments are now conducted. Seventh. The president shall have ultimate authority in all matters of discipline. Highth. The president shall have the right to advise the board in all matters of expenditure. VOL. LXXXIII.—19. 274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Ninth. The president shall have control of all employees engaged in the preservation and maintenance of the buildings of all departments of the univer- sity, and he shall be the chief custodian of such buildings. At another great university a popular professor of another institu- tion was offered the presidency, but he delayed his acceptance until he had come to a clear understanding with the regents as,to their future relations. He said with much frankness that one great disadvantage of the University of —————— had always been the dis- position of the regents to meddle in the internal management, especially in personal matters, such as appointments, promotions and salaries; and he received assurance that the initiative in these matters should rest with himself. At a third great institution where the power of control came to be vested in a single person, it was announced that the trustee had paid “a high compliment to President —----——— by giving him absolute power over the management of the educational affairs of the University.” At a fourth institution the candidate selected by the board of trustees dictated his own terms in accepting the office of president of a college and it was announced that “the board of trustees has accepted the principles proposed by ———————— and all direction of the faculty will proceed from him.” At another time a university president took summary action in regard to several members of the faculty, and when “the persons con- cerned ” asked the reason for the action they received the reply from the president, “I have no reasons to give. It is my pleasure.” It is pos- sible that the distinguished president was only unconsciously reflecting his morning lesson from Kipling, Now these are the laws of the Jungle, And many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law And the haunch and the hump is—Obey. The privilege of overriding legislation of the faculty is claimed by the president of at least one great university. Somewhat recently when the name of a student who was a candidate for a degree in arts was presented to the faculty, the head of one department reported that the candidate had not completed all the work prescribed by the faculty as necessary before obtaining the degree. The president refused to allow the faculty to vote on the case and later stated in the press, over his own signature, “that the president of the university has the authority and privilege of submitting to the trustees a recommendation for any degree without consulting any faculty or any member of a faculty.” These illustrations could be multiplied almost indefinitely. They seem to furnish some ground for the observation of a college professor that “the college presidency is a despotism untempered by assassi- nation.” THE N#ZT JOLLEGE PRESIDENT 275 That the college president “is bearing up well” under these mani- fold duties and responsibilities and that unlike his brother politician in the state he does not “ view the present situation with alarm” there is abundant evidence on every side to prove. He has in the first place written two or three books on the subject—that the number is so limited is in itself perhaps indicative of the insignificant part the whole subject takes in his mind. A more extended source of information is found in the memoirs of college presidents who have taken the nublic into their confidence. Occasionally the college president has written an anonymous magazine article; in one of these he has enlarged on the perplexities of his position, which he likens to those of a stage-coach driver compelled to prod one lazy horse into doing his share of the work while at the same time trying to prevent another spirited one from kicking over the traces. The near-professor was a near-instructor at the time he read this particular article, but he still vividly recalls the strong desire he felt to urge the college president to give up stage-coach driving for a living and get another job. But the college president, unlike the college professor, seldom finds it necessary or wishes to conceal his identity. Educational reviews, educational associations, the inaugurations of brother presidents, and public educational functions of every description give him abundant opportunity to express his opinions in regard to the present distribution of powers between president and faculty and to give his general ap- proval of the principle “it’s heads I win and tails you lose.” At a somewhat recent inauguration of a university president, the previous incumbent of the position gave an address on “'The University Presidency.” In this he states that “the president must mark out his official course for himself and bear the responsibility of it without cavil. He can not expect that the work he has to do will make everybody happy. It will discomfit many. In one way or another they will give him all the trouble they can.” Thisstatement seems so absolutely final as to make it unnecessary to add further illustrations, many though there be at command. But extreme as this statement of a former university president must seem to all who take an active interest in the organization of our educa- tional system, much as these extreme statements are in themselves to be deprecated, irritating and exasperating as must seem the official relationships between college president and college faculty in view of this apparently prevailing conception of the college presidency as held by the college president, it must, after all, never be forgotten, even by those who suffer from the system, that the college president of to-day is the victim of the very virtues of his official predecessors. An over- conscientious desire to do all that he should has often led him to under- take more than he can accomplish; a real desire to save his colleagues 276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY from undue burdens has led him