Skip to main content

Full text of "The Open court"

See other formats 


ITbe  Q^cn  Court 

A  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE 

Dcvoteb  to  tbe  Science  of  IReltaion,  tbe  IReligion  of  Science,  an&  tbc 
Bitension  of  tbe  IReligious  parliament  iroea 

Editor:  Dr.  Paul  Carus.  A'isocittte^ .  j  E.  C.  Hegeler. 

Assistant  Editor:  T.  J.  McCormack.  ^ssoctaies.  ^  ^^^^  Carus. 


VOL.  XVI.  (no.  12)        December,  1902.  NO.  559 

CONTENTS: 

Frontispiece.     Rudolf  Virchow. 

John  Wesley  Powell.     A  Biography.     I.   Boyhood  and  Youth.    Mrs.  M.  D. 

Lincoln  (Bessie  Beech),  Washington,  D.  C 705 

Major  Powell,  the  Chief.     Editor .' 716 

Mithraism  and  the  Religions  of  the  Empire.     Illustrated.     Professor  Franz 

CuMONT,  Ghent,  Belgium 717 

Sketch  of  the  History  of  Thermometry.    Illustrated.    (Continued.)    Dr.  Ernst 

Mach,  University  of  Vienna 733 

Rudolf  Virchow.     A  Biographical  Sketch.     Thomas  J.  McCormack  .     .     .  745 

The  New  Encyclopcedia  of  the  Bible.     Nature-Worship  in  Religion      .     .     .  748 

Secrecy  in  Religion.     Capt.  C.  Pfoundes 753 

Filial  Piety  in  China.     Illustrated.     Editor 754 

The  Supposed  Poem  of  Robert  Burns.     Mrs.  E.  A.  Montague 764 

Some  Factors  in  the  Rising  of  the  Negro.     A  Negro's  View  of  the  Question. 

Joseph  Jeffrey 764 

Book  Reviews 767 

.    CHICAGO 

Ube  <S)pen  Court  Ipubliebing  Compani^ 

LONDON  :  Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Triibner  &  Co.,  Ltd. 
Per  copy,  10  cento  (sixpence).    Yearly,  $1.00  (in  the  U.  P.  U.,  58.  6d.). 

Copyright,  1902,  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.  Entered  at  the  Chicago  Post  Office  as  Second-Class  Matter 


New  Books  on  the  Old  Testament 


BABEL  AND  BIBLE. 

A  Lecture  on  the  Significance  of  Assyriological  Research  for  Religion 
Twice  Delivered  Before  the  German  Emperor.  By  Dr.  Friedrich 
Delitzsch,  Professor  of  Assyriology  in  the  University  of  Berlin.  Trans- 
lated from  the  German  by  Thomas  J.  McCormack.  Profusely  illus- 
trated from  the  best  sources  on  Assyriology.  Fifty-nine  half-tone  and 
photo-zinc  engravings  depicting  every  phase  of  Assyrio-Babylonian 
life  and  art.     Pp.  66.     Price,  boards,  50  cents  net  (2s.  6d.  net). 

This  lecture  is  by  one  of  the  foremost  Assyriologists  and  theologians  of  the  world.  It 
gives  in  brief  compass  the  history  of  Babylon  and  its  civilisation  and  portrays  the  immense 
influence  it  exerted  on  all  early  antiquity,  and  especially  on  the  religious  conceptions  of  the 
Jews  and  hence  on  us  their  spiritual  descendants  This  lecture  aroused  much  discussion  in 
Germany,  and  is  creating  no  little  comment  in  its  present  English  translation. 


THE  CREATION-STORY  OF  GENESIS  I. 

A  Sumerian  Theogony  and  Cosmogony.  By  Dr.  Hugo  Radau.  Pages, 
70,  vi.     Price,  boards,  75  cents  net  (3s.  6d.  net). 

This  work  is  an  exhaustive  and  erudite  investigation,  on  the  ground  of  Sumerian  sources 
accessible  only  to  a  few  scholars,  of  the  creation-story  of  the  Bible,  which  is  proved,  in  part, 
to  be  the  redaction  of  a  Sumerian  theogony  and  cosmogony.  The  booklet  offers  something 
entirely  new  in  this  direction  and  sheds  a  new  and  unexpected  light  on  the  most  discussed 
chapter  of  the  Bible. 

BIBLICAL  LOVE-DITTIES. 

A  Critical  Interpretation,  and  Translation,  of  the  Song  of  Solomon.  By 
Paul  Haupt,  Professor  in  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  Baltimore. 
Price,  paper  pamphlet,  5  cents  (3d.). 

The  great  Biblical  scholar  of  Johns  Hopkins  University  here  offers  a  new  translation 
and  interpretation  of  the  famous  Song  of  Solomon.  He  says  :  "  The  late  Professor  Franz 
Delitzsch,  of  Leipzig,  one  of  the  foremost  Biblical  scholars  of  the  nineteenth  century  and 
one  of  the  most  devout  Christians  I  ever  met  in  my  life,  stated  in  the  introduction  to  his 
commentary  on  the  Song  of  Solomon,  that  this  Book  was  the  most  difiBcult  book  in  the  Old 
Testament,  but  the  meaning  becomes  perfectly  plain,  in  fact  too  plain,  as  soon  as  we  know 
that  it  is  not  an  allegorical  dramatic  poem  but  a  collection  of  popular  love-ditties  which  must 
be  interpreted  on  the  basis  of  the  erotic  imagery  in  the  Talmud  and  modem  Palestinian  and 
other  Mohammedan  poetry." 


The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company 

324  DEARBORN  STREET..  CHICAGO 
London:  KEQAN  PAUL,  TRENCH,  TRUBNER  &  CO.,  Ltd. 


RUDOLF   \IRCHOW. 


(1821-1902.) 


Frontisf-ifCf  to  I'ht  0/>fn  Court. 


The  Open  Court 


A  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE 


Devoted  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  the  Religion  of  Science,  and 
the  Extension  of  the  Religious  Parliament  Idea. 


VOL.  XVI.  (NO.  12.)  DECEMBER,  1902.  NO.  559 

Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co.,  1902. 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL. 

BY  MRS.    M.    D.    LINCOLN   (BESSIE  BEECH.) 
I.   BOYHOOD  AND  YOUTH. 

JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL  was  born  of  English  parents  at 
Mount  Morris,  New  York,  on  the  24th  of  March,  1834.  His 
father,  Joseph  Powell,  while  in  England,  had  been  a  preacher  of 
the  Wesleyan  Church,  and  after  reaching  America  he  continued  to 
preach.  A  diligent  reader,  a  terse  speaker,  a  sound  thinker ;  honest, 
precise,  and  devout,  the  stern  morality  which  he  taught  in  the 
pulpit  was  exemplified  in  all  his  social  relations  and  particularly  in 
the  government  of  his  household.  The  severity  of  the  father's  dis- 
cipline was,  however,  softened  by  the  gentle  influence  of  the 
mother.  Remarkable  alike  for  her  womanly  graces  and  rare  gifts 
of  mind,  she  shone  like  an  angel  of  light  in  the  home,  planning  a 
thousand  pleasures  for  her  children  and  judiciously  managing  her 
domestic  affairs  while  her  husband  itinerated  through  the  country 
on  his  ministerial  labors. 

Even  as  a  child  young  Powell  evinced  his  investigating  ten- 
dencies. He  instinctively  gathered  every  curious  shell  and  pebble 
within  his  reach,  and  read  a  lesson  in  every  leaf  and  flower.  Yet, 
judging  from  the  interest  he  took  in  his  Biblical  studies,  it  would 
have  been  more  reasonable  to  predict  for  him  future  eminence  as 
an  ecclesiastic  than  the  brilliant  «.areer  as  a  scientist  upon  which 
he  was  destined  to  enter.  He  early  committed  to  memory  the 
entire  Gospels  of  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John,  much  to  the 
delight  of  his  father.  When  he  was  about  seven  years  of  age,  the 
family  moved  from  Mount  Morris  to  Jackson,  Ohio.  At  this  time 
the  Anti-Slavery  agitation  was  extending  over  the  country,  and  in 
it  the  father  took  an  active  part.    Associated  with  him  in  this  work 


7o6  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

were  Doctor  Isham,  Mr.  Montgomery,  and  Mr.  Crookham,  resi- 
dents of  the  same  place.  He  was  also  on  intimate  terms  with  other 
men  identified  with  the  movement  throughout  the  State,  and  the 
boy  frequently  saw  Professors  Finney  and  Williams,  then  of  Ober- 
lin  College,  Salmon  P.  Chase,  afterwards  Chief  Justice  of  the 
United  States,  Joshua  R.  Giddings,  and  other  distinguished  aboli- 
tionists. To  the  people  of  southern  Ohio,  many  of  whom  had  orig- 
inally emigrated  from  \'irginia  and  other  slave  States,  anti  slavery 
sentiments  were  extremely  obnoxious.  For  several  years  an  ag- 
gressive agitation  was  kept  up;  meetings  were  held  in  various  por- 
tions of  the  State,  and  pamphlets  in  the  interest  of  the  cause  were 
published  and  distributed.  At  one  time  U'eslefs  Thoughts  on  S/a- 
very  were  issued  in  pamphlet  form  and  widely  circulated  by  a  coterie 
of  men  living  in  Jackson.  This  publication  led  to  a  great  uproar 
in  the  town,  and  four  of  the  leading  agitators  were  mobbed,  and 
soon  afterwards  one  of  the  professors  of  Oberlin  College  was  as- 
saulted on  the  street  while  on  his  way  to  the  Powell  residence. 
These  years  constituted  a  very  exciting  epoch  in  the  boy's  life.  He 
was  now  old  enough  to  appreciate  the  character  of  his  father's 
course,  and  keenly  felt  the  terrorism  in  which  the  family  was  con- 
stantly held. 

But  these  circumstances  led  to  events  which  profoundly  influ- 
enced his  subsequent  life.  A  short  distance  from  Jackson,  on  a 
large  farm,  lived  Mr.  Crookham,  a  man  of  some  means.  He  had 
a  grown  family,  in  which  were  several  sons  who  took  charge  of  the 
farm  and  relieved  their  father  of  the  cares  of  business.  He  was 
now  an  old  man,  and  reputed  to  be  a  great  scholar.  To  John  he 
seemed  a  man  of  miraculous  wisdom.  He  had  built  for  himself 
two  large  log-houses,  connected  by  a  shed.  In  one  he  had  his 
library,  museum,  and  laboratory;  the  other  was  arranged  as  a 
school-house,  and  in  this  he  taught  gratuitously  such  young  men 
as  desired  instruction. 

As  the  son  of  an  abolitionist  it  was  at  one  period  difficult  for 
John  to  attend  the  village  school.  The  boys  considered  that  he 
had  no  rights  which  they  were  bound  to  respect,  and  his  mother 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  not  safe  for  him  to  go  to  the 
school  any  longer.  About  this  time  Mr.  Crookham  came  to  see  his 
father  and  mother,  and  the  kind  old  gentleman  proposed  that  John 
should  come  and  study  with  him  in  his  log  school-house.  The  lad 
was  shy  and  embarrassed,  and  it  was  quite  a  while  before  Mr.  Crook- 
ham, although  a  constant  visitor  in  the  family  for  several  years, 
could  overcome  his  timidity.     At  last,  addressing  Mr.  Powell,  he 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL.  707 

said;  "Great  Britain,^  I  will  take  the  boy  and  make  a  scholar  of 
him."  To  this  the  father  consented,  and  that  day  completed  the 
arrangements  for  his  guardianship  of  the  lad  until  the  excitement 
should  subside. 

There  were  but  three  or  four  other  pupils  and  their  attendance 
was  rather  irregular;  all  but  John  were  grown  men.  Mr.  Crook- 
ham  devoted  himself  largely  to  his  own  studies,  especially  those  in 
natural  history.  With  him  there  were  no  "set"  lessons;  he  gave 
his  pupils  books  to  read  and  occasionally  talked  with  them  and 
asked  them  questions. 

Within  a  few  months,  matters  became  quiet  in  the  village  and 
John  returned  to  the  common  school,  but  Mr.  Crookham  took  great 
pains  to  direct  his  reading.  He  brought  him  Hume's  History  of 
England  and  other  historical  works  and  talked  with  him  on  the  sub- 
jects of  which  they  treated.  While  giving  him  no  books  in  natural 
history,  he  made  him  quite  familiar  with  a  few  plants,  insects,  and 
birds,  and  also  with  some  minerals,  and  by  frequent  conversations 
upon  these  various  subjects,  interested  him  in  the  characteristics 
of  plants  and  animals,  and  the  properties  of  minerals,  and  at  the 
same  time  taught  him  many  of  the  elementary  facts  of  chemistry. 

Mr.  Crookham,  who  was  a  large-framed,  corpulent  man,  often 
asked  John  to  read  to  him,  but  such  readings  were  usually  inter- 
rupted by  his  own  explanations  and  by  general  conversations,  which 
so  thoroughly  illuminated  the  subject  in  hand  that  the  boy,  in  his 
youthful  imagination,  came  to  regard  his  tutor  as  a  giant  of  learn- 
ing and  benevolence.  Sometimes  he  took  John  into  the  woods, 
where  every  step  seemed  to  suggest  something  of  interest.  He 
would  sit  down  on  a  rock,  stump,  or  log  and  describe  to  his  pupil 
what  he  had  found.  Naturally,  as  the  youth  grew  into  manhood, 
he  looked  back  with  great  pleasure  to  those  days,  also  with  wonder 
that  a  man  so  absorbed  in  his  books  should  have  taken  such  in- 
terest in  a  boy  so  young.  The  old  gentleman's  warm  friendship 
for  the  parents  was  not  the  only  influence  which  stimulated  this 
devotion.  He  saw  in  his  prot^g^  that  genius  which  the  father 
failed  to  discover,  and  watched  its  development  with  affectionate 
anxiety. 

John's  father  and  mother  were  Methodists;  Mr.  Crookham 
was  a  Calvinist.  For  hours  the  boy  would  listen  to  their  conversa- 
tions on  religious  subjects,  and  in  this  way  acquired  a  good  many 
ideas, — rather  large  ones,  too,  for  one  of  his  age, — on  a  variety  of 
theological  questions.     He  came  to  understand  that  his   mother 

IMr.  Crookham  always  called  John's  father  "Great  Britain." 


7o8  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

was  not  so  entirely  orthodox  as  his  father  ;  her  opinions  were  per- 
haps shghtly  tinted  with  Swedenborgian  mysticism.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  her  theology  seemed  to  his  boyish  perceptions  a  great  deal 
better  than  that  of  his  father  or  Mr.  Crookham.  When  the  two 
were  discussing  their  relative  opinions,  it  was  John's  habit  to  wait 
for  and  expect  his  mother's  final  exposition  of  the  subject.  He 
thoroughly  believed  that  she  knew  exactly  the  truth,  and  he  used 
to  wonder  why  the  men  argued  over  these  matters  so  long,  and 
why  they  did  not  at  the  outset  ask  his  mother  to  explain  to  them 
just  what  was  right. 

One  day  the  old  Calvinist  came  puffing  up  the  steps  of  neigh- 
bor Powell's  house,  walked  through  the  sitting-room,  and  sitting 
down  in  the  kitchen  where  John's  mother  was  busy,  asked  for 
"Great  Britain."  He  was  evidently  greatly  agitated,  and  after  a 
time  explained  that  some  rowdies  had  burned  his  school-house, 
library,  and  cabinet,  and  that  all  was  lost.  He  seemed  not  to  care 
so  greatly  on  his  own  account,  but  to  mourn  chiefly  because  the 
means  with  which  to  teach  his  "youngsters"  had  been  destroyed. 
After  that  he  came  more  frequently  to  his  father's  house,  and  if  pos- 
sible took  more  minute  direction  of  the  boy's  studies.  Although  by 
reason  of  the  latter's  extreme  youth,  it  was  scarcely  to  be  expected 
that  he  should  have  made  great  advance  in  natural  history,  yet  the 
two  or  three  years  thus  spent  under  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Crookham 
were  of  real  importance  in  giving  to  his  thoughts  that  inclination 
which  carried  him  eventually  and  permanently  into  the  profession 
of  science  and  of  letters. 

During  these  years,  it  had  been  the  father's  ambition  to  place 
his  family  in  such  a  position  that  they  could  live  comfortably,  and 
to  devote  himself  exclusively  to  the  ministry.  Finally,  when  John 
was  twelve  years  old,  Mr.  Powell  moved  further  west,  making  the 
journey  across  northern  Indiana,  through  Chicago,  to  Walworth 
County,  Wisconsin.  This  was  accomplished  with  an  emigrant 
wagon  loaded  with  household  goods,  and  two  carriages,  one  of  the 
latter  being  driven  by  John.  His  father  had  previously  bought 
some  land,  but  upon  reaching  it  decided  not  to  settle  on  it,  but  to 
purchase  a  partly  improved  farm.  The  next  summer  he  com- 
menced preaching  regularly,  leaving  the  Methodist  Church,  how- 
ever, and  joining  the  Wesleyan,  on  account  of  his  anti-slavery  sen- 
timents. He  knew  nothing  about  farming,  did  not  work  on  the 
farm,  and  took  no  part  in  its  management.  All  this  devolved  upon 
John,  and,  aided  by  two  or  three  farm   employees,  the  schoolboy 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL.  709 

became  a  farmer,  with  all  the  responsibilities  of  the  position,  heavy 
indeed  for  a  lad  of  his  years. 

The  farm  was  in  burr-oak  woods,  and  but  a  small  tract  was 
cultivated  the  first  year.  During  the  second  winter  a  large  area 
was  cleared  and  fenced,  and  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  about 
sixty  acres  of  land  were  brought  under  cultivation.  John  worked 
continuously  summer  and  winter :  clearing  the  land,  sodding, 
ditching,  ploughing,  planting,  building,  adding  an  annex  to  the 
house  and  making  the  barn  larger,  constituted  only  a  small  part  of 
the  work  planned  or  executed.  He  labored  through  the  long  days 
and  studied  far  into  the  night,  eagerly  perusing  all  the  books  he 
could  procure. 

Following  the  plough  did  not  suit  him.  While  he  turned  the 
soil,  his  thoughts  were  far  away  amid  the  rocks  and  woods  of  his 
old  home,  where  Mr.  Crookham  first  opened  the  volume  of  Nature 
to  his  wondering  eyes.  Yet  he  toiled  faithfully.  His  home  was 
fifty  miles  from  what  was  then  called  Southport  (now  Kenosha), 
and  sixty  miles  from  Racine,  and  these  places  were  the  markets 
of  the  country.  In  the  late  fall  and  early  winter  months  his  time 
was  usually  occupied  in  hauling  wheat  to  one  or  the  other  of  these 
towns.  With  the  money  obtained  from  the  sale  of  grain  he  had  to 
make  the  purchases  for  the  family, — groceries,  clothing,  lumber, 
and  such  other  things  as  were  needed  on  the  farm.  It  was  a  five 
or  six  days'  journey,  and  from  twelve  to  fifteen  trips  were  made 
each  year.  Those  were  the  pioneer  days  of  our  country,  when 
oxen  drew  the  plough  and  hauled  the  produce  of  the  farms  to  mar- 
ket. Southern  Wisconsin  was  at  that  time  a  great  wheat-producing 
region,  and  all  farmers  in  the  country  were  on  the  road  during  the 
fall  and  winter.  He  did  not  then  realise  how  perilous  was  the 
promiscuous  company  of  travellers  in  his  goings  to  and  from  the 
market  towns  in  these  years  of  his  life.  He  was  associated  with 
hardy,  jovial,  and  often  very  hilarious  frontiersmen,  and  there  were 
temptations  on  the  road  and  in  the  city  to  which  a  country  boy 
might  have  readily  yielded.  But  there  were  circumstances  which 
protected  him  from  the  bad  influences  by  which  he  was  surrounded. 
He  had  a  sense  of  great  responsibility,  especially  so  because  the 
family  purse  was  in  his  custody.  His  father  and  mother  so  com- 
pletely trusted  him  that  they  never  asked  him  to  account  for  his 
transactions. 

In  one  of  the  earlier  years  of  his  pioneer  life,  he  fell  in  com- 
pany with  one  William  Wheeler,  several  years  his  senior,  who  took 
great  interest  in  him,  and  whom  the  boy,  recognising  as  a  supe- 


JIO  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

rior,  soon  came  to  regard  with  sincere  esteem  and  affection.  Mr. 
Wheeler  said  nothing  about  morality,  but  his  general  conduct  and 
noble  example  were  such  as  to  make  a  deep  impression  on  the  lad. 
He  was  far  superior  in  education  to  his  young  companion, — had  at 
one  time  been  in  college  and  now  occupied  himself  very  much  in 
reading,  letting  his  team  follow  the  others  while  he  poured  over 
some  entertaining  volume.  John  was  quick  to  follow  his  example. 
His  wagon-box  became  a  receptacle  for  books,  and  while  his  read- 
ing was  desultory,  it  was  nevertheless  valuable.  Histories  and 
biographies  pleased  him  the  most.  On  these  trips  he  re-read 
Hume's  History  of  England,  Gibbon's  Rome,  a  history  of  the 
United  States,  and  finally  Dick's  philosophy  and  some  works  in 
Mental  Philosophy.  He  never  read  a  work  of  fiction  or  a  volume 
of  poetry,  although  his  mother  had  frequently  urged  him  to  read 
Milton.  Now  he  became  interested  in  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress, 
and  no  matter  what  other  books  he  selected  for  companions  on 
these  long  journeys,  that  one  was  sure  to  be  found  in  his  wagon- 
box,  for  he  could  read  it  when  he  was  tired  of  all  others.  He 
never,  by  the  way,  considered  Bunyan  a  work  of  fiction. 

In  the  winter  of  1850,  when  he  was  sixteen  years  old,  his  dis- 
content with  farm  work  impelled  him  to  leave  home,  and  he  went 
to  Janesville,  determined  to  attend  school.  Janesville  was  about 
twenty  miles  distant,  and  he  walked  the  first  day  to  a  farmhouse 
within  about  two  miles  of  the  town.  He  had  but  a  few  cents  in 
his  pocket,  and  stopping  at  the  farmhouse  to  stay  over  night,  he 
asked  for  work.  The  farmer  engaged  him  for  two  weeks,  and  at 
the  end  of  that  time,  with  six  dollars  in  his  pocket,  John  proceeded 
to  Janesville  and  visited  the  school.  He  returned  to  the  outskirts 
of  the  town  and  made  arrangements  with  a  farmer  to  work  nights 
and  mornings  for  his  board,  stipulating  that  he  should  have  his 
time  during  school  hours  for  study. 

The  family  lived  in  a  log  house.  John's  business  was  to  feed 
and  water  the  cattle  and  sheep,  and  to  care  for  them  generally  ; 
and,  at  night,  after  his  work  was  done  in  the  farmyard,  he  sat  by 
the  chimney  side  rocking  the  cradle  and  studying  his  books  by  the 
fire  light  as  best  he  could.  The  next  year  Joseph  Powell  sold  the 
farm  at  South  Grove  and  moved  to  another  on  Bonus  Prairie,  in 
Boone  county,  Illinois. 

In  the  fall  of  1852,  when  John  was  eighteen,  it  was  decided  by 
his  mother  that  he  should  commence  his  school  life.  The  first  thing 
to  be  done  was  to  earn  the  necessary  money.  Early  in  the  month 
of  October  he  put  the  farm  in  as  good  shape  as  possible  and  turned 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL.  71  I 

it  over  to  his  younger  brother,  W.  B.  Powell,  and  commenced 
studying  at  home.  For  six  weeks  his  school  was  in  the  garret, 
where  he  remained  almost  day  and  night,  studying  grammar,  arith 
metic,  and  geography.  He  then  set  out  for  the  southern  part  of 
Wisconsin,  about  thirty  miles  distant,  and  had  no  difficulty  in  se- 
curing engagement  as  a  teacher.  The  school  engaged,  the  next 
task  was  to  procure  the  necessary  certificate  of  proficiency.  One 
day  in  the  latter  part  of  November  he  went  to  the  township  super- 
intendent to  be  examined.  A  feeling  of  dread  possessed  him  lest 
he  should  fail  on  examination. 

As  he  approached  the  Superintendent's  house  a  fierce  wind 
blew  the  snow  in  his  face.  All  aglow  with  the  excitement  of  a  walk 
of  twenty  miles  in  a  sharp  gale,  he  knocked  at  the  door.  The  lady 
of  the  house,  with  a  cheerful  reassuring  voice,  invited  him  in,  but 
he  had  to  wait  two  or  three  hours  for  the  return  of  the  Superinten- 
dent. At  last  he  came,  and  insisted  that  John,  now  the  dignified 
School-Master,  Mr.  Powell,  should  stay  all  night.  As  the  family 
sat  together  at  the  supper  table,  the  Superintendent  conversed 
with  the  young,  man  about  the  school  he  was  to  teach,  and  about 
various  subjects  that  would  engage  his  attention,  in  so  kind  and 
skilful  a  way,  that  during  the  evening  he  drew  out  such  knowledge 
as  his  visitor  possessed  without  giving  him  an  idea  that  he  was 
passing  the  dreaded  ordeal.  Just  before  going  to  bed,  and  greatly 
to  the  surprise  of  his  visitor,  he  filled  out  a  certificate,  signed  it 
and  handed  it  to  the  young  man.  The  superintendent  was  a  man 
of  fine  culture;  his  advice  was  always  good,  and  during  the  winter 
he  gave  the  young  teacher  much  valuable  aid. 

The  school  over  which  Powell  was  to  preside  was  on  the  north 
side  of  Jefferson  Prairie,  and  a  little  stone  school-house  was  his 
first  college.  At  least  half  of  his  pupils  were  older  than  himself, 
and  several  of  them  were  quite  as  far  advanced  in  their  studies. 
This  compelled  him  to  work  very  hard,  and  certainly  no  pupil  in 
the  school  made  such  progress  as  did  he.  He  provided  himself 
with  several  school  arithmetics  and  worked  through  them  all.  He 
studied  elementary  algebra,  and  took  the  class  about  half  as  far  as 
he  went  himself.  He  read  three  or  four  grammars,  and  made  de- 
cided progress  in  geography,  and  on  this  subject  gave  a  lecture 
one  night  in  the  week  to  the  most  advanced  pupils.  The  other 
young  people  of  the  neighborhood,  as  well  as  pupils  from  adjoining 
towns,  came  to  these  lectures.  For  this  work  Powell  prepared  him- 
self by  systematic  study  and  vigorous  consultation  of  books  of  ref- 


712  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

erence  ;  he  also   made  excellent   use  of  his   limited  knowledge  of 
history,  weaving  it  deftly  into  his  account  of  tlie  lands  of  the  world. 

By  contract  the  teacher  was  to  "board  around,"  but  one  of  the 
trustees,  Mr.  Little,  took  Mr.  Powell  to  his  home  and  insisted  that 
he  should  stay  the  greater  part  of  his  time  with  him.  His  wife  had 
been  a  New  England  school-teaclier,  and  she  had  what  seemed  to 
the  young  man  a  marvellous  library.  She  took  great  interest  in  his 
geographic  work  and  always  kept  him  supplied  with  abundant  ma- 
terial from  which  to  prepare  his  lectures,  and  he  always  gave  her 
an  outline  of  his  discourse  before  delivering  it  in  public. 

In  the  following  summer  (1853)  he  worked  on  a  farm  at  Bonus 
Prairie.  In  the  meantime  his  father  became  interested  in  the  found- 
ing of  a  school  at  Wheaton,  Illinois,  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Wesleyan  Methodists.  Near  the  village  he  bought  a  small  tract 
of  land  of  forty  acres,  on  which  stood  a  little  farmhouse.  He  had 
also  bought  five  acres  of  land  close  by  the  new  building  erected  for 
college  purpose,  and  was  himself  one  of  the  trustees  of  the  college. 
Early  in  the  fall  John's  mother  and  sister  journeyed  with  him  from 
Bonus  Prairie  to  Wheaton.  On  reaching  that  place  he  had  the 
little  frame  moved  from  the  forty-acre  lot  to  the  five-acre  lot  near 
the  village,  a  distance  of  about  half  a  mile,  and  with  the  help  of 
two  or  three  men  it  was  soon  fitted  up  in  comfortable  style  for  the 
winter.  Here  John  studied  and  taught  until  summer,  when  he 
returned  to  the  farm. 

Early  in  the  fall  of  1854  he  went  south  to  Macon  County,  and 
taught  a  County  school,  and  the  following  spring  went  into  busi- 
ness with  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Davis,  who  had  married  his  eldest 
sister.  A  nursery  and  stock  farm,  the  latter  for  sheep,  was  the 
business  venture  in  which  he  engaged,  hoping  that  at  the  end  of 
two  or  three  years  he  would  make  sufficient  money  to  enable  him 
to  take  a  college  course. 

When  the  news  of  his  undertaking  reached  his  father,  and 
with  it  the  alarming  statement  that  John  had  run  into  debt,  he 
wrote  his  son  a  very  bitter  letter,  saying  that  he  considered  the 
debts  which  he  had  assumed  to  be  dishonorable  and  that  his  course 
in  the  matter  was  not  a  whit  better  than  highway  robbery.  His 
mother  also  wrote  advising  him  to  withdraw  from  the  business, 
although  she  treated  the  matter  with  leniency.  The  combined  op- 
position of  his  parents  made  him  relinquish  the  enterprise,  and  he 
then  fully  determined  never  to  commence  again  until  he  had  com- 
pleted a  course  of  study.  Accordingly  he  went  to  Decatur  and 
rented  a  little  house  with  a  single  room,  which  had  previously  been 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL.  713 

used  as  a  shoe-shop.  In  this  humble  tenement  he  boarded  him- 
self, purchasing  bread,  milk,  and  such  other  things  as  did  not  need 
cooking;  and  occasionally  his  sister,  who  lived  in  the  country, 
would  send  him  a  joint  of  meat  ready  for  the  table,  or  would  in 
other  ways  add  to  his  little  store. 

On  going  to  Wheaton,  he  expected  that  the  school  would 
furnish  all  the  educational  facilities  needed,  but  as  it  was  just  or- 
ganised he  soon  found  himself  in  advance  of  any  of  its  classes.  He 
then  formed  the  resolution  of  studying  by  himself.  The  persevering 
and  indomitable  student  may  not  have  judiciously  selected  his 
studies;  but  his  work  in  algebra,  geometry,  and  trigonometry  was 
successful  and  satisfactory.  His  studies  in  mental  and  moral  phi- 
losophy and  his  general  reading  in  history  were  less  profitable, 
perhaps;  but  his  progress  in  Latin  compensated  for  the  deficiency. 

During  the  winter  of  1856  he  taught  school  in  Clinton,  De 
Witt  County,  Illinois,  and  received  sixty  dollars  per  month.  At 
the  little  stone  school-house  he  had  received  fourteen  dollars  per 
month,  and  in  the  school  near  Decatur,  thirty  dollars  per  month, 
and  his  increased  salary  of  sixty  dollars  per  month  seemed  to  him 
a  large  amount.  The  next  year  he  attended  classes  in  Jackson- 
ville College,  Illinois,  studying  Latin  and  Greek,  reviewing  trig- 
onometry and  attending  lectures  in  chemistry. 

His  father  had  always  desired  that  his  son  should  go  to  Ober- 
lin,  and  at  last  in  deference  to  that  strongly  expressed  wish,  he 
entered  Oberlin  College  in  1857.  Being  far  advanced  in  the  scien- 
tific branches  of  study,  he  now  devoted  himself  chiefly  to  Greek 
and  Latin,  studying  botany  also  during  the  spring  term.  There 
was  no  winter  school  at  Oberlin  at  that  time,  as  the  faculty  be- 
lieved the  interests  of  the  pupils  were  subserved  by  a  vacation 
which  would  enable  them  to  teach  during  the  winter  months.  Con- 
sequently Mr.  Powell  returned  to  Wheaton,  entered  school  there, 
and  remained  a  year.  During  all  this  time  his  studies  had  been 
irregular,  but  he  was  in  a  position  where  he  could  graduate  in  any 
western  college  by  a  few  months'  application. 