to assume tasks that his colleagues needed to perform for the sake of their own educational growth; a belief in his own divine right to rule—a belief born of his ecclesiastical an- cestry—has carried with it the corresponding belief in the right of others to be ruled; a conviction that if it is his duty “to break in” an unruly team, it is the duty of the team to be broken in; all of these and still other inherited and accumulated beliefs explain the origin of con- ditions that in the great majority of colleges to-day result in probably more or less friction between the president of the college and the faculty. If there is little friction evident, it is because of strong personal attach- ment between the president and the members of the faculty individually —there is occasional lack of friction in spite of the system, not be- cause of it. But explanations, however reasonable and satisfactory they may be, do not alter the fact that the college president has not only freely expressed his opinion in regard to his own place in the educational system, but he has also on occasions shown why the present arrange- ment has been foreordained to perpetuity. The first reason alleged for the continuance of the present system of external legislation and autocratic administration is that college faculties are unable to do business. “It goes without saying, and prop- erly and without adverse criticism, that the temper of mind which turns a man to the higher forms of scholarship and to investigation and research is not the temper which fits him for executive work,” is the statement of a former university president, but it was made before the election of President Wilson. Another president finds that “a faculty is made up chiefly of specialists, for the most part untrained in the business of administration and without special responsibility for the college and the larger relationships.” Still a third finds “that a faculty that governs itself in an extreme degree is likely to be extremely con- servative; it is likely to perpetuate traditions; it is likely not to be in touch with progressive thought,” though the danger to be anticipated from faculty government is, in the opinion of a fourth, “its radical tendencies.” This difference in point of view may, however, be ex- plained by the geographical location of the two institutions whose presidents have given these judgments—one is east and one is west. And yet another emphatic, unqualified statement is made that “the very worst form of government for college or university is that of a faculty.” This very insistence on the inability of the corporate faculty thereby tends to make a faculty incompetent. That a man quickly becomes what he is thought to be has been learned in nearly every other field but that of normal education. Even those who deal with criminals are learning that the quickest way to make a man guilty of crime is to believe him capable of committing a crime, that trust and confidence THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 277 win a wavering man to the side of law and order while suspicion and distrust send him to the side of lawlessness and crime. But no hope seems to be held out for the college faculty—it ever hears from the plat- form and through the press that it is incapable of doing business and the discouraging feature of the situation is that the American college faculty is coming to believe it. It is also asserted that the college professor does not wish to take a larger part than he now has in the direction of educational policy. “I have heard a good deal about the growing impatience at the ‘amount of business detail forced on the faculty because of this faculty form of government” is the statement made by a university president. “By far the greatest number in every faculty neither desire to assume admin- istrative burdens nor are extraordinarily competent for such tasks” is the opinion of another president. Even so eminent a man as ex-President Eliot has shown much solicitude on this point when he says: Most American professors of good quality would regard the imposition of duties concerning the selection of professors and other teachers, the election of the president and the annual arrangement of the budget of the institution as a serious reduction in the attractiveness of the scholar’s life and the professional career. The near-professor from the safe retreat of his desk in the middle west ventures to ask by what authority ex-President Eliot presumes to speak for the American college professor, why he assumes that the election of a college president, once in say forty years, should be a more serious reduction in the attractiveness of the scholar’s life than is a vote every four years for the electors of the federal president, why the cooperative annual arrangement of the budget of an institution should be a greater infringement on the professional career than is the unaided preparation of the domestic budget with a limited salary and a growing family, why the implication is made that it is only professors of bad quality who grasp at things so far beyond their reach as the selection of professors and other teachers, and why indeed a representative of Puritan New England could imagine that even a college professor would falter in his duty if that duty led him for a brief period from the attractiveness of the scholar’s life into the more arduous paths heretofore trodden alone by the college president. Another reason assigned is the infirmities of temper charged up to the college professor. One president complains: Truly the academic animal is a strange beast. If he can not have some- thing at which he can growl and snarl, he will growl and snarl at nothing at all. Another reports that he has to deal with men “not altogether ripe for translation.” It is a member of a board of trustees who arraigns the entire faculty over which he and his fellow trustees exercise jurisdiction with the seven deadly sins of “jealousy,” “bickerings,” “professional 278 THE POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY incompetency,” “demoralization,” “discourtesy,” “lack of discipline,” and “laziness”—if this term properly translates the statements that “no original work worthy of note has been done by the members of the faculty,” and that “the professors are practically unknown to the litera- ture of their respective subjects, even after long years of identification with their respective departments of instruction.” Truly the members of university faculties may set forth not only the private tables of uni- versity presidents, but also the extension dining tables of boards of trustees. The near-professor recalled that he had once read the story of a conversation between Browning and a Jewish friend in which the latter had sought an explanation for the repugnance often inspired by some of his race and found it, he thought, in the difference in appearance and manner between the Jews and the Christians of a certain class. Brown- ing replied: Naturally their characteristics would become more intensified through long exclusion from other groups of men; their manners would be unlike those of others with whom they were not allowed to mix. No wonder if, hedged in as they were, those peculiarities took offensive shapes. Does not every development, to become normal, require space? Why, our very foot, if you restrict it and hedge it in, throws out a corn in self-defense! Still another reason assigned is that it is not the business of the faculty. “The business of university faculties is teaching. It is not legislation and it is not administration,” is the emphatic statement of one president. “ The special office of the faculty is to teach,” states a second president. “The duties of a professor are investigation and instruction,” adds a third. No statement seems to be so generally endorsed by college presidents as that “it is the business of teachers to teach.” It is altogether probable that college professors would agree that their chief, if not their only, raison détre is teaching, if the term teach- ing is made elastic enough to cover the time and opportunity needed to pursue knowledge. For how can the blind lead the blind, how can we make bricks without straw, are the ever iterated and re-iterated cries of those weighed down with the burdens of daily teaching, of those who have no opportunity themselves of drinking at the Pierian spring, yet must hold the cup to the lips of others. “Our function in the educa- tional system is indeed teaching,” they may well say, “but we must our- selves seek and find knowledge if we are to pass it on to others.” But who shall define the limits of teaching, or prescribe the bound- aries of the educational field, or determine the nature of those questions that are “ purely professional,” or set now on this side and then on that the subjects that concern special departments and those that concern education in general? ‘Teaching and new buildings, teaching and im- proved equipment, teaching and additional instructors, teaching and ve THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 279 academic freedom, teaching and pensions, are all questions of Siamese twinship. Who shall separate teaching from any other part of the edu- cational body without thereby taking from it the breath of life? It must be evident that the present method of collegiate organiza- tion has not only produced friction, for among all the colleges and uni- versities located between Maine and California and between Florida and Washington the number can be counted on the fingers of one hand where there is no friction of an aggravated character either between the board of trustees and the president, or between the president and the faculty, but that it has also resulted in serious incongruities of condi- tions and of relationships. Some of these incongruities are connected with the office of the presi- dent. They result from attempting to fit the round peg into the square hole and they would be amusing did they not so vitally concern our entire educational system. If a successful business man is elected the president of a college, he may inaugurate a campaign of efficiency in order to determine “just how much work each member of the educa- tional staff is doing in the matter of instruction, what he is producing in connection with his chosen line of specialization and—in short—to determine his value to the institution as compared with that of his colleagues.” If a person without even the first college degree is called to a college presidency, he may be solemnly asked in the first interview granted the representatives of the press to enunciate his views in regard to the graduate school. If a clergyman is transplanted from a city or a country parish to the presidency of a great university, he may at once begin planning for new schools of civil and mining engineering. If an eminent physician is invited to become a college president he may imme- diately promulgate fantastic schemes for strengthening the college by the introduction of a plan to promote friendly rivalry among the professors. It is safe to say that if positions were reversed the incongruities would be apparent to all. No professor of mathematics would be called to the pastorate of a city church, no head of a department of modern languages would ipso facto be deemed qualified for the headship of a theological seminary, no professor of English could without special medical training receive a license to practise medicine, no professor of chemistry would be considered a qualified lawyer. One of the most unfortunate features of the official relationship between president and faculty is that if a member of the faculty raises a question in regard to a matter of college policy it is regarded as an unjustifiable interference on his part. His question may seem to him altogether devoid of harm—he may ask in regard to the probable site of a new building, the nature of the campus hedge that is to be set out, or whether the city fathers have ordered the campus drinking water 280 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY boiled, but in any case he is probably warned that the shoemaker should stick to his last. It is also unfortunately true that any criticism of the policy of the administration is often resented as “a personal attack on