For  several  years  he  had  given  all  his  attention  to  botany  and 
zoology.  He  had  an  herbarium  of  many  thousand  plants,  and  a 
large  collection  of  lacustrine  river  and  land  shells,  and  quite  a  large 
cabinet  of  the  reptiles  found  in  Illinois,  Iowa,  and  Michigan.  One 
spring  day  he  went  through  the  village  of  Wheaton  with  a  basket 
containing  some  glass  fruit-cans,  to  be  used  as  specimen  jars,  on 
his  way  to  the  woods  for  the  purpose  of  collecting  snakes.  As  he 
passed  a  group  of  men  they  asked  him  where  he  was  going.      His 


714  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

reply  was  that  he  needed  another  rattlesnake  in  his  collection.  As 
it  happened  he  found  a  rattlesnake  that  day,  and  on  his  return 
through  the  village  at  night,  with  the  live  reptile  in  a  glass  jar,  he 
chanced  to  meet  the  same  gentlemen  with  whom  he  had  been  talk- 
ing in  the  morning.  This  mere  accident  led  to  a  curious  and  rather 
fabulous  story,  to  the  effect  that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  homes 
of  all  the  animals,  knew  their  habits,  and  could  at  any  time  find 
any  animal  he  desired.  This  reputation  clung  to  him  for  years; 
the  incident  got  into  the  country  papers  and  was  repeated  until  the 
story  became  greatly  exaggerated.  When  last  repeated,  the  young 
naturalist  learned  for  the  first  time  that  he  had  appropriated  the 
upper  story  of  his  father's  house  for  a  museum,  and  had  it  full  of 
all  sorts  of  reptiles  ;  and  that  he  could  go  to  the  woods  and  fields 
any  day  and  find  any  reptile,  mammal,  or  bird  that  pleased  his 
fancy,  and  that  he  lived  in  a  house  full  of  them  and  was  constantly 
employed  in  studying  their  habits.  To  be  sure  he  had  a  large  col- 
lection, and  was  very  familiar  with  it  ;  but  the  story  was  much 
larger  than  the  collection. 

About  this  time  he  was  probably  more  interested  in  mollusks 
than  in  any  other  department  of  natural  history.  He  had  a  very 
large  collection  made  by  himself  from  the  Great  Lakes,  the  small 
interior  lakes  of  Wisconsin  and  Illinois,  the  Mississippi  River,  and 
from  most  of  the  rivers  of  Iowa,  Illinois,  Missouri,  Indiana,  and 
Kentucky,  besides  a  good  representation  of  the  land  shells  of  all 
that  region  of  country.  His  greatest  difficulty  was  in  obtaining 
books  to  enable  him  to  identify  species.  There  were  many  speci- 
mens which  he  was  never  able  properly  to  identify,  but  he  gave 
them  names  according  to  the  locality  where  they  were  collected, 
and  from  the  characteristics  of  the  shells.  He  had  collected  some 
fossils,  also,  and  had  studied  minerals  sufficiently  to  become  famil- 
iar with  the  use  of  the  blow-pipe. 

During  the  summer  of  this  year  he  continued  his  travels,  espe- 
cially along  the  Ohio  River  and  across  to  the  lakes,  and  then 
through  Michigan.  In  the  fall  he  went  to  the  Iron  Mountain  re- 
gion, south  of  St.  Louis,  Missouri,  for  the  purpose  of  collecting 
minerals.  He  found  the  country  so  interesting  that  he  continued 
his  stay  in  the  field  until  he  barely  had  the  funds  necessary  to  take 
him  to  St.  Louis,  where  he  hoped  to  earn  enough  to  pay  his  ex- 
penses home.  Not  finding  work  at  once,  he  pawned  his  watch  and 
went  to  Decatur  where  he  had  previously  lived.  Later  he  engaged 
to  teach  at  Hennepin,  Illinois,  and  continued  teaching  for  six 
months,  receiving  one  hundred  dollars  per  month. 


JOHN  WESLEY  POWELL.  ^  715 

It  was  his  intention  at  the  time  to  earn  a  sum  of  money  suffi- 
cient to  enable  him  to  study  in  some  Eastern  college  one  or  two 
years  and  graduate,  but  when  the  spring  time  came  the  old  fasci- 
nation for  natural  history  studies  predominated,  and  he  made  geol- 
ogy a  specialty. 

The  town  of  Hennepin  standing  on  a  bluff  of  the  Illinois  River, 
was  of  itself  a  study.  The  underlying  country  for  miles  around 
was  a  deep  accumulation  of  drift-like  material.  A  great  valley  or 
basin  had  been  filled  and  the  carboniferous  rocks  which  came  near 
the  surface  were  here  marked  to  the  depth  of  about  two  hundred 
feet.  During  the  winter  Powell  became  greatly  interested  in  this 
body  of  drift  material  and  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  the  coun- 
try, and  early  in  the  spring  he  commenced  a  more  thorough  ex- 
amination of  it  and  the  adjacent  county  of  La  Salle.  He  devoted 
several  weeks  to  this  work,  and  then  extended  his  examination 
farther  and  farther  away,  up  and  down  the  valley  of  the  Illinois, 
and  finally  through  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi  and  along  the  Des 
Moines  River  in  Iowa  and  thence  into  southern  Wisconsin. 

His  geological  studies  interested  him  deeply,  and  he  continued 
out  late  in  the  fall.  On  returning  to  Hennepin  he  decided  to  teach 
again  and  postpone  for  another  year  his  trip  to  the  East.  During 
these  scientific  trips  he  had  formed  the  acquaintance  of  many 
scholars  interested  in  natural  history  and  geology,  and  was  elected 
Secretary  of  the  Illinois  Natural  History  Society.  In  this  capacity, 
and  through  the  kindness  of  many  devoted  friends,  he  was  enabled 
to  journey,  by  rail  or  boat,  for  several  years,  without  expense;  and 
being  a  good  walker,  his  expenses  as  a  travelling  student  were 
always  trivial.  He  could  sleep  at  night  on  the  ground  under  a 
tree  with  impunity,  for  he  had  perfect  health  and  was  an  athlete. 

Thus  young  Powell's  student  days  were  not  all  passed  in  the 
school-room,  though  he  had  diligently  applied  himself  to  study 
under  the  direction  of  various  teachers.  Much  of  his  study  was 
made  privately,  as  he  was  impelled  by  a  desire  to  acquire  material 
for  successful  instruction.  The  teacher  thus  became  the  more 
careful  student.  To  a  large  extent  his  school-room  was  in  the  for- 
est and  the  field,  on  the  prairie  and  the  mountain,  and  along  the 
river  bank  and  the  lake  shore;  for  he  early  became  a  student  of 
nature,  and  studied  in  the  solitudes  of  nature. 

[to  be  continued.] 


MAJOR  POWELL,  THE  CHIEF. 

liV    IHE   EDITOR. 

MAJOR  John  Wesley  Powell  received  honoris  causa  the  doctor's 
degree  of  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  which  is  a  rare  dis- 
tinction ranging  high  above  the  title  of  doctor  that  is  conferred  to 
applicants  on  the  ground  of  a  thesis  and  a  due  examination  called 
the  riirororum.  The  doctor's  degree  honoris  causa  is  given  only  to 
men  of  extraordinary  merit  when  they  have  acquired  sufficient  fame 
no  longer  to  be  in  need  of  titles.  The  philosophical  faculty  of  Hei- 
delberg so  correctly  and  pointedly  stated  the  reason  for  conferring 
the  honorary  degree  of  doctor  upon  Major  Powell,  that  we  here 
reproduce  an  English  translation  of  that  portion  of  his  diploma.  It 
reads  as  follows  : 

"  We,  the  Senior  Dean  and  other  professors  of  the  Faculty  of  Philosophy  in 
the  Karl  Rupert  University,  duly  certify  by  this  diploma  bearing  our  seal  that  we 
have  conferred  the  rights  and  privileges  of  a  doctor  of  philosophy,  honoris  causa, 
upon  that  most  learned  and  distinguished  man,  John  W.  Powell,  of  Illinois,  hereto- 
fore chief  of  the  public  institution  of  ethnography,  now  of  geology,  in  the  United 
States  of  America,  who,  laboriously  and  wisely  studying  and  measuring  the  vast 
and  spacious  regions  of  his  own  country  with  others,  has  scientifically  observed 
and  expounded  the  structure,  form,  and  origin  of  the  earth  ;  and  who  has  so  asso- 
ciated with  himself  and  brought  together  into  one  institution  a  great  number  of 
the  most  distinguished  geologists  of  his  country  that  they  have  materially  advanced 
or  solved,  not  less  wonderfully  than  speedily,  very  difficult  and  profound  questions 
in  mineralogy,  petrography,  geology,  and  paleontology;  they  have  studied  under  his 
auspices  as  chief,  thereby  causing  these  things  not  only  to  be  most  skilfully  brought 
together  in  various  works,  but  also  to  be  communicated  with  the  greatest  liberality 
to  all  students  of  these  subjects  in  Europe." 

Major  Powell  was  not  only  a  scientist  but  also  a  chief;  he  was 
an  organiser,  and  it  is  his  spirit  even  to-day  .Tfter  he  has  passed 
away  that  pervades  the  institutions  which  with  him  and  partly 
through  him  were  called  into  existence.  Yet  while  he  was  a  born 
leader,  he  was  never  domineering  but  always  amiable  and  consider- 
ate. He  appeared  to  the  younger  generation  that  grew  up  under 
the  influence  of  his  powerful  personality,  not  as  their  teacher  or 
master,  but  their  senior  friend,  and  they  in  their  turn  learned  to 
look  up  to  him  with  love  and  confidence  as  to  a  father  or  elder 
brother. 


MITHRAISM   AND    THE    RELIGIONS   OF  THE 

EMPIRE.' 

BY  PROFESSOR  FRANZ  CUMONT. 

THE  Acts  of  the  Oriental  martyrs  bear  eloquent  testimony  to 
the  intolerance  of  the  national  clergy  of  the  Persia  of  the  Sas- 
sanids  ;  and  the  Magi  of  the  ancient  empire,  if  they  were  not  per- 
secutors, at  least  constituted  an  exclusive  caste,  and  possibly  even 
a  privileged  race.  The  priests  of  Mithra  afford  no  evidence  of 
having  assumed  a  like  attitude.  Like  the  Judaism  of  Alexandria, 
Mazdaism  had  been  softened  in  Asia  Minor  by  the  Hellenic  civili- 
sation. Transported  into  a  strange  world,  it  was  compelled  to  ac- 
commodate itself  to  the  usages  and  ideas  there  prevailing  ;  and  the 
favor  with  which  it  was  received  encouraged  it  to  persevere  in  its 
policy  of  conciliation.  The  Iranian  gods  who  accompanied  Mithra 
in  his  peregrinations  were  worshipped  in  the  Occident  under  Greek 
and  Latin  names;  the  Avestan y a za/as  assumed  there  the  guise  of 
the  immortals  enthroned  on  Olympus,  and  these  facts  are  in  them- 
selves sufficient  to  prove  that  far  from  exhibiting  hostility  toward 
the  ancient  Graeco-Roman  beliefs,  the  Asiatic  religion  sought  to 
accommodate  itself  to  them,  in  appearance  at  least.  A  pious  mystic 
could,  without  renouncing  his  faith,  dedicate  a  votive  inscription 
to  the  Capitolian  triad, — Jupiter,  Juno,  and  Minerva;  he  merely 
invested  these  divine  names  with  a  different  meaning  from  their 
ordinary  acceptation.  If  the  injunction  to  refrain  from  participating 
in  other  Mysteries,  which  is  said  to  have  been  imposed  upon  Mith- 
raic  initiates,  was  ever  obeyed  it  was  not  long  able  to  withstand  the 
syncretic  tendencies  of  imperial  paganism.  For  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury the  "Fathers  of  the  Fathers"  were  found  performing  the 
highest  offices  of  the  priesthood,  in  temples  of  all  sorts. 

Everywhere  the  sect  knew  how  to   adapt  itself  with  consum- 

1  Extracted  by  the  author  from  his    Textes  et  Monuinents  figuris  relatt/s  aux  Mystires  de 
Mithra  (Brussels:  H.  Lamertin).     Translated  by  T.  J.  McCormack. 


7l8  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

mate  skill  to  the  environment  in  which  it  lived.  In  the  valley  of 
the  Danube  it  exercised  on  the  indigenous  cult  an  influence  that 
presupposes  a  prolonged  contact  between  them.  In  the  region  of 
the  Rhine,  the  Celtic  divinities  were  honored  in  the  crypts  of  the 
Persian  god,  or  at  least  in  conjunction  with  them.  Thus,  the  Maz- 
dean  theology,  according  to  the  country  in  which  it  llourished,  was 
colored  with  variable  tints,  the  precise  gradations  of  which  it  is  now 
impossible  for  us  to  follow.  But  these  dogmatic  shadings  merely 
diversified  the  subordinate  details  of  the  religion,  and  never  im- 
perilled its  fundamental  unity.  There  is  not  the  slightest  evidence 
that  these  deviations  of  a  flexible  doctrine  provoked  heresies.  The 
concessions  which  it  made  were  matters  of  pure  form.  In  reality, 
Mithraism  having  arrived  in  the  Occident  in  its  full  maturity,  and 
even  showing  signs  of  decrepitude,  no  longer  assimilated  the  ele- 
ments that  it  borrowed  from  the  surrounding  life.  The  only  in- 
fluences that  profoundly  modified  its  character  were  those  to  which 
it  was  subjected  in  its  youth  amidst  the  populations  of  Asia. 

The  close  relations  in  which  Mithra  stood  to  certain  gods  of 
this  country  is  not  only  explained  by  the  natural  affinity  which 
united  all  Oriental  immigrants  in  opposition  to  the  paganism  of 
Greece  and  Rome.  The  ancient  religious  hostility  of  the  Egyptians 
and  Persians  persisted  even  in  Rome  under  the  emperors,  and  the 
Iranian  Mysteries  appear  to  have  been  separated  from  those  of  Isis 
by  secret  rivalry  if  not  by  open  opposition.  On  the  other  hand, 
they  associated  readily  with  the  Syrian  cults  that  had  emigrated 
with  them  from  Asia  and  Europe.  Their  doctrines,  thoroughly  im- 
bued with  Chaldaean  theories,  must  have  presented  a  striking  re- 
semblance to  that  of  the  Semitic  religions.  Jupiter  Dolichenus, 
who  was  worshipped  simultaneously  with  Mithra  in  Commagene, 
the  land  of  his  origin,  and  who  like  the  latter  remained  a  preemi- 
nently military  divinity,  is  found  by  his  side  in  all  the  countries  of 
the  Occident.  At  Carnuntum  in  Pannonia,  a  mithraeum  and  a 
dolichenidm  adjoined  each  other.  Baal,  the  lord  of  the  heavens,  was 
readily  identified  with  Ormadz,  who  had  become  Jupiter-Calus, 
and  Mithra  was  easily  likened  to  the  solar  god  of  the  Syrians.  Even 
the  rites  of  the  two  liturgies  appear  to  have  offered  some  resem- 
blances. 

As  in  Commagene,  so  also  in  Phrygia,  Mazdaism  had  sought 
a  common  ground  of  understanding  with  the  religion  of  the  coun- 
try. In  the  union  of  Mithra  and  Anahita  the  counterpart  was  found 
of  the  intimacy  between  the  great  indigenous  divinities  Attis  and 
Cybele,  and  this  harmon}-  between  the  two  sacred  couples  persisted 


MITHRAISM  AND  THE   RELIGIONS  OF  THE  EMPIRE.  719 

in  Italy.  The  most  ancient  mithraeum  known  to  us  was  contiguous 
to  the  vietroon  of  Ostia,  and  we  have  every  reason  to  believe  that 
the  worship  of  the  Iranian  god  and  that  of  the  Phrygian  goddess 
were  conducted  in  intimate  communion  with  each  other  throughout 
the  entire  extent  of  the  empire.  Despite  the  profound  differences 
of  their  character,  political  reasons  drew  them  together.  In  con- 
ciliating the  priests  of  the  Mater  Magna,  the  sectaries  of  Mithra 
obtained  the  support  of  a  powerful  and  officially  recognised  clergy, 
and  so  shared  in  some  measure  in  the  protection  afforded  it  by  the 
State.  Further,  since  men  only  were  permitted  to  take  part  in  the 
secret  ceremonies  of  the  Persian  liturgy,  other  Mysteries  to  which 
women  were  admitted  must  have  formed  some  species  of  alliance 
with  the  former,  to  make  them  complete.  The  Great  Mother 
succeeded  thus  to  the  place  of  Anahita;  she  had  \\&x  Matt-es  or 
"  Mothers, "  as  Mithra  had  his  "Fathers";  and  her  initiates  were 
known  among  one  another  as  "Sisters,"  just  as  the  votaries  of  her 
associate  called  one  another  "Brothers." 

This  alliance,  fruitful  generally  in  its  results,  was  especially 
profitable  to  the  ancient  cult  of  Pessinus,  now  naturalised  at  Rome. 
The  loud  pomp  of  its  festivals  was  a  poor  mask  of  the  vacuity  of 
its  doctrines,  which  no  longer  satisfied  the  aspirations  of  its  devo- 
tees. Its  gross  theology  was  elevated  by  the  adoption  of  certain 
Mazdean  beliefs.  There  can  be  scarcely  any  doubt  that  the  prac- 
tice of  the  taurobolium,  with  the  ideas  of  purification  and  immor- 
tality appertaining  to  it,  had  passed  under  the  Antonines  from  the 
temples  of  Anahita  into  those  of  the  Mater  Magna.  The  barbarous 
custom  of  allowing  the  blood  of  a  victim  slaughtered  on  a  latticed 
platform  to  fall  down  upon  the  mystic  lying  in  a  ditch  below,  was 
probably  practised  in  Asia  from  time  immemorial.  According  to 
a  wide-spread  notion  among  primitive  peoples,  the  blood  is  the 
vehicle  of  the  vital  energy,  and  the  person  who  poured  it  upon  his 
body  and  moistened  his  tongue  with  it  believed  that  he  was  thereby 
endowed  with  the  courage  and  strength  of  the  slaughtered  animal. 
This  sacred  bath  appears  to  have  been  administered  in  Cappadocia 
in  a  great  number  of  sanctuaries,  and  especially  in  those  of  Ma,  the 
great  indigenous  divinity,  and  in  those  of  Anahita.  These  god- 
desses, to  whom  the  bull  was  consecrated,  had  been  generally  likened 
by  the  Greeks  to  their  Artemis  Tauropolos,  and  the  ritualistic  bap- 
tism practised  in  their  cult  received  the  name  of  tauropoliu7n  (rau- 
poTToAiov),  which  was  transformed  by  the  popular  etymology  into 
taurobolium  {ravpo^oXiov).  But  under  the  influence  of  the  Mazdean 
beliefs  regarding   the  future  life,  a  more  profound  significance  was 


720  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

attributed  to  this  baptism  of  blood.  In  taking  it  the  devotees  no 
longer  imagined  they  acquired  the  strength  of  the  bull ;  it  was  no 
longer  a  renewal  of  physical  strength  that  the  life-sustaining  liquid 
was  now  thought  to  communicate,  but  a  renewal,  temporary  and 
even  perpetual,  of  the  human  soul.^ 

When,  under  the  empire,  the  taurobolium  was  introduced  into 
Italy,  it  was  not  quite  certain  at  the  outset  what  Latin  name  should 
be  given  the  goddess  in  whose  honor  it  was  celebrated.  Some  saw 
in  her  a  celestial  Venus;  others  compared  her  to  Minerva,  because 
of  her  warlike  character.  But  the  priests  of  Cybele  soon  introduced 
the  ceremony  into  their  liturgy, — evidently  with  the  complicity  of 
the  official  authorities,  for  nothing  in  the  ritual  of  this  recognised 
cult  could  be  modified  without  the  authorisation  of  the  quindecem- 
virs.  Even  the  emperors  are  known  to  have  granted  privileges  to 
those  who  performed  this  hideous  sacrifice  for  their  salvation, 
though  their  motives  for  this  special  favor  are  not  clearly  apparent. 
The  efficacy  which  was  attributed  to  this  bloody  purification,  the 
eternal  new  birth  that  was  expected  of  it,  resembled  the  hopes 
which  the  mystics  of  Mithra  attached  to  the  immolation  of  the 
mythical  bull.*  The  similarity  of  these  doctrines  is  quite  naturally 
explained  by  the  identity  of  their  origin.  The  taurobolium,  like 
many  rites  of  the  Oriental  cults,  is  a  survival  of  a  savage  past 
which  a  spiritualistic  theology  had  adapted  to  moral  ends.  It  is  a 
characteristic  fact  that  the  first  immolations  of  this  kind  that  we 
know  to  have  been  performed  by  the  clergy  of  the  Phrygian  god- 
dess took  place  at  Ostia,  where  the  nn-/roon,  as  we  saw  above,  ad- 
joined a  Mithraic  crypt. 

The  symbolism  of  the  Mysteries  certainly  saw  in  the  Magna 
Mater  the  nourishing  Earth  which  the  Heavens  yearly  fecundated. 
So  the  Graeco-Roman  divinities  which  they  adopted  changed  in 
character  on  entering  their  dogmatic  system.  Now,  these  gods  were 
identified  with  the  Mazdean  heroes,  and  the  barbaric  legends  then 
celebrated  the  new  exploits  which  they  had  performed.  Again, 
they  were  considered  as  the  agents  that  produced  the  various  trans- 
formations of  the  universe.  Then,  in  the  centre  of  this  pantheon, 
which  had  again  become  naturalistic,  as  it  was  at  its  origin,  was 
placed  the  Sun,  for  he  was  the  supreme  lord  that  governed  the 
movements  of  all  the  planets  and  even  the  revolutions  of  the  heav- 
ens themselves, — the  one  who  diffused  with  his  light  and  his  heat 

1  These  pages  summarise  the  conclusions  of  a  study  entitled  Le  tauroboU  et  U  cult*  de  Btllone, 
published  in  the  Revue  d'hiitoire  et  de  littfrature  religieuset. 
*See  The  Open  Court  for  October,  1902,  p.  609. 


MITHRAISM  AND  THE  RELIGIONS   OF  THE  EMPIRE.  72I 

all  of  life  here  below.  This  conception,  astronomical  in  its  origin, 
predominated  more  and  more  according  as  Mithra  entered  into 
more  intimate  relations  with  Greek  thought  and  became  a  more 
faithful  subject  of  the  Roman  state. 

The  worship  of  the  Sun,  the  outcome  of  a  sentiment  of  recog- 
nition for  its  daily  benefactions,  augmented  by  the  observation  of 
its  tremendous  role  in  the  cosmic  system,  was  the  logical  upshot 
of  paganism.  When  critical  thought  sought  to  explain  the  sacred 
traditions  and  discovered  in  the  popular  gods  the  forces  and  ele- 
ments of  nature,  it  was  obliged  perforce  to  accord  a  predominant 
place  to  the  star  on  which  the  very  existence  of  our  globe  depended. 
"Before  religion  reached  the  point  where  it  proclaimed  that  God 
should  be  sought  in  the  Absolute  and  the  Ideal,  that  is  to  say,  out- 
side the  world,  one  cult  only  was  reasonable  and  scientific  and  that 
was  the  cult  of  the  Sun."^  From  the  time  of  Plato  and  Aristotle 
Greek  philosophy  regarded  the  celestial  bodies  as  animate  and 
divine  creatures;  Stoicism  furnished  new  arguments  in  favor  of 
this  opinion  ;  while  Neo-Pythagorism  and  Neo-Platonism  insisted 
still  more  emphatically  on  the  sacred  character  of  the  luminary 
which  is  the  ever-present  image  of  the  intelligible  God.  These  be- 
liefs, approved  by  the  thinkers,  were  widely  diffused  by  literature, 
and  particularly  by  the  works  in  which  romantic  fiction  served  to 
envelop  genuinely  theological  teachings. 

If  heliolatry  was  in  accord  with  the  philosophical  doctrines  of 
the  day,  it  was  not  less  in  conformity  with  its  political  tendencies. 
We  have  essayed  to  show  the  connection  which  existed  between 
the  worship  of  the  emperors  and  that  of  the  Sol  inv ictus.  When 
the  Caesars  of  the  third  century  pretended  to  be  gods  descended 
from  heaven  to  the  earth,  the  justification  of  their  imaginary  claims 
had  as  its  corollary  the  establishment  of  a  public  worship  of  the 
divinity  from  whom  they  believed  themselves  the  emanations.  He- 
liogabalus  had  claimed  for  his  Baal  of  Emesa  the  supremacy  over 
the  entire  pagan  pantheon.  The  eccentricities  and  violences  of 
this  unbalanced  man  resulted  in  the  lamentable  wreck  of  his  under- 
taking; but  it  answered  to  the  needs  of  the  time  and  was  soon 
taken  up  again  with  better  success.  Near  the  Flaminian  Way,  to 
the  east  of  the  Field  of  Mars,  Aurelian  consecrated  a  colossal  edi- 
fice to  the  tutelary  god  that  had  granted  him  victory  in  Syria.  The 
religion  of  state  that  he  constituted  must  not  be  confounded  with 
Mithraism.  Its  imposing  temple,  its  ostentatious  ceremonies,  its 
quadrennial  games,  its  pontifical  clergy,   remind  us   of  the  great 

1  Renan,  Lettre  a  Berthelot  [Dialogues  et  fragments philosophiques),  p.  168. 


72  2  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

sanctuaries  of  the  Orient  and  not  of  the  dim  caves  in  which  the 
Mysteries  were  celebrated.  Nevertheless,  the  Soi  invictus,  whom 
the  emperor  had  intended  to  honor  with  a  pomp  hitherto  unheard 
of,  could  well   be  claimed  as  their  own  by  the  followers  of  Mithra. 

The  imperial  policy  gave  the  first  place  in  the  official  religion 
to  the  Sun,  of  which  the  Sovereign  was  the  emanation,  just  as  in 
the  Chaldaean  speculations  propagated  by  the  Mithraists  the  royal 
planet  held  sway  over  the  other  stars.  On  both  sides,  the  growing 
tendency  was  to  see  in  the  brilliant  star  that  illuminated  the  uni- 
verse the  only  God,  or  at  least  the  sensible  image  of  the  only  God, 
and  to  establish  in  the  heavens  a  monotheism  in  imitation  of  the 
monarchy  that  ruled  on  earth.  Macrobius  (400  A.  D.),  in  his  Sa- 
turnalia, has  learnedly  set  forth  that  the  gods  were  ultimately  re- 
ducible to  a  single  Being  considered  under  different  aspects,  and 
that  the  multiple  names  by  which  they  were  worshipped  were  the 
equivalent  of  that  of  Helios  (the  Sun).  The  theologian  Vettius 
Agorius  Prete.xtat  who  defended  this  radical  syncrasy  was  not  only 
one  of  the  highest  dignitaries  of  the  empire,  but  one  of  the  last 
chiefs  of  the  Persian  Mysteries. 

Mithraism,  at  least  in  the  fourth  century,  had  therefore  as  its 
end  and  aim  the  union  of  all  gods  and  all  myths  in  a  vast  synthesis, 
— the  foundation  of  a  new  religion  in  harmony  with  the  prevailing 
philosophy  and  political  constitution  of  the  empire.  This  religion 
would  have  been  as  far  removed  from  the  ancient  Iranian  Mazdaism 
as  from  Graeco-Roman  paganism,  which  accorded  the  sidereal  pow- 
ers a  minimal  place  only.  It  had  in  a  measure  traced  idolatry  back 
to  its  origin,  and  discovered  in  the  myths  that  obscured  its  compre- 
hension the  deification  of  nature.  Breaking  with  the  Roman  prin- 
ciple of  the  nationality  of  worship,  it  would  have  established  the 
universal  domination  of  Mithra,  identified  with  the  invincible  Sun. 
Its  adherents  hoped,  by  concentrating  all  their  devotion  upon  a 
single  object,  to  impart  new  cohesion  to  the  disintegrated  beliefs. 
Solar  pantheism  was  the  last  refuge  of  conservative  spirits,  now 
menaced  by  a  revolutionary  propaganda  that  aimed  at  the  annihi- 
lation of  the  entire  ancient  order  of  things. 

At  the  time  when  this  pagan  monotheism  sought  to  establish 
its  ascendency  in  Rome,  the  struggle  between  the  Mithraic  Mys- 
teries and  Christianity  had  long  begun.  The  propagation  of  the 
two  religions  had  been  almost  contemporaneously  conducted,  and 
their  diffusion  had  taken  place  under  analogous  conditions.  Both 
from  the  Orient,  they  had  spread  because  of  the  same  general  rea- 
sons, viz.,  the  political  unity  and  the  moral  anarchy  of  the  empire. 


MITHRAISM  AND  THE   RELIGIONS   OF  THE   EMPIRE.  723 

Their  diffusion  had  been  accompHshed  with  like  rapidity,  and 
toward  the  close  of  the  second  century  they  both  numbered  adher- 
ents in  the  most  distant  parts  of  the  Roman  world.  The  sectaries 
of  Mithra  might  justly  lay  claim  to  the  hyperbolic  utterance  of  Ter- 
tullian  :  '■'■  Hesterni  suvius  et  vesira  omnia  implcvimus.''^  If  we  con- 
sider the  number  of  the  monuments  that  the  Persian  religion  has 
left  us,  one  may  easily  ask  whether  in  the  epoch  of  the  Severi  its 
adepts  were  not  more  numerous  than  the  disciples  of  Christ.  An- 
other point  of  resemblance  between  the  two  antagonistic  creeds  was 
that  at  the  outset  they  drew  their  proselytes  chiefly  from  the  in- 
ferior classes  of  society  ;  their  propaganda  was  at  the  origin  essen- 
tially popular;  unlike  the  philosophical  sects,  they  addressed  their 
endeavors  less  to  cultivated  minds  than  to  the  masses,  and  conse- 
quently appealed  more  to  sentiment  than  to  reason. 

But  by  the  side  of  these  resemblances  considerable  differences 
are  to  be  remarked  in  the  methods  of  procedure  of  the  two  adver- 
saries. The  initial  conquests  of  Christianity  were  favored  by  the 
Jewish  diaspora,  and  it  first  spread  in  the  countries  inhabited  by 
Israelitic  colonies.  It  was  therefore  chiefly  in  the  countries  washed 
by  the  Mediterranean  that  its  communities  developed.  They  did 
not  extend  their  field  of  action  outside  the  cities,  and  their  mul- 
tiplication is  due  in  great  part  to  missions  undertaken  with  the 
express  purpose  of  "instructing  the  nations."  The  extension  of 
Mithraism,  on  the  other  hand,  was  essentially  a  natural  product  of 
social  and  political  factors  ;  namely,  of  the  importation  of  slaves, 
the  transportation  of  troops,  and  the  transfer  of  public  function- 
aries. It  was  in  government  circles  and  in  the  army  that  it  counted 
its  greatest  numbers  of  votaries, ^ — that  is,  in  circles  where  very  few 
Christians  could  be  found  because  of  their  aversion  to  official  pagan- 
ism. Outside  of  Italy,  it  spread  principally  along  the  frontiers  and 
simultaneously  gained  a  foothold  in  the  cities  and  in  the  country. 
It  found  its  strongest  points  of  support  in  the  Danubian  provinces 
and  in  Germany,  whereas  Christianity  made  most  rapid  progress 
in  Asia  Minor  and  Syria.  The  spheres  of  the  two  religious  powers, 
therefore,  were  not  coincident,  and  they  could  accordingly  long 
grow  and  develop  without  coming  directly  into  conflict.  It  was  in 
the  valley  of  the  Rhone,  in  Africa,  and  especially  in  the  city  of 
Rome,  where  the  two  competitors  were  most  firmly  established, 
that  the  rivalry,  during  the  third  century,  became  particularly 
brisk  between  the  bands  of  Mithra's  worshippers  and  the  disciples 
of  Christ. 

The  struggle  between  the  two  rival  religions  was   the   more 


724  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Stubborn  as  their  characters  were  the  more  alike.  The  adepts  of 
both  formed  secret  conventicles,  closely  united,  the  members  of 
which  gave  themselves  the  name  of  "Brothers."^  The  rites  which 
they  practised  offered  numerous  analogies.  The  sectaries  of  the 
Persian  god,  like  the  Christians,  purified  themselves  by  baptism  ; 
received,  by  a  species  of  confirmation,  the  power  necessary  to  com- 
bat the  spirits  of  evil ;  and  ardently  expected  from  a  Lord's  Supper 
salvation  of  body  and  soul.  Like  the  latter,  they  also  held  Sunday 
sacred,  and  celebrated  the  birth  of  the  Sun  on  the  25th  of  Decem- 
ber, the  same  day  on  which  Christmas  has  always  been  celebrated, 
at  least  since  the  fourth  century.  They  both  preached  a  categor- 
ical system  of  ethics,  regarded  asceticism  as  meritorious,  and 
counted  among  their  principal  virtues  abstinence  and  continence, 
renunciation  and  self-control.  Their  concepts  of  the  world  and  of 
the  destiny  of  man  were  similar.  They  both  admitted  the  exist- 
ence of  a  Heaven  inhabited  by  beatified  ones,  situate  in  the  upper 
regions,  and  that  of  a  Hell  peopled  by  demons,  situate  in  the  bowels 
of  the  earth.  They  both  placed  a  Flood  at  the  beginning  of  history; 
they  both  assigned  as  the  source  of  their  traditions  a  primitive  rev- 
elation ;  they  both,  finall}-,  believed  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
in  a  last  judgment,  and  in  a  resurrection  of  the  dead,  consequent 
upon  a  final  conflagration  of  the  universe. 

We  have  seen  that  the  theology  of  the  Mysteries  made  of 
Mithra  a  "mediator"  equivalent  to  the  Alexandrian  Logos.  Like 
him,  Christ  also  was  a  yxcotVi;?,  an  intermediary  between  his  celestial 
father  and  men,  and  like  him  he  also  was  one  of  a  Trinity.  These 
resemblances  were  certainly  not  the  only  ones  that  pagan  exegesis 
established  between  the  two  religions,  and  the  figure  of  the  tau- 
roctonous  god  reluctantly  immolating  his  victim,  that  he  might 
create  and  save  the  human  race,  was  certainly  compared  to  the  pic- 
ture of  the  Redeemer  sacrificing  his  own  person  for  the  salvation 
of  the-world. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  ecclesiastical  writers,  reviving  a  meta- 
phor of  the  prophet  Malachi,  contrasted  the  "Sun  of  justice"  with 
the  "invincible  Sun,"  and  consented  to  see  in  the  dazzling  orb 
which  illuminated  men  a  symbol  of  Christ,  "the  light  of  the  world." 
Should  we  be  astonished  if  the  multitudes  of  devotees  failed  always 
to  observe  the  subtle  distinctions  of  the  doctors,  and  if  in  obedience 
to  a  pagan  custom   they  rendered  to  the  radiant  star  of  day  the 

1  I  may  remark  that  even  the  expression  "  dearest  brothers  "  had  already  been  used  by  the 
sectaries  of  Jupiter  Dolichenus  (GIL,  VI,  406  =  30758  :  yra/r«  carissimos  el  conUgat  hon\titissi- 
mot\\  and  probably  also  in  the  Mithraic  associations. 


MITHRAISM  AND  THE   RELIGIONS  OF  THE   EMPIRE.  725 

homage  which  orthodoxy  reserved  for  God?  In  the  fifth  century, 
not  only  heretics,  but  even  faithful  followers,  were  still  wont  to 
bow  their  heads  towards  its  dazzling  disk  as  it  rose  above  the  hori- 
zon, and  to  murmur  the  prayer,  "Have  mercy  upon  us." 

The  resemblances  between  the  two  hostile  churches  were  so 
striking  as  to  impress  even  the  minds  of  antiquity.  From  the  third 
century,  the  Greek  philosophers  were  wont  to  draw  parallels  be- 
tween the  Persian  Mysteries  and  Christianity  which  were  evidently 
entirely  in  favor  of  the  former.  The  Apologists  also  dwelt  on  the 
analogies  between  the  two  religions,  and  explained  them  as  a  Sa- 
tanic travesty  of  the  holiest  rites  of  their  religion.  If  the  polemical 
works  of  the  Mithraists  had  been  preserved,  we  should  doubtless 
have  heard  the  same  accusation  hurled  back  upon  their  Christian 
adversaries. 

We  cannot  presume  to  unravel  to-day  a  question  which  divided 
contemporaries  and  which  shall  doubtless  forever  remain  insoluble. 
We  are  too  imperfectly  acquainted  with  the  dogmas  and  liturgies 
of  Roman  Mazdaism,  as  well  as  with  the  development  of  primitive 
Christianity,  to  say  definitely  what  mutual  influences  were  opera- 
tive in  their  simultaneous  evolution.  But  be  this  as  it  may,  re- 
semblances do  not  necessarily  suppose  an  imitation.  Many  corre- 
spondences between  the  Mithraic  doctrine  and  the  Catholic  faith 
are  explicable  by  their  common  Oriental  origin.  Nevertheless,  cer- 
tain ideas  and  certain  ceremonies  must  necessarily  have  passed 
from  the  one  cult  to  the  other;  but  in  the  majority  of  cases  we 
rather  suspect  this  transference  than  clearly  perceive  it. 

Apparently  the  attempt  was  made  to  discern  in  the  legend  of 
the  Iranian  hero  the  counterpart  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  and  the  dis- 
ciples of  the  Magi  probably  drew  a  direct  contrast  between  the 
Mithraic  worship  of  the  shepherds,  the  Mithraic  communion  and 
ascension,  and  those  of  the  Gospels.  The  rock  of  generation,  which 
had  given  birth  to  the  genius  of  light,  was  even  compared  to  the 
immovable  rock,  emblem  of  Christ,  upon  which  the  Church  was 
founded  ;  and  the  crypt  in  which  the  bull  had  perished  was  made 
the  counterpart  of  that  in  which  Christ  was  born  at  Bethlehem.^ 
But  this  strained  parallelism  could  result  in  nothing  but  a  carica- 

1  M.  Jean  Reville  (Etudes  publi^es  en  honiviage  a  la  faculte  de  theologie  de  Montauban,  1901, 
pp.  339  et  seq.)  thinks  that  the  Gospel  story  of  the  birth  of  Christ  and  the  adoration  of  the  Magi 
was  suggested  by  the  Mithraic  legend  ;  but  he  remarks  that  we  have  no  proof  of  the  supposition. 
So  also  M.  A.  Dieterich  in  a  recent  article  {Zeitschr.f.  Neutest.  IVt'ss.,  1902,  p.  190),  in  which  he 
has  endeavored  not  without  ingenuity  to  explain  the  formation  of  the  legend  of  the  Magi  kings, 
admits  that  the  worship  of  the  shepherds  was  introduced  into  Christian  tradition  from  Mazda- 
ism. But  I  must  remark  that  the  Mazdean  beliefs  regarding  the  advent  of  Mithra  into  the  world 
have  strangely  varied.     (Cf.  T.  et  M.,  t.  I.,  pp.  160  et  seq.) 


726 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


ture.  It  was  a  strong  source  of  inferiority  for  Mazdaism  that  it 
believed  in  only  a  mythical  redeemer.  That  unfailing  wellspring 
of  religious  emotion  supplied  by  the  Gospel  and  the  Passion  of  the 
God  sacrificed  on  the  cross,  never  flowed  for  the  disciples  of  Mithra. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  orthodox  and  heretical  liturgies  of 
Christianity,  which  gradually  sprang  up  during  the  first  centuries 
of  our  era,  could  find  abundant  inspiration  in  the  Mithraic  Mys- 
teries, which  of  all  the  pagan  religions  offered  the  most  affinity  with 
Christian  institutions.  We  do  not  know  whether  the  ritual  of  the 
sacraments  and  the  hopes  attaching  to  them  suffered  alteration 
through  the  influence  of  Mazdean  dogmas  and  practises.  Perhaps 
the  custom  of  invoking  the  Sun  three  times  each  day, — at  dawn,  at 
noon,  and  at  dusk, — was  reproduced  in  the  daily  prayers  of  the 
Church,  and  it  appears  certain  that  the  commemoration  of  the  Na- 
tivity  was   set    for   the   25th   of  December,    because  it   was  at    the 


Fig    I.     Bas-Relief  OF  Mayence. 
Mithra  drawing  his  bow  ;  and  the  god  of  the  winds. 

winter  solstice  that  the  rebirth  of  the  invincible  god,i  the  Natalis 
Invicti,  was  celebrated.  In  adopting  this  date,  which  was  uni- 
versally distinguished  by  sacred  festivities,  the  ecclesiastical  author- 
ity purified  in  some  measure  the  profane  usages  which  it  could  not 
suppress. 

The  only  domain  in  which  we  can  ascertain  in  detail  the  ex- 
tent to  which  Christianity  imitated  Mithraism  is  that  of  art.  The 
Mithraic  sculpture,  which  had  been  first  developed,  furnished  the 
ancient  Christian  marble-cutters  with  a  large  number  of  models, 
which  they  adopted  or  adapted.  For  example,  they  drew  inspira- 
tion from  the  figure  of  Mithra  causing  the  waters  of  the  well  of  life 
to  leap  forth  by  the  blows  of  his  arrows, ^  to  create  the  figure  of 
Moses  smiting  with  his  rod  the  rock  of  Horeb  (Fig.  i).      Faithful 

1  See  open  Court  for  November,  p.  680.  «  See  Open  Court  for  October,  p.  605. 


MITHRAISM  AND  THE  RELIGIONS  OF  THE  EMPIRE.  727 

to  an  inveterate  tradition,  they  even  reproduced  the  figures  of  cos- 
mic divinities,  like  the  Heavens  and  the  Winds,  the  worship  of 
which  the  new  faith  had  expressly  proscribed  ;  and  we  find  on  the 
sarcophagi,  in  miniatures,  and  even  on  the  portals  of  the  Romance 
Churches,  evidences  of  the  influence  exerted  by  the  imposing  com- 
positions that  adorned  the  sacred  grottoes  of  Mithra.^ 

It  would  be  wrong,  however,  to  exaggerate  the  significance  of 
these  likenesses.  If  Christianit}^  and  Mithraism  offered  profound 
resemblances,  the  principal  of  which  were  the  belief  in  the  purifica- 
tion of  souls  and  the  hope  of  a  beatific  resurrection,  differences  no 
less  essential  separated  them.  The  most  important  was  the  con- 
trast of  their  relations  to  Roman  paganism.  The  Mazdean  Mys- 
teries sought  to  conciliate  paganism  by  a  succession  of  adaptations 
and  compromises;  they  sought  to  establish  monotheism  while  not 
combating  polytheism,  whereas  the  Church  was,  in  point  of  prin- 
ciple, if  not  always  in  practise,  the  unrelenting  antagonist  of  idol- 
atry in  an}^  form.  The  attitude  of  Mithraism  was  apparently  the 
wisest ;  it  gave  to  the  Persian  religion  greater  elasticity  and  pow- 
ers of  adaptation,  and  it  attracted  toward  the  tauroctonous  god 
all  who  stood  in  dread  of  a  painful  rupture  with  ancient  traditions 
and  contemporaneous  society.  The  preference  must  therefore  have 
been  given  by  many  to  dogmas  that  satisfied  their  aspirations  for 
greater  purity  and  a  better  world,  without  compelling  them  to  de- 
test the  faith  of  their  fathers  and  the  state  of  which  they  were  cit- 
izens. As  the  Church  grew  in  power  despite  its  persecutors,  this 
policy  of  compromise  first  assured  to  Mithraism  much  tolerance 
and  afterwards  even  the  favor  of  the  public  authorities.  But  it 
also  prevented  it  from  freeing  itself  of  the  gross  and  ridiculous 
superstitions  which  complicated  its  ritual  and  its  theology ;  it  in- 
volved it,  in  spite  of  its  austerity,  in  an  equivocal  alliance  with  the 
orgiastic  cult  of  the  beloved  of  Attis ;  and  it  compelled  it  to  drag 
the  entire  weight  of  a  chimerical  and  odious  past.  If  Romanised 
Mazdaism  had  triumphed,  it  would  not  only  have  assured  the  per- 
petuity of  all  the  aberrations  of  pagan  mysticism,  but  would  also 
have  rescued  from  oblivion  the  erroneous  doctrine  of  physics  on 
which  its  dogmatism  reposed.  The  Christian  doctrine,  which  broke 
with  the  cults  of  nature,  remained  unconsciously  exempt  from  these 
impure  associations,  and  its  liberation  from  every  compromising 
attachment  assured  it  an  immense  superiority.  Its  negative  value, 
its  struggle  against  deeply-rooted  prejudices,  gained  for  it  as  many 
souls  as  the  positive  hopes  which  it  promised.      It  performed  the 

1  See  next  Open  Court, 


728  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

miraculous  feat  of  triumphing  over  the  ancient  world  in  spite  of 
legislation  and  the  imperial  policy,  and  the  Mithraic  Mysteries 
were  promptly  abolished  the  moment  the  protection  of  the  State 
was  withdrawn  and  transformed  into  hostility. 

Mithraism  reached  the  apogee  of  its  power  toward  the  middle 
of  the  third  century,  and  it  appeared  for  a  moment  as  if  the  world 
was  on  the  eve  of  becoming  Mithraic.  But  the  first  invasions  of 
the  barbarians,  and  especially  the  definitive  loss  of  Dacia  (275  A. 
D.),  soon  after  followed  by  that  of  the  Agri  Decumates,  adminis- 
tered a  terrible  blow  to  the  Mazdean  sect,  which  was  most  power- 
ful in  the  periphery  of  the  orbis  Ronianus.  In  all  I'annonia,  and  as 
far  as  Virunum,  on  the  frontiers  of  Italy,  its  temples  were  sacked. 
By  way  of  compensation,  the  authorities,  menaced  by  the  rapid 
progress  of  Christianity,  renewed  their  support  to  the  most  re- 
doubtable adversary  that  they  could  oppose  to  it.  In  the  universal 
downfall  the  army  was  the  only  institution  that  remained  standing, 
and  the  Caesars  created  by  the  legions  were  bound  perforce  to  seek 
their  support  in  the  favored  religion  of  their  soldiers.  In  273  A. 
D.,  Aurelian  founded  by  the  side  of  the  Mysteries  of  the  taurocto- 
nous  god  a  public  religion,  which  he  richly  endowed,  in  honor  of 
the  Sol  invictus.  Diocletian,  whose  court  with  its  complicated  hier- 
archy, its  prostrations  before  its  lord,  and  its  crowds  of  eunuchs, 
was,  by  the  admission  of  contemporaries,  an  imitation  of  the  court 
of  the  Sassanids,  was  naturally  inclined  to  adopt  doctrines  of  Per- 
sian origin,  which  flattered  his  despotic  instincts.  The  emperor 
and  the  princes  whom  he  had  associated  with  himself,  meeting  in 
conference  at  Carnuntum  in  307  A.  D.,  restored  there  one  of  the 
temples  of  the  celestial  protector  of  their  newly  organised  empire.^ 
The  Christians  believed,  not  without  some  appearance  of  reason, 
that  the  Mithraic  clergy  were  the  instigators  of  the  great  persecu- 
tion of  Galerius.  In  the  Roman  empire  as  in  Iran,  a  vaguely  monis- 
tic heliolatry  appeared  on  the  verge  of  becoming  the  sole,  intolerant 
religion  of  state.  But  the  conversion  of  Constantine  shattered  the 
hopes  which  the  policy  of  his  predecessors  had  held  out  to  the 
worshippers  of  the  sun.  Although  he  did  not  persecute  the  beliefs 
which  he  himself  had  shared, ^  they  ceased  to  constitute  a  recog- 
nised cult  and  were  tolerated  only.  His  successors  were  determin- 
edly hostile.  To  latent  defiance  succeeded  open  persecution.  Chris- 
tian polemics  no  longer  restricted  its  attacks  to  ridiculing  the  le- 
gends and  practises  of   the  Mazdean  Mysteries,  nor  even  to  taunt- 

1  See  Tht  0/>en  Court  for  August,  p.  451. 

2Cf.  Preger,  Konslantinos-Hflios  (Hermes,  XX.WI),  1901,  p.  457. 


MITHRAISM  AND  THE   RELIGIONS  OF  THE   EMPIRE.  729 

ing  them  for  having  as  their  founders  the  irreconcilable  enemies  of 
Rome;  it  now  stridently  demanded  the  total  destruction  of  idolatry, 
and  its  exhortations  were  promptly  carried  into  effect.  When  a 
rhetorician^  tells  us  that  under  Constantius  no  one  longer  dared  to 
look  at  the  rising  or  setting  sun,  that  even  farmers  and  sailors  re- 
frained from  observing  the  stars,  and  tremblingly  held  their  eyes 
fixed  upon  the  ground,  we  have  in  these  emphatic  declarations  a 
magnified  echo  of  the  fears  that  then  filled  all  pagan  hearts. 

The  proclamation  of  Julian  the  Apostate  (331-363  A.  D.)  sud- 
denly inaugurated  an  unexpected  turn  in  affairs.  A  philosopher, 
seated  on  the  throne  by  the  armies  of  Gaul,  Julian  had  cherished 
from  childhood  a  secret  devotion  for  Helios.  He  was  firmly  con- 
vinced that  this  god  had  rescued  him  from  the  perils  that  menaced 
his  youth  ;  he  believed  that  he  was  entrusted  by  him  with  a  divine 
mission,  and  regarded  himself  as  his  servitor,  or  rather  as  his  spirit- 
ual son.  He  dedicated  to  this  celestial  "king"  a  discourse  in 
which  the  ardor  of  his  faith  transforms  in  places  a  cold  theological 
dissertation  into  an  inflamed  dithyrambic,  and  the  fervor  of  his  de- 
votion for  the  star  that  he  worshipped  never  waned  to  the  moment 
of  his  death. 

The  young  prince  had  been  presumably  drawn  to  the  Mysteries 
by  his  superstitious  predilection  for  the  supernatural.  Before  his 
accession,  perhaps  even  from  youth,  he  had  been  introduced  se- 
cretly into  a  Mithraic  conventicle  by  the  philosopher  Maximus  of 
Ephesus.  The  ceremonies  of  initiation  must  have  made  a  deep 
impression  on  his  feelings.  He  imagined  himself  thenceforward 
under  the  special  patronage  of  Mithra,  in  this  life  and  in  that  to 
come.  As  soon  as  he  had  cast  aside  his  mask  and  openly  pro- 
claimed himself  a  pagan,  he  called  Maximus  to  his  side,  and  doubt- 
less had  recourse  to  extraordinary  ablutions  and  purifications  to 
wipe  out  the  stains  which  he  had  contracted  in  receiving  the  bap- 
tism and  the  communion  of  the  Christians.  Scarcely  had  he  as- 
cended the  throne  (361  A.  D.)  than  he  made  haste  to  introduce 
the  Persian  cult  at  Constantinople  ;  and  almost  simultaneously  the 
first  taurobolia  were  celebrated  at  Athens. 

On  all  sides  the  sectaries  of  the  Magi  lifted  their  heads.  At 
Alexandria  the  patriarch  George,  attempting  to  erect  a  church  on 
the  ruins  of  a  mithraeum,  provoked  a  sanguinary  riot.  Arrested  by 
the  magistrates,  he  was  torn  from  his  prison  and  cruelly  slain  by 
the  populace  on  the  24th  of  December,  361,  the  eve  of  the  Natalis 

1  Mamert.,  Grat.  actio  in  fulian.,  c.  23. 


730  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Invicti.  The  emperor  contented  himself  with  addressing  a  paternal 
remonstrance  to  the  city  of  Serapis. 

But  the  Apostate  soon  met  liis  death  in  the  historic  expedition 
against  the  Persians,  to  which  he  had  possibly  been  drawn  by  the 
secret  desire  to  conquer  the  land  which  had  given  him  his  faith  and 
by  the  assurance  tliat  his  tutelary  god  would  accept  his  homage 
rather  than  that  of  his  enemies.  Thus  perished  this  spasmodic 
attempt  at  reaction,  and  Christianity,  now  definitively  victor,  ad- 
dressed itself  to  the  task  of  extirpating  the  erroneous  doctrine  that 
had  caused  it  so  much  anxiety.  Even  before  the  emperors  had 
forbidden  the  exercise  of  idolatr}-,  their  edicts  against  astrology 
and  magic  furnished  an  indirect  means  of  attacking  the  clergy  and 
disciples  of  Mithra.  In  371  A.  D.,  a  number  of  persons  who  culti- 
vated occult  practises  were  implicated  in  a  pretended  conspiracy 
and  put  to  death.  The  mystagogue  Maximus  himself  perished  as 
the  victim  of  an  accusation  of  this  kind. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  imperial  government  legislated 
formally  and  directly  against  the  disgraced  sect.  In  the  provinces, 
popular  uprisings  frequently  anticipated  the  interference  of  the 
magistrates.  Mobs  sacked  the  temples  and  committed  them  to  the 
flames,  with  the  complicity  of  the  authorities.  The  ruins  of  the 
mithraeums  bear  witness  to  the  violence  of  their  devastating  fury. 
Even  at  Rome,  in  377  A.  D.,  the  prefect  Gracchus,  seeking  the 
privilege  of  baptism,  offered  as  a  pledge  of  the  sincerity  of  his  con- 
version the  "smashing,  shattering,  and  shivering,"'  of  a  Mithraic 
crypt,  with  all  the  statues  that  it  contained.  Frequently,  in  order 
to  protect  their  grottoes  from  pillage,  the  priests  walled  up  the 
entrances,  or  conveyed  their  sacred  images  to  well-protected  hiding- 
places,  convinced  that  the  tempest  that  had  burst  upon  them  was 
momentary  only,  and  that  after  their  days  of  trial  their  god  would 
cause  again  to  shine  forth  the  light  of  final  triumph.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Christians,  in  order  to  render  places  contaminated  by  the 
presence  of  a  dead  body  ever  afterward  unfit  for  worship,  some- 
times slew  the  refractory  priests  of  Mithra  and  buried  them  in  the 
ruins  of  their  sanctuaries,  now  forever  profaned  (Fig.  2). 

The  hope  of  restoration  was  especially  tenacious  at  Rome, 
which  remained  the  capital  of  paganism.  The  aristocracy,  still 
faithful  to  the  traditions  of  their  ancestors,  supported  the  religion 
with  their  wealth  and  prestige.  Its  members  loved  to  deck  them- 
selves with  the  titles  of  "  Father  and  Herald  of  Mithra  Invincible," 
and  multiplied  the  offerings  and  the  foundations.      They  redoubled 

1  St.  Jerome,  Epiit.  toy  ad  I^tnm  {T.  el  Af.,  t.  II,  p.  i8);  subvertt't ,  frf^'t ,  excutsit. 


MITHRATSM  AND  THE  RELIGIONS  OF  THE  EMPIRE. 


731 


their  generosity  toward  him  when  Gratian  in  382  A.  D.  despoiled 
their  temples  of  their  wealth.  A  great  lord  recounts  to  us  in  poor 
verses  how  he  had  restored  a  splendid  crypt  erected  by  his  grand- 
father near  the  Flaminian  Way,  boasting  that  he  was  able  to  dis- 
pense with  public  subsidies  of  any  kind.^  The  usurpation  of  Eu- 
genius  appeared  for  a  moment  to  bring  on  the  expected  resurrection. 
The  prefect  of  the  praetorium,  Nicomachus  Flavianus,  celebrated 
solemn  taurobolia  and  renewed  in  a  sacred  cave  the  Mysteries  of 
the  "associate  god"  {deiiin  comiteni)  of  the  pretender.  But  the  vic- 
tory of  Theodosius,  394  A.  D.,  shattered  once  and  for  all  the  hopes 
of  the  belated  partisans  and  the  ancient  Mazdean  belief. 

A  few  clandestine  conventicles  may,  with  stubborn  persistence, 
have  been  held   in   the  subterranean  retreats  of  the  palaces.      The 


Fig.  2.     Chained  Skeleton. 
Discovered  in  the  ruins  of  a  temple  at  Saarburg. 

cult  of  the  Persian  god  possibly  existed  as  late  as  the  fifth  century 
in  certain  remote  cantons  of  the  Alps  and  the  Vosges.  For  example, 
devotion  to  the  Mithraic  rites  long  persisted  in  the  tribe  of  the 
Anauni,  masters  of  a  flourishing  valley,  of  which  a  narrow  defile 
closed  the  mouth.  But  little  by  little  its  last  disciples  in  the  Latin 
countries  abandoned  a  religion  tainted  v/ith  moral  as  well  as  polit- 
ical decadence.  It  maintained  its  ground  with  greater  tenacity  in 
the  Orient,  the  land  of  its  birth.  Driven  out  of  the  rest  of  the  em- 
pire, it  found  a  refuge  in  the  countries  of  its  origin,  where  its  light 
only  slowly  flickered  out. 

ICIL,  VI,  774  {T.etM.,t.  II,  p.  94,  n°.  13). 


732  THE  OPEN  COURT, 

Nevertheless,  the  conceptions  which  Mithraism  had  diffused 
throughout  the  empire  durinfi;  a  period  of  three  centuries  were  not 
destined  to  perish  with  it.  Some  of  them,  even  those  most  charac- 
teristic of  it,  sucli  as  its  ideas  concerning  Hell,  the  efficacy  of  the 
sacraments,  and  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh,  were  accepted  even 
by  its  adversaries;  and  in  disseminating  them  it  liad  simply  accel- 
erated their  universal  domination.  Certain  of  its  sacred  practices 
continued  to  exist  also  in  the  ritual  of  Christian  festivals  and  in 
popular  usage.  Its  fundamental  dogmas,  however,  were  irreconcil- 
able with  orthodox  Christianity,  outside  of  which  onl}-  they  could 
maintain  their  hold.  Its  theory  of  sidereal  influences,  alternately 
condemned  and  tolerated,  was  carried  down  by  astrology  to  the 
threshold  of  modern  times  ;  but  it  was  to  a  religion  more  powerful 
than  this  false  science  that  the  Persian  Mysteries  were  destined  to 
bequeath,  along  with  their  hatred  of  the  Church,  their  cardinal 
ideas  and  their  influence  over  the  masses. 

Manichaeism,  although  the  work  of  a  man  and  not  the  product 
of  a  long  evolution,  was  connected  with  these  Mysteries  b}'  numer- 
ous affinities.  The  tradition  according  to  which  its  original  founders 
had  conversed  in  Persia  with  the  priests  of  Mithra,  may  be  inexact 
in  form,  but  it  involves  nevertheless  a  profound  truth.  Both  reli- 
gions had  been  formed  in  the  Orient  from  a  mixture  of  ancient 
Babylonian  mythology  with  the  Persian  dualism,  and  had  after- 
wards absorbed  Hellenic  elements.  The  sect  of  Manichaius  spread 
throughout  the  empire  during  the  fourth  century,  at  the  moment 
when  Mithraism  was  expiring,  and  it  was  called  to  assume  the  lat- 
ter's  succession.  Mystics  whom  the  polemics  of  the  church  against 
paganism  had  shaken  but  not  converted  were  enraptured  with  the 
new  conciliatory  faith  which  suffered  both  Zoroaster  and  Christ  to 
be  simultaneously  worshipped.  The  wide  diffusion  which  the  Maz- 
dean  beliefs  with  their  taint  of  Chaldaeism  had  enjoyed,  prepared 
the  minds  of  the  empire  for  the  reception  of  the  new  heresy.  The 
latter  found  its  ways  made  smooth  for  it,  and  this  is  the  secret  of 
its  sudden  expansion.  Thus  renewed,  the  Mithraic  doctrines  were 
destined  to  withstand  for  centuries  all  persecutions,  and  rising 
again  in  a  new  form  in  the  Middle  Ages  to  shake  once  more  the 
ancient  Roman  world. 


SKETCH  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  THER- 
MOMETRY.' 


BY  DR.    ERNST  MACH. 


[continued.] 

BOYLE,  in  1661,  and  Mariotte,  in  1676,  enunciated  the  experi- 
mental law  that  the  product  of  the  volume  of  a  given  mass  of 
gas  at  constant  temperature  by  the  pressure  which  it  exerts  on  unit 
of  surface  is  constant.  If  a  mass  of  air  of  volume  V  be  subjected 
to  a  pressure  F,  it  will  assume,  on  the  pressure's  increasing  to  P' 

V  V 

^=nP,   the  volume    V  =      ;  whence  FV=nF  —  ^=P' V .      If    we 

fi  n 

represent  the  F's  as  abscissas  and  the  corresponding  F's  as  ordi- 


1 

'^^^^ 

"~~ — — ———_____ 

i 

Fig.  9. 

nates,  the  areas  of  the  rectangles  formed  by  the  F's  and  Fs  will  in 
all  cases  be  equal.  The  equation  FV=a  constant  gives  as  its  graph 
an  equilateral  hyperbola,  which  is  the  visualisation  of  Boyle's  Law. 
(See  Fig.  9.) 

The  experiments  which  led  to  this  law  are  very  simple.  In  a 
glass  siphon-tube  having  a  closed  limb  at  a  and  an  open  limb  at  b 
(Fig.  10),  a  quantity  of  air  v  is  introduced  and  shut  off  from  the 
outside  air  by  mercury.      The  pressure  on  the  enclosed  air  is  given 

1  Translated  from  Mach's  Principien  der  Wdrwelehre  by  Thomas  J.  McCormack. 


734  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

by  the  height  of  the  mercury-baroniettr  plus  the  difference  of  level 
mn  of  the  two  surfaces  of  the  licjuid,  and  can  be  altered  at  will  by 
altering  the  height  of  the  mercury  column. 

Experiments  in  verification  of  Boyle's  law  (which  Boyle  him- 
self did  not  regard  as  absolutely  accurate)  were  carried  out  through 
a  wide  range  of  pressures  and  for  many  different  gases  by 
^  Oerstedt  and   Schwendsen,  Depretz,  Pouillet,  Arago  and 

Dulong,  and   Mendelejeff, — but  most   accurately  by  R6g- 
^^  nault,^  and  through  the  widest  range  of  pressures  by  Ama- 

gat.2 

If  the  pressure  in  the  apparatus  represented  in  Fig. 
lo  be  doubled,  the  volume  v  of  the  gas  will  be  diminished 
one  half;  if  it  be  doubled  again,  it  will  be  diminished  one 
fourth.  The  errors  in  the  readings  increase  greatly  as  the 
volume  decreases,  and  to  eliminate  them  Rdgnault  re- 
sorted to  an  ingenious  expedient.  At  a  he  attached  a 
UP  stop-cock  through  which  air  could  be  introduced  under 
varying  pressure;  the  volume  of  the  enclosed  air  v  could 
Fig.  10.         thus  be  always  kept  the  same  and  subsequently  compressed 

V 

to  ,^  by  lengthening  the  column  of  mercury  ;////.  With  such  an  ar- 
rangement the  measurements  were  always  of  like  exactitude. 

It  appears  that  to  reduce  unit  of  volume  under  a  pressure  of 
one  meter  of  mercury  ^'^,  it  is  requisite  in  the  case  of  air,  carbonic 
acid  gas,  and  hydrogen  to  increase  the  pressure  to  respectively 
19.7198,  10.7054,  and  2O.20S7  meters  of  mercury.  The  product 
PV,  therefore,  for  high  pressures,  decreases  for  air  and  carbonic 
acid  gas  and  increases  for  hydrogen.  The  two  first-named  gases 
are  therefore  more  compressible  and  the  last-named  less  compres- 
sible than  Boyle's  Law  requires. 

Amagat  conducted  his  experiments  in  a  shaft  400  meters  deep 
and  increased  the  pressure  to  327  meters  of  mercury.  He  found 
that  as  the  pressure  increases  the  volume  of  PV  first  decreases, 
and  after  passing  through  a  minimum  again  increases.  With  nitro- 
gen, for  7^^20.740  meters  of  mercury,  7^=50989;  for  7^=50 
meters,  /'F:=  50800,  approximately  a  minimum;  and  for  7^  = 
327.388  meters,  /'F^r 05428.  Similar  minima  are  furnished  by 
other  gases.  Hydrogen  showed  no  minimum,  although  Amagat 
suspected  the  existence  of  one  at  a  slight  pressure. 

We  shall  not  discuss  here  the  attempts  that  have  been  made 

\  Mtmoirfs  de  I'  Aciitifmit-,  Vol.  XXI. 

i  Annates  de  chintie  et  €it  physiguf.  Fifth  Series,  Vol.  XIX.  (1880). 


SKETCH  OF  THE   HISTORY  OF  THERMOMETRY.  735 

by  Van  der  Waals,  E.  and  U.  Diihring,  and  others  to  explain  these 
phenomena  by  the  molecular  theory.  It  will  be  sufficient  for  us  to 
remark  that  while  Boyle's  Law  is  not  absolutely  exact,  it  neverthe- 
less holds  very  approximately  through  a  v/ide  range  of  pressures 
for  many  gases. 

It  was  necessary  to  adduce  the  foregoing  facts  for  the  reason 
that  the  behavior  of  gases  with  respect  to  pressure  is  of  importance 
in  the  consideration  of  their  behavior  with  respect  to  heat, — a  sub- 
ject which  was  first  minutely  investigated  by  Gay-Lussac.^  This 
inquirer  makes  mention  of  the  researches  of  Amontons,  and  also 
employs  the  observations  of  Lahire  (1708)  and  Stancari,  from 
which  the  necessity  of  thoroughly  drying  the  gases  clearly  ap- 
peared. Gay-Lussac's  procedure  was  as  follows.  A  perfectly  dry 
cylinder  closed  by  a  stop-cock  is  filled  with  gas  and  plunged  into  a 
bath  of  boiling  water.  After  the  superfluous  gas  has  been  expelled, 
the  cock  is  closed  and  the  cylinder  cooled  in  melting  ice.  On  open- 
ing the  cock  under  water,  a  part  of  the  cylinder  fills  with  water. 
By  weighing  the  cylinder  thus  partly  filled  with  water,  afterwards 
completely  filled  with  water,  and  again  when  empty,  we  obtain  the 
coefficient  of  expansion  of  the  gas  from  the  melting-point  of  ice  to 
the  boiling-point  of  water.  At  0°  C.  temperature  100  volumes  of 
air,  hydrogen,  and  nitrogen  give  respectively  137.5,  137.48,  137.49 
volumes  at  100°  C.  Also  for  other  gases,  and  even  for  vapor  of 
ether,  Gay-Lussac  obtained  approximately  the  same  coefficient  of 
expansion,  viz.,  0.375.  He  states  that,  fifteen  years  before,  Charles 
(1787)  knew  of  the  equality  of  the  thermal  dilatation  of  gases;  but 
Charles  had  published  nothing  on  the  subject.  Dalton^  likewise 
had  occupied  himself  with  this  question  earlier  than  Gay-Lussac, 
and  had  both  remarked  the  equality  of  the  thermal  dilatation  of 
gases  and  given  0.376  as  the  coefficient  of  expansion. 