the president.” A member of the faculty may question the wisdom of admitting stu- dents poorly prepared, or of retaining students whose ill health makes it difficult for them to do their college work, or of dismissing students who have presented a petition stating what they believe to be grievances, but all such questions are too often interpreted as “attacks on the president.” In one institution where autocratic rule has been carried to an intol- erable degree, one of the professors at one time suggested some improve- ments that might be made in the institution. He was quickly removed and no protest was made by his colleagues either collectively or indi- vidually because they were too timid to do so or because they were too much hampered by the meager salaries paid to feel justified in running the risk of removal. But in spite of apparent acquiescence in the action of the president, one by one the members of a small group were dropped on the suspicion of being sympathizers with the erring professor be- cause known to be his personal friends. They were afterwards pursued by a relentless persecution that for years prevented any of the number from securing positions in the educational field for which their ability and professional qualifications fitted them. At the time of friction between a president and members of the faculty due to the unexplained demand made for the resignation of several of its members, the professors involved sent to the board of trustees a respectful petition asking for a full and open investigation of their work. This petition was characterized by the board as “rank insubordination,” since a by-law of the university provided that all communications from the faculty should come to the board through the hands of the president. “The communication should be treated with just the respect it deserves,” said a member of the board of trustees in a public meeting. “It is an insult to the board and to the President; it is rank discourtesy, and for one, I do not propose to stand it. I move the letter be sent to the writer.” “And the board concurred,” is the comment of the press, “smashing the right of petition at one very large and full swoop.” The policy of concealment that prevails makes it difficult for the public to know what the situation really is. The public knows that more than one university professor has been dismissed, or his resigna- tion has been demanded “ for the good of the institution,” and it draws the conclusion that these are examples of martyrdom in the cause of academic freedom of speech. In a few instances such has been the case, but in other instances, men have been relieved of their positions because they have been incompetent to fill them. Such men have sometimes THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 281 chosen to assume that they were dismissed for holding opinions at variance with those of the administration, but those who have been familiar with the situation have wondered less that these professors were dismissed from their positions than that were ever appointed to them. To president and faculty alike lack of frankness and freedom of expres- sion brings needlessly harsh and often unmerited criticism. What wonder if members of college faculties, on their part, sometimes feel that they are employees, hired by the year, with a time-card, and with a “boss” to enforce discipline; that they are clerks in a depart- ment store with the floorwalker ever present to keep them at their tasks ; that they are horses in stalls conveyed by railway train to some distant point unknown to them; that they are tagged and pigeonholed in the desk of the president; that they are parts of a machine, irresponsible for the results of its work. Yet they never forget that it is also true that at rare intervals great educational leaders have arisen who by natural ability and educational training have seemed ideally qualified for the headship of great educational institutions. And it has been unfortunately true that these leaders have led where there have been few to follow. Trustees, faculty, alumni and undergraduates accus- tomed to the old order have feared to break with the past and have turned back again when the path has narrowed and clouds have obscured the heights. The inorganic nature of the college and the lack of relationship among its different parts is well illustrated in the typical college campus. This is crowded with buildings representing every period of architecture known and not infrequently having buildings that utterly refuse to be classified ; every variety of building material has been used in their construction; when several buildings have been erected of the same material, as of brick, the incongruities are needlessly multiplied by the use of pressed brick, tapestry brick, cream brick, and every other variety and color known to the builder; when one form of brick has been somewhat consistently used, the trimmings of granite, of white marble, or of red sandstone, or of brown sandstone, add the seemingly inevitable note of discord. Even single buildings illustrate the same spirit. One college received the gift of a physics laboratory and the building was planned by the president and a local mechanic without any consultation with the professor of physics. In another university the president secured the funds for a new library building and this he felt gave him the right to decide on the plans for it and also to select its location on the campus; incidentally, the site selected was next to the athletic field. In another college, the planning of a large lecture hall to be occupied jointly by several departments was turned over to” a young architect who had never planned an educational building of any sort. Without consultation with any of the departments con- cerned, the plans were drawn up, the building was erected, and the 282 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY members of the faculty moved in. That some rooms were to be used. for classes in mathematics and others for work in modern languages and still others for English had apparently in no way affected the plans. Nor are these conditions necessarily