For  the  comparison  of  different  gases,  Gay-Lussac  also  used 
two  perfectly  similar  graduated  glass  receivers  dipped  a  slight  dis- 
tance apart  in  mercury  (Fig.  11).  When  like  volumes  of  different 
gases  were  introduced  into  these  receivers  under  like  pressures  and 
at  like  temperatures,  both  always  appeared  to  be  filled  to  the  same 
marks  of  division. 

In  another  investigation,  Gay-Lussac^  employed  a  vessel 
shaped  somewhat  like  a  thermometer  and  having  a  horizontal  tube 
in  which  the  air  was  shut  off  from   the  atmosphere  by  a  drop  of 

y  Annates  de  chitnie,  first  series,  Vol.  XLIII.  (1802). 

i  Nicholson' s  Journal,  Vol.  V.  (1801). 

3Biot,  Traiti  de physique.  Vol.  I.,  p.  182,  Paris,  1816. 


736 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


mercury,  the  vessel  being  heated  simultaneously  with  mercury- 
thermometers.  Between  the  melting-point  of  ice  and  the  boiling- 
point  of  water  the  dilatation  of  the  air  is  very  nearly  proportional 
to  the  indications  of  the  mercury-thermometer. 


A^ 


i-"ie.  II. 


Hit;.  12- 


II 


The  experiments  above  described  were  subsequently  performed 
on  a  larger  scale  and  with  closer  attention  to  sources  of  error,  by 
Rudberg,^  Magnus,'''  R^gnault,^  Jolly, ^  and  others.  Two  methods 
are  principally  employed.  The  first  consists  (Fig.  12)  in  heating 
a  glass  vessel  .4  to  the  temperature  of  boiling,  repeatedly  exhaust- 
ing it,  and  then  filling  it  with  air  that  has  passed  over  chloride  of 
calcium.  While  still  at  boiling  tempera- 
ture, the  tip  S  is  hermetically  sealed,  the 
barometer  noted,  the  vessel  inverted  and 
encased  (B)  in  melting  ice,  with  the  tip 
under  mercur}'.  When  cool,  the  tip  is 
broken  off,  and  the  mercury  rises  into  the 
vessel ;  the  difference  of  level  of  the  mer- 
cury within  and  without  the  tube  is  then 
noted,  and  the  apparatus  weighed  the  re- 
quired number  of  times.  It  is  the  method 
of  Gay-Lussac  with  the  requisite  refine- 
ments. 

Tlie  second  method  (Fig.  13)  consists 
in  plunging  a  vessel  A  full  of  dry  air  as  far 
as  the  bend  of  the  tube  a,  first  in  a  bath  of 
melting  ice  and  then  in  steam  from  boiling  water,  while  simultane- 
ously so  regulating  the  height  of  the  mercury  column  at  n  that  the 
inside  surface  of  the  mercury  constantly  grazes  the  glass  spicule  s. 
The  volume  of  the  air  is  thus  kept  constant,  and  what  is  really 


%J 


Fig.  13. 


\ Poggendor/s  AnnnUn,  41,  44. 
ZMhuoir.s  li,  fAcad..  Vol.  XXI. 


% Poggtndorfs  Annnlfti,  45, 

\  Poggtndorfs  Annal,n,  Jubelbiind. 


SKETCH   OF  THE   HISTORY  OF  THERMOMETRY.  737 

measured   is   the   increynent  of  the  expansive  force  of   the  gas  when 
heated. 

If  a  volume  of  gas  v  under  a  constant  pressure/  be  raised  from 
0^  to  100°  C,  it  will  expand  to  the  volume  t'(l-j-a),  where  a  is 
called  the  coefficient  of  expansion.  If  the  gas  as  it  now  is  at  100°  C. 
were  compressed  back  to  its  original  volume,  it  would  exert,  ac- 
cording to  Boyle's  Law,  a  pressure  /',  where  z;/'  =  z;(l -j- a)/. 
Whence  it  follows  that  /'=:/(!  -fa).  If  Boyle's  Law  held  exactly, 
a  would  likewise  be  the  coefficient  of  the  increment  of  expansive  force, 
or,  more  briefly,  the  coefficient  of  expansive  force.  But  as  the  law  in 
question  is  not  absolutely  exact,  the  two  coefificients  are  not  identi- 
cal. Calling  the  coefficient  of  expansion  a  and  the  coefficient  of 
expansive  force  /3,  the  values  of  these  coefficients  for  the  interval 
from  0°  to  100°  C.  for  a  pressure  of  about  one  atmosphere  are,  ac- 
cording to  R^gnault : 

a  ^ 

Hydrogen 0 .  36613         0 .  36678 

Air 0.36706         0.36645 

Carbonic  Acid  Gas 0 .  37099         0 .  36871 

The  coefficients  of  expansion  increase  slightly,  according  to 
R^gnault,  with  the  increase  of  the  density  of  the  gas.  It  further 
appears  that  the  coefficients  of  expansion  of  gases  which  deviate 
widely  from  Boyle's  Law  decrease  slightly  as  the  temperature 
measured  by  the  air-thermometer  rises. 

Gay-Lussac  has  shown  that  between  0°  and  100°  C.  the  expan- 
sion of  gases  is  proportional  to  the  indications  of  the  mercury-ther- 
mometer. Designating  the  degrees  of  the  mercury-thermometer 
by  /  and  the  jip  part  of  the  coefficient  of  expansion  as  above  deter- 
mined by  a,  we  shall  have,  at  constant  pressure,  ^' ^  z'o ( 1 -|- a/) ,  and 
at  constant  volume  /=/o(l  +  a/"),  where  vq,  pQ,  v,  p,  respectively 
represent  the  volume  and  pressure  of  the  gases  at  0°  and  t°,  and 
where  the  coefficients  of  expansion  and  expansive  force  are  assumed 
to  be  the  same.  Each  of  these  equations  expresses  Gay-Lussac's 
Law.^ 

Boyle's  Law  and  Gay-Lussac's  Law  are  usually  combined. 
For  a  given  mass  of  gas  the  product  /o^'o  at  the  definite  tempera- 
ture 0°  has  a  constant  value.  If  the  temperature  be  increased  to  t° 
C.  and  the  volume  kept  constant,  the  pressure  will  increase  to/'  = 
/o(l  +  at) ;  wherefore  p'va  =/oZ-'o  (1  +  o.t).  And  if  the  pressure  /  and 
the  volume  v  at  /°  be  altered  at  will,  the  product  will  he  pv^^p'vQ. 

lln  this  country  and  in  England,  Gay-Lussac's  Law  is  usually  called  Charles's  Law.— TV. 


738  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Whence  /z'=/o7'o(l +«'')■      This  last   law  is  called   the  combined 
Law  of  Boyle  and  Gay-Lussac. 

Boyle's  Law  was  visualised  by  an  equilateral  hyperbola.  The 
proportional  increase  of  the  volume  or  the  pressure  of  a  gas  with 
its  temperature  may  be  represented,  conformably  to  Gay-Lussac's 
Law,  by  a  straight  line  (Fig.  14).  Remembering  that  a  is  very  ap- 
proximately equal  to  ^i^,  we  may  say  that  for  every  increase  of  1° 
Celsius  the  volume  or  pressure  increases  v,i.j  of  its  value  at  0°, 
and  that  there  is  likewise  a  corresponding  decrease  for  every  degree 
Celsius.  This  increase  may  be  conceived  uniJiout  limit.  By  tak- 
ing away  t,1^  273  times,  we  reach  the  pressure  0  or  the  volume  0. 
If   therefore   the  gas  acted   in   strict  conformity  with   the  Law  of 

Boyle  and  Gay-Lussac  without 
limit,  then  at  — 27!^)^  Celsius  of  the 
mercury  -  thermometer  it  would 
exert  no  pressure  whatever  and 
would  present  Amontons's  "de- 
gree of  greatest  cold."  The  tem- 
perature — 273''  C.  has  accordingly 
been  called  the  absolute  zero,  and  the  temperature  reckoned  from 
this  point  in  degrees  Celsius  (viz.,  7'=:273-|-/)  the  absolute  tempe- 
rature. 

Even  if  this  view  of  the  matter  be  not  taken  seriously, — and 
we  shall  see  later  that  there  are  grave  objections  to  it, — still  the 
presentation  of  the  facts  is  simplified  by  it.  Writing  the  Law  of 
Boj-le  and  Gay-Lussac 


and  considering  that/o^'oa  is  a  constant,  we  have 

pv 

'     =  const. , 
T 

the  simplified  expression  of  the  law. 

The  Law  of  Boyle  and  Gay-Lussac  likewise  admits  of  geomet- 
ric representation.  Conceive  laid  (Fig.  lo)  in  the  plane  of  the 
paper,  a  large  number  of  long,  similar,  slender  tubes  filled  with 
equal  quantities  of  the  same  kind  of  gas.  These  tubes  are  made 
fast  at  one  extremity  to  OT  and  closed  at  the  other  by  moveable 
pistons.  The  first  tube,  at  OV,  has  a  temperature  0°  C,  the  next 
a  temperature  of  l"  C,  the  next  2°  C,  etc.,  so  that  the  temperature 
increases  uniformly  from  O  to  T.  We  now  conceive  the  pistons  to 
be  all  gradually  pushed   inwards,  mercury  columns  measuring  the 


SKETCH  OF  THE   HISTORY  OF  THERMOMETRY, 


739 


pressure/  erected  over  each  position  of  the  pistons  at  right  angles 
to  the  plane  of  their  action,  and  through  the  upper  extremities  of 
these  columns  a  surface  laid.  The  surface  so  obtained  is  imaged 
in  Fig.  16,  and  is  merely  a  synthesis  of  the  graphs  of  Fig.  9  and 
Fig.  1-4.  Every  section  of  the  surface  parallel  to  the  plane  TOP 
is  a  straight  line,  conforming  to  Gay-Lussac's  Law.  Every  section 
parallel  to  POV\s  an  equilateral  hyperbola,  conforming  to  Boyle's 
Law.  The  surface  as  an  aggregate  furnishes  a  complete  synoptic 
view  of  the  pressures  exerted  by  the  same  gaseous  mass  at  any  vol- 
ume and  at  any  temperature  whatsoever. 

The  laws  in  question  are  in  part  also  fulfilled  for  vapors.  Ac- 
cording to  Biot,^  J.  A.  Deluc"^  appears  to  have  been  the  first  to 
frame  anything  like  a  correct  view  of  the  deportment  of  vapors. 


r 

It— — 

II                              = 

II 

11— 

II 

1  1 ^=^-^^ 

II 

IK 

^^^=i^^ 

JO 

1^— --  — 

2" 

,.          IJ^-         -- 

7  " 

1   ^=^_ 

0° 



— -^-'^ 

Fig.  15.  Fig.  16. 

H.  B.  Saussure^  knew  from  observation  that  the  maximum  quan- 
tity of  vapor  which  a  given  space  can  contain  depends  not  on  the 
nature  or  density  of  the  gas  filling  the  space,  but  solely  on  the  tem- 
perature. Doubtless  this  suggested  to  Dalton*  the  idea  of  inquir- 
ing whether  water  really  was  absorbed  by  gases,  as  was  then  gene- 
rally supposed.  He  caused  the  liquid  to  be  vaporised  in  the  Torri- 
cellian vacuum,  and  obtained  for  a  given  temperature  the  sa7ne 
pressure  as  in  air.  Air,  therefore,  played  no  part  in  vaporisation. 
Priestley's  discovery,  that  gases  of  widely  differing  specific  gravities 
diffused  into  one  another  uniformly,  combined  with  that  just  men- 

IBiot,  Traite  de physique,  Paris,  i8i5.  "2.  Idees  sur  la  mStiorologie,  Paris,  1787. 

SEssai  su>-  Vhygromeirie,  Neuchatel,  1783. 

4  0«  the  Constitution  of  Mixed  Gases,  ete.,  jMem.  Manchest.  Soc,  V.,  1801. 


740 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


ticned,  led  Dalton  to  the  conception  that  in  a  mixture  of  gases  and 
vapors  occupying  a  given  space  fi'cry  portion  hthaved  as  if  it  alone 
7i.<cre  prt-sent.  Dalton's  wa}' of  expressing  this  fact  was  by  saying 
that  the  particles  of  a  gas  or  vapor  could  exert  i)ressure  only  on 
particles  of  its  own  kind. 

The  discovery  that  gases  behave  toward  one  another  precisely 
as  void  spaces,'^  is  one  of  the  most  important  and  fruitful  that  Dalton 


Jfi^ 


John  Dalton  {1766-1844). 

ever  made.  The  way  to  it  had  been  prepared  by  the  observations 
above  mentioned,  and  in  reality  it  furnishes  nothing  but  a  lucid 
conceptual  expression  of  the  facts,  such  as  science  in  the  New- 
tonian sense  requires.      But   the  preponderance  of  the  speculative 


\ Manchester  Meinoin,   Vol.  V.,  1801,  p.  535-     Compare   Henry,  Li/e  0/  Dalton,  p.  32.     Ualton 
says:  "  and  consequently  (the  panicles)  arrange  themselves  just  the  same  as  in  a  void  space." 


SKETCH  OF  THE   HISTORY  OF  THERMOMETRY. 


741 


element  and  of  a  bent  for  capricious  theorising  in  Dalton,  which 
becomes  so  fateful  in  the  researches  to  be  discussed  further  on, 
makes  its  appearance  here  also.  Dalton  cannot  refrain  from  in- 
troducing along  with  his  statement  of  the  facts  an  entirely  redundant 
conception,  which  impairs  the  clearness  of  his  ideas  and  diverts  at- 
tention from  the  main  point.  This  is  the  "pressure  of  the  particles 
of  different  gases  on  one  another.  "^  This  hypothetical  conception, 
which  can  never  be  made  the  subject  of  experimental  verification, 
certainly  does  not  impart  clearness  to  the  directly  observable  fact ; 
on  the  contrary,  it  involved  its  author  in  unnecessary  controversies. 

Gay-Lussac^  showed,  by  the  experiment  represented  in  Fig. 
11,  that  vapor  of   ether   at  a  temperature   above  the  boiling-point  of 
ether  behaved  exactly  as  air  did  on  changes  of  temperature.     The 
observations  of  Saussure  and   Dalton  adduced 
in  the  preceding  paragraphs,  together  with  that 
just  mentioned,  indicate  that  vapors  may  occur 
in  two  states,   viz.,    as   saturated   and   as  no}i- 
saturated  or  superheated  vapors. 

The  phenomena  involved  may  be  clearly 
illustrated  by  an  experiment  which  presents  in 
rapid  and  lucid  succession  the  different  cases, 
before  considered  separately.  We  perform 
(Fig.  17)  the  Torricellian  experiment,  and  in- 
troduce into  the  vacuum  of  the  Torricellian 
tube  a  small  quantity  of  ether.  A  portion  of 
the  ether  vaporises  immediately,  and  the  mer- 
cury column  is  depressed  by  the  pressure  of 
the  vapor,  say,  at  20°  C,  a  distance  of  435  vwi. 
If  the  temperature  in  the  barometer  tube  be 
raised  by  a  water  bath,  say  to  30^  C,  the  col- 
umn will  show  a  depression  of  637  nitn;  whilst 
in  a  bath  of  melting  ice  it  will  show  only  182  nun. 
vapors,  therefore,  increases  with  the  temperature.  If  the  tube 
containing  the  ether  be  plunged  deeper  into  the  mercury,  so  as  to 
diminish  the  space  occupied  by  the  vapor,  the  height  of  the  surface 
of  the  mercury  in  the  tube  will  still  not  be  altered.  The  pressure 
of  the  vapor,  therefore,  remains  the  same.  But  it  will  be  noticed 
that  the  quantity  of  liquid  ether  has  slightly  increased  and  that 

IThe  passage  reads:  "When  two  elastic  fluids,  denoted  hy  A  and  B,  are  mixed  together, 
there  is  no  mutual  repulsion  amongst  their  particles;  that  is,  the  particles  of  ^  do  not  repel 
those  of  5,  as  they  do  one  another.  Consequently,  the  pressure  or  whole  weight  upon  any  one 
particle  arises  solely  from  those  of  its  own  kind." 

2  Ann.  de  chim.  et  de phys.,  XLIII  (1802),  p.  172. 


The  pressure  of 


742 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


therefore  a  portion  of  the  vapor  has  been  liquefied.  As  the  tube  is 
withdrawn  the  quantit)-  of  liquid  ether  diminishes  and  the  pressure 
again  is  the  same. 

A  small  quantity  of  air  introduced  into  the  Torricellian  vacuum 
also  causes  a  depression  of  the  barometer  column, — say  200  mm. 
If  the  tube  be  now  plunged  in  until  the  air  space  is  reduced  one 
half,  the  depression  according  to  Boyle's  Law  will  be  too  ////;/.  In 
precisely  the  same  manner  vapor  of  ether  behaves,  conformably 
to  Gay-Lussac's  observation,  provided  the  quantity  of  ether  intro- 
duced into  the  tube  is  so  small  that  </// the  ether  vaporises  and  a 
still  greater  quantity  ^-c^?//// vaporise.  For  example,  when  at  20*^  C. 
a  depression  of  only  200  ///;//  is  generated  by  the  inclosed  ether,  the 
tube  contains  no  liquid  ether.  Diminishing  the  Torricellian  vacuum 
one  half  doubles  the  depression.    The  depression  may  be  increased 

by  further  immersion  to 
485  mm.  But  still  further 
immersion  of  the  tube 
no  longer  augments  the 
depression,  and  liquid 
ether  now  makes  its  ap- 
pearance. 

The  preceding  ob- 
servations relative  to  va- 
pors may  be  epitomised 
by  a  simple  illustration. 
A  long  tube  closed  at 
O  contains  an  adequate 
quantity  of  rarefied  va- 
por. If  the  piston  K  be 
gradually  pushed  in  and  mercury  columns  measuring  the  pressures 
be  erected  at  every  point  over  which  the  piston  passes,  the  extrem- 
ities of  these  columns  will  all  lie  in  the  hyperbola  PQR.  But  from 
a  definite  position  M  of  the  piston  on,  the  increase  of  pressure 
ceases,  and  liquefaction  takes  place.  If  at  the  position  7' of  the 
piston  nothing  but  liquid  remains  in  the  tube,  then  a  very  great  in- 
crease of  pressure  follows  on  the  slightest  further  movement  of  the 
piston.  Repeating  this  experiment  at  a  higher  temperature,  we 
obtain  increases  of  pressure  corresponding  to  Gay-Lussac's  Law 
and  the  coefficient  of  expansive  force  (O.OOIJOT),  as  the  curve  P' Q R 
indicates.  The  liquefaction  of  vapors  begins  only  at  higher  pres- 
sures and  greater  densities. 

Vapors  of  sufficiently  small  density  approximately  fulfil,  ac- 


Fig.  i8. 


SKETCH  OF  THE   HISTORY  OF  THERMOMETRY. 


743 


cordingly,  the  Law  of  Boyle  and  Gay-Lussac.  Such  vapors  are 
called  non-saturated  or  superheated  vapors.  If  the  concentration 
of  the  vapors  is  continued,  they  reach  a  maximum  of  pressure  and 
density  which  cannot  be  exceeded  for  any  given  temperature,  as 
every  further  diminution  of  the  vapor  space  causes  a  partial  lique- 
faction of  the  vapor.  Vapors  at  the  maximum  of  pressure  are  called 
saturated  vdi-pors.  Given  enough  liquid  and  sufficient  time  and  this 
maximum  of  pressure  will  always  establish  itself  in  a  closed  space. 

The  relationship  between  temperature  and  the  pressure  of 
saturated  vapors  has  been  investigated  for  different  vapors  by 
many  inquirers.  The  methods  they  employed  are  reducible  to  two 
fundamental  types.  The  first  consists 
in  introducing  the  liquid  to  be  investi- 
gated into  the  Torricellian  vacuum  and 
in  placing  the  latter  in  a  bath  of  definite 
temperature.  The  amount  of  depression 
with  respect  to  the  height  of  the  barom- 
eter column  gives  the  pressure  of  the 
vapor.  If  the  open  end  of  a  siphon 
barometer,  which  has  been  exhausted 
and  charged  with  the  liquid,  be  hermet- 
ically sealed  and  placed  in  a  bath  of 
given  temperature,  the  mercury  column 
will  indicate  the  pressure  of  the  vapor 
independently  of  that  of  the  atmosphere. 
This  procedure  is  only  a  modification  of  the  preceding  one.  The 
method  here  employed  is  commonly  called  the  static  method. 

Vapors  are  being  constantly  generated  at  the  free  surface  of 
liquids.  For  a  liquid  to  boil,  that  is,  for  bubbles  of  the  vapor  to 
form  in  its  interior,  expand,  rise  to  the  surface  and  burst,  it  is 
necessary  that  the  pressure  of  the  hot  vapor  in  these  bubbles  should 
at  least  be  in  equilibrium  with  that  of  the  atmosphere.  The  tetn- 
perature  of  boiling  is  therefore  that  temperature  at  which  the  pres- 
sure of  the  saturated  vapor  (the  maximum  pressure)  is  equal  to  the 
pressure  of  the  atmosphere.  If  a  liquid,  therefore,  be  boiled  under 
the  receiver  of  an  air-pump,  by  means  of  which  the  air-pressure 
can  be  raised  or  lowered  at  will,  (being  kept  constant  by  the  cool- 
ing and  re-liquefaction  of  the  generated  vapors,)  the  temperature  at 
which  the  liquid  boils  will  give  the  temperature  for  which  the  air- 
pressure  produced  is  the  maximum  pressure  of  the  vapor.  Thus, 
in  Figure  20,  ^  is  a  large  glass  balloon  connected  with  an  air-pump, 
by  which  the  air-pressures  are  regulated.    In  G  the  liquid  is  boiled 


\d) 


Fig.  ig. 


744 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


and  the  vapors  generated,  while  in  the  bent  tube  R,  which  can  be 
cooled,  they  are  rc-liquefied.  This  method  is  commonly  called  the 
dynamical  method. 

Experiments  were  conducted  according  to  these  methods  by 
Ziegler  (1759),  B6tancourt  (1792),  G.  G.  Schmidt  (1797),  Watt,i 
Dalton''  (1801),  Noe  (1818),  Gay-Lussac"*  (1816),  Dulong  and  Arago 
(1830),  Magnus*  (1844),  Regnault^  (1847),  and  others. 

For  the  same  temperature  the  maximum  pressure  varies  greatly 
with  the  liquid,  and  it  also  increases  rapidl}'  with  the  temperature. 

Even  Dalton  soui^ht  a  universal  law 
for   the    dependence    of    maximum 
pressures  on  temperature,  and  his 
investigations    were    continued    in 
recent  times  by  E.    and    U.    Duh- 
ring  and  otliers.     The  purpose  and 
scope  of  our  work  preclude  our  dis- 
cussing these  researches. 
The  most   extensive   investigations,   owing   to   their   practical 
importance   for  the  operation   of  steam  engines,    were   conducted 
with  water-vapor.      R^gnault   found  the  following  relationship  be- 
tween temperatures  and  maximum  pressures,  expressed   in    milli- 


Fig.  20. 


eters  of  mercury  : 

°C. 

mm. 

^C. 

mm. 

0.00 

4.54 

111.74 

1131.60 

52.16 

102.82 

131.35 

2094.69 

100.74 

777.09 

148.26 

3359.54 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  extract  from  Regnault's  table  that  the 
pressure  of  water-vapor  from  0^  to  lOO"^  C.  increases  by  about  one 
atmosphere;  while  from  100^  to  150°  it  increases  by  more  than 
three  atmosplieres.  The  rapid  rise  of  the  curve  of  pressures  on  in- 
crease of  temperature,  as  represented  in  the  graphed  illustrations 
which  Regnault  furnished,  renders  this  relationship  even  more  strik- 
ing. 

A  more  extended  extract  from  this  table  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
vaporous  pressure  of  700  mm  is  of  value  in  ascertaining  the  influ- 
ence of  atmospheric  pressure  in  the  determination  of  the  boiling- 
point  on  thermometers. 

[to  be  continued. 1 


1  Brewster's  Encyclopiidie,  (1810-1830).  iMem.  Manclifst.  Sac,  V.,  1801. 

SBiot,  Train  lie  physique,  Paris,  1816.  ^  Poggcndor/s  AnnaUn,  LXI. 

hMhuoircs  dc  I' Acad.,  Vol.  XXI. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

RUDOLF  VIRCHOW. 

(1821-1902.) 

In  the  recent  death  of  Rudolf  Virchow  at  the  age  of  eighty-one,  Germany  has 
lost  the  most  commanding  figure  of  her  scientific  world.  Virchow's  activity  em- 
braced every  field  connected  with  the  science  of  man,  and  his  influence  in  social, 
political,  and  cultural  domains  generally  perhaps  exceeded  that  of  any  other  scien- 
tific man  of  his  generation.  He  was  involved  in  the  political  troubles  of  1848, 
having  been  removed  from  his  position  by  the  Prussian  government  ;  he  was  a 
member  of  the  city  council  of  Berlin  in  1859 ;  a  representative  in  the  Prussian 
House  of  Commons  in  1862,  a  staunch  champion  of  the  National- Vereiii,  founder 
of  the  Fortschrittspartei,  etc.,  etc.;  frequently  he  crossed  swords  with  Bismarck 
in  animated  parliamentary  debates,  and  from  his  pen  flowed  the  famous  word, 
Kidtiirkampf,  which  became  the  shibboleth  of  the  most  significant  struggle  in 
modern  German  politics. 

Yet  all  this,  and  vastly  more  besides,  was  only  Virchow's  avocation.  His  real 
work  lay  in  the  sciences  of  medicine,  anatomy,  pathology,  and  anthropology.  Born 
in  Schivelbein,  Pomerania,  October  13,  1821,  he  first  became  famous  as  a  profes- 
sor of  the  so-called  Wiirzburg  school  of  medicine.  He  afterwards  returned  to 
Berlin,  where  he  was  to  remain,  and  where  he  founded  the  famous  Pathological 
Institute.  The  science  of  pathological  anatomy  as  it  is  to-day  owes  in  nearly  all 
its  parts  its  fundamental  conformation  to  him,  and  the  impress  that  he  left  on  the 
science  of  medicine  at  large  was  no  less  deep.  Physical  anthropology  and  prehis- 
toric archaeology,  especially  in  Germany,  received  immense  aid  from  his  researches 
and  it  is  perhaps  in  this  field  that  his  name  is  widest  known  to  the  general  scientific 
public.  But  his  greatest  achievement  was  the  ioundation  oi  ce//idar  ^a(/ioiog-y, 
and  to  his  view  of  the  nature  of  the  animal  cell  we  shall  briefly  refer,  before  pro. 
ceeding  to  his  well-known  and  often  misinterpreted  attitude  toward  the  theory  of 
evolution. 

According  to  Virchow,  every  cell  is  born  of  a  cell.  Cells  change  in  the  organ- 
ism, and  may  therefore  be  said  to  be  variable ;  they  possess,  as  Virchow  phrased 
it,  mutability.  "From  his  point  of  view  the  whole  question  of  the  origin  of  species 
centers  in  the  problem  of  the  relation  between  the  mutability  of  the  organism  and 
the  mutability  of  the  cell.  The  comparison  of  the  forms  of  organisms  and  organs 
may  form  the  starting-point  of  researches  on  variability,  but  the  study  of  the  varia- 
tions of  the  whole  organism  or  organ  must  be  based  on  the  study  of  the  variations 
of  the  constituent  cells,  since  the  physiological  changes  of  the  whole  body  depend 
upon  the  correlated  physiological  changes  that  take  place  in  the  cells.     Without  a 


74^  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

knowledge  of  the  processes  that  take  place  in  varying  cells,  it  is  impossible  to  de- 
termine whether  a  deviation  from  the  normal  form  is  due  to  secondary  causes  that 
afifect  during  their  period  of  development  organs  already  formed,  or  whether  it  is 
due  to  primary  deviations  which  develop  before  the  first  formation  of  the  varying 
organ.  Two  questions,  therefore,  arise  :  the  first,  whether  secondary  deviations 
may  become  hereditary.  For  this  no  convincing  proof  has  been  found.  The  sec- 
ond question  is,  whether  primary  variations  do  occur,  and  if  so,  whether  they  are 
hereditary."  ' 

Now,  cellular  research,  Virchow  claims,  has  given  no  satisfactory  answer  to 
these  questions,  and  since  problems  concerning  the  origin  of  species  and  the  forms 
of  organisms  must  be  determined  by  investigations  concerning  the  mutability  and 
general  function  of  cells,  therefore  Virchow  regarded  any  definite  theory  with  re- 
gard to  the  descent  of  man  as  speculathm  and  not  as  an  assured  scientific  result. 
His  attitude  was  one  of  extreme  scientific  reserve  and  caution  ;  he  withheld  judg- 
ment ;  he  did  not  disbelieve  in  evolution  ;  he  took  the  same  stand  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Neanderthal  skull,  which  he  considered  an  individual  variation,  claim- 
ing it  would  be  absurd  to  construct  an  entire  race  from  a  single  cranium.  He  was 
hypercritical  and  conservative  to  a  degree  in  science,  and  his  attitude  on  these 
momentous  questions  contrasts  strangely  with  his  impetuous  progressiveness  and 
liberalism  in  politics.  Broad  and  encyclopaedic  as  his  attainments  were,  he  brought 
the  spirit  of  the  specialist  to  this  problem  and  demanded  that  it  should  be  solved 
by  the  specialist's  criteria. 

Virchow's  position  has  been  so  admirably  summarised  by  Clifford  in  his  essay 
on  the  great  scientist's  famous  address  made  in  1877  on  "The  Liberty  of  Science 
in  the  Modern  State,"  that  we  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  it.     Clifford  says  .^ 

"He  [Virchow]  recalled  the  early  days  of  the  Association,  when  it  had  to 
meet  in  secret  for  fear  of  the  authorities;  and  he  warned  his  colleagues  that  their 
present  liberty  was  not  a  secure  possession,  that  a  reaction  was  possible,  and  that 
they  should  endeavor  to  make  sure  of  the  ground  by  a  wise  moderation,  by  a  put- 
ting forward  of  those  things  which  are  established  in  the  sight  of  all  men,  rather 
than  of  individual  opinions.  He  divided  scientific  doctrines  into  those  which  are 
actually  proved  and  perfectly  determined,  which  we  may  give  out  as  real  science 
in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word  ;  and  those  which  are  still  to  be  proved,  but 
which,  in  the  meantime,  may  be  taught  with  a  certain  amount  of  probability,  in 
order  to  fill  up  gaps  in  our  knowledge.  Doctrines  of  the  former  class  must  be 
completely  admitted  into  the  scientific  treasure  of  the  nation,  and  must  become 
part  of  the  nation  itself  ;  they  must  modify  the  whole  method  of  thinking.  For  an 
example  of  such  a  doctrine  he  took  the  great  increase  in  our  knowledge  of  the  eye 
and  its  working  which  has  come  to  us  in  recent  times,  and  the  doctrine  of  percep- 
tion founded  upon  it.  Things  so  well  known  as  this,  he  said,  must  be  taught  to 
children  in  the  schools  '  If  the  theory  of  descent  is  as  certain  as  Professor  Haeckel 
thinks  it  is,  then  we  must  demand  its  admission  into  the  school,  and  this  demand 
is  a  necessary  one.'  And  this,  even  although  there  is  danger  of  an  alliance  between 
socialism  and  the  doctrine  of  evolution. 

"But,  he  went  on  to  say,  there  are  parts  of  the  evolution  theory  which  are 
not  yet  established  scientific  doctrines  in  the  sense  that  they  ought  to  be  taught 
dogmatically  in  schools.     Of  these  he  specially  named  two  :  the  spontaneous  gene- 

1  Quoted  from  an  article  by  Dr.  Boas  in  Science  for  Sept.  19,  1902. 

2  "  Virchow  on  the  Teaching  of  Science,"  in  Lectures  and  Estays,  Macmillan,  New  York  and 
London,  second  edition,  p.  418. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  747 

ration  of  living  matter  out  of  inorganic  bodies,  without  the  presence  of  previously 
living  matter ;  and  the  descent  of  man  from  some  non-human  vertebrate  animal. 
These,  he  said,  are  problems  ;  we  may  think  it  ever  so  probable  that  living  matter 
has  been  formed  out  of  non-living  matter,  and  that  man  has  descended  from  an 
ape-like  ancestor  ;  we  may  fully  expect  that  evidence  will  shortly  be  forthcoming 
to  establish  these  statements  ;  but  meanwhile  we  must  not  teach  them  as  known 
and  established  scientific  facts.  We  ought  to  say,  '  Do  not  take  this  for  established 
truth,  be  prepared  to  find  that  it  is  otherwise ;  only  for  the  moment  we  are  of  opin- 
ion that  it  may  be  true.'  " 

Professor  Clifford,  then,  in  a  thoroughgoing  review  of  the  situation  discusses 
the  nature  of  the  evidence  for  the  descent  of  man  and  shows  it  to  be  of  equal  valid- 
ity with  that  on  which  the  so-called  "actually  assured"  results  of  science  rest. 
The  strength  of  this  evidence  is  not  apparent  to  infantile  minds,  and  therefore  it 
cannot,  of  its  own  nature,  be  taught  to  others  than  advanced  pupils  ;  but  the  facts 
can  be  taught  to  children  in  the  schools,  and  if  that  be  done  the  demonstration 
will  arise  later  inevitably  and  of  itself. 

To  us,  of  thirty  years  later,  the  discussion  appears  belated.  But  not  so  the 
question  of  the  spontaneous  generation  of  life,  the  adversaries  of  which  have  re- 
cently again  reared  aloft  their  grim-visaged  heads.  "Life  from  life,  and  from  life 
only,"  is  their  cry.  The  eternity  and  indestructibility  of  life  they  have  placed  on 
the  same  footing  with  that  of  energy  and  matter.  And  the  recent  experiments  on 
the  viability  of  bacteria  in  very  low  degrees  of  cold  and  in  very  high  degrees  of 
heat  have  furnished  them  with  unexpected  straws  of  support.  Yet  Clifford's  trench- 
ant remarks  still  hold.  "  We  can  only  get  out  of  spontaneous  generation,"  he  says, 
"by  the  supposition  made  by  Sir  W.  Thompson,  in  jest  or  earnest,  that  some  piece 
of  living  matter  came  to  the  earth  from  outside,  perhaps  with  a  meteorite.  I  wish  to 
treat  all  hypotheses  with  respect,  and  to  have  no  preferences  which  are  not  entirely 
founded  on  reason ;  and  yet,  whenever  I  contemplate  this 

'  simpler  protoplastic  shape 
Which  came  down  in  a  fire-escape,' 
an  internal  monitor,  of  which  I  can  give  no  rational  account,  invariably  whispers 

'  Fiddlesticks! '  " 

* 

A  fropos  of  Clifford's  essay  on  Virchow  and  his  discussion  of  the  ancestry  of 
hoofed  animals  and  the  wiles  of  the  devil  in  "salting"  the  geological  strata  with 
fossils  to  deceive  mankind,  we  cannot  omit  repeating  a  little  pleasantry  recorded 
by  him  of  a  meeting  of  the  great  French  naturalist  Cuvier  with  his  Satanic  Majesty. 
The  Devil  is  said  to  have  appeared  to  Cuvier  and  threatened  to  eat  him.  "  Horns  ? 
Hoofs?"  said  Cuvier.  "Graminivorous.  Can't  eat  me."  "All  flesh  is  grass," 
replied  the  Devil,  with  that  fatal  habit  of  misapplying  Scripture  which  has  always 
clung  to  him. 

We  have  merely  indicated  the  salient  features  of  Virchow's  illustrious  career. 
It  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  enter  here  into  the  details  of  his  life,  or  to  make 
more  than  the  merest  reference  to  his  myriad  social  and  scientific  achievements. 
His  was  one  of  the  most  versatile  minds  of  the  last  century ;  he  was  one  of  the  dic- 
tators of  its  scientific  opinion ;  and,  not  least  of  all,  he  was  a  shining  example  of 
the  devotion  of  a  man  of  pure  science  to  the  welfare  of  his  city  and  nation.  His 
life  was  destined  to  great  length  and  fullest  fruition. 

Thomas  J.  McCormack. 


748  THE  OPEN  COURT. 


THE  NEW  ENCYCLOPEDIA  OF  THE  BIBLE. 

We  devoted  considerable  space  in  our  August  number  of  1901  to  the  story  of 
the  inception  and  character  of  the  great  critical  P2ncyclopa:-dia  of  the  Bible'  edited 
by  Cheyne  and  Black  and  conceived  by  the  late  Prof.  W.  Robertson  Smith,  the 
author  of  the  chief  Biblical  articles  in  the  F.ncyclopddia  Fritannica.  We  have 
now  to  chronicle  the  appearance  of  the  third  volume  of  this  latest  and  crowning 
achievement  of  British  Scriptural  scholarship.  The  material  covers  the  letters 
from  L  to  P  (including  1299  columns  of  fine  print).  The  contributors  are  forty- 
nine  in  number,  and  while  they  come  mostly  from  Great  Britain  and  Germany, 
still  Holland,  Switzerland,  and  America  are  not  unrepresented.  This  international 
character  of  the  undertaking  is  a  certain  guarantee  of  its  sound  critical  and  pro- 
gressive spirit.  These  volumes  have  brought  the  bewilderingly  vast  material,  his- 
torical, archaeological,  geographical,  critical,  and  what  not,  now  offered  by  Oriental 
research,  up  to  the  "  high  level  of  the  most  recent  scholarship,"  and  so  constitute 
a  work  of  reference  that  supersedes  or  supplements  existing  English  literature  in 
this  field,  and  that  no  modern  student  of  the  Bible  therefore  can  afford  to  be  with- 
out. 

But  the  work  is  not  a  collection  of  disjointed  information  about  the  Bible, — not 
a  dictionary  ;  it  is  "  a  survey  of  the  contents  of  the  Bible,  as  illuminated  by  criti- 
cism— a  criticism  which  identifies  the  cause  of  religion  with  that  of  historical  truth, 
and,  without  neglecting  the  historical  and  archaeological  setting  of  religion,  loves 
best  to  trace  the  growth  of  high  conceptions,  the  flashing  forth  of  new  intuitions, 
and  the  development  of  noble  personalities,  under  local  and  temporal  conditions 
that  may  often  be,  to  human  eyes,  most  adverse." 

We  quote  below,  and  in  full,  one  of  the  interesting  articles  of  the  work,  show- 
ing the  outspoken  critical  and  historical  spirit  in  which  delicate  Biblical  questions 
are  treated  and  offering  also  much  valuable  information  on  an  important  subject. 
We  naturally  omit  the  cross-references  to  the  other  articles  of  the  Eiuycloptcdia, 
which  form  a  very  essential  feature  of  the  work  as  a  whole. 

NATURE-WORSHIP  IN  THE   PROGRESS  OF  RELIGION. 

The  earliest  stage  of  the  development  of  religious  ideas  about  nature  is  that  in 
which  man  conceives  natural  objects  as  animated  by  a  demonic  life  ;  the  second, 
that  in  which  these  objects  and  localities  are  regarded  as  inhabited  by  a  divinity 
or  frequented  by  it ;  the  third,  that  ' '  in  which  they  are  the  visible  symbols  wherein 
the  presence  of  a  god  is  graciously  manifested,  and,  finally,  to  the  rejection  of  the 
symbol  as  incompatible  with  the  conception  of  a  god  whose  invisible  presence  fills 
earth  and  heaven. 

"  The  first  of  these  stages  had  been  left  behind  by  the  religion  of  Israel  long 
before  our  knowledge  of  it  begins  ;  but  innumerable  customs  of  social  life  and 
ritual  observance  that  had  their  root  and  reason  in  animistic  beliefs  survived  even 
to  the  latest  times,  and  doubtless  the  beliefs  themselves  lingered  as  more  or  less 
obscure  superstitions  among  certain  classes  of  the  people,  as  they  do  to  the  present 
day  among  the  peasantry  in  Christian  Europe. 

1  Encyclopadia  Biblica.  A  Critical  Dictionary  of  the  Literary,  Political,  and  Religious  His- 
tory, the  ArchajoloKy,  GeoRraphy,  and  Natural  History  of  the  Bible.  Ediied  by  the  Rev.  T.  K. 
Cheyne,  M.  A  ,  D.  D.,  and  J.  Sutherland  Black,  M.  A.,  LL  D.  New  York  :  The  Macmillan  Cono- 
pany.     London  :  Adam  and  Charles  Black.     1902.     Vol.  III.,  L  to  P,  pages,  xv,  650. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  749 

"  It  is  obvious  that  the  nature  of  the  object  itself  determined  how  far  it  could 
be  carried  along  by  the  advancing  religious  conceptions.  A  holy  mountain,  for 
example,  most  easily  became  the  abode  of  a  god,  whose  power  was  manifested  in 
storm  and  lightning,  or  in  the  beneficent  rain-clouds  which  gathered  around  its 
top  ;  a  cave  near  the  summit  might  be  in  a  special  sense  his  dwelling-place.  A 
natural  rock  which  had  been  revered  as  the  seat  of  a  numen  might  become  a  rock- 
altar  or  a  massebah,  in  which  a  deity  no  longer  bound  to  the  spot  received  the 
sacrifices  of  his  worshippers  and  answered  their  requests  ;  and  might  even  finally 
be  understood  by  higher  spirits  as  only  the  symbol  of  the  divine  presence.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  sacred  tree  was  not  so  easily  dissociated  from  its  own  life;  its 
spirit  might  be  very  potent  in  its  sphere,  but  it  was  to  the  end  a  tree-spirit,  even  if 
some  greater  name  was  given  it.  Consequently,  the  beliefs  and  customs  connected 
with  trees  and  with  vegetation  generally  have  been  left  behind  in  the  progress  of 
religion  and  often  put  under  its  ban,  though  nowhere  extirpated  by  it. 

HOLY  TREES  IN  ISRAEL. 

"We  find  this  true  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  mountains  and  the  sacred 
wells  and  springs  which  once  had,  as  in  some  instances  we  can  still  perceive,  their 
own  numina,  have  been  taken  possession  of  by  Yahwe,  and  become  his  holy  places, 
seats  of  his  worship ;  no  traces  of  a  distinctive  cultus  have  been  preserved  ;  the 
rocks,  so  far  as  they  have  a  religious  association  at  all,  are  his  altars  or  memorial 
stones. 

"Sacred  trees,  too,  are  found  at  the  sanctuaries  of  Yahwe  ;  at  Beersheba,  by 
the  holy  wells,  was  a  tamarisk  which  Abraham  planted  with  religious  rites  (Gen. 
xxi.  33);  at  Hebron  Abraham  built  an  altar  at  the  'elon  Mamre  (xiii.  18),  where  he 
dwelt  (xiv.  13);  beneath  the  tree  Yahwe  appeared  to  him  in  theophany  (xviii.  i  ff.). 
At  the  'elo7i  more  at  Shechem  Yahwe  appeared  to  Abraham  (Gen.  xii.  6  f.);  under 
the  'elah  at  the  same  place  Jacob  buried  the  idols  and  amulets  of  his  Aramaean 
household  (Gen.  xxxv.  4) ;  there  Joshua  erected  a  massebah  beneath  the  'elah 
which  is  in  the  sanctuary  of  Yahwe  (Josh.  xxiv.  26);  by  the  same  tree  Abimelech 
was  made  king  (Judg.  ix.  6)  ;  near  Shechem  stood  also  an  'elon  yne'oneiiim.  (Judg. 
ix.  37)  ;  the  tomb  of  Deborah  was  under  a  tree  near  Bethel  named  'allon  bakkuth 
Gen.  xxxv.  8)  ;  beneath  the  'elali  at  Ophrah  the  angel  of  Yahwe  appeared  to  Gideon, 
who  built  an  altar  on  the  spot  (Judg.  vi.  11,  ig,  24).  Compare  also  the  place- 
names,  Elim  (Ex.  xvi.  i),  Elath  (2  K.  xiv.  22),  Elon  (Judg.  xxii.  11) ;  see  also  Judg. 
iv.  5,  I  S.  xiv.  2,  xxii.  6,  xxxi.  13  (i.  Ch.  x.  12).  The  words  vji{,  p]'^j^  ['elah,  'allah), 
"jl^JN  {'elo7i,  'allo?i),  ordinarily  mean  'holy  tree'  (cp.  Is.  i.  29);  the  substitutions 
made  in  the  Targums  and  by  Jerome  (i.  e.,  Jerome's  Jewish  teachers)  show  how 
keenly  this  was  felt  at  a  late  time.  The  etymological  connection  of  the  word  with 
''^  (el),  'numen,  god,'  is  very  probable.  The  names  'elon  more,  'elon  me  'onejiitn, 
point  to  tree  oracles  ;  and  though  these  names,  like  many  of  the  others,  are  prob- 
ably of  Canaanite  origin,  we  may  observe  that  David  takes  an  omen  from  the  sound 
of  a  marching  in  the  tops  of  the  baka  trees  (2.  S.  v.  24). 

SURVIVALS  IN  CULT  AND  CUSTOM. 

"Of  an  actual  tree  cult  we  have  no  evidence  in  the  Old  Testament,  the  pro- 
phetic irony  directed  against  the  veneration  of  stocks  (Y- )  and  stones  more  probably 
referring  to  'aserahs  or  wooden  idols.  But  the  places  of  worship  '  under  every  lux- 
uriant tree '  had  at  least  originally  a  deeper  reason  than  that  '  the  shade  was  good  ' 
(Hos.  iv.  13) ;  and  we  shall  probably  not  err  if  we  see  in  beliefs  which  in  many 


75°  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Other  parts  of  the  world  have  been  associated  with  the  pxjwers  of  tree-spirits  and 
the  life  of  vegetation  at  least  one  root  of  the  sexual  license  which  at  these  sanc- 
tuaries was  indulged  in  in  the  name  of  religion.  Doubtless  the  custom  existed, 
which  still  prevails  in  Syria  as  in  many  other  countries,  of  hanging  upon  the  trees 
bits  of  clothing,  ornaments,  and  other  things  which  keep  up  the  connection  be- 
tween the  man  to  whom  they  belonged  and  the  spirit  of  the  tree.  At  least  one  law 
— the  three  years  'orlah  of  fruit-trees  when  they  begin  to  bear  (Lev.  xix.  23-25) — 
perpetuates  a  parallel  between  the  life  of  tree  and  man  which  was  once  more  than 
an  analogy.  The  prohibition  of  mixed  plantations  [kiF  dyim,  Dt.  xxii.  9)  is  prob- 
ably another  instance  of  the  same  kind.  The  prohibition  of  reaping  the  corner  of 
a  field  (Lev.  xix.  9,  xxiii.  22),  though  now  a  charitable  motive  is  attached  to  it,  had 
primitively  a  very  different  reason  :  the  corner  was  left  to  the  grain-spirit.  That 
the  first  sheaf  of  the  harvest,  the  first  cakes  made  of  the  new  grain,  were  originally 
not  an  offering  to  the  God  of  the  land,  but  a  sacrament  of  the  corn-spirit,  is  shown 
by  similar  evidence. 

"  If  all  this  belongs  to  an  age  which  to  the  Israelites  was  prehistoric,  the  gar- 
dens of  Adonis  (Is.  xvii.  10)  and  the  women's  mourning  for  Tammuz  (Ezek.  viii.  14) 
show  that  in  mythologised,  and  doubtless  foreign,  forms,  the  great  drama  of  plant 
life — the  blooming  spring,  the  untimely  death  under  the  fierce  midsummer  sun, 
and  the  resurrection  of  the  new  year,  maintained  its  power  over  the  Israelites  as 
well  as  their  neighbors. 

WATER  LIRATION. 

"The  holy  wells  and  springs  in  Palestine,  like  the  mountains,  were  taken  pos- 
session of  by  Yahwe  when  he  supplanted  the  baals  in  their  old  haunts.  No  trace 
remains  in  the  Old  Testament  of  distinctive  rites  or  restrictions  connected  with 
sacred  waters  such  as  we  know  in  abundance  among  the  neighbors  of  the  Israelites. 
But  one  ceremony  was  observed  annually  in  the  temple,  at  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles, which  must  be  briefly  mentioned  here.  At  this  season  water  was  drawn 
from  Siloam,  carried,  amid  the  blare  of  trumpets,  into  the  temple  precincts  through 
a  gate  called  for  this  reason  the  water-gate,  and  poured  upon  the  altar,  running 
down  through  a  drain  into  the  subterranean  receptable.  The  reason  for  the  rite  is 
given  in  another  place  :  '  The  Holy  One,  Blessed  is  he  !  said,  Pour  out  water  be- 
fore me  at  the  Feast,  in  order  that  the  rains  of  the  year  may  be  blessed  to  you.' 
The  libation  was  thus  an  old  rain  charm,  a  piece  of  mimetic  magic.  A  very  sim- 
ilar ceremony  at  Hierapolis  is  described  by  Lucian. 

WORSHIP  OF  THE  SUN  AND  MOON. 

"The  heavenly  bodies,  especially  the  sun,  moon,  and  (five)  planets,  appeared 
to  the  ancients  to  be  living  beings,  and  since  their  influence  on  human  welfare  was 
manifest  and  great  they  were  adored  as  deities  (see  Wisd.  xiii.  2  ff.).  The  relative 
prominence  of  these  gods  in  religion  and  mythology  differs  widely  among  peoples 
upon  the  same  plane  of  culture  and  even  of  the  same  stock  ;  they  had  a  different 
significance  to  the  settled  population  of  Babylonia  from  that  which  they  had  for 
the  Arab  nomad,  and  besides  this  economic  reason  there  are  doubtless  historical 
causes  for  the  diversity  which  are  in  great  part  concealed  from  us. 

"That  the  Israelite  nomads  showed  in  some  way  their  veneration  of  the  sun 
is  most  probable  ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  sun-worship  was  an  im- 
portant part  of  their  religion.  In  Palestine  the  names  of  several  cities  bear  witness 
to  the  fact  that  they  were  seats  of  the  worship  of  the  sun  (Shemesh).     The  best 


MISCELLANEOUS.  75I 

known  of  these  is  Beth-shemesh — now  'Ain  Shems — in  the  Judaean  lowland,  just 
across  the  valley  from  Zorah,  the  home  of  Samson,  whose  own  name  shows  that 
Israelites  participated  in  the  cult  of  their  Canaanite  neighbors,  and  perhaps  ap- 
propriated elements  of  a  solar  myth.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  the  worship 
of  the  sun  at  these  places  was  of  native  Canaanite  origin,  or  is  to  be  ascribed  to 
Babylonian  influence,  such  as  we  recognise  in  the  case  of  the  names  Beth-anath 
and,  probably,  Beth-dagon.  If  we  may  judge  from  the  evidence  of  PhcEuician 
names,  the  worship  of  the  sun  had  no  such  place  in  the  religion  of  Canaan  as 
Shamash  had  in  that  of  the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians,  and  it  seems  more  likely 
that  the  god  whose  cult  gives  a  distinctive  name  to  certain  places  was  a  foreign 
deity.  These  considerations  lend  some  additional  probability  to  Budde's  surmise 
that  the  southern  beth-shemesh  is  the  place  designated  in  the  Amarna  Tablets, 
no.  183,  1.  14  ff.,  as  Bit-Ninib  in  the  district  of  Jerusalem.  The  name  of  the  city 
of  Jericho — the  most  natural  etymology  of  which  derives  it  from  -Ot,  moon — may 
indicate  that  it  was  a  seat  of  moon-worship  ;  but  we  have  no  other  evidence  of  the 
fact.  The  names  of  the  Desert  of  Sin  and  the  holy  mountain  Sinai  bear  witness 
to  the  fact  that  the  region  was  a  centre  of  the  cult  of  the  moon-god  Sin,  who  was 
zealously  worshipped  in  Syria  (Harran),  Babylonia,  and  southern  Arabia  ;  in  later 
times  Greek  and  Latin  writers  as  well  as  Nabataean  inscriptions  attest  the  worship 
of  the  moon  by  the  population  of  Arabia  Petraea ;  the  appearance  of  the  new  moon 
is  still  greeted  by  the  Bedouins,  as  it  was  by  Canaanites  and  Israelites  in  Old  Tes- 
tament times.  The  religious  observance  of  the  new  moon  with  festal  rejoicings 
and  sacrifices  belongs  originally  to  a  lunar  cult ;  but,  as  in  many  other  cases,  this 
festival  and  its  rites  were  taken  up  into  the  religion  of  Yahwe — the  national  reli- 
gion absorbing  the  nature  religion.  Whether  the  Canaanite  Astarte-worship  was 
associated  with  the  planet  Venus  we  do  not  certainly  know  ;  the  worship  of  the 
Queen  of  Heaven  in  the  seventh  century  was  evidently  regarded  as  a  new  and  for- 
eign cult. 

"The  opinion,  formerly  widely  entertained  and  not  yet  everywhere  aban- 
doned, that  the  Canaanite  worship  of  Baal  and  Astarte  was  primitive  sun-  and 
moon-worship,  is  without  foundation  ;  the  identification — so  far  as  it  took  place  in 
the  sphere  of  religion  at  all — is  late  and  influenced  by  foreign  philosophy. 

WORSHIP  OF  THE   STARS. 

"  If  the  evidence  of  the  worship  of  the  heavenly  bodies  in  Israel  in  older  times 
is  thus  scanty  and  indirect,  the  case  is  otherwise  in  the  seventh  and  sixth  centuries. 
Jeremiah  predicts  that  the  bones  of  all  classes  in  Jerusalem  shall  be  exhumed  and 
spread  out  before  '  the  sun  and  the  moon  and  the  whole  host  of  heaven  whom  they 
have  loved  and  served  and  followed  and  consulted  and  prostrated  themselves  to' 
(Jer.  viii,  2).  The  deuteronomic  law  pronounces  the  penalty  of  death  against  the 
man  or  woman  who  worships  the  sun  or  the  moon  or  the  host  of  heaven  (xvii.  3) ; 
cp.  also  Dt.  iv.  15,  19.  The  introduction  of  this  cult  in  Jerusalem  is  ascribed  to 
Manasseh,  who  built  altars  for  all  the  host  of  heaven  in  the  two  courts  of  the 
temple  (2  K.  xxi.  3,  5)  ;  the  apparatus  of  this  worship,  with  other  heathenish  par- 
aphernalia, was  destroyed  by  Josiah  in  his  reformation  (621  B.  C.)  and  the  priests 
put  out  of  the  way  (2  K.  xxiii.  4  f.).  The  altars  of  the  astral  cults  were  under  the 
open  sky,  frequently  upon  the  flat  roofs  of  houses  (Jer.  xix.  13,  Zeph.  i.  5);  prob- 
ably the  altars  on  the  roof — the  '  upper  story '  of  Ahaz — (2  K.  xxiii.  12),  apparently 
an  addition  to  the  temple,  were  of  this  sort.  Sacrifices  were  burnt  upon  them 
(2  K.  xxiii.  5).     The  heavenly  bodies  needed  no  idol,  they  were  visible  gods  ;  and 


752  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

although  various  symbols  of  the  sun  are  found  in  Assyria  as  well  as  Egypt,  it  is  not 
certain  that  there  were  such  in  Jerusalem.  Horses  dedicated  to  the  sun  were  sta- 
bled at  one  of  the  entrances  to  the  temple,  apparently  in  an  annex  on  the  western 
side  (2  K.  xxiii.  11),  and  with  them  chariots  of  the  sun.  The  horses,  animals  sacred 
to  the  sun  (Bochart,  i.  141  0.,  ed.  Rosenm  ),  were  not  kept  for  sacrifice  but,  har- 
nessed to  the  chariots,  were  driven  in  procession  ;  according  to  the  Jewish  commen- 
tators, driven  out  (toward  the  East)  to  meet  the  sun  at  his  rising.  These  horses  were 
probably,  as  elsewhere,  white.  The  rite,  one  of  those  imitative  acts  of  cultus 
which  have  their  ultimate  origin  in  mimetic  magic,  probably  came  to  the  Jews 
from  Assyria,  though  the  special  sacredness  of  the  horse  to  the  sun  seems  rather 
to  be  of  Iranian  origin.  Another  rite  is  described  by  Ezekiel  (viii.  16):  in  the  inner 
court  of  the  temple,  at  the  very  door  of  the  r<"'f,  between  the  prostyle  and  the  great 
altar,  men  were  standing  with  their  backs  to  the  sanctuary  of  Yahwe  and  their  faces 
to  the  East,  protrasting  themselves  eastward  to  the  sun.  The  words  in  the  next 
verse,  translated  in  the  Revised  Version  '  they  put  the  branch  to  their  nose,'  have 
been  thought  to  refer  to  another  feature  of  the  ritual,  similar  to  the  use  of  the 
bunch  of  twigs  called  barcsma,  held  by  the  Persians  before  the  mouth  when  at 
prayer  ;  not  only  this  interpretation,  however,  but  the  connection  of  the  words 
with  the  sun-worship  of  v.  16,  is  uncertain.  The  throwing  of  kisses  to  the  sun  and 
moon  is  alluded  to  in  Job  (xxxi.  26-28)  as  a  superstitious  custom  ;  it  corresponds 
to  the  actual  kissing  of  an  idol  (i  K.  xix.  18,  Hos.  xiii.  2). 

THE  HOST  OF  HEAVEN  AND  THE  TWELVE  SIGNS. 

"In  the  references  to  this  worship,  beside  sun  and  moon,  two  other  names 
appear  which  require  a  word  of  comment.  One  of  these  scba  hds-scnndim 
(D^?J^n  N-V\  '  the  host  of  heaven  '  ((S  in  Dt.  i)  Konunq  rov  vvpavov,  elsewhere  f'l  i(H//f, 
arparid  ;  Vg.  militt'a),  is  a  collective  term,  sometimes  apparently  including  the  sun 
and  moon,  sometimes  designating  the  other  heavenly  bodies  ;  see  Dt.  iv.  19,  '  the 
sun  and  moon  and  stars — all  the  host  of  heaven.'  The  word  'host'  {saba)  is  the 
common  Hebrew  word  for  army  ;  the  stars,  conceived  as  living  beings,  not  only 
by  their  number  (Jer.  xxxiii.  22),  but  also  by  their  orderly  movement  as  though 
under  command,  resembled  an  army  in  the  field.  In  at  least  one  old  passage,  the 
phrase  '  the  host  of  heaven  '  designates  the  beings  (cp.  'a  certain  spirit,' v.  21)  who 
form  Yahwe's  court  and  execute  his  will  (i  K.  xxii.  19  fT. ,  Micaiah's  vision  ;  cp.  also 
Josh.  V.  13  f).  It  is  unnecessary  to  suppose  that  the  author's  conception  here  is 
essentially  different  from  that  implied  in  the  more  common  use  of  the  phrase,  as 
though  in  the  latter  the  stars  were  meant  as  merely  astronomical  bodies  and  in  the 
former  'angels';  unnecessary,  therefore,  to  seek  a  remote  connection  between 
senses  which  only  our  modern  ideas  have  separated.  The  '  host  of  heaven  '  are 
the  ministers  of  Yahwe. 

"The  other  word,  mazzaloth,  occurs  only  jn  2  K.  xxiii.  5  ('^*''i'2.  (S  /^aCoiyx^^, 
Vg.  duodecim  signa,  Pesh.  tnauzlatha,  Tg.  J^JP?"!^).  and— if  the  words  are  rightly 
identified — in  Job  xxxviii.  32  (•'^''^t'*),  and  is  variously  understood  of  the  signs  of 
the  zodiac  (so  Jerome  above),  or  the  planets.  It  appears  to  be  a  loan-word  from 
Assyr.  matizallu,  'station,  abode,'  and  points  to  the  origin  of  the  religion. 

HISTORY. 

' '  The  worship  of  the  '  sun  and  moon  and  the  whole  host  of  heaven  '  came  in 
under  Assyrian  influence  in  the  seventh  century;  it  flourished  under  Manasseh  ; 
was  temporarily  suppressed,  with  other  foreign  religions,   by  Josiah  in  621  ;  but 


MISCELLANEOUS.  753 

sprang  up  again  after  his  death,  and  continued  in  full  vigor  down  to  the  fall  of 
the  kingdom  of  Judah  in  586  ;  nor  did  that  catastrophe  extinguish  it.  We  cannot 
doubt  that  astrological  divination,  if  not  the  worship  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  was 
one  of  the  strongest  temptations  of  heathenism  to  the  Jews  in  Babylonia  (see  Is. 
xlvii.  13,  cp.  Dan.  ii.  2,  etc.). 

"The  development  of  theological  monotheism  involved  the  assertion  of 
Yahwe's  supremacy  over  the  heavenly  bodies  :  he  created  them,  he  leads  out  their 
host  in  its  full  number,  calls  them  all  by  name,  so  great  is  his  power  not  one  of 
them  dares  be  missing  (Is.  xl.  26,  cp.  xlv.  12,  Gen.  i.  14  ff.,  Neh.  ix.  6).  They  are 
not  mere  luminaries  set  in  the  sky,  but  superhuman  beings  ;  it  is  by  Yahwe's  ordi- 
nance that  the  nations  worship  them  (Dt.  iv.  19  f.,  cp.  xxxii.  8  (S,  Jubilees,  xv. 
31  f.)  ;  the  final  judgment  falls  no  less  upon  the  high  host  on  high,  who  guide  and 
govern  the  nations  in  history,  than  on  the  kings  of  the  earth  on  earth  ;  they  shall 
together  be  shut  up  in  prison  (Is.  xxiv.  21-23;  Enoch  xviii.  13-16,  xxi.  1-6;  Rev. 
ix.  I  f.,  II  ;  cp.  Dan.  viii.  10  f.). 

"  Philo  is  therefore  in  accord  not  only  with  Greek  thinkers  but  with  the  Old 
Testament  in  representing  the  stars  as  intelligent  living  beings;  they  are  of  a  'di- 
vine and  happy  and  blessed  nature,'  nay,  'manifest  and  perceptible  gods' — ex- 
pressions which,  as  he  means  them,  are  not  incompatible  with  his  monotheism. 
The  Essenes  are  said  to  have  observed  certain  religious  customs  which  imply 
peculiar  veneration  for  the  sun  ;  but  whatever  may  have  been  the  origin  of  the 
practices,  it  may  be  assumed  that  they  had  found  in  them  some  symbolical  mean- 
ing in  harmony  with  the  fundamental  dogma  of  their  Judaism."  fi. 


SECRECY  IN  RELIGION. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court: 

The  interesting  contribution  of  the  Countess  E.  Martinengo-Cesaresco  in  the 
September  Of  en  Court  refers  to  a  condition  of  Oriental  reticence  in  the  presence 
of  aliens  of  other  cults,  of  which  there  is  a  parallel  in  the  existence  of  a  like 
secrecy  in  the  Far  East.  Even  in  the  company  of  compatriots  the  initiates  do  not 
utter  the  sacred  Mantra,  or  make  Mudra  manipulations  openly.  Especially  is  this 
so  in  the  esoteric  sects,  such  as  the  Shin-gon,  and  the  Tendai, — especially  in  the 
higher  classes  of  the  Order  of  Yama-bushi,  of  which  there  are  two  branches.  The 
chief  monastery  of  the  Shingon  branch  is  at  the  former  imperial  retreat  of  Daigo, 
"Sam-bo  In"  (Three  Treasures,  Tri-ratna),  near  the  Yamashina  railway  station 
beyond  Kioto.  That  of  the  Tendai — now  connected  with  Mii-dera  at  Otsu — is  at 
the  north-east  suburb  of  Kioto,  named  "  Sho-go  In,"  formerly  the  residence  of  an 
imperial  prince.  The  rites  are  esoteric  and  do  not  materially  diverge.  The  writer 
has  been  initiated. 

In  the  Tendai  and  Shingon  ritual,  on  special  occasions,  the  Gayatri — in  an 
esoteric  form — occupies  a  prominent  place;  the  A-a-a-a,  U-m-m-m-m,  being  joined 
in  by  the  assembled  Bonzes,  and  heard  by  the  votaries  who  are  railed  off  at  a  dis- 
tance from  the  high  altar.  The  chief  abbot  performs  the  secret  manipulations 
facing  the  altar,  with  his  hands  concealed  from  the  gaze  of  the  laity,  and  reciting 
(or  reading)  the  litanies  meanwhile  in  a  subdued  voice,  or  silently  moving  the  lips. 

Circumambulation,  the  clanging  of  cymbals,  and  in  special  ceremonies  the 
blowing  of  a  conch,  form  a  feature. 