due to differences in the periods at which college buildings have been erected—they prevail on more than one campus where the greater number of buildings have been erected in | a single generation during the incumbency of a single president. Nor are they always due to the selection of different architects—in more than one instance a single architect has planned the greater number of the buildings of a college campus, yet he has been the chief of sinners in including among the buildings he has planned those that range in style from the classical period through the gothic, romanesque and renais- sance to a Queen Anne house, a French chateau, or a feudal castle for the president. The Architectural Record has recently published a series of articles by Montgomery Schuyler on the architecture of American colleges and more than one of the articles has emphasized the lack of harmony and the absence of a consistent plan in the buildings of a college campus. The author writes of one college: Seemingly, there has been enough money spent on buildings to execute suck a scheme (of unity and variety) handsomely and impressively. The actual result is simply deplorable in the crudity of the parts and the absence of anything that can be decently called a whole. ... There is not a trace of a general plan. The disposition of the buildings in relation to one another is as higgledy-piggledy as the design of each considered by itself. The architecture of college buildings and the planning of a college campus may not seem to come within the range of a discussion of the next college president, but in fact nothing else in the domain of educa- tion seems to illustrate so well and so vividly the incongruities of the educational system itself. What the college is in brick and mortar, that the college is in its organization and in its educational plan. He who runs may read the incongruities of the college campus, but he who loiters has perceived but dimly, if at all, the intellectual incongruities reflected through it. In view of these conditions who shall be the next college president? A former university president at the recent inauguration of one of his successors enumerates some twenty qualifications that should be found in the man who fills the office, although he states that “the qualities which enter into the making of an ideal college president are very widely distributed and never can be found represented in a great many men.” The members of a college faculty are ready to accept this statement of the difficulty of finding the ideal college president. But unlike members of boards of trustees they are concerning themselves not with candidates for the position of president, but with the organization of THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 283 the presidency. And first of all it seems clear to one who “can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of twenty to follow his own teaching” that the first plain duty is to recognize the existence of the situation and then frankly meet it. A recent inquiry instituted among three hundred professors of science in this country seems to indicate that in the opinion of eighty- five per cent. of these the present conditions are intolerable. This opinion may be entirely wrong, but it behooves even the college presi- dent either to disprove it or to accept it. Since he is to-day, by the very nature of his position, an administrative officer and business manager, rather than an investigator, it seems improbable that he will be inclined to undertake such investigation as would give a larger basis for gen- eralization than that already carried on by a college professor. Until such time, therefore, as the college president can broaden the basis of generalization already provided for him by a college professor he should accept the conclusions drawn and adapt his course to them. This investigation seems to show that what many college professors to-day desire is not more administrative work, but greater legislative power. Time is now frittered away by college faculties in administra- tion that ought to be done by the administrative officer ; college faculties wish less rather than more of these responsibilities. But many college professors do believe that every question of legislation that concerns the educational work of the college no matter how remotely or how indi- rectly should be acted upon by themselves, that they should have repre- sentation on the boards of control, and most of all that they should be educationally enfranchised to the extent of choosing their own presi- dent. They would probably at the outset agree with Dr. Patton that “the qualities which enter into the making of an ideal college president are very widely distributed,” and that “it is their assemblage and their blending in the charm of an engaging personality that creats diffi- culties and also makes the selection of a college president a weary search.” Recognizing the weariness of the search, they would abandon it at the outset and concentrate their efforts on the consideration of what should be the organization, powers and duties of the presidency. What many college professors also desire is greater community of interest and of action with each other and with their official head. Col- lege presidents are wont to boast of the infrequency of the faculty meet- ings in their own institutions and they seem to believe that one measure of their official success is their ability to dispense wholly or in part with such meetings. Yet what is needed for the good of the cause is not fewer but many more faculty meetings. College professors are tempted, under present conditions, to confine themselves exclusively to their own line of work; they do not make connections with the work of other departments, or seek out relationships between different branches of knowledge, or see things as a whole. The college professor has in large 284 THE POPULAR SOIENCE MONTHLY measure been made what he is by the conditions in which he has been placed and he has lacked the courage to insist on having these conditions changed. But many men are conscious of the present, though not inevitable, limitations