At  the  temples  in  the  mountains,  the  rendezvous  of  periodical  pilgrimage  and 
assemblies  of  the  Order,  there  are  secret  ceremonies  for  adepts  and  initiates,  the 


754  "T"^  OPEN  COURT. 

commonalty  of  lay  pilgrims  seeing  but  little  of  what  takes  place,  the  celebrants  of 
the  rites  being  screened  ofif. 

The  incantations,  exorcisms,  and  ancient  rites  are  imitated  by  charlatans  who 
impose  upon  the  credulous  for  sordid  motives,  but  the  Order  does  not  sanction 
such  practices.  C.  Pfoundes. 


FILIAL    PIETY    IN    CHINA. 

While  sauntering  through  the  Pan-American  Exposition,  my  eye  caught  a  little 
Chinese  store  in  which  among  other  Chinese  curios  were  displayed  wall  pendants, 
ornamental  mottos  designed  to  be  hung  up  as  decorations  in  the  sitting  rooms  of  the 
Celestials.  Being  interested  in  the  subject,  I  secured  copies  of  them,  and  since 
they  are  characteristic  of  the  spirit  of  Chinese  moralism,  I  take  pleasure  in  repro- 
ducing them  here  for  the  benefit  of  our  readers. 

The  paper  and  art  work  are  crude  enough  to  allow  the  assumption  that 
the  prints  must  be  very  cheap  in  China,  and  are  designed  not  forihe  rich  but  for 
the  common  people.  They  may  cost  in  Peking  or  Hong  Kong  not  more  than  one 
or  two  cents  apiece.  Evidently  they  serve  two  purposes  .  first  of  ornament  and 
secondly  of  instruction. 

The  Chinese  are  a  moralising  people,  even  more  so  than  we ;  while  we  dislike 
abstract  moralising,  they  delight  in  it,  and  do  not  tire  of  impressing  upon  their 
children  the  praiseworthiness  of  filial  devotion. 

Filial  devotion  is  in  Chinese  hsiao;  the  character  consists  of  two  symbols 
showing  a  child  supporting  an  old  man,  and  filial  piety  is  supposed  to  be  the  basis 
of  all  virtue.  The  moral  relations  are  regarded  as  mere  varieties  of  /isiao;  and 
the  original  significance  of  the  word,  which  means  chiefly  the  devotional  attitude  of 
a  child  toward  his  parents,  includes  such  relations  as  the  obedience  of  the  subject 
to  his  ruler,  of  the  wife  to  her  husband,  of  the  younger  brother  to  his  elder  brother, 
and  of  any  one's  relations  to  his  superiors,  including  especially  man's  relation  to 
heaven  or  the  Lord  on  high,  to  God. 

The  Chinese  ornament  their  rooms,  not  as  we  do  with  pictures  of  beauty,  but 
with  moral  sayings;  and  the  two  here  reproduced  are  typical  of  the  national 
character  of  the  Chinese.  The  former  of  the  two  pendants,  literally  translated, 
reads : 

3e  ^  ia  i^  ill  ^  3i 

"  When  father  |  and  son  |  combine  |  their  efforts  |  mountains  |  are  changed  |  into  gems." 
The  saying,  however,  is  not  an  admonition  to  parents  to  keep  in  harmony  with 
their  sons  but  to  sons  to  be  obedient  to  their  parents. 
The  second  pendant  means  : 

>t  >fl  1p]  it  ±  ^  ^ 

"  When  elder  brother  |  and  yoimger  brother  (or  briefly,  when  brothers)  |  are  harmonious  |  in 
their  hearts  |  the  earth  |  will  be  changed  |  into  an  Eldorado."  1 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  letters  are  pictures  containing  figures  and  Chinese 
characters;  and  we  have  here  the  Chinese  peculiarity  of  utilising  their  script  for 
illustrations  which  represent  scenes  from  well-known  Chinese  stories  of  filial  de- 
votion ;  all  of  them  being  taken  from  a  famous  book  called  1  xcetity-four  S/ories 
of  Filial  De7-otion.  These  stories  are  known  to  every  Chinaman,  for  they  form 
the  most  important  text-book  of  their  moral  education. 
1  Literally,  gold. 


[When]  father 


li 
[their]  efforts 


hsiitng 
[When]  elder 
brothers 


[and]  younger 
brothers 


t'ling 

[are]  harmoni- 
ous 


"^  hsin 

[in  their]  hearts 


'■;-^         sJian 
mountains 


c7i  'eng 
are  fashioned 


yii 


t'li 
the  earth 


■pien 
is  changed 


chin 

into  an  Eldorado 
(gold). 


Chinese  Wall  Pendants 


756  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

The  first  character  {fti,  meaning  father)  represents  Wang  Ngai.  who  lived 
during  the  Wei  dynasty  (220-364  AD).  His  mother  while  living  was  much  afraid 
of  thunderstorms.  The  picture  shows  him  bringing  offerings  to  her  grave  and  pro- 
tecting it  against  the  fury  of  the  thundergod,  who  is  seen  hovering  above  him  in 
the  air.     (No.  8o5rt,  p.  242.') 

The  inscription  of  the  second  character  {tze,  meaning  "son")  reads  in  one 
place  "Tai  Son's  aged  mother"  and  in  another  "Tan  Hsiang's  daughter  weeping 
over  a  sweet  melon." 

The  third  character  (//.v/V//:=combine)  pictures  a  child  standing  before  an  old 
gentleman.  The  inscription  reads  ;  "  Keeping  in  his  bag  a  crab  apple  he  showed 
his  devotion  to  his  parent."  It  refers  to  the  story  of  Luh  Sii.  When  a  boy  of  six 
years  he  visited  Yen  Yii  who  gave  him  crab  apples  to  eat  but  noticed  that  the  child 
kept  one  in  his  bag  for  his  mother. - 

The  fourth  character  (//,  meaning  "strength")  illustrates  the  story  of  Hwang 
Hiang  who,  as  a  boy  of  seven,  after  his  mother's  death  devoted  himself  un- 
weariedly  to  his  father's  comfort.  In  summer  he  fanned  his  pillow,  in  winter  he 
kept  it  warm.     (No.  217,  pp.  69 — 70.) 

The  fifth  character  (s/ian,  meaning  "mountain")  represents  Kiang  Keh,  a 
Chinese  Anchises,  about  490  A.  D.  Once  he  rescued  his  mother  during  a  dis- 
turbance of  the  peace  by  carrying  her  many  miles  on  his  shoulders.  Behind  the 
fugitives  in  the  center  of  the  character  rages  the  spirit  of  rebellion  and  on  the  right- 
hand  corner  is  seen  a  deserted  house.     (No.  255,  p.  80.) 

The  sixth  character  {ch'tng^,  meaning  "fashioning,  shaping,  transforming 
into  ")  illustrates  the  story  of  Wu  Meng  who  exposes  himself  to  the  bites  of  mos- 
quitoes lest  his  mother  be  stung  by  them.  The  picture  of  the  hero  of  the  story 
lying  naked  on  a  couch  is  quite  indistinct  in  the  reproduction,  but  the  comfort  of 
his  mother,  reclining  in  an  easy  chair  finds  an  artful  expression.    (No.  808,  p.  260.) 

The  last  character  (yii)  of  the  first  series  is  remarkable  in  so  far  as  it  rep- 
resents the  only  instance  of  a  woman's  being  praised  for  filial  devotion.  It  rep- 
resents Ts'ui  She  who  nursed  at  her  own  breast  her  toothless  old  mother-in-law 
who  was  incapable  of  taking  other  nourishment.     (No.  79i«,  p.  238.) 

The  first  character  of  the  second  pendant  (/tsiituff-,  meaning  "elder  brother") 
relates  to  Wang  Siang,  whose  stepmother  felt  an  appetite  for  fresh  fish  in  winter. 
He  went  out  on  the  river,  lay  down  on  the  ice,  warming  it  with  his  own  body,  and 
caught  a  couple  of  carp,  which  he  presented  to  her.     (No.  816,  p.  241.) 

The  next  character  (//,  younger  brother)  shows  the  famous  Emperor  Yao  in 
the  center  and  before  him  his  successor  Shun,  the  pattern  of  filial  as  well  as  royal 
virtues.  The  elephant,  one  of  the  animals  that  helped  him  plow  the  fields,  is 
visible  above  Shun  on  the  right-hand  side.  William  Frederick  Mayers  in  his 
Chinese  Reader's  Manual  (No.  617,  p.  189)  says  about  him  . 

"Tradition  is  extremely  discordant  with  reference  to  his  origin  and  descent. 
According  to  the  Main  Records  of  the  five  Emperors,  his  personal  name  was  Chung 
Hwa,  and  he  was  the  son  of  Ku  Sow,  a  reputed  descendant  of  the  emperor  Chwan 
Hii.  (He  had  also  the  designation  Yii,  which  is  by  some  referred  to  a  region  in 
modern  Ho-nan,  but  by  others  to  the  territory  of  Yii  Yao,  in  modern  Chekiang, 
with  one  or  the  other  of  which  it  is  sought  to  connect  him  )  His  father,  Ku  Sow 
(lit.  the  'blind  old  man')  on  the  death  of  Shuns  mother,  took  a  second  wife,  by 
whom  he  had  a  son  named  Siang ;  and  preferring  the  offspring  of  his  second  union 

•  The  numbers  and  pages  in  parentheses  refer  to  Mayers's  Chintst  Render's  Manual. 
2  Luh  Suh  is  ineniioned  by  Meyer  Ch.  R.  M.,  No.  443. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  757 

to  his  eldest  son,  he  repeatedly  sought  to  put  the  latter  to  death.  Shun,  however, 
while  escaping  this  fate,  in  no  wise  lessened  his  dutiful  conduct  toward  his  father 
and  stepmother,  or  his  fraternal  regard  for  Siang.  He  occupied  himself  in  plough- 
ing at  Li  Shan,  where  his  filial  piety  was  rewarded  by  beasts  and  birds  who 
spontaneously  came  to  drag  his  plough  and  to  weed  his  fields.  He  fished  in  the 
Lui  Lake  and  made  pottery  on  the  banks  of  the  Yellow  River.  Still  his  parents 
and  his  brother  sought  to  compass  his  death  ;  but  although  they  endeavoured  to 
make  him  perish  by  setting  fire  to  his  house  and  by  causing  him  to  descend  a  deep 
well,  he  was  always  miraculously  preserved.  In  his  20th  year,  he  attracted  by  his 
filial  piety  the  notice  of  the  wise  and  virtuous  Yao,  who  bestowed  upon  him  his  two 
daughters  in  marriage,  and  disinherited  his  son  Chu  of  Tan,  in  order  to  make  Shun 
his  successor  upon  the  throne.  In  the  71st  year  of  his  reign  (B.  C.  2287,  cf.  T.  K.), 
Yao  associated  his  protege  with  him  in  the  government  of  the  empire,  to  which  the 
latter  succeeded  on  the  death  of  Yao  in  B.  C.  2258." 

The  character  t'ujig  which  means  "agree"  refers  to  Meng  Tsung  of  the  third 
century  A.  D.  whose  mother  loved  to  eat  bamboo  shoots.  While  he  was  sorrow- 
ing because  they  do  not  sprout  in  winter,  the  miracle  happened  that  in  spite  of  the 
frost  the  bamboos  began  to  put  forth  their  sprouts,  and  so  he  was  enabled  to  fulfil 
his  mother's  desire.  (No.  499,  p.  155.)  The  picture  shows  a  table  on  which  the 
dish  of  bamboo  sprouts  is  served,  the  face  of  his  mother  hovering  above  it.  On  the 
right  hand  Meng  Tsung  sits  sorrowing  ;  the  left-hand  stroke  is  a  sprouting  bamboo 
stick. 

Yen-Tze,  the  hero  of  the  next  story,  depicted  in  the  character  "heart,"  is  said 
to  have  ministered  to  his  mother's  preference  for  the  milk  of  the  doe  by  disguising 
himself  in  a  deer  skin  and  mingling  with  a  herd  of  deer  in  the  forest,  where  he 
succeeded  in  milking  a  doe  and  in  spite  of  robbers,  represented  as  attacking  him  on 
either  side,  he  carried  his  mother's  favorite  food  safely  home  in  a  pail.  (No.  916, 
p.  276.) 

The  character  fii,  "earth,"  depicts  the  touching  story  of  the  sacrifice  of  Yang 
Hiang,  who  saw  a  tiger  approaching  his  father  and  threw  himself  between  him  and 
the  beast.  (No.  882,  p.  266  )  In  the  reproduction  it  is  difficult  to  recognise  the 
crouching  tiger,  which  forms  the  stroke  through  the  character. 

The  last  but  one  character  (pie?i,  meaning  "changes")  refers  to  Min  Sun,  a 
disciple  of  Confucius.  Mayers  says  :  "His  stepmother,  it  is  recorded,  having  two 
children  of  her  own,  used  him  ill  and  clothed  him  only  in  the  leaves  of  plants. 
When  this  was  discovered  by  his  father,  the  latter  became  wroth,  and  would  have 
put  away  the  harsh  stepmother,  but  Min  Sun  entreated  him  saying :  '  It  is  better 
that  one  son  should  suffer  from  cold  than  three  children  be  motherless  ! '  His 
magnanimous  conduct  so  impressed  the  mind  of  his  stepmother  that  she  became 
filled  with  affection  toward  him."     (No.  503,  p.  156.) 

The  last  character  {chin,  meaning  "gold")  bears  the  inscription  "With  mul- 
berries he  shows  his  filial  devotion  to  his  mother."  It  illustrates  the  story  of  Ts'ai 
Shun  who  during  the  famine  caused  by  the  rebellion  of  Wang  Meng  (25  A.  D) 
picked  wild  mulberries  in  the  woods  and  brought  the  black  ones  to  his  mother 
while  he  was  satisfied  with  the  unripe  yellow  ones.  The  picture  shows  a  robber 
watching  the  boy.  In  China  even  criminals  have  a  respect  for  the  devotion  of 
children  to  their  parents.  So  in  recognition  of  his  filial  piety  the  robber  made  him 
a  present  with  rice  and  meat. 

Hokusai,  the  painter  of  the  poor,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  artists  of  Japan, 


758 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


illustrated  the  twenty-four  filial  stories  in  pictures  which  in  crude  woodcut  re- 
productions are  well  known  all  over  the  country  of  the  rising  sun. 


They  represent  (beginning  always  with   the  picture  in  the  right-hand  corner 
and  proceeding  downward) ; 

I.   Shun,  the  person  mentioned  above  destined  to  become  the  son-in-law  of 
and  successor  tp  Emperor  Yao,  assisted  in  plowing  by  an  elephant 


MISCELLANEOUS. 


759 


2.  Tseng  Shen,  Confucius'  disciple.  The  picture  illustrates  a  miraculous 
event.  When  gathering  fuel  in  the  woods  his  mother,  anxious  to  see  him, 
bit  her  finger  and  such  was  the  sympathy  between  the  two  that  he  was 
aware  of  his  mother's  desire  and  at  once  appeared  in  her  presence.  (No. 
739,  p.  223.) 

3.  Wen  Ti,  natural  son  of  Kao  Tsu,  founder  of  the  Han  dynasty,  succeeded 
to  the  throne  after  the  usurpation  by  the  Empress  Dowager  in  179  B.  C. 
When  his  mother  fell  sick  he  never  left  her  apartment  for  three  years 
and  did  not  even  take  the  time  to  change  his  apparel.  He  is  also  famous 
as  a  most  humane  monarch. 

4.  Min  Sun,  maltreated  by  his  stepmother,  has  been  mentioned  above.  (No. 
503,  p.  156.) 

5.  Chung  Yeo,  another  disciple  of  Confucius,  famous  for  his  martial  accom- 
plishments, who  died  a  hero's  death  in  the  suppression  of  a  rebellion.  He 
used  to  say :  "In  the  days  when  I  was  poor  I  carried  rice  upon  my  back  for 
the  support  of  those  who  gave  me  birth  ;  and  now,  for  all  that  I  would 
gladly  do  so  again,  I  cannot  recall  them  to  life  ! "    (No.  91,  p.  29 — 30.) 


Chih  Ntj  AND  Keng  Niu. 

A  Chinese  fairy  tale  of  the  Star  Vega.     A  native  illustration  from 

Williams's  Middle  Kingdom. 

6.   Tung  Yung  was  too  poor  to  give  his  father  a  decent  burial.    So  he  bonded 

himself  for  10,000  pieces  of  cash  to  perform  the  funeral  rites  with  all 

propriety.      "  When  returning  to  his  home,  he  met  a  woman  who  offered 

herself  as  his  wife,  and  who  repaid  the  loan  he  had  incurred  with  300  webs 

of  cloth.     The  pair  lived  happily  together  for  a  month,  when  the  woman 

disclosed  the  fact  that  she  was  no  other  than  the  star  Chih  Nu,i  who  had 

been  sent  down  by  the  Lord  of  Heaven  her  father  to  recompense  an  act 

of  filial  piety;  and  saying  this  she  vanished  from  his  sight.  "     (No.  691, 

p    210.) 

The  story  of  Chih  Nu  is  one  of  the  prettiest  fairy-tales  of  China,  which  is 

briefly  thus  :  The  sun-god  had  a  daughter  Chih  Nu  (star  Vega^OC  in  Lyre)  who 

excelled  by  her  skill  in  weaving  and  her  industrial  habits.     To  recompense  her  he 

had  her  married  to  Keng  Niu  the  herdsman  (constellation  Aquila),  who  herded  his 

IThe  Spinning  damsel,  which  is  0.  of  Lyre. 


760 


THE  OPEN  COURT. 


cattle  in  the  silver  stream  of  Heaven  (the  milky  way).  As  soon  as  married,  Chih 
Nil  changed  her  habits  for  the  worse  ;  she  forsook  the  loom  and  gave  herself  up  to 
merry  making  and  idleness.     Thereupon  her  father  decided  to  separate  the  lovers 


by  the  stream  and  placed  them  each  one  on  one  side  of  the  milky  way,  allowing 
the  husband  to  meet  his  wife  over  a  bridge  of  many  thousand  magpies  only  once  a 
year,  on  the  seventh  day  of  the  seventh  month,  which  is  a  holy  day  in  China  and 
Japan  even  now. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  761 

Our  picture  shows  Chih  Nii  vanishing  from  Tung  Yung's  sight. 

7.  The  story  of  Yen-Tze,  who  while  dressed  in  a  deer  skin,  is  here  pictured 
as  meeting  a  robber.     (No.  916,  p.  276.) 

8.  Kiang  Keh  asking  the  robber  chief's  permission  to  allow  him  to  carry 
away  his  mother.     (No.  255,  p.  80.) 

9. .  Luh  Sii  (who  lived  in  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era),  was  liberated 
by  his  jailer,  when  imprisoned  for  complicity  in  a  conspiracy,  on  account 
of  the  devotion  he  showed  toward  his  mother.      (No.  443,  p.  140.) 

10.  The  story  of  Ts'ui  She,  nursing  her  husband's  mother. 

11.  Wu  Meng  (No.  868,  p.  260),  exposing  himself  to  mosquitoes. 

12.  Wang  Siang,  thawing  the  ice  to  catch  carp. 

13  The  story  of  Kwoh  K'ii,  who  "is  said  to  have  lived  in  the  second  century 
A.  D.,  and  to  have  had  an  aged  mother  to  support,  beside  his  own  wife 
and  children.  Finding  that  he  had  not  food  sufficient  for  all,  he  proposed 
to  his  wife  that  they  should  bury  their  infant  child  in  order  to  have  the 
more  for  their  mother's  wants  ;  and  this  devotedness  was  rewarded  by  his 
discovering,  while  engaged  in  digging  a  pit  for  this  purpose,  a  bar  of  solid 
gold  which  placed  him  above  the  reach  of  poverty,  and  upon  which  were 
inscribed  the  words :  'A  gift  from  Heaven  to  Kwoh  K'ii ;  let  none  deprive 
him  of  it!'"     (No.  303,  p.  95.) 

14.  Yang  Hiang  offering  himself  to  the  tiger.      (No.  882,  p.  266.) 

15.  Cho  Show-ch 'ang  searched  fifty  years  for  his  mother  who  had  been  divorced 
from  his  father.  Having  succeeded  in  his  purpose  he  served  her  the  rest 
of  her  life.      (No.  81,  p.  26 — 27.) 

16.  Yii  K'ien-low,  ministering  unto  his  sick  father.     (No.  950,  p.  286.) 

17.  Lao  Lai-Tze  plays  like  a  child  with  his  parents  who  suffer  from  senile 
childishness. 

18.  The  same  story  is  told  of  Ts'aiShun  as  of  Tseng  Shen  viz.,  that  he  was  re- 
called from  a  distance  by  a  sensation  of  pain  which  visited  him  when  his 
mother  bit  her  own  finger.  During  the  troubles  ensuing  upon  Wang 
Mang's  usurpation,  A.D.  25,  when  a  state  of  famine  prevailed,  he  nourished 
his  mother  with  wild  berries,  retaining  only  the  unripe  ones  for  his  own 
sustenance.  On  her  death,  while  mourning  beside  her  coffin,  he  was 
called  away  by  attendants  who  exclaimed  that  the  house  was  on  fire  ;  but 
he  refused  to  leave  the  spot,  and  his  dwelling  remained  unharmed.  As 
his  mother  had  been  greatly  alarmed,  in  her  lifetime,  whenever  thunder 
was  heard,  he  made  it  his  duty,  after  death,  to  repair  to  her  grave  during 
thunderstorms,  and  to  cry  out:  "Be  not  afraid,  mother,  I  am  here!' 
(No.  752,  p.  226.) 

Our  illustration  depicts  him   meeting  a  hunter  in  the  woods  who  gives  him  a 
piece  of  venison. 

19.  Huang  Hiang,  fanning  his  father's  bed. 

20.  Kiang  She  in  conjunction  with  his  wife  devoted  himself  to  waiting  upon 
his  aged  mother,  in  order  to  gratify  whose  fancy  he  went  daily  a  long  dis- 
tance to  draw  drinking  water  from  a  river  and  to  obtain  fish  for  her  table. 
This  devotedness  was  rewarded  by  a  miracle.  A  spring  burst  forth  close 
by  his  dwelling,  and  a  pair  of  carp  were  daily  produced  from  it  to  supply 
his  mother's  wants.     (No.  256,  p.  81.) 

21.  Wang  Ngai  comforting  the  spirit  of  his  mother  in  a  thunderstorm. 

22    Ting  Lan.      "Flourished  under    the   Han  dynasty.     After  his  mother's 


762 


THE   OPEN  COURT. 


death  he  preserved  a  wooden  effigy  representing  her  figure,  to  which  he 
offered  the  same  forms  of  respect  and  duty  as  he  had  observed  toward  his 
parent  during  life.     One  day,  while  he  was  absent  from  home,  his  neigh- 


Vh     ^■ 


f.  -*1  ± 


-h 
nn 


tf^^ 


bour  Chang  Shuh,  came  to  borrow  some  household  article,  whereupon  his 
wife  inquired  by  the  diviningslips  whether  the  effigy  would  lend  it,  and  re- 
ceived a  negative  reply.      Hereupon   the   neighbour   angrily  struck  the 


MISCELLANEOUS. 


763 


wooden  figure.  When  Ting  Lan  returned  to  his  home  he  saw  an  expression 
of  displeasure  on  the  features  of  his  mother's  efiBgy,  and  on  learning  from 
his  wife  what  had  passed,  he  took  a  stick  and  beat  the  aggressor  severely. 


^1 


pfe 


When  he  was  apprehended  for  this  deed  the  figure  was  seen  to  shed  tears, 
and  the  facts  thus  becoming  known  he  received  high  honours  from  the 

State"     (No.  670,  p.  204.) 


764  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

23.  Meng  Sung  reaping  bamboo  shoots  for  his  mother  in  winter. 

24.  Hwang   T'ing-Kien   (a  celebrated   poet  of  the  Sung  dynasty),    performs 
menial  services  in  ministering  to  his  parents.     (No.  226,  p.  73.) 

Some  of  the  stories  seem  silly  to  us  :  a  pickax  would  have  done  better  service 
in  breaking  the  ice  than  the  method  of  thawing  it  up  with  one's  own  body  and 
catching  cold  ;  a  mosquito-net  would  have  proved  more  useful  than  feeding  the 
insects  with  the  blood  of  a  devoted  child,  etc  Moreover  the  stolidity  of  parents 
in  accepting  sacrifices  of  children  with  equanimity  and  as  a  matter  of  course  is  to 
our  sense  of  propriety  nothing  short  of  criminal.  Still,  it  will  be  wise  for  us  whose 
habits  of  life  suffer  from  the  opposite  extreme,  viz  ,  irreverence  for  authority  or 
tradition  in  any  form,  to  recognise  that  all  of  them  are  pervaded  with  a  noble  spirit 
of  respect  for  parents,  which  though  exaggerated  is  none  the  less  touching  and 
ought  to  command  our  admiration.  p.  c. 


THE  SUPPOSED  POEM  OF  ROBERT  BURNS. 

The  Universalist  Leader  of  Boston  republished  the  poem  "  Words  o"  Cheer" 
attributed  to  Robert  Burns,  which  appeared  in  the  September  Open  Court,  and 
one  of  its  readers  has  supplied  the  following  information  as  to  its  origin. 

Sir  : 

I  find  on  page  1366  of  the  Leader  information  called  for  in  regard  to  the  poem 
"  Words  o'  Cheer.  "  I  am  not  really  one  of  your  Scotch  friends,  but  I  can  tell  you 
where  I  got  it  years  ago.  It  is  taken  from  Lizzie  Doten's  Poents  frotn  the  Inner 
Life,  published  by  the  Banner  of  L.ight  in  1871.  It  is  an  inspiration  poem  given 
while  in  trance,  purporting  to  come  from  Robert  Burns.  The  poem  consists  of 
thirteen  verses.  Whoever  sent  it  to  The  Open  Court  broke  right  into  the  middle 
of  it ;  had  they  copied  the  whole  of  it  you  would  have  known  hoic  it  got  here,  and 
iL'herc  it  came  from  at  that  late  date.  I  am  in  possession  of  the  book  and  have 
heard  the  lady  deliver  her  poems  impromtu  myself  The  likeness  of  her  poems  to 
Shakespeare  is  equally  good.  The  poem,  as  printed  in  the  Leader,  differs  a  word 
or  two  here  and  there.  Probably  the  one  who  is  passing  the  poem  along  wishes 
you  or  someone  else  to  acknowledge  its  merits  before  giving  the  source  from  whence 
it  sprung.     The  first  half  of  the  poem  is  a  "dead  give  away.  " 

Mrs.  E.  a.  Montague. 

MiLFORD,  Mass.,  32  Fruit  St. 

*■  ■)<■ 

Mr.  Andrew  W.  Cross,  of  Riverside,  Cal  ,  writes  us  to  the  same  effect  ;  add- 
ing, however,  that  the  language  is  not  that  of  Burns. 


"some  factors  in  the  RISING  OF  THE  NEGRO." 
A  negro's  view  of  the  question. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Open  Court . 

Speculation  as  to  the  specific  possibilities  of  an  undeveloped  person  or  race 
cannot  be  indulged  in  with  any  degree  of  impunity  by  those  who  expect  to  remain 
within  the  pale  of  common  sense.  Nobody  pays  much  attention  nowadays  to  the 
Jew's  estimate  of  the  Gentiles,  or  the  Greek's  and  Roman's  estirtiate  of  the  capabil- 
ities of  barbarians. 


MISCELLANEOUS.  765 

A  little  more  than  half  a  century  ago  it  was  generally  believed  in  Europe  and 
America  that  the  black  man  was  incapable  of  social  improvement  and  that  nature 
or  God  had  produced  him  merely  to  serve  the  white  man  as  a  slave.  Calhoun  is 
said  to  have  exclaimed  :  "  Show  me  a  Negro  who  can  conjugate  a  Greek  verb,  and 
I  will  concede  to  him  the  right  of  human  brotherhood  ! "  And  thus  the  divine  right 
of  the  white  man  to  the  labor  and  liberty  of  the  Negro  seemed  as  divinely  ordained 
and  as  securely  established  as  the  ancient  and  sacred  right  of  man  to  rule  over 
woman. 

But  the  passion  for  absolute  supremacy  among  individuals  and  groups  of  indi- 
viduals, after  causing  countless  millions  to  mourn  from  time  immemorial,  is  slowly 
though  surely  being  transmuted  from  a  gross,  brutal,  and  sanguinary  impulse  to  a 
bridled  and  humane  rivalry  for  intellectual,  moral,  and  spiritual  excellence. 

It  is  a  fact  that — 

"Dogma  and  Descent,  potential  twin, 
Which  erst  could  rein  submissive  millions  in, 
Are  now  spent  forces  on  the  eddying  surge 
Of  thought  enfranchised.     Agencies  emerge 
Unhampered  by  the  incubus  of  dread 

Which  cramped  men's  hearts  and  clogged  their  onward  tread. 
Dynasty,  Prescription  !  spectral  in  these  days 
When  Science  points  to  Thought  its  surest  ways, 
And  men  who  scorn  obedience  when  not  free 
Demand  the  logic  of  Authority  ! 
The  day  of  manhood  to  the  world  is  here, 
And  ancient  homage  waxes  faint  and  drear. 

"Vision  of  rapture!     See  Salvation's  plan 
'Tis  serving  God  through  ceaseless  toil  for  man  ! " 

And  while  it  is  true  that  here  and  there  and  now  and  then  among  civilised 
men  the  claim  of  "  divine  rights  "  is  still  set  up  by  the  arrogant  and  belated,  never- 
theless the  sweep  of  social  evolution  has  acquired  such  tremendous  momentum 
consequent  upon  the  development  of  a  higher  social  consciousness  nowadays,  that 
no  careful  student  of  the  times  need  be  hoodwinked  by  such  paltry  eddies  in  the 
mighty  and  irresistible  current  of  human  progress.  There  never  was  so  much  tol- 
erance and  sympathy  at  any  one  time  among  mankind.  Never  in  the  history  of 
the  world,  so  far  as  we  know,  have  there  existed  so  many  contemporaneous  civil- 
ised nations  of  any  magnitude  and  fighting  power  as  to-day.  In  fact,  international 
law  as  a  result  of  international  tolerance  and  sympathy  seems  not  very  far  from 
evolving  an  international  tribunal  and  the  very  much  'longed-for  internalio7ial 
arbitration.  The  Christian  sects,  though  legion  in  number,  do  not  persecute  each 
other,  and  Mussulman  missionary  effort  among  Christians  in  England  does  not  ex- 
cite a  Chinese-like  Boxer  rising  in  that  country.  Monarchy  and  Democracy  and 
the  myriad  political  creeds  exist  side  by  side.  Science  and  Religion,  like  the  rest, 
and  with  no  less  degree  of  aggressive  ardor,  are  compelled  to  respect  the  rights  of 
each  other.  And  in  the  industrial  world,  feudalism  and  Negro  slavery  have  passed 
away.  That  the  institution  of  feudalism  and  Negro  slavery  had  respectively  out- 
lived their  social  and  economic  utility  does  not  detract  from  the  validity  of  the  fact 
that  the  human  mind  had  become  so  possessed  of  the  incubus  of  sympathy  and 
liberty  that  the  black  man's  freedom  came  to  him  not  only  as  an  economic  neces- 
sity in  the  British  dominions  and  as  a  military  expedient  in  the  United  States,  but 
as  a  moral  necessity  of  Christendom  all  the  world  over. 

No  phenomenon  is  isolated.    Every  fact  in  the  universe  is  in  some  way  related 


766  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

to  every  other  fact.  Surely,  the  spirit  of  the  Reformation  was  incarnate  in  the 
American  revolution,  and  also  in  the  anti-slavery  agitation  of  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States.  Is  there  naught  in  common  between  Martin  Luther,  Oliver 
Cromwell,  and  John  Brown  ?  And  so  we  find  that  sympathy  and  tolerance  for  those 
who  differed  from  us  in  opinion  or  belief,  was  extended  to  sympathy  and  tolerance 
for  those  who  differed  from  us  in  race,  color,  or  sex. 

It  is  true  that  in  Europe  the  Jew  has  few  rights  which  the  Christian  thinks 
himself  bound  to  respect,  and  that  the  Negro  in  the  Southern  States  of  America 
has  few,  if  any,  rights  which  the  white  man  feels  himself  bound  to  respect ;  yet  men 
have  ceased  to  cry  out  very  vehemently  against  the  competition  of  women  in  the 
industrial  and  intellectual  walks  of  life,  and  are  rather  seeking  to  cooperate  with 
them  ;  the  American  laborer  is  forced  to  say  comrade  to  his  competitor  of  foreign 
birth  and  alien  tongue  if  the  dignity  of  labor  is  to  be  upheld  :  the  rich  and  cultured 
are  waking  up  to  their  duty  to  the  mass  of  ignorant  and  poor  people;  the  virtuous 
are  lifting  the  fallen ;  and  the  best  and  fullest  education  is  no  longer  the  monopoly 
of  the  rich  or  privileged  classes. 

When  we  consider  that  even  in  war  the  sick  and  helpless  are  cared  for  by  the 
strong  and  healthy;  that  the  foreign  missionary  enterprise  of  Christendom  consti- 
tutes a  firm  and  enormous  ladder  reaching  from  the  depths  of  barbarism  to  the 
heights  of  civilisation  ;  that  our  systems  of  railroads  and  steamboats,  of  telegraph 
and  newspapers,  of  free  libraries  and  free  education,  are  the  heralds  of  the  ulti- 
mate comparative  annihilation  of  distance  and  ignorance; — when  we  consider  these 
facts  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  present  status  of  humanity  is  the  most  tolerant,  the 
most  integrated,  and  the  most  sympathetic  known  to  history.  With  the  growth  of 
social  self  consciousness  has  come  the  revelation  of  man's  relations  to  man  in  spite 
of  differences  in  the  abstract  or  the  concrete,  in  the  subjective  or  the  objective.  In 
fact,  the  transcendental  cosmic  consciousness  of  Krishna,  the  Buddha,  the  Christ, 
Spinoza,  and  Walt  Whitman,  is  to-day  the  gospel  of  science  or  Monism,  and  is 
consequently  permeating  the  masses  and  destined  to  imbue  them  with  the  sweet 
spirit  of  the  Masters,  leading  on  to  universal  harmony  and  universal  good. 

In  this  whirligig  of  things  social,  man  is  learning  that  his  neighbor  is  part  of 
himself,  that  the  black  man  and  the  white  man  are  neighbors  and  consequently 
parts  of  each  other ;  that  man  is  part  of  the  universe  and  the  universe  is  part  of 
man  ;  and  that  in  virtue  of  such  facts  it  is  to  man's  highest  interest  that  he  be  in 
harmony  with  all  his  relations  and  thus  avoid  hurting  himself.  The  relation  of 
the  slum  to  the  mansion  is  the  relation  of  barbarism  to  civilisation.  Neither  wealth 
nor  civilisation  is  safe  while  the  majority  of  men  are  poverty-stricken  and  barbar- 
ous 

There  is  a  spirit  abroad  that  looks  grudgingly  upon  the  higher  education  of 
the  poor,  and  of  the  Negro  especially.  It  was  claimed  that  the  poor  child  ought  to 
be  taught  to  work ;  but  the  wave  of  industrial  education  or  the  gospel  of  labor  has 
engulfed  the  children  of  the  rich  also.  Men  are  learning  the  dignity  and  pedagogic 
value  of  manual  work.  But  some  say  that  because  it  took  the  Anglo-Saxon  a 
thousand  years  to  acquire  culture  and  refinement,  the  Negro  ought  to  be  made  to 
travel  at  the  same  slow  pace,  or  his  progress  will  not  be  real.  Such  people  do  not 
ask  themselves  ichy  the  Anglo  Saxon  was  forced  to  move  so  slowly,  and  whether 
the  conditions  for  human  development  have  changed  any  since  the  granting  of 
Magna  Charta  or  not.  While  the  Negro  was  toiling  for  the  material  advancement 
of  the  white  man,  the  white  man  was  toiling  for  the  intellectual  advancement  of 
the  Negro.     How  compensatory  it  all  is! 


MISCELLANEOUS.  767 

But  there  are  still  others  who  contend  that  the  race  problem  should  not  be  in- 
terfered with  ;  that  things  will  come  right  of  themselves  without  our  trying  to  force 
matters ;  that  the  force  of  social  evolution  will  eventually  right  the  wrongs  ;  that 
the  2'is  medicatrix  fiaturcv  will  cure  the  lesion.  Yet  the  science  of  surgery  and 
therapeutics  disproves  such  a  contention.  A  man  may  die  for  lack  of  proper  aid, 
and  a  man  may  recover  from  a  malady  rapidly  if  his  treatment  is  scientifically  cor- 
rect, or  slowly  or  not  at  all  if  the  treatment  is  antagonistic  to  the  operation  of  the 
vis  medicatrix  tiatia-ce.  We  may  cooperate  with  the  trend  of  the  evolutionary 
forces,  or  we  may  oppose  them.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  evolution  may  pro- 
ceed in  spite  of  us  and  in  virtue  of  us.  In  the  main,  humanity  has  bleedingly 
struggled  up  to  its  present  status  through  the  conflict  of  its  passions,  and  appetites, 
and  desires.     Humanity  as  an  evolving  unit  may  truly  sing  : 

"By  the  light  of  burning  martyr  fires 
Christ's  bleeding  feet  I  track. 
Toiling  up  new  Calvaries  ever 

With  the  cross  that  turns  not  back." 

It  is  for  us  of  the  present  age  of  knowledge  wittingly  to  harmonise  our  lives 
and  the  lives  of  our  children  with  the  mighty  forces  which  are  compelling  us  on- 
ward. The  white  man  and  the  black  man  must  learn  respectively  that  one  cannot 
hurt  or  neglect  the  other  with  impunity.  This  higher  consciousness  brings  a  knowl- 
edge of  more  relations  and  consequently  of  more  responsibilities.  We  cannot  es- 
cape if  we  neglect  to  ennoble  ourselves  by  ennobling  our  neighbors.  In  the  light 
of  our  higher  consciousness  and  wider  vision  may  the  guilt  of  strangling  a  soul  be- 
cause of  difference  in  color,  birth,  or  sex,  be  the  least  of  our  sins! 

Joseph  Jeffrey,  M.  D. 


BOOK  REVIEWS. 


An  instructive  work  on  the  industrial  and  commercial  changes  which  have 
distinguished  the  last  ten  years  of  the  world's  progress  is  Brooks  Adams's  book 
The  Nexv  Empire.  Mr.  Adams's  point  of  view  is  economic.  His  subject  is  "mar- 
kets" ;  the  territory  tributary  to  a  market,  when  considerable,  being  called  a  State, 
and  when  vast,  an  Empire.  The  market  is  an  outgrowth  of  trade  and  spreads 
along  the  lines  of  converging  trade  routes.  He  has  presented  us,  therefore,  with  a 
history  of  the  changing  fortunes  of  the  trade  routes  of  the  world,  from  the  earliest 
times  to  the  fall  of  Pekin.  The  goal  of  history,  in  Mr.  Adams's  view,  is  the  eco- 
nomic supremacy  of  the  United  States.  The  book  is  pleasantly  and  vigorously 
written,  and  contains  several  maps  illustrating  commercial  development,  which 
will  be  welcome  to  the  student.  (New  York  :  The  Macmillan  Company.  London  : 
Macmillan  &  Co.,  Ltd.      1902.     Pages,  xxxvii,  243.     Price,  $1.50  net.) 

The  most  important  phases  of  the  social  workings  of  our  large  cities  has  been 
treated  in  Charles  Zueblin's  book  Aynericaii  Municipal  Prog^i'ess.  The  sub-title 
describes  the  work  as  "Chapters  in  Municipal  Sociology,"  which  is  defined  as  the 
investigation  of  "the  means  of  satisfying  communal  wants  through  public  activ- 
ities." Purely  administrative  progress  has  been  excluded,  viz.,  the  police  and 
judicial  departments,  as  well  also  as  charities,  churches,  and  institutions  of  vice. 
The  subjects  considered  are  :  Transportation  ;  Public  Works  ;  Sanitation  ;  Public 
Schools  ;    Public   Libraries  ;    Public   Buildings  ;    Parks  and   Boulevards  ;    Public 


768  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

Recreation  ;  and  Public  Control,  Ownership,  and  Operation.  (New  York  :  The 
Macmillan  Company.  London  .  Macmillan  &  Co.,  Ltd.  1902.  Pages,  v,  380. 
Price,  Si  25  net.)  

The  Fall  of  Nineveh  has  found  its  historical  novelist  in  Josiah  M.  Ward. 
Come  ivith  Me  to  Babylon  is  the  entreating  title  of  the  work,  the  illustrations  of 
which  aim  boldly  at  Ninevitical  grandeur  but  fall  sadly  short  of  it.  The  text  is 
exuberant,  almost  tropical  in  character,  and  on  the  score  of  richness  of  portrayal 
the  reader  will  have  no  cause  to  complain.   (New  York  :  Frederick  A.  Stokes  &  Co.) 


"Historical  materialism"  and  "the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history" 
are  terms  which  have  often,  but  wrongly,  been  applied  to  the  doctrine  that  the  ex- 
istence of  man  depends  upon  his  ability  to  sustain  himself,  that  consequently  the 
economic  life  is  the  fundamental  condition  of  all  life,  and  that  therefore  to  eco 
nomic  causes  "  must  be  traced  in  last  instance  those  transformations  in  the  struc- 
ture of  society  which  themselves  condition  the  relations  of  social  classes  and  the 
various  manifestations  of  social  life."  In  a  new  book  entitled  The  Economic  In- 
terpretation of  History,  Dr.  Edwin  R.  A.  Seligman,  Professor  in  Columbia  Uni- 
versity, New  York,  has  attempted  to  explain  the  genesis  and  development  of  this 
doctrine,  to  study  some  of  the  applications  of  it  made  by  recent  thinkers,  to  ex- 
amine the  objections  advanced  against  it,  and  to  estimate  its  true  import  and  value 
for  modern  science.  The  essay  is  brief  and  gives  a  clear  survey  of  the  develop- 
ment of  economic  studies  and  their  bearing  on  political  history,  its  appreciation  of 
Karl  Marx's  work  being  especially  prominent.  (New  York :  The  Columbia  Uni- 
versity Press.  The  Macmillan  Company,  Agents.  1902.  Pages,  ix,  166.  Price, 
$1.50.) 

The  Rev.  Joseph  H.  Crooker  of  Ann  Arbor  is  now  publishing  in  the  Spring- 
field A'epiiblitan  a  series  of  essays  on  the  place  of  Jesus  in  history.  He  is  stirred 
by  the  following  considerations  :  "It  is  clear  enough,  as  all  freely  admit,  that  the 
name,  'Jesus,'  has  played  a  mighty  part  in  the  world's  history  for  nearly  two  thou- 
sand years,  but  many  fear  that,  in  spite  of  all  this,  the  discoveries  of  recent  years 
have  cast  so  many  doubts  upon  the  accuracy  of  the  Gospels  that  we  cannot  longer 
be  sure  that  any  such  person  ever  lived.  Or  if  he  lived,  his  career  is  too  shadowy 
to  be  helpful,  and  his  teaching  too  uncertain  to  be  authoritative.  There  is  a  ter- 
rible dread  gripping  at  the  hearts  of  Christians.  It  is  the  fear  that  we  may  soon 
have  to  give  up  our  loved  Master,  and  put  him  among  the  fair  but  unsubstantial 
creations  of  human  fancy.  At  least,  it  is  feared  that  the  character  of  the  man  who 
lived  under  that  name  is  so  far  removed  into  the  realm  of  poetry  and  so  completely 
surrounded  with  uncertainty,  that  he  can  no  longer  be  to  us  a  real  historical  person 
to  love  as  a  friend  and  revere  as  a  teacher." 

We  can  anticipate  the  answer  to  this  state  of  uncertainty  by  the  following  sen- 
tences which  conclude  the  first  installment:  "  The  Gospels,  when  allowed  to  shine 
in  their  own  light,  which  is  the  light  of  love,  lend  themselves  to  a  new  and  higher 
ministry.  We  ought  to  handle  them  rationally,  but  reverently,  for  increase  of 
inner  life.  These  pages  fire  our  hearts  with  ennobling  motives,  the  less  we  go  to 
them  for  dogma  and  the  more  we  use  them  for  communion  with  one  who  went 
about  doing  good,  and  who,  in  so  doing,  showed  us  the  true  way  of  life." 


THE   OPEN    COURT 


A  MONTHLY  MAGAZINE 


VOLUME    XVI 


CHICAGO 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

LONDON  AGENTS; 

Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Trubner  &  Co.,  Ltd. 

1902 


Copyright  by 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Co. 

January,  February,  March  Numbers,  iqoi. 

April  to  December  Numbers,  1902. 


INDEX  TO  VOLUME  XVI. 

MAIN  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Adi  Granth,   the  Holy  Scriptures  of  the  Sikhs,  A  Poem  from  the.     Evelyn 

Martinengo-Cesaresco 380 

Alpha  and  Omega.     Paul  Carus 620 

Altgeld,  John  P.    Obituary  Notice 251 

Amitabha.     A  Story  of  Buddhist  Metaphysics.     Paul  Carus 415,486,   536 

Apostolic  Succession,  The.     Dogma  and  Criticism.     *** 321 

"  Aum  "  and  the  Mantra  Cult,  The  Syllable.     C.  Pfoundes 318 

Babel  and  Bible.     Friedrich  Delitzsch 209,  263 

Barrows,  the  Rev.  John  Henry.    Biographical  Note.  Paul  Carus.  44. — Bishop 

Fallow's  Tribute  to.     440. — Obituary  Notice.     385. 
Bible,  Open  Inspiration  Versus  a  Closed  Canon  and  Infallible.     Charles  W. 

Pearson 175 

Biblical  Love-Ditties.     Paul  Haupt 291 

Bigelow,  Poultney.     A  New  History  of  Modern  Europe 234 

Bonney,  Charles  Carroll.     Charity.     A  Poem.     378. — Consolation.     A  Poem. 
120. — The  Storm.     A  Poem.     442. 

Bonney  on  Uniformity  in  Judicial  Practice,  Mr.     Editorial  Note 443 

Buddhist  Convert,  A.     Paul  Carus 250 

Burns,  Robert,  Poem  Wrongly  Attributed  to 568,  764 

Carus,  Paul.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  and  the  Jesuits.  40. — IVhettce 
and  Whither.  In  Reply  to  my  Critics.  74. — Our  Custom  House.  141. 
— Friends  or  Slaves.  An  Appeal  to  Congress.  146. — Professor  Pearson 
on  the  Bible.  152. — Fylfot  and  Swastika.  153,  356. — Wu  Tao  Tze's 
Nirvana  Picture.  163. — Taxation  of  Capital  Discourages  Thrift.  182. — 
Representation  Without  Taxation.  183. — Easter,  the  Festival  of  Life 
Victorious.  193. — The  Shape  of  the  Cross  of  Jesus.  247. — The  Cruci- 
fixion of  Dogs  in  Ancient  Rome.  249. — A  Buddhist  Convert.  250. — The 
Memoirs  of  Kamo  No  Chomei.  252. — Heinrich  Julius  Holtzmann.  257. 
— Amitabha.  A  Story  of  Buddhist  Metaphysics.  415,  486,  536. — The 
Chrisma  and  the  Labarum.  428. — Hokusai.  Japanese  Artist.  440. — The 
Wheel  and  the  Cross.  478. — Mahayana  Doctrine  and  Art.  Comments  on 
the  Story  of  Amitabha.  562,  621. — The  Trinity.  612. — Alpha  and  Omega. 
620. — Thanksgiving.  689. — History  of  Christianity  in  Japan.  6go. — Two 
Philosophical  Poems  of  Goethe.  694. — Major  Powell,  the  Chief.  716. — 
Filial  Piety  in  China.  754. 
Charity.     A  Poem.     Charles  Carroll  Bonney 378 


IV  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

PACE 

Cheney,  Ednah  D.     Sketch  of  Dr.  Marie  Zakrzewska's  Life 391 

Chrisma  and  the  Labarum,  The.     Paul  Carus 428 

Christianity  in  Japan,  History  of.     Paul  Carus 6go 

Christian  Poetry,  the  Origin  of.     F.  W.  Fitzpatrick i 

Circumnavigation  of  the  Globe,  Sir  John  Maundeville  on  the.   Edward  Lindsey  107 

Clerke.  A.  M.     The  Discovery  of  Neptune 696 

Conard,  Laetitia  M.     Leon  Marillier.     Obituary  Notice 50 

Consolation.     A  Poem.     Charles  Carroll  Bonney 120 

Conversion,  An  Instance  of.     Oscar  L.  Triggs 69 

Cumont,  Franz.     The  Mysteries  of  Mithra, 

65,  167,  200,  300.  340,  449,  522,  602,  G70,  717 

Custom  House,  Our.     Paul  Carus 141 

Delitzsch.  Friedrich.     Babel  and  Bible 209,  263 

Dogs  in  Ancient  Rome,  The  Crucifixion  of.     Paul  Carus 249 

Easter,  the  Festival  of  Life  Victorious.      Paul  Carus 193 

Edmunds,  Albert  J.     Gospel  Parallels  from  Pali  Texts.     559,  684. — Jesus  in 
the  Talmud.     475. 

Elisha  Ben  Abuya 631 

Europe,  A  New  History  of  Modern.     Poultney  Bigelow 234 

Evans,  Elizabeth  E.     A  Nearer  View  of  Count  Leo  Tolstoy 396 

Evans,  E.  P.     Richard  Wagner 577,  652 

Filial  Piety  in  China.     Paul  Carus 754 

First  Christians,  According  to  F.  J.  Gould,  The 116 

Fitzpatrick,  F.  W.     The  Origin  of  Christian  Poetry i 

Friends  or  Slaves.     An  Appeal  to  Congress.     Paul  Carus 146 

Fylfot  and  Swastika.     Paul  Carus 153,  356 

Gandhi,  Virchand  R.     Obituary  Notice.     Mrs.  Charles  Howard 51 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd.     Oration  at  Funeral  of  Dr.  Marie  Zakrzewska 386 

Gayatri,  The  Significance  of  the 115 

Geometry  by  Paper-Folding,  Instruction  in 55 

Geometry,  The  Foundations  of.     George  Bruce  Halsted 513 

Goethe,  Two  Philosophical  Poems  of.     Paul  Carus 694 

Gospel  Parallels  from  Pali  Texts.     Albert  J    Edmunds 559,  684 

Haeckel's  Work  on  the  Artistic  Forms  of  Nature 47 

Haupt,  Paul.     Biblical  Love-Ditties 291 

Heat,  The  Theory  of.     Ernst  Mach 641,  733 

Henning,  Charles  L.     Hiawatha  and  the  Onondaga  Indians 459,  550 

Hiawatha  and  the  Onondaga  Indians.     Charles  L.  Henning 459,  550 

Hokusai.     Japanese  Artist.     Paul  Carus 440 

Holtzmann,  Heinrich  Julius.     Paul  Carus 257 

Howard,  Mrs.  Charles.     The  Death  of  Mr.  Virchand  Gandhi 51 

Hymn  to  the  Sun.     A  Poem.     Sir  C.  E.  Carrington 316 

Indian  Burial  Customs,  Concerning.     William  Thornton  Parker 86 

Jeffrey,  Joseph.     Some  Factors  in  the  Rising  of  the  Negro 764 

Jesuits,  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  and  the.     Paul  Carus 40 

Jesuits,  The  Truth  About  the.     Henri  de  Ladevcze 10 

Jesuit  Under  the  X-Ray,  The.     Charles  Macarthur 367 

Jesus,  The  Shape  of  the  Cross  of.     Paul  Carus 247 

Kamo  No  Chomei,  The  Memoirs  of.     Paul  Carus 252 

Kaplan,  Bernard  M.     The  Apostate  of  the  Talmud    467 


INDEX.  V 

PAGE 

Ladeveze,  Henri  de.     The  Truth  About  the  Jesuits lo 

Leibnitz,  Gottfried  Wilhelm 104 

Leonowens,  Anna  Harriette.     The  Religion  of  Siam 149 

Life,  The  Play  of.     A  Poem.     Lollie  Belle  Wylie 253 

Lincoln,  M.  D.     Life  of  John  Wesley  Powell 705 

Lindsey,    Edward.     Sir   John    Maundeville  on   the  Circumnavigation   of   the 

Globe 107 

L.  M.  J.     Is  Spiritualism  Unscientific  ? 375 

Macarthur,  Charles.     The  Jesuit  Under  the  X-Ray 367 

Mach,  Ernst.     The  Theory  of  Heat 6^i,   733 

Mahayana  Doctrine  and  Art.     Comments  on  the  Story  of  "Amitabha."     Paul 

Carus 562,   621 

Marillier,  Leon.     Obituary  Notice.     Laetitia  M.  Conard 50 

Martinengo-Cesaresco,  Evelyn.  From  the  Adi  Granth,  the  Holy  Scriptures 
of  the  Sikhs.  A  Poem.  380. — Om  and  the  Gayatri.  97. — Secrecy  in 
Religion.   566. 

Maude,  Aylmer.     The  Misinterpretation  of  Tolstoy 590 

McCormack,  Thomas  J.  Translation  of  The  Mystey-ies  of  Mitlira.  65,  167, 
200,  300,  340,  449,  522,  602,  670,  717. — Translation  of  Babel  and  Bible, 
209,  263. — Translation  of  Theory  of  Heat.  641,  733. — Destruction  of  An- 
cient Rome.  237.  —  Rudolf  Virchow,  745 — Book-Reviews,  Notes,  etc., 
fassim. 
Mithra,  The  Mysteries  of.     Frank  Cumont. 

65,  167,  200,  300,  340,  449,  522,  602,  670,   717 

Moran,  Thomas  A.     Taxation  of  Real  Estate 187 

Negro,  Some  Factors  in  the  Rising  of  the.     Joseph  Jeffrey 764 

Negro,  The  Hope  of  the.     John  L.  Robinson 614 

Neptune,  The  Discovery  of.     A.  M.  Clerke 6g6 

Nirvana  Picture,  Wu  Tao  Tze's.     Paul  Carus 163 

Om  and  the  Gayatri.     Evelyn  Martinengo-Cesaresco 97 

Parker,  William  Thornton.     Concerning  Indian  Burial  Customs 86 

Parthenon  and  Its  Possible  Restoration,  The.     Yorke  Triscott 31 

Pearson,  Charles  W.     Open  Inspiration  Versus  a  Closed  Canon  and  Infallible 

Bible 175 

Pearson  on  the  Bible,  Professor.     Paul  Carus 152 

Pearson,  Professor  Charles  William.     Editorial  Note 441 

Pfoundes,  C.     The  Syllable  "Aum  "  and  the  Mantra  Cult.     318, — Secrecy  in 

Religion.     753. 
Powell,  Major  John  Wesley.     Obituary  Notice.     639. — Life  of.      Mrs.  M.  D. 

Lincoln.     705. — Major  Powell,  the  Chief.    716. 
Religion  of  Science  Library,  Exclusion  of,  by  Postal  Authorities  as  Second- 
Class  Matter 113 

Religion,  Secrecy  in.   Evelyn  Martinengo-Cesaresco.   566. — C.  Pfoundes.   753. 

Representation  Without  Taxation.     Paul  Carus 183 

Rijnhart  in  Tibet,  Peter 109 

Robinson,  John  L.     The  Hope  of  the  Negro 614 

Rome,  The  Destruction  of  Ancient.     T.  J.  McCormack 237 

Siam,  Its  Court  and  Religion.     Anna  Leonowens 53 

Siam,  The  Religion  of.     Anna  Harriette  Leonowens 149 

Spiritualism,  Is  It  Unscientific  ?     L.  M.J 375 


VI  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

I'ACB 

Spiritualistic  Stance,  A.     W.  H.  Trimble 378 

Storm,  The.     A  Poem.     Charles  Carroll  Bonney 442 

Tai-Ping  Canon,  The 59 

Talmud,  Jesus  in  the.     Albert  J.  Edmunds 475 

Talmud,  The  Apostate  of  the.     Bernard  M.  Kaplan 467 

Taxation,  A  Symposium  on.     Roy  O.  West,  Arba  N.  Waterman,  Thomas  A. 

Moran 184 

Taxation  of  Capital  Discourages  Thrift.      Paul  Carus 182 

Taxation  Question,  The.     A.  N.  Waterman 129 

Thanksgiving.     Paul  Carus 689 

Thermometry,  Sketch  of  the  History  of.      E.  Mach 641,   733 

Tolstoy,  A  Nearer  View  of  Count  Leo.     Elizabeth  E.  Evans 396 

Tolstoy,  Mr.  Maude's  Article  on 634 

Tolstoy,  The  Misinterpretation  of.     Aylmer  Maude 590 

Triggs,  Oscar  L      An  Instance  of  Conversion 69 

Trimble,  W.  H.     A  Spiritualistic  Seance 378 

Trinity,  The.     Paul  Carus 612 

Triscott,  Yorke.     The  Parthenon  and  Its  Possible  Restoration 31 

Uplift  the  Masses.     A  Poem.     Charles  Carroll  Bonney 246 

Virchow,  Rudolf.     Biographical  Sketch.     T.  J.  McCormack 745 

Vivekananda,  Swami.     Obituary  Notice 576 

Wagner,  Richard.     E.  P.  Evans 577,  652 

Waterman,  Arba  N.     The  Taxation  Question.     129. — Concentrate  the  Power 

of  Taxation.      185. — Special  Assessments.  190. 

West,  Roy  O.     The  Assessor's  Burden 184 

Wheel  and  the  Cross,  The.     Paul  Carus 478 

IVhence  and  Wliither.     In  Reply  to  My  Critics.     Paul  Carus 74 

Words  o'  Cheer.     A  Poem.     Wrongly  attributed  to  Robert  Burns 568 

Wylie,  Lollie  Belle.     The  Play  of  Life 253 

Zakrzewska,  Dr.  Marie.     Funeral  Oration.     William  Lloyd  Garrison.    386. — 

Her  Own  Farewell   Address.     386, — Obituary  Notice.     384 — Sketch  of 

Her  Life.     Ednah  D.  Cheney.     391. 

BOOK-REVIEWS,  NOTES,  CORRESPONDENCE,  ETC. 

Abbott,  Lyman.     The  Rights  of  Man 382 

Abhayaratha,  H.  S.     Life  of  Gautama  Buddha 575 

Adams,  Brooks.     The  New  Empire 767 

Adams,  Robert  Chamblet.     Good  Without  God 639 

Addams,  Jane.     Democracy  and  Social  Ethics 447 

Albers,  A.  C.     Life  of  Buddha  for  Children 573 

Ananda  Maitriya.-     Animism  and  Law.     A  Paper  on  Buddhism 572 

Anuruddha,  Maha  Thero.     Anuruddha-cataka 443 

Arnold,  Matthew.     Literature  and  Dogma  :  An   Essay  Toward  a  Better  Ap- 
prehension of  the  Bible 703 

Ashley,  Roscoe  Lewis.     The  American  Federal  State 254 

Asiatic  Creeds,  Conference  of  the 630 

Beard,  Charles.     The  Industrial  Revolution 383 

Beman,  W.  W.,  and  D.  E.  Smith.     Academic  Algebra 510 

Bibelot  Series 126,  448,  703 


PAGE 

Bigelow,  Poultney.     The  Children  of  the  Nations 700 

Bixby,  James  T.     The  New  World  and  the  New  Thought 511 

Blackmar,  Frank  W.     Life  of  Charles  Robinson,  the  First  State  Governor  of 

Kansas 382 

Blauvelt,  Mary  Taylor.     The   Development  of   the   Cabinet   Government   in 

England 320 

Blondel,  Herve.     Approximations  to  Truth 46 

Bloomfield,  Maurice,  and  Richard  Garbe.     Atharva-veda 317 

Bose,  Charu  Chandra.     Pali  and  Its  Relation  to  Sanscrit.      574. — The  Origin 

and  Development  of  the  Pali  Language.     574. 
Botsford,   George  Willis.     A  History  of  the  Orient  and  Greece.     244. — An 

Ancient  History  for  Beginners.     693. 

Bourdeau,  Louis.     Le  probleme  de  la  vie 236 

Brooks,  Edward.     The  Story  of  the  .^Eneid,  or  the  Adventures  of  .^Eneas.   633. 

— The  Story  of  King  Arthur  and  the  Knights  of  the  Round  Table.   633. 
Brown,  George  W.     Reminiscences  of  Gov.   R.   J.   Walker  :  With   the   True 

Story  of  the  Rescue  of  Kansas  From  Slavery 511 

Brown,  Walter  Lee.     Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus 447 

Brown,  William  Garrott.     The  Lower  South  in  American  History 512 

Buddharakkhito.     Jinalamkara 443 

Burnett,  Irwin.     The  Heretic 637 

Carruth,  William  Herbert.     Schiller's  Bride  of  Messina 127 

Cavazzutti,  E.  M.     Projet  d'organisation  du  mouvement  scientifique  universal 

en  anglais,  espagnol,  Frangais,  Allemand,  Italien 701 

Christian  Era,   Prof.   Hermann   Schubert's  computation  of  time   which    has 

elapsed  since  beginning  of 256 

Clark,  John  Bates.     The  Control  of  Trusts 126 

Gierke,  A.  M.     Popular  History  of  Astronomy 696 

Clodd,  Edward.      S.  Laing's  Modern  Science  and  ilfodern  Thought 638 

Codman,  John.     Arnold's  Expedition  to  Quebec 255 

Congress  of  Religions  at  Buffalo,  Proceedings  of   Seventh  Annual  Meeting  of.   383 

Cornish,  F.  Warre.     Chivalry 506 

Couchoud,  Paul-Louis.     Life  of  Benoit  Spinoza 448 

Crawford,  F.  Marion.     Marietta,  a  Maid  of  Venice 125 

Crew,  Henry,  and  Robert  R.  Tatnell.   Laboratory  Manual  of  Physics  for  Use 

in  High  Schools 510 

(Jri  Dharmadaso.     Vidagdha  Mukha  Mandana 443 

Crooker,  Joseph  Henry.    The  Unitarian  Church  :  A  Statement.     383. — Essays 

in  The  Springfield  Republican.      768. 

Crosby,  Ernest.     Captain  Jinks,  Hero 575 

Dannemann,  Friedrich.     Grundriss  einer  Geschichte  der  Naturwissenschaften  445 
Dantec,  Felix  Le.     L'unite  dans  I'Stre  vivant  :  Essai  d'une  biologie  chimique.    235 

Davids,  T.  W.  Rhys.     His  Statement  Regarding  Vase  Inscriptions 256 

Davis,  William  Stearns.     God  Wills  It 127 

Delitzsch's  Lecture  on  "  Babel  and  Bible  " 251 

Dresser,  Horatio  W.     The  Christ   Ideal,  A  Study  of  the  Spiritual  Teachings 

of  Jesus 575 

Edmunds,  Albert  J.     Dhammapada 569 

Electricity,  Reports  of  International  Congress  of 128 

Ely,  Richard  T.     Social  Aspects  of  Christianity 512 


Vni  THE  OPEN  COURT. 

I'AGE 

Emerson,  Edwin.     Fugitive  Poems 126 

Encycloptcdia  Biblica 748 

E.  P.  B.     God  the  Beautiful ;  An  Artist's  Creed 512 

Erasmus.     Praise  of  Folly 1 27 

Errera,  Leo.     Philosophical  Botany 446 

Ezra  Stiles.     Literary  Diary 639 

Fairlie,  John  A.     Municipal  Administration 125 

Fiske,  John.      Life  Everlasting 122 

Forester,  George.   The  Faith  of  an  Agnostic  ;  Or  First  Essays  in  Rationalism.   444 

Forward,  Rashleigh  Gumming.     The  King  Who  Wouldn't  be  a  Pagan 637 

Fullerton,  George  Stuart.      His  articles  in  The  Philosophical  A'c7>iezL' 575 

Gakuto,   The 255 

Garbe,  Richard,  and  Maurice  Bloomfield.     Atharva-veda 317 

Gaza  Coin,  Note  on 316 

Giglio-Tos,  Ermanno.     Les  problemes  de  la  vie 236 

Good  Will 128 

Gould,  F.  J.     The  Religion  of  the  First  Christians.    116.— Will  Women  Help? 

An  Appeal  to  Women  to  Assist  in  Liberating  Modern  Thought  From  The- 

ologica.     125. 

Grasset,  J.     Les  limites  de  la  biologie 382 

Greenough,    James  Bradstreet,    and   George   Lyman   Kittredge.     Words   and 

Their  Ways  in  English  Speech 311 

Gummere,  Francis  B.     The  Beginning  of  Poetry 380 

Gunkels  Legends  of  Genesis 245 

Guymiot,  M.      The  First  Principles  of  Herbert  Spencer 704 

Haas,  Hans.     Geschichte  des  Christenthums  in  Japan 690 

Haeckel,  Ernst.     Kunstformen  der  Natur.     47. — Riddle  of  the  Universe.    191. 
Hamilton,  Edward  John.     The  Moral  Law,  or  The  Theory  and   Practice  of 

Duty 575 

Hammurabi,  Code  of  Laws  of 639 

Hansen,  George.     Baby  Roland 703 

Hapgood,  Norman.     Life  and  Appreciation  of  George  Washington 128 

Hardesty,  Irving.     Neurological  Technique 125 

Harnack,  Adolf.     Das  Wesen  des  Christenthums 381 

Harper,  William  R.    .Constructive  Studies  in  the  Priestly  Element  in  the  Old 

Testament 319 

Hart,  Albert  Bushnell.     The  Foundations  of  American  Foreign  Policy.    46. — 

The  Welding  of  the  Nation.     47. 