of vision, and they would most gladly welcome an opportunity to exchange opinions and experiences with others of the guild. Faculty meetings that should be genuine discussions of the large educational questions of the day would lengthen the range of vision of the college professor, perhaps even that of the college presi- dent; they would deepen and broaden his educational foundations ; they would make him more sympathetic with the difficulties of his colleagues and more tolerant of opinions that differ from his own. “ How can I hate a man I know?” asked the gentle Elia, and his own implied answer would be that given by the vast majority of college professors could friendly relationships be established among them. The great national learned societies whose annual meetings are a source of profit and in- spiration to all who attend them show that college professors, given freedom of action, can conduct large meetings with decorum, and with- out bickerings and petty jealousies. Can it not be assumed that these same men in their own college faculties, were the opportunity offered them, could and would discuss large educational questions in the same tolerant, inquiring spirit? Is not the spirit of the seeker after truth the same both at home and abroad, and should not his own college receive the benefit of this spirit? Many men are heard year after year at the sessions of these learned societies whose voices have never been heard in their own colleges outside of their own class-rooms. Is not the college the loser, whether the college be interpreted as meaning board of trustees, president, faculty, students or alumni? Members of college faculties want at least the opportunity of taking a more active part in the smaller as well as in the larger affairs of the college. Probably nearly every member of a college faculty belongs to a club that has rooms or a building of its own, and he finds there, hung in a conspicuous place, a “book of suggestions” wherein he is not only invited but even urged to enter any ideas he may have for the improve- ment of the club. He goes to the public library and he finds a box of slips whereon he may record the title and author of any book he thinks it advisable to add to the library. He works for a summer in the British Museum and one of the first books he sees is a portly volume in which he may register inquiries or make reports of conditions to be changed, and to all inquiries he speedily finds an answer recorded in the same volume, together with the thanks of the administration for calling attention to matters to be remedied. He dines on a railway train, and at the bottom of the menu card he finds an invitation to report to the officer named any lack of attention on the part of the waiters. He goes to a great railway restaurant and he finds there a request to report at the desk any complaint in regard to food or service. THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 285 In more than one line of public business he sees evidences of a friendly desire for cooperation between business managements and the general public. It is probable that few persons, even few college professors, avail themselves of these privileges or heed these invitations and even urgent entreaties. Yet the very fact that such opportunities are given the public is at once a safeguard to the organization making them in that it forestalls carping criticism, and at the same time it affords an outlet to the ill humors that would otherwise poison the minds of even reason- able men. The situation is precisely the same as that involved in the resumption of specie payments, as long as men can not get a dollar in gold for every dollar of paper money they hold, they will continue to demand gold; when every paper dollar can be redeemed in gold at its face value, men prefer the more convenient paper bills to the gold coin. But no “book of suggestions” now hangs in the office of a college president, no slips calling for ideas are circulated by boards of trustees among college faculties, no invitations to report leaks, screws loose, or balky window shades are sent out by managers of college buildings, no notice is posted in any college building asking college professors to register complaints of the failure of other college employees to have the lantern ready at the hour appointed for the lecture or to set up on time a piece of apparatus necessary for an important experiment. Then, too, the college professor would like to have the next college president not only listen to his suggestions, but even go so far as to occasionally ask him for opinions! As it is, the college president when he first meets his faculty and in his public inaugural address states his own conception of the function of a college and outlines what his policy is to be in connection with the particular institution over which he has been called on to preside. It is not on record that he has ever asked the members of the faculty what their opinions are on these questions. He may not be an alumnus of the college or have ever served on its faculty, yet election to the presidency of an institution with which he has no personal connection and with whose history he can have been but imper- fectly acquainted is assumed to endow him with omniscience and his utterances are received as those of a prophet. The college professor would sometimes like to play the role of prophet! The near-professor passed a pleasant hour as he reorganized the office of the college presidency, and then he turned to his Quentin Durward and to the conversation between the Scot and the Bohemian who boasted of his liberty. “But you are subject to instant execution, at the pleasure of the Judge.’’ ‘«Be it so,’’ returned the Bohemian; ‘‘I can but die so much the sooner.’’ ‘And to imprisonment also,’’ said the Scot; ‘‘and where, then, is your boasted freedom?’’ ‘*TIn my thoughts,’’ said the Bohemian, ‘‘ which no chains can bind.’’ 286 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY THE MATTER OF COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS By PRESIDENT FRANK L. McVEY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA pe the past several years a marked change has taken place in the atti- - tude of colleges and universities toward the matter of entrance requirements. An examination of catalogues, articles and discussions, shows clearly the swinging of opinion from the former college view to the high school way of regarding the question. It is, moreover, now generally conceded that the relationship existing between the college and the secondary school is a part of the whole system of education and not a specific relation between two of the factors of that system. The growth in the high-school attendance and the emphasis upon the im- portance of it as a factor have been brought about by a clearer recog- nition of the high school in its relation to public education. Perhaps the most fundamental point in all of this discussion is the fact that the secondary period in the school-boy’s life is far more favor- able than his college years to the free exploration of the boy.t Self- realization has come to be a motive that has reached down into the high- school period, and it has been found, in the opinion of able directors of secondary education, that restricted preparatory courses prescribed by colleges do not afford the experience needed in the high school. It is further stated that individual pupils can not know at the beginning of the high-school course that they can go to college four years later on. Moreover, it has been shown that the specification of subject matter for the four years of the high school tends to materially hamper rather than help in the direction of secondary education. The confusion in the re- quirements of different colleges east and west makes it impossible for the ordinary high school to meet the demands of all of them. The result is that those who have observed the boys and girls working in the high schools of the country have come to the conclusion that there is a wide discrepancy between preparation for life and preparation for college as defined in the ordinary entrance requirements. For these reasons and many others it has come to be felt that the high school should serve as an open door through which may pass the boys and girls looking for a larger education. The placing of the emphasis upon citizenship and the efficiency of the individual seems to point conclusively to a larger freedom on the part of the high schools and their management to meet the specific needs 1Abraham Flexner, ‘‘The American College,’’ p. 223. YNOM£ »o 4 ct P| Be +} si COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS 287 of the group of young people who come to their doors. The recognition of the mechanic arts, household science and agriculture, together with the attempt to reflect the major industries of the community, have brought the vocational idea in conflict with the traditional one of cul- ture. A middle ground seems to be the saner position to take, since it is possible, and ought to be possible, for young people to secure a blend- ing of liberal and vocational training at the same time, and through this combination education can receive the proper emphasis upon its social significance. The combination of the two makes possible a closer re- lationship of the work which the boy is doing to the welfare of society. Consequently, it appears to many educators that the requirement of four years of work in any particular subject as a condition of admission to the college or university is illogical and unhappy as a part of the educational machinery. Yet, on the other hand, it is distinctly under- stood that the attempt on the part of the high school to reach out and enrich its curriculum does not, and must not, mean the teaching of too many subjects to the same students at the same time. The report of the Committee on the Articulation of High Schools and Colleges to the Secondary Department of the National Education Association in 1911 presented not only the various considerations that may be advanced regarding the function and field of education in the high school, but endeavored to define the meaning of a well-planned high-school course, and why it should be adopted as the basis of college admission. It is accepted without argument that fifteen units should be required for admission to the college or university, and that the specific subjects that should be offered may be summarized as three units of English, two units of one foreign language, two units of mathe- matics, one unit of social science (including history), and one unit of natural science. This makes nine units, and to these should be added two more units, so as to enlarge the requirements to at least two majors of three units each, leaving four units to be used as best meets the needs of the individual. The suggestions of the committee have been more than accepted by the action of the University of Chicago in the new entrance require- ments adopted by the faculties of that institution.? Accepting as fun- damental the requirement of fifteen units, the University of Chicago requirements place the first emphasis upon English and the demand for three units of that subject. The departure from the idea of the committee, and for that matter from the general plan adopted by most universities of the country, is in the option granted to the student in the choice of subjects for the remaining units. Seven units must be selected from five groups in the proportion of three in one and two in 7*“Changes in Entrance Requirements at the University of Chicago,’’ by C. R. Mann, Educational Review, September, 1911. 