Harvard  Summer  School  of  Theology 320 

Hatzfeld,  Ad.      Blaise  Pascal 45 

Herrick,  Robert.     The  Real  World 127 

Heysinger,  J.  W.     Solar  Energy  ;  Its  Source  and  Mode  Throughout  the  Uni- 
verse     576 

Ilibbcrl  Jourtial,   The 702 

Hindu-Buddhistic  Religious  Conference 704 

Hindu  Child-Widow  Remarriage 639 

Hirsch,  Max.     Democracy  Versus  Socialism 121 

Hodder,  Alfred.     The  Adversaries  of  the  Sceptic,  or  the  Specious  Present.    A 

New  Inquiry  Into  Human  Knowledge 448 

Holgate,  Thomas  F.     Plane  and  Solid  Elementary  Geometry 510 


INDEX.  IX 

PAGE 

Holmes,  C.  J.     Hokusai 440 

Holtzmiiller,  G.     Solid  Geometry 510 

Holyoake,  George  Jacob.     The  Logic  of  Death 637 

Hunt,  Mary  A.     Scientific  Bible 509 

Indian  National  Social  Congress 192 

Ingret,  Maxime.     Cours  Complete  de  Langue  Fran^aise 447 

Jabelon.     The  Phallic  Derivation  of  Religion 639 

Jaulmes,  Alfred.     His  sketch  on  Satanism,  etc 446 

Jaures,  Jean.     The  Reality  of  the  Sensible  World 638 

Johnston,  R.  M.      The  Roman  Theocracy  and  the  Republic 127 

Kamo  No  Chomei.     Ho  Jo  Ki 252 

Karppe,  S.     Essai  de  critique  et  d'histoire  de  philosophie 638 

Kellor,  Francis  A.     Experimental  Sociology,  Descriptive  and  Analytical 192 

Kelly,  Edmund.     Government  or  Human  Evolution 123 

Kennard,  Joseph  Spencer.     The  Fallen  God  :  And  Other  Essays  in  Literature 

and  Art 508 

Kidd,  Benjamin.     Principles  of  Western  Civilisation 635 

Kittredge,    George   Lyman,    and  James  Bradstreet   Greenough.     Words  and 

Their  Ways  in  English  Speech 311 

Kovalevsky,  Maxime.      Russian  Political  Institutions,  Their  Growth  and  De- 
velopment from  the  Beginning  of  Russian  History  to  the  Present  Time..  .  192 

Ladeveze,  Henri  de,  author  of  "  The  Truth  About  the  Jesuits" 256 

Laing,  S.     Modern  Science  and  Modern  Thought 638 

Lanciani,  Rodolfo.     The  Destruction  of  Ancient  Rome 237 

Lane,  Michael  A.     The  Level  of  Social  Motion 319 

Lapie,  Paul.     Logic  of  the  Will 575 

Lazarus,  M.     The  Ethics  of  Judaism 128 

Leclere,  Albert.     Essai  critique  sur  le  droit  d'affirmer 235 

Leibnitz,    Gottfried   Wilhelm.     Discourse    on    Metaphysics,    Correspondence 

with  Arnauld,  and  Monadology 104 

Leonard,  William  A.     The  New  Story  of  the  Bible 125 

Leonowens,  Anna  Harriette.     Siam  and  the  Siamese 53 

Leon,  Xavier.     The  Philosophy  of  Fichte 448 

Lessen,  Eduard.     Adalbert  Svoboda 637 

Light  of  Dharma,   The 126 

Linn,  William  Alexander.     The  Story  of  the  Mormons 511 

Lucas,  Edward  Verrail.      A  Book  of  Verses  for  Children 632 

Maddison,  Isabel.     Handbook  of  British,  Continental,  and  Canadian  Univer- 
sities   446 

Maddock,  John.     A  Catechism  of  Positive,  Scientific  Monism.      In  Refutation 

of  the  Negative  Monism  of  Prof.  Ernst  Haeckel 381 

Major,  Charles.     Dorothy  Vernon  of  Haddon  Hall 447 

Mangasarian,  M.  M.     A  New  Catechism 246 

Manley,  Frederick.     Shakespeare's  Merchant  of  Vejiice 64 

Martinengo-Cesaresco,  Evelyn.     Italian  Characters 245 

Mauxion,  Marcel.     L'Education  par  I'instruction  et  les  theories  pedagogiques 

de  Herbart 46 

McConnell,  S.  D.     The  Evolution  of  Immortality 512 

Medhurst,  Rev.  Dr.     The  Tai-Ping  Canon 59 

Mereness,  Newton  D.     Maryland  as  a  Proprietary  Province 47 


X  THK  OPEN  COURT. 

PAGE 

Merriam  Company,  G  &  C.     Webster's  International  Dictionary 574 

Miller,  William.     Shakespeare's  Macbeth  and  the  Ruin  of  Souls 575 

Missouri  Botanical  Garden,  Annual  Report  of 637 

Morgan,  Mary.     Echoes  from  the  Solitudes 128 

Moulton,  F.  R.     An  Introduction  to  Celestial  Mechanics 702 

Newport,   David.     Eudemon 127 

Nicholson,  J.  Shield.     Principles  of  Political  Economy 128 

Patten,  Simon  N.     The  Theory  of  Prosperity 192 

Paulhan,  Fr.     The  Psychology  of  Invention,  46;  Les  characteres,  384. 

Payne,  William  Morton.     Little  Leaders.     Editorial  Echoes 702 

Pennington,  Jeanne  G.     Good  Cheer  Nuggets 255 

Perry,  Walter  Copeland.     The  Boy's  Odyssey 634 

Philosophy,  Proceedings  of  the  International  Congress  of 638 

Prat,  Louis.     Le  mystere  de  Platon,  Aglaophamos 45 

Psychological  Index,  No.  8,  The 383 

Records  of  the  Past 445 

Reinsch,  Paul  S.     Colonial  Government 572 

Renouvier,  Charles.     Uchronie.     45. — The  Dilemmas  of  Pure  Metaphysics. .  236 

Rijnhardt,  Susie  Carson.     With  the  Tibetans  in  Tent  and  Temple 109 

Riley,  I.  Woodbridge.     The  Founder  of  Mormonism ;  A  Psychological  Study 

of  Joseph  Smith,  Jr 576 

Roberts,  Peter.     The  Anthracite  Coal  Industry 128 

Roberty,  Eugene  de.     Nietzsche 638 

Row,  T.  Sundara.     Geometric  Exercises  in  Paper-Folding 55 

Schmidt,  Heinrich.     A  Struggle  for  the  "Riddle  of  the  Unwerse" 192 

Schoute,  P.  H.     Multidimensional  Geometry 510 

Searching  for  the  Truth 512 

Seligman,  Edwin  R.  A.     The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History 768 

Single  Tax  Colony,  Establishment  of 256 

Smart,  A.  W.     System  of  Kant 448 

Smith,  D.  E.,  and  W.  W.  Beman.     Academic  Algebra 510 

Smith,  Goldwin.     Commonwealth  or  Empire 570 

Smithsonian  Institution,  Annual  Reports 124,  636 

Steiner,  Rudolf.     Die  Mystik 637 

Strong,  D.  M.     The  Udana,  or  the  Solemn  Utterances  of  the  Buddha 444 

Tatnell,  Robert  R.,  and  Henry  Crew.     Laboratory  Manual  of  Physics  for  Use 

in  High  Schools 510 

Temple  Classics,   The 703 

Thomas,  Calvin.     The  Life  and  Works  of  Friedrich  Schiller 507 

Thomas,  William  Hannibal,     The  Negro  Question  :  What  He  Was,  What  He 

Is,  and  What  He  May  Become 64 

Thorndike,  Edward.     The  Human  Nature  Club 383 

Tomlins,  W.  L.     The  Laurel   Song  Book  for  Advanced  Classes  in  Schools, 

Academies,  Choral  Societies,  etc 320 

Triggs,  Oscar  Lovell.     Chapters  in  the  History  of  the  Arts  and  Crafts  Move- 
ment   51 ' 

Triplett,  Norman.     The  Psychology  of  Conjuring  Deceptions 446 

Vanni,  Icilio.     Receipt  of  his  pamphlet  on  the  theory  of  knowledge  acknowl- 
edged    384 

Vidyabhusana,  Satis  Chandra.     Kacchayana's  PdU  Grammar 445 


INDEX.  XI 

PAGE 

Walkley,  Albert.     Life  of  Theodore  Parker 512 

Ward,  Josiah  M.     Come  With  Me  to  Babylon 768 

Ward,  Lester  F.     His  report  on  sociology  at  Paris  Exhibition  of  1900  to  ap- 
pear in  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education 384 

Waterman,  A.  N.     Note  concerning  ' '  Taxation  "  articles 192 

Watts,  Charles.     The  Miracles  of  Christian  Belief 382 

Wheeler,  Benjamin  Ide.     Dionysos  and  Immortality 122 

Wollpert,  Frederick.   Correction  of  review  of  his  work.  From  Whence,  What, 

and  to  What  End  ? 63 

Wood,  S.  T.     Primer  of  Political  Economy 125 

World  Alm,anac  and  Eyicyclofcsdia  for  1902 126 

Young,  J.  W.  A.     The  Teaching  of   Mathematics  in   the   Higher  Schools  of 

Prussia 254 

Zueblin,  Charles.     American  Municipal  Progress 767 


Cheap  Editions  of  Standard  Works 

in 

Philosophy,  Science,  and  Religion 

THE  RELIGION  OF  SCIENCE  LIBRARY 

Yearly,  $1.50 

Biological  Publications 

No.  18.   An  Examination  of  Weisraannisra.     G.  J.  Romanes.  .  ,35c  (2s.). 
"    19.   On  Germinal  Selection.     August  Weismann.  ....  .25c  (is.  6d.). 

"    29.   On  Orthogenesis.     Th.  Eimer 25c  (is.  6d.). 

"    32.    A  Mechanico-Physiological  Theory  of  Organic  Evo- 
lution.    Karl  von  Nageli 15c  (gd.). 

Psychological  Books 

No.  4.  The  Diseases  of  Personality.     Th.  Ribot 25c  (is.  6d.). 

"    5.   The  Psychology  of  Attention.     Th.  Ribot 25c  (is.  6d.). 

"    6.  The  Psychic  Life  of  Micro-Organisms.     A.  Binet.  .25c  (is.  6d.). 

"    8.   On  Double  Consciousness.     Alfred  Binet 15c  (gd.). 

"  10.   The  Diseases  of  the  Will.     Th.  Ribot .25c  (is.  6d.) 

"  16.   On  Memory,  and  The  Specific  Energies  of  the  Ner- 
vous System.     Prof.  Ewald  Hering .15c  (gd.). 

Neat  Paper  Covers.    Stitched  Backs 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company 

324  DEARBORN  STREET.  CHICAGO 
London:  KEQAN  PAUL,  TRENCH,  TRUBNER  &  CO.,  Ltd. 

"* 

VALUABLE  ^EW  BOOKS 

Whence  and  Whither?  An  Inquiry 

The  Qospel  According  to  Darwin. 

Into   the   Nature   of   the   Soul,    Its 

By  Dr.  Woods  Hutchinson.  Pages, 

Origin  and  Destiny.     By  Dr.  Paul 

xii,  241.     Price,  paper,  50  cents  (2s. 

Carus.      Pages,    viii.    i88.      Price, 

6d.).     Cloth,  $1.50  (6s.). 

cloth,  75  cents  (3s.  6d.). 

"  Is  one  of  the  most  thoughtful  and  stim- 

Treats of  the  nature  of  the  ego ;  human 

ulating  of  recent  publications  .  .  .  frank' 

personality;    spiritual    heredity;    human 

manly,  and  straightforward  .  .  .  much  food 

Immortality;  etc..  from  the  standpoint  of 

for  profitable  meditation  in  its  pages."— 

modern  psychology  and  biology. 

Chicago  Chronicle, 

A^vaghosha's   Discourse  on  the  Awakening  of  Faith  In  the  Mahaydna. 

Translated  for  the  first  time  from   the  Chinese  version,   by  Teitaro  Suzuki. 

Pages,  176.     Price,  cloth,  $1.25  (5s.). 

This  is  one  of  the  lost  sources  of  Buddhism.    It  has  never  been  found  in  Us  original  San. 

skrit,  but  has  been  known  to  e.\ist  in  two  Chinese  translations,  the  contents  of  which  have  never 

been  made  accessible  to  the  Western  world.    This  famous  book  has  now  been  translated  from 

the  Chinese  for  the  first  time,  by  Mr.  Teitaro  Suzuki,  a  Japanese  Buddhist  scholar,  and  has 

been  published  with  introduction,  comments,  glossary,  and  index. 

An   Enquiry  Concerning  Human 

World's  Congress  Addresses.  De- 

Understanding.   By  David  Hu.me. 

livered  by  the  President,  the  Hon. 

Reprinted  from  the  edition  of  1777, 

Charles  Carroll  BoNNEY,  LL.D., 

with  Hume's  autobiography  and  a 

to  the  World's  Parliament  of  Reli- 

letter   from   Adam   Smith,    usually 

gions  and  the  Religious  Denomina- 

prefixed to  the  History  of  England. 

tional  Congresses  of  1893.     Printed 

Frontispiece,  portrait  of  Hume  by 

as   a   Memorial   of    the   Significant 

Ramsay.    Pages,  201.    Price,  paper. 

Events  of  the  Columbian  Year.   Pp. , 

25  cents. 

vi,  88.     Price,  paper,  15c  (gd.). 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  CO.,  3,/d" art^r^n  st. 

London  :  Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Triibner  &  Co.,  Ltd. 

THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY 


CONTENTS  OF  THE  SEPTEMBER  NUMBER. 

Aerography.     Percival  Lowell. 

University  Control.     Prof.  J.  J.  Stevenson. 

The  World-view  of  a  Scientist :  Ernst  Haeckel's  Phi- 
losophy.    Prof.  Frank  Thilly. 

Eels  and  the  Eel-Question.     M.  C.  Marsh. 

The  Story  of  a  Word — Mammal.     Dr.  Theo.  Gill. 

A  Year  of  Weather  and  Trade  in  the  United  States. 
Prof.  R.  DeC.  Ward. 

Mental  and  Moral  Heredity  in  Royalty.     Dr.  Fred- 
erick Adams  Woods. 

A  New  Theory  of  Light  and  Colors.    Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton. 

Discussion  and  Correspondence: 
Are  Fellowships  Almsgiving  or  Investments  ? 
Mrs.  W.  a.  Kellerman. 

The  Progress  of  Science  : 
The  Carnegie  Institution  and  the  Marine  Biologi- 
cal Laboratory ;  Science  in  American  Journals  ;  A 
Graduate  School  of  Agriculture  ;  Biographies  of 
Eminent  Chemists  ;  The  Comparative  Growth  of 
Bacteria  in  Milk  ;  Scientific  Items. 


CONTENTS  OF  THE  OCTOBER  NUMBER. 

Rudolf  Virchow.     Frontispiece. 

A  Study  in  Plant  Adaptation.     Prof.  J.  W.  Toumey. 

The  American  Origin  of  Agriculture.     O.  F.  Cook. 

Mental  and  Moral  Heredity  in  Royalty.  Dr.  Fred- 
erick Adams  Woods. 

The  Competition  of  the  United  States  with  the 
United  Kingdom.     Dr.  John  Waddell. 

Scientific  Reading  in  a  Public  Library.  Arthur  E. 
Bostwick. 

An  Ascent  of  Mt.  Orizaba.  Prof.  Alja  Robinson 
Crook. 

Origin  of  the  Fins  of  Fishes.  President  David 
Starr  Jordan. 

Domestic  and  Intercollegiate  Athletics.  Prof.  Cal- 
vin M.  Woodward. 

Recent  Advances  in  Science  and  their  Bearing  on 
Medicine  and  Surgery.    Prof.  Rudolf  Virchow. 

Discussion  and  Correspondence  : 
Are  Fellowships  Almsgiving  or  Investments?  Pres- 
ident David  Starr  Jordan. 
College  Professors  :  President  C.  W.  Super. 

The  Progress  of  Science  : 

Rudolf  Virchow;  Scientific  Eminence;  The  New 
British  Order  and  Academy  ;  The  President's  Ad- 
dress before  the  British  Association  ;  The  Interna- 
tional Council  for  the  Study  of  the  Sea;  Scientific 
Items. 

Index  to  Volume  LXI. 


^S^  The  MONTHLY  will  be  sent  to  new  subscribers  for  six  months  for  One  Dollar. 

SUBSCRIPTION  ORDER 

To   THE  SCIENCE  PRESS, 

Publishers  of  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 
Sub-Station  84,   New   York  City. 

Please  find  enclosed  check  or  money  order  for  three  dollars,  subscription 
to  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY  for  one  year,  beginning 
igo2. 

Please  find  enclosed  from  a  new  subscriber  one  dollar  {sent  at  your  risk), 
subscription  for  six  monlhs  to  THE  POPULAR  SCIENCE  MONTHLY, 
beginni/ig ig02. 

Na  me 

Address 


Single  Numbers,  30  Cents.  Yearly  Subscription,  $3.00. 

THE  SCIENCE  PRE5S 

Garrison-on-Hudson,  N.  Y.  41  North  Queen  St.,  Lancaster,  Pa. 

SUB=STATION  84:    NEW  YORK. 


MRi  ALICl  MCrNlLlf\A.C  SWIIIbiJ«N[  f\  ilH  C  PtHKlH      f\»l  QUILL  LRCOUC/t^RlinOf  OF  KIPOn}\AUtUilmE  BIII/l[LLf\lAM£  HjINHAnRi 


§1 


V/0RLDLS6R£AtE£MHmLECTS 
ARE  REPRESENTED  IN  iTS  PAGES 

All  of  the  -writers  -whose  portraits  appear  in  the  margin  of 
this  pat(c\vere  represented  in  last  year's  niiinhers  of  The  Li\-ing 
Age;  and  Avith  them  Katharine  Tynan,  Maxwell  Gray,  George 
Meredith,  Fiona  Macleod,  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  Hilaire  Belloc,  Sir 
Rowland  Blennerhassett,  Eugene  Melchior  de  Vogue,  Paul  Bourget, 
Henry  Lawson,  Arthur  Christopher  Benson,  Max  Beerbohm,  Pierre 
de  Coubertin,  William  Watson,  Maxime  Gorky,  G.  M.  Trevelyan,  Emily 
Lawless,  Theophile  Gautier,  Prince  Kropotkin,  and  manv  ot  tiers. 

THE  LIVING  ACE 

AS    IT    ENTERS    I  TON"    ITS 

SIXTIETH  YEAR  AND  236TH  QUARTERLY  VOLUME 

still  Tnaintains  the  high  standard  of  literary  excellence  which  has 
characterized  it  from  the  beginning.  It  presents  in  an  inexpen- 
sive form,  considering  its  great  aTnoimt  of  matter,  -with  freshness, 
owing  to  its  weekly  issne,  and  with  a  satisfactory  completeness 
e(|ualled  by  no  other  publication,  the  be-t  Essays,  Reviews,  Criti- 
cisms, Serial  and  Short  Stories,  Sketches  of  Travel  and  Discovery, 
Poetry,  Scientific,  Biographical,  Historical  and  Political  Informa- 
tion, frf)in  the  ^  ast  field  of  Foreign  Pcriotliial  Literature. 


ABSOLUTELY   FREE 

To  all  NEW  Subscribers  to  THE  LIVING  AGE  for  the  year  i;>03 
there  will  be  sent  FREE,  until  tiie  edition  is  exiiausted,  tiie  THIRTEEN 
WEEKLY  ISSIES  for  the  three   months,  October,   November  and 
December,  making  a  large  octavo  votume  of  824  pages. 
Send  at  Once  and  Secure  Advantage  of  this  Splendid  Offer 


Published  every  Saturday,  anil  giving  aliout  3,300  pages  a 
year  of  the  World's  Best  Literature,  popular,  yet  of  permanent 


Subscription  Price,  $6.00  a  Year  Single  Number,  I  5  Cents 


THE    LIVING    ACE    COMPANY 


p.  O.  Box  6200 


131^  BROMFIELD  STREET,  BOSTON 


;sm. 


ANDREW  ^NC 


SIDNEY  LEE 


HERBERT  PAUL 


SIR  E  ARNOLP 


EDMUND  COiU 


^3tl/WENrSJ  REID  t 


JOHN  BUCHAN 


LESLIE  STEPHEN 


A  UNIQUE   MATHEMATICAL   WORK 

Geometric  Exercises  in  Paper^Folding 

By  T.  SUNDARA  ROW.  Edited  and  revised  by  W. 
W.  Beman  and  D.  E.  Smith.  With  many  half-tone  en- 
gravings from  photographs  of  actual  exercises,  and  a 
package  of  papers  for  folding.  Pages,  x,  148.  Price, 
cloth,  $1.00  net  (4s.  6d.  net.). 

"  I  have  sought  not  only  to  aid  the  teaching  of  geometry  in  schools  and 
colleges,  but  also  to  afford  mathematical  recreation  to  young  and 
old,  in  an  attractive  and  cheap  form.  'Old  boys'  like  myself  may  find 
the  book  useful  to  revive  their  old  lessons,  and  to  have  a  peep  into 
modern  developments  which,  although  very  interesting  and  instructive, 
have  been  ignored  by  university  teachers." — From  the  author's  Preface. 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHINQ  CO.,  ,.,^^'^^^  sx. 

London  :  Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Triibner  &  Co. 


INTERESTING  BOOK  ON  EGYPT 

THE 

BOOK  OF  THE  DEAD 

An  Englisli  Translation  of  the  Chapters, 
Hymns,  etc.,  of  the  Theban  Recension,  with 
Introduction,  Notes,  etc.  By  E.  A.WALLIS 
BUDGE,  M.A.,  Litt.D.,  D.Lit.,  Keeper  of 
the  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  Antiquities  in  the 
British  Museum.  With  four  hundred  and 
twenty  vignettes,  which  do  not  appear  in  the 
larger  edition  published  in  1897.  Three  vols. 
Crown  8vo.    Price,  $3.75  net.    Just  Published. 

The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company,  Chicago 

Monon  Building    -    -    324  Dearborn  Street. 


Attractive    Combined    Offers 


Asiatic  Russia  (postpaid' 
Records  of  the  Past 
The  Open  Court 
Bibliotheca  Sacra 


$7.95 

2.00 

1.00 

3.00 

All  four  for  $10.75. 


$13.95 


Asiatic  Russia  (postpaid)  -  -  -  $7.95 

The  Open  Court  -  -  -  -         1.00 

Bibliotheca  Sacra    -  -  -  -  3.00 

$11.95 
All  three  for  $9.75. 


Records  of  the  Past  -  -  -  $2.00 

The  Open  Court  ...  -         1.00 

Bibliotheca  Sacra    -  -  -  -  3.00 

$6.00 
All  three  for  $4.75. 

Asiatic  Russia. —  "A  work  of  highest  authority,  presented  with 
Hterary  grace  and  skill.  .  .  .  The  result  of  prodigious  scholarship 
and  wide  observation   presented  in  easy,  readable  style." — The 

Critic. 

Records  of  the  Past A  new  monthly  periodical  published  at 

Washington,  D.  C,  under  the  editorship  of  Rev.  Henry  Mason 
Baum,  D.  C.  L.,  with  Mr.  Frederick  Wright  as  assistant.  Each 
number  contains  thirty-two  quarto  pages,  accompanied  with 
numerous  elegant  illustrations. 

Remittances,  strictly  in  advance,  may  be  made  by 
Money  Order,  New  York  Draft,  or  Registered  Letter  to 

Bibliotheca  Sacra  Co.,  Oberlin,  Ohio,  U.  S.  A. 


REPRINTS  OF  SCIENCE  CLASSICS. 

No.  I. 

THE  ANALYSIS  OF  AIR  AND  WATER,  being  selections  from  Lavoisier's  Elemen- 
tary Treatise  of  Chemistry.  Translated  and  annotated  by  C.  E.  Litiebarger . 
Double  number.     Ten  cents. 

The  laboratory  method  of  science  teaching,  at  first  applied  to  supplement  the  text-book,  has  proved  so 
valuable  that  the  text-book  work  has  in  a  measure  become  subordinate  to  the  laboratory  work.  In  the  lab- 
oratory the  student  comes  in  direct  contact  with  the  facts  of  science,  and  uses  his  text-book  mainly  to  sup- 
plement and  correlate  what  he  has  learned  in  the  laboratory.  The  text-book,  however,  too  often  proves 
inadequate.  From  his  experience  in  getting  knowledge  at  first  hand  in  the  laboratory,  the  student  comes  to 
feel  a  desire  to  get  his  knowledge  of  matters  which  from  lack  of  time  and  facilities  he  cannot  study  by  lab- 
oratory methods,  also  at  first  hand  ;  he  wants  to  consult  the  original  sources  of  the  knowledge  of  the  facts 
given  in  the  text.  The  value  of  "  supplementary  reading,"  as  it  is  called,  is  universally  recognized  in  the 
study  of  history  and  literature.  It  gives  the  student  a  breadth  and  power  impossible  otherwise.  And  so  it 
would  be  in  the  study  of  science,  if  the  original  sources  of  information  were  readily  accessible. 

To  meet  this  want  is  the  object  of  ihe  series  ot  "Reprints  of  Science  Classics."  These  consist  of  selec- 
tions from  the  writings  of  the  pioneers  of  science,  so  edited  as  to  be  within  the  comprehension  of  the  be- 
ginner in  science.  They  embrace  the  sciences  of  Biology  (Botany,  Zoology  and  Physiology),  Chemistry, 
Physics,  Astronomy,  Physiography,  etc.,  and  are  accompanied  with  copious  notes,  reproductions  of  cuts 
and  plates,  biographical  sketches  and  other  matter  calculated  to  arouse  interest  and  hold  attention.  Each 
"Reprint"  is  edited  by  a  man  who  is  a  teacher  as  well  as  a  scientist.  It  is  believed  that  the  study  of  such 
"Reprints"  cannot  fail  to  inculcate  more  of  the  true  scientific  spirit  into  science  education  and  to  make  it 
more  and  more  of  a  training  for  power. 

(In  Preparation.) 
THE    MECHANICAL   EQUIVALENT   OF    HEAT.     A   Literal  Transcript  from  the   Original  Papers,  by 
yames  Prescott  jfoule.     Edited  by  F.  A.  Osborn,  Professor  of  Physics  in  Olivet  College. 

The  School  Science  Press,  Ravenswood,  Chicago,  111. 


OUT    LE    MONDE    LIT   la  revue 
Internationale  illustree 


T 

L'Humanite  Nouvelle 

La  moins  couteuse,  la  mieux  faite,  la  plus 
complete  de  toutes  les  revues  de  langue 
frangaise.  Organe  libre  des  tendances  les 
plus  larges  en  matieres  scientifiques  et 
artistiques. 

L'Huinanite  Nouvelle 

parait  mensuellement  en  un  volume  illu- 
stre  in-8°  rasain  de  128  pages. 

La  revue  ne  publie  que  de  I'inedit. 

Sciences  sociologiques  (politique,  histoire, 
socialisme),  geographiques,  biologiques, 
etc.;  Philosophie;  Contes;  Vers;  Theatre; 
Critique  litteraire  et  artistique,  etc.  Re- 
vue des  livres  et  revues  de  toutes  les 
langues  et  sur  tons  sujets. 

Directeurs :  A.  Hamon  et  V.  Eniile=Michelet 

Aucune  revue  ne  pent  rivaliser  avec  L'Hu- 
7namte  Nouvelle . 

Un  an  Six  mois  Un  numero 
Abonne-j  France  et  Belgique  15        8  i  75 

ments     |  Union  postale  20      10  2  " 

Envoi  d'un  numero  specimen  franco  sur  demande 

3  bis,  Cours  de  Rohan,  Paris,  6e 
62,  Rue  Montagne  de  la  Cour,  Bruxelles 


To  the  West 

The  North-Western  Line  is  the 
only  double  track  railway  from 
Chicago  to  the  Missouri  River. 

The  double  track  is  now  completed  between  Chicago 
and  Council  Bluffs.  Four  fast  trains  each  way  ds;ly 
between  Chicago  and  Omaha,  three  trains  daily  to  the 
Pacific  Coast  and  two  to  Denver. 

A  double  track  railway  across 
the  western  prairies  means  a 
great  deal  of  history-making,  em- 
pire-building, American  energy. 

The  story  of  the  western  country  and  of  the  Pioneer 
Line  that  has  played  so  great  a  part  in  its  progress 
is  interestingly  told  in  a  booklet  which  will  be  sent  on 
receipt  of  a  two-cent  stamp  to  pay  postage. 

W.  B.  Kniskern.  Gen'l  Pass'R&Tkt  Agt. 

CHICAGO 


IMPORTANT   PUBLICATION! 

The   Science  of    Mechanics 

A  Critical  and  Historical  Account  of  Its  Development 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  MECHANICS.  A  Critical  and  Historical  Account 
of  Its  Development.  By  Dr.  Ernst  Mach,  Professor  of  the  History 
and  Theory  of  Inductive  Science  in  the  University  of  Vienna.  Trans- 
lated by  Thomas  J.  McCormack.  Second  Enlarged  Edition.  259  Cuts. 
Pages,  XX,  605.  Cloth,  Gilt  Top,  Marginal  Analyses.  Exhaustive 
Index.     Price,  $2.00  net  (9s.  6d.  net). 

Comments  on  the  First  Edition. 

"  Mach's  Mechanics  is  unique.  It  is  not  a  text-book,  but  forms  a  useful  supplement  to 
the  ordinary  text-book.  The  latter  is  usually  a  skeleton  outline,  full  of  mathematical  symbols 
and  other  abstractions.  Mach's  book  has  '  muscle  and  clothing,'  and  being  written  from  the 
historical  standpoint,  introduces  the  leading  contributors  in  succession,  tells  what  they  did 
and  how  they  did  it,  and  often  what  manner  of  men  they  were.  Thus  it  is  that  the  pages 
glow,  as  it  were,  with  a  certain  humanism,  quite  delightful  in  a  scientific  book.  .  .  .  The 
book  is  handsomely  printed,  and  deserves  a  warm  reception  from  all  interested  in  the  pro- 
gress of  science." — The  Physical  Revieiv,  New  York  and  London. 

"  Those  who  are  curious  to  learn  how  the  principles  of  mechanics  have  been  evolved, 
from  what  source  they  take  their  origin,  and  how  far  they  can  be  deemed  of  positive  and 
permanent  value,  will  find  Dr.  Mach's  able  treatise  entrancingly  interesting.  .  .  .  The  book 
is  a  remarkable  one  in  many  respects,  while  the  mixture  of  history  with  the  latest  scientific 
principles  and  absolute  mathematical  deductions  makes  it  exceedingly  attractive." — Mechan- 
ical World,  Manchester  and  London,  England. 

"  The  book  as  a  whole  is  unique,  and  is  a  valuable  addition  to  any  library  of  science  or 
philosophy.  .  .  .  Reproductions  of  quaint  old  portraits  and  vignettes  give  piquancy  to  the 
pages.  The  numerous  marginal  titles  form  a  complete  epitome  of  the  work  ;  and  there  is 
that  invaluable  adjunct,  a  good  index.  Altogether  the  publishers  are  to  be  congratulated 
upon  producing  a  technical  work  that  is  thoroughly  attractive  in  its  make-up." — Prof.  D.  W. 
Hering,  in  Science. 

"  A  masterly  book.  ...  To  any  one  who  feels  that  he  does  not  know  as  much  as  he  ought 
to  about  physics,  we  can  commend  it  most  heartily  as  a  scholarly  and  able  treatise  .  .  .  both 
interesting  and  profitable." — A.  M.  Wellington,  in  Engineering  Neivs,  New  York. 

' '  Sets  forth  the  elements  of  its  subject  with  a  lucidity,  clearness,  and  force  unknown  in 
the  mathematical  text-books  ...  is  admirably  fitted  to  serve  students  as  an  introduction  on 
historical  lines  to  the  principles  of  mechanical  science." — Canadian  Mining  and  Mechan- 
ical Reviezv,  Ottawa,  Can. 

"  There  can  be  but  one  opinion  as  to  the  value  of  Mach's  work  in  this  translation.  No 
instructor  in  physics  should  be  without  a  copy  of  it." — Henry  Crezu,  Professor  of  Physics  in 
the  Northwestern  University,  Evanston,  111. 


THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  CO.,  ^,,^^S?ist. 

London  :  Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  TrUboer  &  Co.,  Ltd.