288 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY another. These groups are ancient language, modern foreign language, history or social science and science. The remaining five units may be selected from any subjects offered by the high school for graduation, but no student is to be admitted to the university on less than the fifteen units required for entrance. Under the plan that has been outlined by the University of Chicago, it is possible for the student to enter the university without mathe- matics, or, if he takes another combination under the second provision of the plan, to present his credits without languages, either ancient or modern; or, he may enter with modern languages, mathematics or his- tory, and without ancient languages or science. This statement of the plan, however, does not complete it by any means, since the university adds two additional features, one relating to the observation and con- trol of students, and the other to the continuance of certain lines of work. There has been established a grading system, which automat- ically eliminates the student who falls below grade, while the university maintains a statistical comparison of school and college records, so as to follow up the work of the high-school student, not only after he has entered college, but to bring the comparison with his record as a high- school student. To this a third feature is added, namely, a conference of high-school men. Having entered college, the student must pursue one of the subjects followed in the high school, and by the end of the second year must have completed two years in history and economics, two years of mathematics and science, and be able to read a foreign language; and if he comes up for a degree he must have spent three years of work in one department and two in another. You have under this plan a systematic attempt to coordinate the work of the high school and the college through the entire course of both. An examination of the table of admission units required in the lib- eral arts colleges of state universities, shown below, indicates a stricter adherence to type and quite a marked tendency toward a hardening of lines in the establishment of certain prescribed studies for entrance to the colleges of state universities. Under ordinary circumstances one would expect a closer coordination between the state universities and the secondary schools than in the instance of the privately endowed schools and the high school. The explanation for the advanced stand of the University of Chicago is to be found partially in the fact that her officers have studied the school situation more carefully perhaps than have those of other institutions, and partially in the fact of her location in a city well endowed with high schools. In most of the states the universities are compelled to hold to the general conditions existing in those states, rather than follow the lines of development in the older and better established communities. Consequently, while the state uni- versities attempt certain vocational subjects, the practise in this direc- COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS 289 tion is by no means so extended as it is in the case of the University of Chicago. The average entrance requirements of the state universities are three units of English, one of science, one of history, and two and a half of mathematics. These correspond rather closely to the provisions set forth by the committee of the National Education Association, but that committee adds additional academic units in order to make a sec- ond major of three units. The vocational subjects permitted by the state universities amount on the average to two units, leaving the re- maining units to be selected from foreign languages, mathematics, civics and history. The University of Minnesota has gone farther than any other state university in the larger freedom of election given in the prescribed English requirements. Two units of mathematics are de- manded, and four units of English, while vocational subjects may make up the remaining number of units, if desired. Universities like Ari- zona, Kansas, California, Cornell, Georgia, Iowa and others do not accept vocational subjects for entrance requirements. Most of the state universities have a system of courses based upon’ prescribed and free electives, prescribed limited electives and free elect- ives, or upon the group system. The question of majors is left to take care of itself in most instances, the idea being that if the student is forced to take certain prescribed subjects, he will follow them up in his choice of electives. A study of the situation, however, shows that in the majority of instances where no majors are required the student scatters his free electives over a large number of subjects. Entrance to state universities is based upon the idea of the need of general knowl- edge and certain requirements for specific courses. That is, for the purpose of pursuing the social sciences, the student in the high school should have had elementary mathematics, foreign language and the be- ginnings of civics. This is merely an example of the point of view, and in support of this position it may be said that the student’s preparation is materially limited from the college side if he enters upon his fresh- man year without some elementary training in science or mathematics. The movement to carry down into the high school the elementary work in these subjects is materially retarded, and the colleges are forced to establish courses of study in beginning languages and mathematics. Whether this is a calamity or not remains to be seen. The old Scotch university way of looking at it permitted any boy who thought he had in him the ability to carry on higher studies to go up to the university. No restriction was placed upon his entrance. The searching power of examinations was relied upon to determine his ability to maintain a standard sufficient for the granting of a degree. If, however, there can be aroused in the secondary period of the student’s education a larger appreciation of his relation to society, some understanding of the forces VoL. LXXXIII.—20. 290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY of nature, and some fundamental principles instilled relative to citizen- ship, with at least some glimmer of what it means to study, the colleges and universities have all that can be expected or hoped for. TABLE SHOWING ADMISSION UNITS REQUIRED IN LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES OF STATE UNIVERSITIES Note.—Compiled from Catalogues, 1911, in the President’s Office, University of North Dakota. Any table of this kind can not be complete and fully accurate. Its purpose is served if it shows the situation. as aS) Namesof | 3° Universites gs Lom!